VOICEITT
ABOUT VOICEITT
Israel-based social enterprise developing a speech recognition technology that recognizes non-standard speech patterns and translates unintelligible sounds into clear speech in real time, enabling children and adults with severe speech impairments to communicate spontaneously and naturally using their own voices. No other assistive technology solution enables a person with speech disabilities to communicate spontaneously using their own voices.
ABOUT DANNY WEISSBERG
Chief Executive Officer, is an engineer-turned-serial entrepreneur with 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship, business development, management, innovation, research and development in cutting edge technologies of complex software solutions. Prior to founding Voiceitt, Danny was the CEO of YubiTech, a software mobilisation company, and the Open University Entrepreneurship Club. Danny also has specific distinction in R&D, having excelled through various points of his career at leading Israeli software firms CheckPoint, HP, and Radvision (now Cisco). Danny graduated with a B.Sc. with Honors in from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, a B.A. in Computer Science with Honors from the Open University of Israel.
CAMELTARY (Camel Commentary)
Speak, Learn, Repeat.
So much about entrepreneurship is about communication. You have the investor meetings, the brainstorms, the pitching, the events, the marketing. You spend hours and hours talking and spreading your message. We take it for granted just how much we use and need our ability to speak.
VoiceItt gives people with speech disabilities their voice back. The service is catered for those suffering with Autism, Down Syndrome, ALS, among others, and offering them a means that has the capability to learn and translate their noises into a language in real time.
Danny Weissberg, VoiceItt’s Founder, explains how the service is ‘language independent’ and relies on the speech pattern of each individual, not conventional languages.
“Here’s an example – a mother, to a child with Cerebral Palsy, can understand everything because she’s used to it.” VoiceItt uses the same skills through a machine learning process always learning how the user interacts. “The more they use it, the better it gets.”
Weissberg was a late-bloomer when entering the world of entrepreneurship. However, he discovered computers early on and became inspired by their ability to connect you with, and meet, people.
“We control many things with voice recognition – cars, homes, computers. Voice recognition is a very important part of the machine learning process.”
For someone who predicted we would all have smartphones in our pockets 10 years ago, and who patented the ability to transform desktop websites to mobile apps, this writer will trust him.
Seeing that voice-recognition was the first wave of computer communication, he was inspired by the unfortunate stroke of his grandmother to make sure everyone’s speech can be interpreted by machines.
“Startups that focus on social good are the most amazing thing, but very tough. Raising money is hard, but for social change is harder. It’s a niche market.” Weissberg expressed many dark hours as the initial funding came to an end in 2016, but VoiceItt has subsequently raised $6 million, mainly through Government funding, competitions, and smaller investments.
Quite the accomplishment for a company without a working product.
“When you have an idea that creates a connection, you have an edge over everyone else. It’s all about the connection.”
James Spiro