Klemen Simonic met Ambroz Bizjak at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, during their undergraduate studies. After studies, they travelled in different directions: while Simonic joined Facebook and developed its speech systems, Bizjak worked in Cosylab, where he developed the core software for control systems for particle accelerators, fusion reactors, and cancer therapy systems.

After spending several years in the corporate world, the duo got together to embark on a new journey to understand humans through audio AI technologies.

This led them to start Soniox.

Soniox, a startup based in the US, has developed AudioMind, a foundational AI model that can deeply understand audio with all its information.

Also Read: How big tech players are redefining the classic freedom of speech vs. censorship debate

“Through interactions with our customers, we recognised a growing demand for capabilities beyond mere speech-to-text conversion. Clients expressed interest in features such as sentiment detection, summarisation, and audio event recognition, indicating a clear need for a more versatile audio intelligence solution,” says Simonic. “Driven by this demand, we conceived the idea of AudioMind — a general-purpose intelligence for audio that could perform a wide range of tasks, akin to text-based Large Language Model operators. ”

Comprehensive audio processing

According to Simonic, AudioMind distinguishes itself from traditional speech recognition technology by offering a “comprehensive” approach to audio processing. Unlike other similar apps in the market that focus on converting speech to text, AudioMind natively processes audio as the input modality, enabling it to utilise all available information within the audio signal fully.

“Our solution offers a wide range of capabilities beyond simple transcription. Through prompting mechanisms, AudioMind empowers users to specify how they want the audio content to be interpreted,” he shares.

AudioMind supports a wide range of instructions for converting speech to text. For instance, to transcribe speech, one can use a simple prompt like ‘Transcribe this audio for me, please’, or ‘Transcribe this audio into a polished transcript’.

“AudioMind introduces a groundbreaking focus on speaker intelligence. Unlike conventional systems that primarily transcribe speech without distinguishing between speakers, our solution offers advanced capabilities to separate and identify speakers within a conversation accurately,” Simonic claims.

Furthermore, the app allows users to “effortlessly” generate speaker-separated and labelled transcriptions, summaries, and documents. By providing prompts, users can instruct AudioMind on how they want the document to be organised and structured, including specifying titles and sections.

Understanding tone, gender, and emotions

Human communication is not solely reliant on speech or text; it encompasses tone, intonation, and emotional cues. AudioMind has the ability to decipher these elements to provide a more comprehensive understanding of communication.

For instance, in customer service industries, recognising the tone of a customer’s voice can help gauge satisfaction levels or detect frustration. This insight enables businesses to tailor their responses appropriately, leading to improved customer experiences and satisfaction.

It also has the capability to discern emotions and aids in sentiment analysis, allowing organisations to gauge public opinion, customer sentiment, or patient well-being accurately. For example, in mental health care, analysing the emotional tone of patient conversations can assist therapists in tracking progress or identifying potential issues.

The solution also supports certain types of background filtering. By filtering out background noise and irrelevant sounds, it can focus on extracting meaningful information from the audio input. This directly improves the accuracy of downstream tasks.

Limitless opportunities

The entrepreneur-duo sees “limitless” opportunities for their solution, given the ubiquity of audio, voice, and speech across diverse sectors. Beyond traditional speech transcription, AudioMind holds promise in healthcare, where it can facilitate the creation of medical documentation through voice input, improving efficiency and accuracy.

In customer service, the voice generator app allows for enhanced interactions between agents and customers, improving satisfaction and retention rates.

Moreover, AudioMind can “interpret users’ voices with precision” in virtual assistants and voice-enabled devices, opening up new possibilities for intuitive and personalised experiences.

“AudioMind has been meticulously trained to listen and understand audio in a manner akin to human processing. Through extensive training with diverse audio datasets, it has developed the capability to recognise and understand various types of sounds, including those originating from the environment and those produced by humans,” Simonic explains. “This distinction is crucial for comprehending the surrounding context within an audio environment.”

Also Read: Why is text-to-speech technology a game-changer for inclusivity in faith-based apps?

For example, while speech recognition systems may focus solely on transcribing spoken words, AudioMind goes beyond recognising nuances such as laughter, indicating humour, or crying, signalling distress.

The startup plans to broaden its language support beyond English, aiming to enhance its usability and break down language barriers for users worldwide. “We recognise the importance of linguistic diversity and understand that catering to multiple languages is crucial for reaching a global audience. While we are still finalising the list, some of the languages under consideration include Spanish, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Italian,” he adds.

“Our goal is to ensure that AudioMind becomes accessible and beneficial to users from diverse linguistic backgrounds, facilitating seamless communication and interaction across borders and cultures,” Simonic concludes.

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Amidst the global evolution of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, the pressing question remains: How do we integrate them into our workplaces successfully?

DEI are not just buzzwords for me; they are fundamental principles shaping our modern workplace.

In my role as the Executive Director for SGTech, I firmly believe that leadership plays a crucial role in fostering a culture of inclusion, and this commitment starts from the top. SGTech comprises individuals from diverse disciplines, backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets, all united in our cause.

We are committed to continuous learning and transformation, emphasising the importance of thinking differently, keeping an open mind, and being receptive to emerging trends locally and globally. Inclusion is integral to our organisation’s ethos as we build our Secretariat and tech community.

SGTech is dedicated to enabling anyone who wishes to join the tech workforce, irrespective of their current qualifications, skill sets, gender, culture, ethnicity, or age. This commitment also extends to our team at SGTech, ensuring that we embody the inclusive values we advocate for.

Drawing from experience, achieving inclusion requires a multifaceted approach. In fact, we suggest pushing for skill-based hiring, where individuals are evaluated based on their competencies rather than traditional qualifications. This approach promotes diversity and ensures that the workforce is equipped with the necessary skills for the job.

Additionally, cultivating an attitude of lifelong learning within the organisation is crucial. This involves encouraging employees to continuously develop their skills and knowledge, fostering a culture where learning is valued and supported at all levels. These efforts can help create a more inclusive and dynamic work environment where individuals are empowered to reach their full potential.

Also Read: Invest in women, accelerate progress: Why gender equality matters now more than ever

To inspire inclusion within SGTech, we have implemented several key strategies.

We have a clear organisational structure and unbiased HR hiring policies to ensure fair hiring practices. This includes defining roles and responsibilities to support hiring based on the right skills. We want to continuously foster a culture of learning and development, which we achieve through year-long programs that encourage and reward upskilling and reskilling, enabling skills exchange, training, and talent development within teams and across the organisation.

Promoting mindfulness is another crucial aspect, encouraging individuals to refrain from judging others based on appearances, be aware of perceptions, and use language that is respectful and inclusive. Providing open feedback channels, conflict resolution mechanisms, and access to counselling as needed has further enhanced inclusivity and supported employee well-being.

We also plan to continue walking our talk by embracing diversity in all its forms. Currently, our permanent hybrid working model fosters a more flexible and adaptable work environment and also significantly facilitates the seamless transition for mothers returning to full-time employment, thereby promoting inclusivity and flexibility within our workforce.

In addition, we also work on maintaining a workforce that spans a wide range of ages, from fresh graduates to individuals in their post-50s, and welcome interns from Institutes of Higher Learning.

We recognise and value the skills and experience that each of our colleagues brings to the table, fostering an environment where everyone feels valued and included. Our goal is to build a lifelong learning and growth culture where every individual feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute their best.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly transformed the way we live and work and, through this, catalysed Southeast Asia’s (SEA) long-anticipated shift from the physical to the online world.

Businesses have had to ramp up their digitalisation efforts to stay afloat as consumers turn to the online sphere for their day-to-day activities. According to a joint survey by Microsoft and IDC Asia Pacific, nearly 75 per cent of organisations in Singapore accelerated their pace of digitalisation due to the pandemic.

On top of this, SEA’s booming internet economy is set to grow to US$1 trillion by 2030, as millions of new internet users fuel online businesses in fields including e-commerce and virtual finance, according to a report jointly produced by Temasek, Google, and Bain.

With more investors recognising the region as one with valuable digital economy opportunities, there needs to be a reliable, secure digital infrastructure for businesses to tap into for growth.

The accelerated pace is set to make the region a global technology giant, and well-designed data frameworks are vital in supporting this trajectory.

Latency is the new currency

As individuals and businesses consume more data in an increasingly interconnected world, particularly in SEA, reliable and fail-safe internet connections with the lowest possible latency (the round-trip time taken for data to travel between an end device and the server where the data is stored or processed, for example, when using an application in the cloud) are becoming more crucial.

Latency is decisive for the time it takes for a transaction to be registered when making online purchases to get a smooth reaction and a good user experience when using applications hosted in the cloud. Moreover, such everyday aspects make up the digital economy.

From a business perspective, latency issues cost money. Productivity related to virtual desktops, conference and video calls, and everything virtually related to working from home depends on high-performance interconnection.

Industrial activities like remote robotics and AI-supported research and development require the lowest possible latency for maximum efficiency. As such, low latency is essential for future-proofing Singapore’s economy, as booming and upcoming technologies like cloud gaming, virtual or augmented reality, e-health, and the connected car need latencies as low as 1-3 milliseconds.

Also Read: Dancing through data: What can AI-powered insights into my own music tastes reveal?

Security is also enhanced when a firewall kicks in with minimal delays, ensuring businesses are better prepared and not compromised by cyber threats.

With this, latency in digital services and applications is genuinely revenue-related. It is the new currency in today’s post-COVID digital economy.

Reliable internet exchanges: The heartbeat of the digital world

While it is hard to imagine the internet as something stored anywhere else, your computer, Internet Exchanges (IX), play a significant role in the world’s rapid shift to the digital world.

They guarantee a smooth, secure and fast exchange of data packets between networks of any size, ensuring that everyday online activities run seamlessly and quickly, especially in today’s climate, where everyone is hugely reliant on the internet.

Being connected to an IX allows networks to directly connect to other networks and share data traffic (also known as “peering”). This significantly reduces latency by reducing the path length that data needs to travel.

Also, data centre-neutral IX platforms, like those operated by DE-CIX, are distributed. This means that the infrastructure is housed in multiple data centres in a metro region, significantly increasing the resilience of the entire IX platform.

In some cases, by connecting to an IX, company networks can peer with networks connected to several other interconnected IXs within a region.

By connecting to DE-CIX Singapore, for example, network operators gain the possibility to exchange data directly at low latency with other networks, such as internet service providers, cloud providers, content networks, CDNS, over-the-top (OTT) providers and enterprise networks, not only in Singapore but also elsewhere in SEA, enabling enterprises to gain access to a vibrant SEA interconnection ecosystem.

The rise of cloud adoption, but what are the risks?

Ramping up digitalisation increases reliance on cloud-based services across all kinds of businesses. Instant access to content, applications and services that are essential in our daily lives has made how we work and live simpler.

According to Alibaba Cloud’s Cloud in Asia survey, Singapore is the most prolific adopter of cloud computing in SEA, with nearly nine in 10 IT decision-makers saying their companies are already using cloud-based services.

However, the move to the cloud poses new risks for enterprises in Singapore and worldwide. For instance, as the reliance is generally on only one cloud partner to manage data and workloads, this tendency towards cloud concentration creates a single point of failure, as has been evident with major outages at big global cloud players in the past.

For several critical industries, the mitigation of this cloud concentration risk is being written into law in increasingly more regions around the globe. Therefore, companies are looking for solutions to manage a multi-cloud environment efficiently.

Truly mitigating the cloud concentration risk, however, does not just stop at using different clouds. It is also important to access those clouds from physically independent locations.

Also Read: Why offshoring your data parsing processes could be your legal tech startup’s secret weapon

Using a distributed infrastructure involving diverse providers and multiple redundant pathways creates the resilience necessary for critical applications and data. DE-CIX offers enterprises interconnection solutions that connect directly to the required application or compute source at the lowest latency possible.

For example, to the many cloud services an enterprise makes use of (through DE-CIX DirectCLOUD), or to applications such as those available through Microsoft 365, with direct connectivity possible for enterprises via DE-CIX with the Microsoft Azure Peering Service.

In this way, latency is minimised, and resilience is ensured.

The enterprise of the future is digital

With SEA’s internet economy set to flourish in the coming decade, seamless, top-quality and cost-effective interconnection services are a must to cater to the needs in the modern world of both businesses and end-consumers alike.

Latency is the new currency against today’s backdrop of accelerated digitalisation, ensuring that the exciting next generation of applications and services are well-supported by solid digital infrastructure.

DE-CIX Asia brings low latency and robust interconnection to SEA. It offers better localisation of interconnection services across the region, one with more than 600 million inhabitants and massive digital demand, easing the pressure on existing internet infrastructure in the area and bringing content and applications closer to the users.

In establishing such strong foundations for SEA, we are excited to see further growth in technical innovations and disruptors as we collectively pave the way toward the region’s anticipated role as a global technology hub.

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Are you monetising your social media efforts?

While the word monetisation is assumed to correspond directly with money, in the world of digital marketing.

The term has more to it than conversions based around currencies. Online startups cannot aggressively advertise, treating platforms as television channels, because a modern e-customer relies on information and connectivity.

This way, monetisation for online businesses revolves around value proposition between brands and customers. 

Any startup not leveraging social media is underestimating its worth. According to a source, the number of users on social networking platforms will increase by 9.57 per cent by 2021.

So the situation begs businesses to optimise their social media marketing to complete their buyer’s journey for any given item that requires an action from users. For example, some online companies want people to purchase a product while others want them to fill out a form to receive a free eBook. 

Let us explore the types of technologies that optimise and monetise social media.

Converse to convert

Consumers can be found on messaging apps more than in physical stores these days, suggested Uber’s Chris Messina when he coined the term conversational commerce.

While this method can be eased by using chatbots, you can still have a human team working on this part of the marketing strategy for a ‘just born’ startup with less in hand.

Throughout the classes in school about sociology, we study that people are social beings and they love to talk, interact and network. Instead of having products thrown at them, they like to gaze through the gallery and perhaps discuss their choices with a salesperson. A similar experience can now be felt online, especially on e-commerce websites.

Video your way to success

If your startup is on social media websites such as Instagram, then video marketing should be a top priority for you in this day and age.

A report projects that by 2022, videos will make up over 80 per cent of all consumer traffic online. Asia’s online video business alone is predicted to reach US$52 billion in the year 2024. These figures are too enticing to ignore. 

There are several ways video is being used by marketers to attract users and perhaps also enable them to click the landing page link.

While you can make native videos for platforms like YouTube or Facebook, you can also create short videos for several other social networking sites. Digital marketers and designers work together to produce all kinds of videos, such as a presentation, interview, product demos, brand story, etc.

Get influencers on stage

You heard that, right! This isn’t about sidelining your business, but a contract of collaboration. Celebrity endorsements have always been a part of campaigns, services or product promotions.

The only difference now is that businesses have an ocean of celebrities to choose from who are not limited to cinema or politics. The question now arises, which platform is best?

A survey suggests that in 2019, 86 per cent of marketers in the United States said they viewed Instagram as a valuable platform for influencer marketing. This, however, doesn’t mean you should leave out other social media websites.

The type of product or campaign you are promoting also impacts your decision about when, where and how to use this marketing technique to accelerate your startup’s growth successfully.

Brand the people

Embrace the idea of personal branding for yourself as an owner or partner in the startup business, and suggest your employees do the same. This way, you are humanising your startup and making it appear more welcoming by putting people at the centre of activities.

A typical example of this exists in the journalism industry in which you see that the editors and writers have social media links attached to their profiles on their author web page.

The trick is not to let your profile be all about the brand, partially it should, but your social media account should also display your personality and preferences. Tell you what, if you are an e-news startup, then the chances are that your potential readers may search for and interact with your writers on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sell on social 

Although money isn’t the only factor holding up the term monetisation, it is one of them, and it certainly plays a key role.

With the advent of e-wallets, brands could start selling their products and services online, hence giving birth to a new word “social selling”. You can open a shop on Facebook, use Snapcash to make payments, and instabuy via Instagram Shopping.

Social selling kicked off largely because consumers spend most of their time on social media. From kids to adults, everyone spends a good amount of time searching for products and reading the reviews, especially when it comes to eating out.

Millennials considered being the most active buyer’s makeup 54 per cent of those who search social networking channels to search for products.

The targeted advertisements option provides businesses with the ability to focus their marketing on groups of people within the social media website. This boosts the reach of the post and increases the chances of consumers clicking on the call to action button.

Bonus tip: social branding

Although some brands are debranding, it is not actually a very good idea to remove the identification of your company from your services and products. Even if the trend picks up by any chance, which is doubtful, don’t let it swarm your social media.

You need to display your custom visual identity to tell your target market that it’s you on the other side of the computer and not merely a chatbot. 

To brand your startup on social channels, make sure you add your logo onto the profile image section, write about yourself, create an engaging banner. 

If you aren’t branding digitally, have just begun or missing out on something, make sure you have a dedicated team and strategy planned in front of you.

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Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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Image Credit: Jakob Owens

This article was first published on August 27, 2019.

The post 5 ways to monetise social media technology for startup success appeared first on e27.

You’re reading this because you want your white paper to get media coverage.

But stop. Not a lot of white papers are newsworthy and even those that are need to be pitched in the right way to get coverage.

Before you even think about a PR plan for your white paper, ask these questions:

• Can we connect our white paper to a news issue or trend, to make it relevant?
• What does our white paper mean to our customers, industry, and wider society?
• Does it confirm what our audience already knows or are we adding original value?
• What will the average person think of our paper – good and bad?
• Who cares? And why should they care?

You can just as easily apply these questions to a research report or e-book, if that’s the content you’re working with.

So, if you’ve got the right answers, you can prepare a written pitch for your in-house PR. If it’s just you or a colleague managing your PR right now, you can use these same steps to prepare a written pitch to media.

Your pitch serves as a good, plainly-worded summary that makes your white paper’s news value crystal clear. Get it ready weeks before your white paper’s release date. Busy media people like advance notice. So does your in-house PR. Advance notice gives them time to target the most well-suited media contact.

What about the writing itself? You’ll need to help a wider public grasp the white paper’s main finding or argument, quickly. So spell things out. Say why the work is important.

Explain why people should care

Why? Well, media don’t care who you are. You must convince them that the actual contents of your paper – not just the fact that that you’ve produced one – is news. If you can’t convince your PR, they can’t convince the media for you.

Your white paper just might be news if it has:

• a new ‘fact’ about customer behaviour;
• a fresh perspective on an industry or societal problem;
• a research finding which challenges perceptions;
• or significant survey data, or credible forecasts.

Your written pitch needs to be direct, too. It needs to be specific. In its Pulse of Fintech report, KPMG write that “investments in Fintech companies in Asia hit $16.8 billion in the first half of 2018”. That’s a lot better than saying “People continued to invest in fintech in the first half of the year”. Credible, specific and factual content strengthens a pitch.

Get to the point and drop the jargon

What about the structure of your pitch? That’s important too. Put the central point in the first paragraph. Why? Well, if your reader gets interrupted by a text message or a coffee craving, they’ll still have come away with the main gist.

Use the rest of your summary to explain why the white paper was produced, how research was done, and what your findings means to your audience. Cut out jargon. Limit acronyms. And write it in a way that a 12-year-old can understand.

And try to keep it short – a page will do. As a founder, you’ll be especially glad of the short copy when you run a journalist or editor through it on the phone. But you’ll need to cover every step above before you even think about doing that.

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Photo by Chris Moore on Unsplash

This article was first published on November 29, 2018.

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