Sayso

Sayso is a San Francisco-based company that has developed a platform that uses technology to help people who have accents communicate more clearly. It was founded in 2020 and has the stated goal of aiding the more than 2 billion people worldwide who speak English with an accent to be more understandable to others. It was part of the 2020/2021 cohort of the Creative Destruction Labs Program, a non-profit organization that mentors start-ups.

The company's platform can be downloaded as a desktop app for Mac or Windows as well as on a softphone. It works with more than 800 communication apps, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Salesforce. The platform uses soundwave-based technology to change the sounds of the words to be more legible. The soundwaves are dissected into millisecond-long snippets so they can be processed in real time. Those soundwaves are then run with parallel data of what is considered a clearer, easier-to-understand accent and altered to be more similar to the clearer accent. The technology is being trained to understand words from a variety of dictionaries as well as slang and colloquialisms from around the world.

An example of how Sayso works

Sayso's platform can be used in a variety of contexts:

• virtual meetings among international teams
• hiring people without the bias that may come along with having an accent
• international events that require collaboration
• business deals between people from different countries