Mount2 Speak - Your AI Speaking Companion

Level Up Your IELTS Speaking/Interview/Public SPeaking with an AI speaking mentor dedicated to help you practice and get instant feedback for your performance.

• As college students, we recognize a common problem among young people when it comes to speaking practice. In high school, as we prepare to enter college, we need to practice speaking for English proficiency exams, such as IELTS and TOEFL, and for college interviews. When we get into college, we are assigned lots of presentations, and we also start getting internship and job interviews. As can be seen, from high school, to college, and to work later on, there are innumerable speaking occasions that need preparation.
• As established in the previous section, there is such ubiquitous demand for speaking practice among young people, namely high-school and college students, job seekers, and young professionals. This demographic of the population demonstrate particularly great demands for:
  • Improving presentation & public speaking skills (via courses, bootcamps, webinars, workshops, contests, etc.) as 89.3% of surveyed undergraduate students want public speaking classes to be included in their program (PubMed).
  • Preparing for IELTS and TOEFL Speaking, as 3.5 million (BC17, BC19) and 2.3 million (Wiki) people take the IELTS and TOEFL exams respectively every year.
  • Practicing college/job interviews, as 300,000 students graduate from university in Vietnam every year (MOET).
• Great demand for speaking practice means great demand for feedback and mentorship. That explains why over the past few years, there has been the rapid rise of public speaking coaches, IELTS/TOEFL speaking teachers, and interviewing mentors. Learners evidently need a speaking companion who can help them throughout their learning journey.
• For writing, there are tools such as Grammarly that provide instantaneous feedback for every sentence and every word we write. Such tools, unfortunately, are less common for speaking, meaning almost everybody faces the problem of not having someone or something to provide feedback and mentorship while practicing speaking. But not just any kind of feedback or mentorship. The feedback must satisfy a number of criteria, not one or the other but altogether:
  1. Consistent Companionship: The feedback provider should be available on a long-term basis.
  2. Convenience: The feedback, ideally, should be accessible anytime and anywhere the learner needs.
  3. Quality: The feedback should be comprehensive, evidence-based, and insightful.
  4. Versatility: The feedback provider should be multipurpose — you don’t want to look and pay for a different mentor for each speaking occasion.
  5. Affordability: This is self-explanatory.
• To sum up, people practicing different types of English speaking have one thing in common: they need but lack mentorship and feedback that is consistent, convenient, insightful, versatile, and affordable. Traditional learning methods do not meet these requirements; they’re lucky to even meet one or two. But to learners, each and every single one of these criteria is essential.

So far, Mount2 Speak has launched the MVP version, which can be tried out via this link speaking.mount2.education/. We are continuously developing and improving the product. Here is how it works.

• Users first select a practice type as they please — Public Speaking, IELTS/TOEFL Speaking, or Interview. They, then, may be asked to do some setup (practice modes, question selection, etc.) before proceeding to record/upload their speech/answers.
• After that, the users will receive a thorough report that includes: (1) their speaking transcript, (2) a summary of their strengths and weaknesses, and (3) detailed AI-powered analytics and feedback for their speaking performance. There is a specialized, unique assessment rubric for each speaking purpose, but we typically provide feedback for the following criteria: Fluency & Coherence (Pauses, Fillers, Linking Words, Repetition), Delivery (Speaking Speed, Pronunciation, Intonation), and Language (Vocabulary Profile, High-Frequency Words, Boosters & Hedges, Grammatical Errors). Appropriate comments and suggestions for improvement will also be included in our feedback.
• The users can share their speaking practice with friends/teachers to receive human feedback in the form of timestamped comments. 
• All of each user’s practices, together with their analytics, will be automatically saved in a personal library. The users can conveniently retrieve and review their past practices later.
• The users can also enroll in on-site speaking courses with built-in practice exercises/games.
• In the future, the users can create classrooms/groups/communities to make the most out of their peer learning experience.

Realizing this unaddressed demand, Mount2 Speak aims to deliver unique values to all of our users. Our product benefits all those involved in the learning process of speaking skills, accompanying individual learners, fostering peer learning, and assisting educators.

• As a Companion for Self-Learning, Mount2 Speak provides mentorship & feedback that satisfies all the needs of learners:
  • Consistent Companionship & Convenience: Mount2 Speak is always there for you to practice anytime, anywhere you want.
  • Quality: Mount2 Speak offers insightful feedback (with specialized analytics for each speaking purpose) and comprehensive support (with a huge bank of questions, materials, and online courses).
  • Versatility & Affordability: Mount2 Speak provides an all-in-one speaking mentor supporting different purposes (be it public speaking, IELTS speaking, or interview), at a price much cheaper than other 1-on-1 learning methods.
• As a Coordinator for Peer Learning, Mount2 Speak helps foster a peer learning culture among users with connection features such as sharing, commenting, and forming groups/communities.
• As an Assistant for Traditional Learning, Mount2 Speak supports educators in managing classes and monitoring students, with assistive tools such as LMS integration for institutions, automated student reports, and virtual classrooms.

Beside Mount2Speak, we are also developing other platforms to create an ecosystem supporting English learning for everyone such as Mount2Pen (same as Mount2Speak but for writings), Mount2Lib (mount2lib.webflow.io), and Mount2Mentorship (connecting academic mentors and mentees)

About us: https://drive.google.com/file/...

• Up to now, Mount2 Speak has gathered a talented team of 11 members with diverse expertise around the world. We have also received US$ 2,000 in seed funding from VinUniversity Incubator Program.
• Within 3 months of operating, we have successfully developed and tested our MVP version with 290+ users worldwide. Based on the rich feedback we have received after several user interactions and interviews, we are now working on the beta version of our product, which is expected to be launched in early November 2022.
• At the same time, we also made concerted efforts to engage with potential users & partners.
  • “Transferable Skills: Unseal the Untold” Webinar Series: 520+ participants, 8 club partners, & 8 guest speakers.
  • Mount2 Public Speaking Contest 2022: 300+ candidates, 22 individual partners, & 12 corporate partners.
  • A growing community of 3,300+ followers.

Value proposition

What truly sets Mount2 Speak apart is that we seamlessly integrate into, rather than competing with, current learning methods (Self-Learning, Peer Learning, and Traditional Learning). By doing so, we avoid direct competition and convert the apparent competitors into a part of our ecosystem. This integration is made possible with an Artificial Intelligence companion that gets better every day.

Our goal: achieve product-market fit and 100k users with 50-60% retention rate, 10min/day/user and 15% paying users

Our road map

TimeMilestone08/06/2022Mount2 Speak founded07/2022Mount2 Speak Demo launch08/2022Mount2 Speak MVP launch10/2022Mount2 Speak Beta launch12/2022 - 03/2023Mobile Application launch & Monetization03/2023Marketing push06/2023Reaching Product-Market Fit with 100,000 users (10% paying users, equivalent to a monthly revenue of US$ 15 x 100000 x 10% = US$ 150,000)06/2023 - 08/2023Preparing for Scale-up (infrastructure, sales, marketing, etc.)08/2023 - 12/2023Scale-up (reaching millions of users)01/2024 - 07/2024Expanding business units (extending to other languages like Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, etc.)

We relies on Natural language processing (NLP) and speech to text to recognize user input and analyze based on IELTS/Public Speaking/ Interview criterias

We are serving 900 users and aiming to reach 100k users next year

We don't have sufficient capital mostly for product development and marketing push in next year

VinUniversity Incubator: small fund

The Real IELTS, Phil Connect, SunUni: business customers

OMT - a LMS business that have huge network of 1000 + education businesses: partnership intermediary

Highschools and universities in Vietnam

1. Target market
   • B2C:
     • High school students
     • University students
     • Working adults
   • B2B:
     • High schools
     • Universities
     • Educational institutions and businesses
2. Revenue model
   • B2C: Freemium (USD 0-15/user/month)
   • B2B: API as a service

For our detailed business model, check it here: https://drive.google.com/file/...