BoldVoice · B2C · accent coaching app
Recruit a Hollywood accent coach and run a manual email pilot with 12 users
Led to a ~$500K term sheet and YC; the coach still works with them
Workedvalidationpartnerships
What they did
Before any code: cold-reached Hollywood speech/accent coaches (who work with actors) for differentiation. First coach, Ron, recorded lesson videos; ~12 beta users were manually sent the videos by email, emailed back speech recordings, and the coach gave asynchronous feedback. Used the pilot to pitch investors.
What happened
Landed a ~$500K first term sheet, then YC; coach Ron still works with them 5 years later.
- Stage
- pre-launch
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Why BoldVoice Charged From Day 1 and Ignored the Duolingo Freemium Playbook — Anada Lakra“I had this idea that if we got Hollywood speech coaches to work with us, that it would be especially differentiated and very cool”
“So we're just doing the dry run super manually without any lines of code being written, just to see how this would actually go and work when we actually had a real product out there.”
Related topics
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- BoldVoice: Show a sample of the full in-app results to push web users to the appFounder says it boosts web-to-app conversion; no numbers
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- Show a countdown of free scans left before the paywall appears