![]() ![]() ![]() There is science behind all this.”Īguilar says people are encouraged to use Speeko to record their voice during any meetings or presentations where they may be addressing a group. You learn techniques on how to retain an audience’s attention. “It measures how dynamic you sound as a speaker. “It will tell you if you are a monotone speaker and how to improve that,” he said. The feedback from the app may address the pacing of their reading, their pauses, their intonation and the use of filler words such as “um” and “like.” ![]() For example, a user may be asked to read 30 seconds of teleprompter-style copy on the screen. One section of the app provides interactive lessons and exercises. That data was built into the Speeko app, where users record themselves and get instant feedback on how to improve. The company has developed machine-learning algorithms to identify vocal patterns of good and bad speakers, based on thousands of speech recordings and years of academic communication research. The two friends saw a way to combine voice analytics and artificial intelligence to help people avoid similar embarrassing public speaking experiences. He experienced sweaty palms and shortness of breath, and “totally botched my presentation.” He ended up working with a speech coach to improve, which was the catalyst for the idea of Speeko. What inspired him and Pham to create a better-speech app?Īguilar recalls a stressful experience in which he had an anxiety attack speaking in front of his rhetoric class at the Iowa. The team also includes another Solon native, Skylar Hansen, who works as the team's lead operating systems developer and is Nico's longtime friend from Solon High School. The young company works out of Iowa City as well as their new office space in downtown Chicago as part of the Techstars global startup accelerator program.Īguilar is CEO of the Speeko venture, which currently employs six full and part-time developers and data scientists. “But our core team has been building toward this for awhile.” “It was a big leap for me to go all-in on this startup,” says Aguilar. Aguilar has two masters degrees from the University’s College of Public Health.Īfter more than three years working on the startup in their spare time, Aguilar was able to leave his job as a manager at Northwest Memorial Hospital in Chicago and pursue Speeko full-time. Pham, who is now finishing his medical residency at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, is a co-founder of Speeko. The two collaborated on other startups while working on research that measured communication patterns in medical settings. Later, as a student at the University of Iowa, he became friends with Anthony Pham of Davenport. As a high school senior in 2007, his wind turbine project placed fourth in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. He remembers being “CEO of a soap-making company” in a class project by chemistry instructor Ken Beck which first gave him a taste of business basics. It’s where an interest in science and technology became his passion. “Some of the best teachers I have ever had in my life were at Solon High School,” he says. That’s a broad scope, but it doesn’t mean Aguilar has forgotten his local roots. ![]()
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