Audioscribe gets kickstart with winning weekend
Crowdsourced transcription service the top idea at second Auckland Startup Weekend.
Tuesday, September 27 2011 || News || BY Lesley Springall
Alexei Dunayev’s idea for a crowd-sourced, voice-to-text transcription service packaged as a smartphone application was one of 37 ideas pitched at the Startup Weekend. By the end, it was the unanimous winner.
Dunayev, an education technology entrepreneur and one of New Zealand’s former Fulbright scholars, came up with his business idea after he tried to help his girlfriend wade through countless recorded interviews for her PhD which explored the role architects play after a disaster.
The transcription services they looked at were too expensive and took too long. Current transcription technology can at best translate its user’s voice into text, but only after a lot of trial and error. It certainly can’t handle multiple interviewees. So Dunayev toyed with the idea of crowd-based transcription services, using lots of people to quickly transcribe parts of recordings. The idea, he discovered, wasn’t new - there were crowds of transcribers out there - but making it affordable, easy to use and accessible to anyone was the problem.
Help came in the form of Auckland’s second Startup Weekend.
The Startup Weekend is a global event that brings budding entrepreneurs together with like-minded individuals from a host of disciplines, adds mentors and supplies sandwiches and coffee to keep the creative juices flowing. The aim is to build companies, projects and communities in a matter of hours instead of months.
Dunayev’s Audioscribe idea was one of 10 to be selected for the full weekend treatment.
His team included a couple of designers, a professional writer, a social media whizz, another entrepreneur and startup community supporter and a smartphone app developer. With the introductions over, the team worked into the wee small hours, nutting out ideas and testing different business scenarios.
The next day may have been Saturday in New Zealand, but it was still Friday in California, so Dunayev and his team began tapping into overseas networks for market research, narrowing down the cluttered $US50 billion transcription market into a sizeable chunk where Audioscribe could make its mark.
By the end of Saturday, the budding company had sourced a fair amount of data, selected its market, drafted the beginnings of a business plan and built a prototype app for Google's Android operating system.
The atmosphere on Sunday during the pitch countdown was electric, says mentor Alan Froggatt, head of business coaching consultancy Genratec. “Team after team stepped up with knock your socks off presentations.”
Audioscribe was the standout because it was a great idea that was executable and had a ready market, says Duncan Shand, of digital marketing agency Young & Shand, one of the weekend’s three judges. “It was quite a simple idea, thought out well and it could get traction from day one.”
Among the other ideas were a kid-safe phone where parents can control the applications installed and the numbers children can ring and receive calls from; and Eyedentify, designed to help retailers identify shoplifting threats.
“Ideas aren’t really the problem. It’s the ability to pull a team together and make a business happen that’s often the issue,” says Shand.
The Startup Weekend was pivotal in the getting the idea off the ground, Dunayev says. “It was in the back of my mind for a couple of months. I was just wondering if we could do it. But the energy and the passion of the people at the Startup Weekend gave me a lot of assurance and a lot support to realise that this was an idea that was worth continuing with.”
From my perspective a little knowledge and a simple search on google throws up lots of other options for this service. Did the team or the "best in business" advisors both to look at what was in the market?
Crowd sourcing might be flavor of the month in NZ but it is not new.
Posted by Anonymous at 08:08 on September 29, 2011
I had the great pleasure of hosting Audioscribe & the other teams for 54 hours over the weekend at the MYOB offices in Newmarket. In an world poised on the brink of another financial crisis - it was refreshing and inspirational to see how a great idea AND a heap of passion can great amazing business concepts - inspite of market conditions.
We captured some of the energy in these pictures on Facebook - enjoy!
http://t.co/2XLaeRsA
Warm regards
Julian Smith
General Manager | www.myob.co.nz
Posted by Julian Smith at 00:15 on September 28, 2011
This may be innovation in NZ but not outside world. http://scribie.com/
Posted by Ammy at 11:46 on September 27, 2011
Rajiv, innovation comes in the approach. For example, is there a correlation between Toyota and Benz? In short this validates the space (really).
Best,
jim
Posted by Jim from Boston (chur) at 06:18 on September 28, 2011
I had the great, great pleasure of mentoring this team over the weekend and what stood out to me was how well the group worked together. *Excellent* team and a great balance of passion and calculation in Alexei's leadership style.
The entire weekend was standout, world class and well organised by @JasonArmishaw @justinryanscott and @AlanFroggatt and hosted by @MYOBteam. Thank you for a great experience.
Posted by @KenBrickley at 10:48 on September 27, 2011
Inspirational story!
It's so cool that New Zealand continues to honour it's reputation as a country of innovators and inventors. Even the depression, recession or whatever that is today isn't sufficient to dull the dreamers.
Posted by anonymous at 05:25 on September 27, 2011
I use these services all the time on the net. I'm not sure I understand what is new or different here? Would have hoped something more innovative would have won. All the best to Audioscribe anyway (I think that name has been trademarked though by audioscribe.com
Posted by RANDELL at 11:49 on September 29, 2011
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