Long before AI became a buzzword, Vu Van recognized its transformative potential. Combining her deep understanding of language learning with her AI expertise, Vu Van founded ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant) in 2015. ELSA, an AI-powered learning app, provides users with an interactive and personalized approach to improving English pronunciation,
50 million users later, over $27 million dollars raised, with investors including Gradient Ventures, Google’s dedicated AI fund, this is a conversation not to be missed.
Some notable quotables from Vu Van:
1. On the current market, AND EXPLOSION OF CHATGPT:
“We’ve been doing this work long before it became exciting, it is accelerating what we wanted to do, in terms of the market acceptance and the adoption of it.”
While the market can feel tough, there is an undercurrent of excitement on the possibility of artificial intelligence since it is now more widely understood by the masses. The challenge for ELSA is in staying steadfast to the goal, and delivering quality to the user.
2. On turning rejection to fuel your fire:
ELSA was inspired by Vu Van’s own journey as an immigrant in the United States, where despite her grasp of English, her Vietnamese accent was hardly understood by others. She relates a particular incident in Stanford where her idea was ignored, but when later retold exactly by the next person, was celebrated.
“And I was sitting there really silently thinking, how did I not get the same attention? I was literally trying to say the exact same thing five minutes ago. The feedback from my professors and classmates was embarrassing: the delivery of my message was hard to understand”
She realized the very problem she faced, was what 90% of the 1.5 billion people learning English struggle with as well: and she was determined to solve it.
3. On just getting started:
Interestingly, Vu Van did not have the ‘Cold Start’ problem—ELSA had virality long before the product was perfect.
“We didn’t know what the product was and just put out a landing page about an AI that could help users learn English: 10,000 people signed up. And so they became our key user group where we improved upon their feedback.
When we went out to the market, in the beginning of 2016; we just debuted the product at SXSW. We won, and within the first 24 hours, we had 30,000 people downloading and like crashing every single server that we had!”
Vu Van’s purpose was clear: to put something out that focused on first, getting as much data as possible to train the model.
Tune in to more as we discuss:
– Vu Van’s approach to building
– Her vision for ELSA and staying ahead of the curve
– Seeing opportunities in crises: a 300% revenue jump in COVID?
ABOUT vu van
Vu Van is an entrepreneur and the Co-founder & CEO of Silicon Valley-based ELSA, the world’s best and smartest English pronunciation app. She worked with leading speech scientists, machine learning scientists, and linguists from around the world to create ELSA. Powered by the company’s proprietary AI and speech recognition technology, ELSA scores a learners’ speech to pinpoint individual syllable and phoneme level mistakes with real-time feedback.
Prior to founding ELSA, Vu lived and worked in Vietnam, Singapore, Denmark where she experienced the challenges of an English language learner abroad. She served as an Engagement Manager at Booz & Co, one of the top four global management consulting firms. Vu earned an MBA and a Masters in Education from Stanford University and is originally from Vietnam.
ABOUT ELSA
ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant) is a startup founded in 2015 by Stanford alum Ms. Vu Van, and Dr. Xavier Anguera, a veteran in speech recognition and AI. ELSA’s app, which is called ELSA Speak, listens to the way language learners pronounce words, sentences or conversations to pinpoint exact errors and provide real-time, accurate feedback on their pronunciation mistakes with specific suggestions on how to improve. The company built its own proprietary speech technology using deep learning and A.I. to detect people’s pronunciation mistakes with 95%+ accuracy. Based in San Francisco, ELSA has raised $27 million in capital and is backed by leading VCs in Silicon Valley, Southeast Asia and Japan. ELSA Speak is available for iOS and Android and reaches more than 54 million downloads in over 190 countries. The company has offices in Portugal, Vietnam, India, Brazil and Japan.
The inspiration for ELSA, the 2016 SXSWEdu winner, came when Vu realized that pronunciation and accent often pose as a hindrance for non-native employees in the business. Its vision is to become the best and most accessible pronunciation training tool for the more than 1.5 billion language learners around the world, enabling everybody to speak English confidently and fluently and unlock new opportunities in their lives.
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Disclaimer: This podcast is an expression of personal opinion and does not represent the opinion of the host Sarah Chen-Spellings (SCS) as an investor personally, her firm Beyond The Billion (BTB) or any company discussed. These discussions are for informational purposes only, including any mention of securities or venture funds; and does not constitute any investment, legal, tax advice. SCS or BTB may hold currently, or in the future, direct or indirect interests in the featured companies or funds. No guarantee of any kind is implied or possible where projections of future conditions are attempted.