venture challenge 2014 - a summer series: "venture challenge could obviously broaden my horizons"
07.08.2014
Get inspired this summer by exciting startup projects from the venture challenge courses at ETH Zurich. In the latest interview, Hui, who is passionate about languages, talks about his startup which helps English learners.
 Hui Liang from SoundNative
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How and why did you launch "SoundNative"?
Everybody has the right to speak English with his own accent and must not be discriminated against because of his unique accent. However, heavily accented English is apparently less preferable since it makes the speakers incomprehensible and thus conversations inefficient. I have been working on speech processing for seven years and my ears are sensitive to various sounds. By comparing the pronunciations of native English speakers and those of English learners, I noticed that first of all it was essential to pronounce each sound unit (technically, "phoneme") of English correctly if someone wanted to get rid of his accented English, and that the problems with prosody were secondary.
Unfortunately, people in general are not good at mimicking foreign sounds (especially those that do not exist in their native languages). For example, I have heard quite a lot of complaints about the hard-to-follow English accents of native Chinese speakers. As a result, SoundNative is aimed at helping people to improve their ability to mimic the pronunciation of English sound units (our very first goal). I hope SoundNative will be able to benefit my compatriots as well as other English learners all over the world.
How is your service positioned regards to your competitors (on the market)?
Without a doubt, people can find other software designed for language study on the market. To my best knowledge, existing software teaches a learner the pronunciation of a word by playing an audio recording of this word, and then can probably judge whether the learner pronounces it well enough -- if not, the learner needs to repeat it. In summary, in order to make progress, a learner needs to figure out by himself the difference between the standard and his own pronunciations of a word. The key idea of SoundNative is that it is SoundNative that figures out such differences and tells a learner what to do with his speech organs, after recognising and analysing his pronunciation.
Why did you apply for venture challenge?
Making a product and selling a product are two totally different stories. Scientists and engineers are good at making products, but I suppose most of them lack knowledge on how to sell their amazing products. venture challenge is a great event that provides technical minds with the fundamentals of running a start-up as well as encouragement. I did not want to be "brainwashed" by technical stuff and venture challenge could obviously broaden my horizons.
Which module from venture challenge helped you most?
The module about financing, I would say. A business idea with all the techniques behind it is like a machine and finance is like lubricant that ensures the machine works smoothly. Knowledge on financing is of great help for me to administer a start-up.
Would you suggest the venture challenge program to other students and researchers?
Yes, definitely. Mostly likely students and researchers have rather a technical mindset. This is a necessary condition for the success of a business, but not a sufficient condition. Students and researchers may think that their ideas/products are amazing and simply presume that they will be popular. venture challenge can let students and researchers take a glance at how business is done in practice.
You also took part at Google Pitchfest and were under the finalist. How did you convince the jury?
Firstly, I think the jury liked the key idea of SoundNative. Secondly, I remember I tried to use simple words and body language to help convey this key idea to the jury, who had no prior knowledge about SoundNative. Thirdly, I didn't stammer and my pitch was smooth. I suppose I looked quite confident and professional to some extent during the pitch, which gave the jury a good impression.
What kind of advice would you give to another young entrepreneur?
I may be just repeating other people's experience (laughter). We Chinese are told that a very famous poet in the Tang Dynasty (ancient China about 1200 years ago) did not publicise his new poems until the revisions could be understood by his neighbour, an illiterate old lady. My translation of this story would be that young entrepreneurs should always make their products and services easy to use, their presentations easy to understand, their advertisements concise and clear, etc. In brief, never overestimate target customers. Things obvious to inventors/creators are not necessarily obvious to customers.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my team mates: Timo Klein and Marta Wlodarz. They have quite different educational backgrounds from mine, which reminds me of another suggestion: it would be better to have a couple of people with different mindsets/backgrounds in a technical team.
Everybody has the right to speak English with his own accent and must not be discriminated against because of his unique accent. However, heavily accented English is apparently less preferable since it makes the speakers incomprehensible and thus conversations inefficient. I have been working on speech processing for seven years and my ears are sensitive to various sounds. By comparing the pronunciations of native English speakers and those of English learners, I noticed that first of all it was essential to pronounce each sound unit (technically, "phoneme") of English correctly if someone wanted to get rid of his accented English, and that the problems with prosody were secondary.
Unfortunately, people in general are not good at mimicking foreign sounds (especially those that do not exist in their native languages). For example, I have heard quite a lot of complaints about the hard-to-follow English accents of native Chinese speakers. As a result, SoundNative is aimed at helping people to improve their ability to mimic the pronunciation of English sound units (our very first goal). I hope SoundNative will be able to benefit my compatriots as well as other English learners all over the world.
How is your service positioned regards to your competitors (on the market)?
Without a doubt, people can find other software designed for language study on the market. To my best knowledge, existing software teaches a learner the pronunciation of a word by playing an audio recording of this word, and then can probably judge whether the learner pronounces it well enough -- if not, the learner needs to repeat it. In summary, in order to make progress, a learner needs to figure out by himself the difference between the standard and his own pronunciations of a word. The key idea of SoundNative is that it is SoundNative that figures out such differences and tells a learner what to do with his speech organs, after recognising and analysing his pronunciation.
Why did you apply for venture challenge?
Making a product and selling a product are two totally different stories. Scientists and engineers are good at making products, but I suppose most of them lack knowledge on how to sell their amazing products. venture challenge is a great event that provides technical minds with the fundamentals of running a start-up as well as encouragement. I did not want to be "brainwashed" by technical stuff and venture challenge could obviously broaden my horizons.
Which module from venture challenge helped you most?
The module about financing, I would say. A business idea with all the techniques behind it is like a machine and finance is like lubricant that ensures the machine works smoothly. Knowledge on financing is of great help for me to administer a start-up.
Would you suggest the venture challenge program to other students and researchers?
Yes, definitely. Mostly likely students and researchers have rather a technical mindset. This is a necessary condition for the success of a business, but not a sufficient condition. Students and researchers may think that their ideas/products are amazing and simply presume that they will be popular. venture challenge can let students and researchers take a glance at how business is done in practice.
You also took part at Google Pitchfest and were under the finalist. How did you convince the jury?
Firstly, I think the jury liked the key idea of SoundNative. Secondly, I remember I tried to use simple words and body language to help convey this key idea to the jury, who had no prior knowledge about SoundNative. Thirdly, I didn't stammer and my pitch was smooth. I suppose I looked quite confident and professional to some extent during the pitch, which gave the jury a good impression.
What kind of advice would you give to another young entrepreneur?
I may be just repeating other people's experience (laughter). We Chinese are told that a very famous poet in the Tang Dynasty (ancient China about 1200 years ago) did not publicise his new poems until the revisions could be understood by his neighbour, an illiterate old lady. My translation of this story would be that young entrepreneurs should always make their products and services easy to use, their presentations easy to understand, their advertisements concise and clear, etc. In brief, never overestimate target customers. Things obvious to inventors/creators are not necessarily obvious to customers.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my team mates: Timo Klein and Marta Wlodarz. They have quite different educational backgrounds from mine, which reminds me of another suggestion: it would be better to have a couple of people with different mindsets/backgrounds in a technical team.