BY JESSICA RIDGWAY
Most smartphones come equipped with speech recognition systems like Siri or Cortana that are capable of understanding the human voice and putting words into actions. But what if smartphones could do more? What if smartphones could register feeling?
BY JESSICA RIDGWAY
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Company: SimpleEmotion
Founders: Matt Fernandez & Akash Krishnan
Launched: 2012
Most smartphones come equipped with speech recognition systems like Siri or Cortana that are capable of understanding the human voice and putting words into actions. But what if smartphones could do more? What if smartphones could register feeling?
That’s the idea behind Simple Emotion, a startup that offers a voice recognition software program able to discern happiness or sadness — as well as more complex feelings like disgust.
The “emotion-based audio analysis” program works by measuring different frequencies and energies in the voice, says Matt Fernandez, co-founder and CEO. “We were able to teach a computer to understand the things we often take for granted.”
Simple Emotion software is customizable. Users can “teach” the program to detect specific emotions by adding their own audio files to the software collection. “We’ve worked with feelings like irritation, and understanding the difference between hot anger, when people are screaming and yelling, and cold anger, like bitterness,” says Fernandez.
Fernandez, 21, and co-founder Akash Krishnan, 20, originally developed the software as a tool to help people with autism hone their communication skills. Today their focus is on call centers and how those companies can use Simple Emotion’s patented technology to increase quality assurance — whether it’s evaluating a dissatisfied customer’s call to uncover what went wrong, or teaching service representatives how best to interact with callers.
What’s next? The company is nearing the end of a funding round, which may determine whether Fernandez and Krishnan drop out of Stanford and MIT, respectively. Both are college juniors. The duo hopes to apply the software to other industries. Says Fernandez, “We’re really excited about applying [Simple Emotion] to healthcare, robotics, the automotive industry and autism — there are lots of places.”
BACK OFFICE
The team consists of Matt Fernandez, CEO, and Akash Krishnan, CTO, and outside consultants and contractors when necessary. The two founders bootstrapped the company with $2,000 and so far have secured approximately $100,000 from outside investors.
YOUTHFUL ENERGY
“This company spawned out of a high school research project that got out of control in many ways — in a great way,” says Fernandez. Fernandez and Krishnan, who attended Oregon Episcopal School, got the idea for their project from the movie I, Robot, which features a robot who knows when its user is afraid.
THE COMPETITION
Beyond Verbal is a Tel Aviv-based startup using “emotions analytics” software to analyze emotions from vocal intonations. The company is targeting call centers and says its software can detect 400 variations of different moods.
