Schulich Undergrad’s Startup Lands Funding from Amazon
After competing on The Amazing Race Canada: Heroes Edition as a Season 6 contestant, Joseph Truong (BBA ’17) is continuing to show that he’s unstoppable.
Truong is now dedicating his time to VoiceHero, the analytics platform that he and his friend, Jacob Chan, came up with in their university dorm.
“We received an Amazon Echo Dot for Christmas and noticed the power of 3rd party applications on the platform,” said Truong. “We started to develop Alexa and Google applications on smart speakers and realized the opportunity for analytics was there.”
VoiceHero is an analytics platform that helps businesses measure performance and make data-driven decisions on voice. The company, which is now heading into its beta trial, has a waitlist of users for the next product release. It was also chosen out of hundreds of applications across dozens of countries to be part of the Alexa Accelerator program, powered by TechStars.
This 13-week program, hosted in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, provides nine early-stage startups a chance to show off their new ideas and an opportunity to engage with investors. “Every day, I’m learning, growing, failing and adapting faster than I ever have. It is really teaching me how to validate and refine the business from the ground up,” shared Truong.
Truong credits Schulich for the success of his startup so far. “Schulich taught me how to leverage the power of the network, communicate effectively, and to lead teams small and large,” said Truong. “I would like to give a special shout out to the professors and mentors who’ve pushed and supported me along the way—Greg Milavsky, Steve Pulver, Chris Carder, Nilay Goyal, Mick Bhinder and Elliott Atkins—I would not be where I am today without them!”