Namecoach

Pronounce the following last name: Daigle.

Did you say “day-gull”? “Die-gelle”? “Day-glee”? Don’t worry — Namecoach can help you.

This startup is targeting the $100 billion market for voice-focused Artificial Intelligence (AI), and within it, the eleven-billion-dollar market for name pronunciation.

Every day, there are 143 million attempts at unfamiliar names in the U.S. alone. And eighty percent of names have multiple pronunciations. So it’s no surprise that they’re often said incorrectly.

This may seem like a trivial error. But research from MIT shows that people whose names are consistently mispronounced often experience lower confidence and decreased participation — key drivers of productivity and success in education and business.

Current AI solutions aren’t designed for multicultural environments. They struggle with names, regional accents, cultural nuances, and appropriate responses.

Namecoach does things differently. It’s an AI-powered platform that delivers accurate audio-name pronunciations. This ensures names are pronounced correctly with ease every time, and sets a new standard for AI-enhanced communication.

Namecoach is off to a successful start:

It’s backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund — Peter was an early investor in Facebook — StartX, Impact America Fund, 640 Oxford, Authentic Ventures, and other venture-capital firms. These VCs also invested in Spotify, OpenAI, Facebook, and Airbnb.

The company has four million users and is generating four million dollars in annual-recurring revenue (ARR), all while achieving ninety-percent profit margins.

And its award-winning platform is used by more than 400 customers, including LucasFilm, the WNBA, Proctor & Gamble, and The American Medical Association.

Namecoach uses a combination of user-verified audio and the world’s largest database of name pronunciations. Its proprietary AI-based system analyzes factors like national, ethnicity, gender, and location to recommend the most likely pronunciation, even for names with multiple variations.

Simply add Namecoach to the tool of your choice. Its platform integrates into applications people use every day, including Zoom, Outlook, Salesforce, and Teams. Then, hear suggested pronunciations based on the database’s AI recommendations of user-verified recordings.

Notably, tools that improve people’s writing and speaking can become quite valuable. Grammarly, a tool that uses AI to help people write more clearly and efficiently, raised funds in 2021 at a thirteen-billion-dollar valuation.

To generate revenue, Namecoach offers annual subscriptions. Future potential revenue streams include a freemium platform, licensing the company’s proprietary technology to AI companies, and usage-based revenue from third parties.

By 2027, Namecoach projects to reach twenty million dollars in ARR.

Team Background

Praveen Shanbhag - Founder & CEO

Prior to starting Namecoach, Praveen was a lecturer at Stanford University. Before that, he was a science and technology graduate fellow at the National Academy of Sciences.

Early in his career, he was a senior analyst with Advisory Board, a Washington D.C.-based research-services company. Before that, he was a research analyst with the White House’s Office of Science and Technology.

Praveen holds a Bachelor’s degree in Science from Harvard, a Master’s degree in Physics from Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford.

John Merrells - Engineering and Product Advisor

John is an award-winning startup veteran who’s been affiliated with sixteen exits worth more than eight billion dollars.

In addition to his role with Namecoach, he is Chief Technology Officer with kea, a software-development company. He is also a mentor and advisor with StartX, a prominent startup accelerator.

Earlier in his career, he co-founded Parthenon, a startup accelerator for software companies. Before that, he was a software engineer with Netscape and Octel Communications.

John earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Hertfordshire.

Fabricio Bellesa - Head of Engineering

Fabricio has notable domain experience with respect to engineering.

Prior to Namecoach, he scaled PicPay, a financial-technology company, from 30 engineers to 1,000 as it became Brazil’s largest digital-wallet service.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree at the Instituto Federal do Espírito Santo in Brazil.

Co-Investors

Founders Fund

Founded by Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, investor in Palantir, SpaceX, airbnb, Spotify, ZocDoc, Facebook, Stripe, Oculus, Lyft and Oscar

StartX

A non-profit startup accelerator associated with Stanford University.

640 Oxford Ventures

A venture-capital firm investing in promising early-stage companies.

Impact America Fund

A venture-capital firm investing in high-growth early-stage tech companies.