What are you most proud of what you’ve built to date and why?
spent the last two years building and shipping in the consumer social space and I learned so much through it:
- Autonomous AI matchmaking. I learned about how to make AI think more like humans and given the ability to match make people autonomously through graph databases and GraphRAG. I share a small demo in here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rami-m_i-think-i-found-a-way-to-make-ai-think-like-activity-7374494387558301696-vYUZ
- I was fascinated with the idea of having the centralized AI friend that knows everyone around you is able to automatically match you with the right people at the right time based on your calendar or location.
- For that idea to be brought to life, I had to learn context engineering and giving LLMs a human-like memory and decision-making capabilities. That was done through GraphRAG and several other techniques. I livestreamed that learning process: https://www.youtube.com/live/4YP-mUO-tL4
- I launched it at UCalgary and UWaterloo: https://heyember.me/ & https://uw.heyember.me/
- struggled with the cold-start/chicken-in-the-egg problem. Didn’t have the bandwidth to spread it so I decided to move on to https://getaudora.app
What tech stack are you using, or planning to use, to build this product (incl. coding tools, AI models, etc)?*
low-latency/realtime transcription, ML on speech data (classifying people starting to get nervous/confidence dips to help deescalate the effects in real-time, Wearables SDK like the meta glasses (which came out last week)
Describe what you / your company do (50 characters max)
Real-time AI communication coach
What is your big vision?
millions of people around the world every day miss out on so many opportunities because of their communication skills. Most critically, that is found in sales teams, early-stage founders, and executives
but this is something that every single person around the world is impacted by, especially people with mental disorders or neurodivergence. I’ve done research on autism and its effects on people who are on the spectrum and it is absolutely wild how differently they see the world and how hard it is for them to connect with the world. I’m someone who deeply hates wasted potential. There are billions of people around the world who have so much potential for making a change, a positive impact on the world, but are held back because of how they speak or are perceived.
I strongly believe that given the trajectory of technology, we can easily and ethically bridge that gap
this not only helps with their career opportunities but also their relationships. To be able to connect with their friends, to be able to find a life partner, and deeply connect with them. This is something that can never be replaced by AI, it can only be enhanced due to the nature of how communication happens. That’s why I’m at the frontier of this technology (I bought the Meta glasses just to build an app for it😅) and I will continue to be able to find the best solutions for this global epidemic
Why does this company need to exist?
explained in prev question (What is your big vision)
Why did you pick this idea specifically to work on?
My years of working through my own communication challenges (social anxiety) taught me how insanely hard it is to rewire speech, habits, and behavior in the real world. Now I’m applying those insights to a very different, much higher-stakes beast: founder communication. I understand the psychology, the mechanics of speech, and the brutal reality of investor and customer conversations, and I have the technical and product skills to build the system that finally helps founders communicate at the level their startup deserves Deep obsession with communication as a leverage point: I genuinely believe “the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your conversations” (Tony Robbins) and the same is true for startups. How people see your product and your business is directly related to your ability to explain it clearly Founder-market fit with my initial niche: I am myself an early-stage founder pitching in high-stakes situations, and I’m surrounded by immigrant and non-native-English founders facing the same challenges.
What do you understand about your business that others (competitors) don’t? And who are they?
We have quite a lot of competitors but none address my target market and ICP
Some e.g.:
- Poised & Yoodli: focused on B2B, roleplaying, Preparation & Rehearsal, and speech analytics. It is far from being your “speech coach”
- Speeko & Orai: A mobile app focused on vocal exercises and public speaking drills.
They focus on the surface level: Are you speaking fast? How many filler words? We go deeper. Audora analyzes the actual meaning of your sentences, identifying when your word choice shows hesitation or anxiety for e.g. These are “Rehearsal Tools” designed for safe, controlled environments. They excel at counting filler words during practice but fail to address the psychological root causes of communication failure in high-stakes moments. Furthermore, they are tethered to the desktop, leaving founders unsupported during the most critical interactions: in-person like networking and investor meetings. Audora’s semantic engine detects topic drift and a 20% spike in speaking rate. Knowing his pitch deck context, it flashes a subtle “Slow Down. Tie it back to the root problem: ENERGY SUPPLY” nudge on his screen. Mark resets, delivers a clear value prop, and saves the pitch.
Audora’s Unfair Advantage:
- Reality vs. Rehearsal (Wearable Moat): The majority of deal-making that happens in the physical world. We are the first to utilize the Meta Glasses SDK to move coaching offline.
- Behavioral Diagnostics (The “Why”): Competitors flag symptoms (“You said ‘um’ 5 times”). Audora flags causes (“You speed up and use filler words specifically when asked about Market Size due to anxiety”). We don’t just fix the speech; we fix the founder’s confidence.
How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time?
I just finished university two days ago. But before that, I was working on it during my free time outside university studies and my part-time TA role
Do you have a product yet? And are people using it?
It’s closed alpha/beta. We’re talking to people who are on our waitlist and understanding what their needs are. But we’ll definitely have a public product out before the start of the program.
Anything else we should know? (e.g. insight or traction (revenue, design partners, etc) related)
You can find my application responses here: https://notes.rami-maalouf.tech/My-Outputs/My-Essays/miami-founder-residency Also I don’t have a demo video but you can look at how differently our product was 2 months ago with our previous demo video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rami-m_having-social-anxiety-is-a-skill-issue-and-activity-7385010725607342081-v-kp
THE PLAN: Q1: Release the desktop public beta as our primary value driver to the waitlist with a goal of reaching 1,000 paying active users by end of quarter. Launch a viral marketing video showcasing the Meta Glasses integration in real-world scenarios, similar to Cluely’s video but tailored to our ICP. This will drive brand awareness and help establish the community as we release the alpha version of the wearable companion to early adopters and encourage mobile app downloads
Q2: Use usage data and feedback from Q1 to iterate heavily on the UX, ensuring that the feedback loops across desktop and wearable are so valuable that users cannot imagine pitching without them Sean Ellis PMF test. Wispr Flow is the best reference point for what we aim to achieve.
Q3: Secure formal partnerships with three key organizations that value articulate members, such as NEXTAI, YC, DMZ, Antler Deploy Audora as a licensed tool for their cohorts, validating the B2B revenue model and gaining access to a steady stream of high-intent users
Q4: Data moat: Train the proprietary Founder Anxiety Model using high-stakes intervention data collected across Q1 to Q3. Strategic Expansion: With a robust dataset on social anxiety patterns, execute the expansion strategy. Evaluate the technical and commercial feasibility of entering the neurodivergent and social accessibility market versus the enterprise sales market based on Q3 traction. Identify additional use cases unlocked by AI advancements at that stage.
What gets you most excited re our residency?
- Noble ideas surface naturally when you’re around people with shared values. I spent my first two years building alone. No community, no co-founder. I’d prefer if that was not the case
- Lastly, I want to inspire and be inspired. I want to be surrounded by people who are just as optimistic about the future that we can create. I know this sounds cheesy, but this is the delusion that people have in SF that gets them to actually succeed in their venture
- There’s a lot to learn in the space of AI. I’d like to be in this surrounded by people, mentors, and teachers who are at the forefront of that. Right now, my best tool for that is YouTube videos
- Time is the only finite resource in the world. While of course failing is a necessary step to learn certain things, there’s still a big difference between failing at something that could have been avoided and failing at something that no one could have ever seen. In my first two years as an entrepreneur, I failed at things that now seem so obvious. I strongly believe that if I had the right mentorship back then, I could have been way ahead in my journey because I would have failed at harder problems.
- I believe that your residency and it’s mentors can help me fail at the right things, so I can learn what no one else has and share those lessons forward through my content (https://youtube.com/@ramimaalouf). That’s literally how we evolve as a species. Either that, or I don’t fail at all but that’s kind of impossible for an entrepreneur paving his own path
What’s the most impactful thing you’ve read recently and why?
https://youtu.be/HOdOOw7voIM & https://youtu.be/zeip0nmYw_E = passion is not enough. Ikigai. The importance of community and accountability. I am not operating at my peak abilities. I got a lot more to grow