2012 – Takeoff!

Our journey began in 2012.  I was fortunate to have a mentor who believed in me and felt that our technology would have important applications in Education and in the workforce.  Equally important was my relationship with my co-founders in Kyiv, Ukraine who were willing to embark on this incredible journey that would become LanguaMetrics, Inc.

Our team had deep experience working with Stanford Research International’s (SRI) speech analytics technology.  Our scientists and engineers in Kyiv were able to extend this technology to fulfill my (at the time) futuristic vision of how we could apply our technology to two very important applications.  Our focus was improving the method in which children learn to read and how children around the world and within the U.S. learn to speak English.

Thanks to my mentor we were afforded an opportunity that a bootstrapping startup would typically not be able to afford.  We were invited to present our nascent capabilities to the BLE group in San Diego, California.  This networking opportunity got us noticed by the newly formed Tyton Partners.  This led to a breakfast invitation the next day for me to meet with a director from the newly formed EMPGI.  By the second cup of coffee, I had an invitation to present to EMPGI’s international conference to be held in Dublin, Ireland in two weeks’ time.

Our tiger team in Kyiv dug down even deeper to get our demonstration up to the next level in time for the Dublin conference.  In our next episode I’ll explain how our presentation, and good fortune, landed us on the other side of the world two weeks later.  Please stay tuned…