On the Fly Mobile Captioning: Hi There Solutions New Live Voice to Text Apps

Brian Taylor 0:10
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of This Week in Hearing. I’m Brian Taylor. And today we have a startup company. Hi There Solutions that has developed a really cool app that you can use for the deaf and hard of hearing. And here to discuss. Hi There Solutions are the co founders, John and Chase Prieve. Welcome to This Week in Hearing. It’s great to have you with us.

Chase Prieve 0:34
Hey, thank you so much of the opportunity beyond we are extremely excited. So thank you very much. My father John is my co founder. My name is Chase Prieve, and we’re Hi There Solutions really excited for this opportunity. Anything you would like to add there?

John Prieve 0:49
Thank you, Brian, for the opportunity. Great to be able to talk a little bit about our company our mission, our why the inspiration or mobile app solution or award winning mobile app.

Brian Taylor 1:01
Yeah, we want to hear all about it. And before we dive into the all the great things inside the app, maybe talk a little bit about yourselves and your motivation for founding this company.

John Prieve 1:14
You bet. So Brian, my grandparents, Walter and Anna Prieve. That would be Chase’s great grandparents, Walter and Anna were both Deaf and Walter attended the Wisconsin School for the Deaf. This is over 100 years ago, and they were married. They had five children. My father, Richard Prieve, was the oldest of the five- he had four sisters. And think about this in the middle of the Great Depression, how hard it would have been for a hearing person to find employment to find work and be able to provide for their family. Well, Walter and Anna were both Deaf. And they in the Great Depression just were not able to provide for their family. So they ended up actually putting all five children into foster homes up in Northwest Wisconsin. And sadly, the the family never was able to come back together again. So there’s a bit of our family history. Myself personally, about a year and a half ago, I had a middle ear surgery for cholesteatoma. The result of that as I have a severe hearing loss in my left ear a moderate hearing loss in my right ear, I’m a bilateral hearing aid user- wearer, if you will. And just between those two pieces of family history, Walter and Anna myself that provides the mission, if you will, for Hi there solutions. Now the the inspiration for our mobile app. I’ll let Chase take that part Okay,

Chase Prieve 2:55
so that we have a family history. It’s very deeply rooted, myself personally. I have a friend. She was actually the first cochlear implant recipient west of the Mississippi River. Wow, she was born hear. Yeah, it’s crazy. She was born hearing, developed a very severe lung infection was over prescribed antibiotics. And as a result lost her hearing. And one day she was on vacation with their family down in Mexico. And they had a rental home. And she was trying to show me around, like, Oh, this is what the beach looks like, FaceTime. Yeah, using FaceTime. And unfortunately, it kept seizing up, you know, he kept getting, you know, the, hey, there’s no video and she reads lips. So and unfortunately, you know, connection was a great Wi Fi cellular and we just ended up hanging hanging up the call. So I turned to my dad after we spoke. And I asked, Why doesn’t FaceTime have real time accurate captions? And that’s my personal connection. Okay.

John Prieve 4:10
And Brian, the next morning, we founded Hi, there solutions. We did?

Brian Taylor 4:17
Well that’s a pretty remarkable story. So you must have some type of technical background that allow you to do something so quickly. So tell us a little bit about your technical backgrounds?

Chase Prieve 4:26
Sure, absolutely. So I’ve got eight years of sales experience and knowledge in the tech industry. And we’re using a AWS or Amazon web services provider called Mission Cloud, and we’re also working with a company called Kiwi Tech. They’re designing our user experience. And so I have a little bit of knowledge and API’s integrating with say hearing aids, that sort of thing. That’s me personally, I don’t want to speak for your background.

John Prieve 5:02
Yeah, so Chase comes from this telecom tack AI Artificial Intelligence background, which is terrific to help us with our front end and back end mobile app developers myself, I’m coming more from 30 plus years with startup companies. So I clearly understand what it takes in terms of market prep market research, getting getting your product promoted, position priced appropriately, etc. So we’ve, we’ve spent the last three years actually from the initial idea of a failed FaceTime call all the way through today, we’re our app, our mobile app with our two solutions, is available within the Apple app and Google Play stores for download and subscription are available and 10. Languages.

Chase Prieve 6:00
Sorry, and American Sign Language sticker emojis, so if your viewers sign, we have that available as well.

Brian Taylor 6:07
Well, let’s talk more about this app. I think it’s really cool. I’ve checked it out myself. And, you know, tell us tell us what is on the app, I think this is one of those kinds of apps that really everybody that has even a mild amount of hearing loss to Deaf or a cochlear implant user can benefit from so tell us more about the app and what you can get on it.

John Prieve 6:29
You bet me we share our screen, we can put up a nice visual for the day.

Brian Taylor 6:35
Yeah, we’d love to see the visual, that would be bad. So

John Prieve 6:38
and we have on the screen now, one of our two solutions that is in the Hi There app of the first solution. And I’ll I’ll take this one, and then I’ll go to the second one and Chase’ll cover off on the second solution. Our first solution is called Hi there. This is that inspiration, where Chase had turned to, you know, his mom and me and said Why doesn’t FaceTime a video chat product have real time captions for the deaf and hard of hearing. So we’ve created that from scratch with our two mobile app developers. The first here is Hi there. It’s a video chat and has real time caption speech to text instant messaging. And as Chase mentioned, animated American Sign Language sticker emojis, all within a video call. Now, many people understand that FaceTime is proprietary only to Apple users. So if you’re an Android user, your smartphone is an Android, you’re now unable to make a FaceTime call and vice versa. So what we’ve created as a as an app, that’s what we call device agnostic. In other words, an Apple user can can have a video channel hide their call with an Android user and vice versa. So that’s why we like to say making the Hi there call is super easy, anytime, anywhere cellular or Wi Fi between an iOS or an apple and an Android device and back and forth. So that’s high. They’re first in class, and with just terrific accuracy, all within a video chat call are set. Second solution. I’ll let you chase take this one, is just talk.

Chase Prieve 8:24
So yeah. The inspiration behind this was our you know, my friend who has a cochlear implant her boyfriend at the time. He’s also he was he still is Deaf, and he was trying to order something from Jamba Juice. And you can imagine how noisy it is in there, all the blenders and what have you. And he was unable to order they couldn’t understand and he couldn’t hear our friend had to order on his behalf and thinking through that problem, if you would, what and then you throw into the fact that there’s you know, face masks Plexiglass – very hard to, you know, communicate, especially if you’re deaf, hard of hearing. So we created another solution called Just Talk which is a chat board with real time captions, speech to text, text to speech, ASL sticker emojis, and it’s great for a two way conversation in a noisy and quiet place. I actually used it at a baseball game to order a hotdog and it works beautifully. And as you can see there, those are animated ASL sticker emojis, anything else you’d like to add?

John Prieve 9:40
So this is a terrific product, Brian, where, as Chase mentioned, for not only noisy places think of a Jamba Juice or an outdoor arena like a baseball game or noisy restaurant Starbucks, but also quiet places. So think about Deaf and hard of hearing individuals. They do the same thing that hearing people do, they go open a bank account a checking account, they pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy. They they, they’re there in a grocery store. And they’re trying to have an interaction, maybe a customer service. So he’s both noisy and quiet places. This is a terrific text chat board solution. And at the end of the conversation, the individuals are able to delete that conversation or just by exiting out of the solution, the conversation is deleted as well. We encrypt all our solutions from front end the back end. So privacy is very, very secure within our mobile app.

Chase Prieve 10:38
And we can differentiate between speakers, which is really cool.

Brian Taylor 10:43
Yeah, tell us a little bit more about that. And how does it make that differentiation? I mean, how does it different colors on the on the screen? How does it How does it look?

John Prieve 10:51
Yes, so we we have a differentiation on in just talking, I’ll go back to high there for just a second at the end. But with just talk you can see we color differentiated. One speaker from a second speaker, we have also included a the ASL sticker emojis, what is very, very cool is that an individual can, an individual can just simply tap this just talk microphone down here in order to activate the microphone on their smartphone. And the microphones on smartphones as we went through our beta testing for both Android and Apple devices. My goodness, they are stared and stayed at the heart. The microphones are just terrific, terrific technology. One example, last October, it was my birthday, we’re up in Boulder, Colorado, and my favorite Italian restaurant. been going there 14 years. And the waiters got mask, a mask on. It’s a busy noisy restaurant. And we were in beta testing. So we Chase had Just Talk pulled up to do just that beta test. And the waiter who’s standing with his mask on taking the order, maybe standing five or six feet away, Chase is placing the order, the waiter was reading it back to him. And that was 99.9% perfectly accurate. That conversation between the two speakers in English alone. And that was just an English. But again, we have nine other languages that can be transcribed, if you will, within our it’s just talk solution. Jumping quickly back to Hi There, this is so cool. We differentiate, you know, between the two different speakers and we use I’ve got my mouse pointing to it, you know, just the identifier that that contact, it has our beta testing examples here are our Paul up in the upper right hand corner. And this is his friend, Noah. So we have an /n/ and a /p/ in order to differentiate between the two persons who happen to be speaking in their speech has been transcribed. So really, really terrific in terms of being able to differentiate between the two different speakers, the text in the case of a Hi There call just simply scrolls up so that at any point in time, a customer can simply use their finger and pull down and be able to go back to what someone may have said in an earlier part of that conversation. But again, at the end of the call, everything is deleted, it’s encrypted. And these are private conversation that no one is reading or no one else is saving or anything like that. The back end. Yeah, that’s

Chase Prieve 13:46
cool. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead, please. Oh, yeah. What’s really cool about the Hi There Solution and Just Talk is that our artificial intelligence, machine learning, pardon me, and natural language processing, it can now autocorrect itself. And it’s available. Yeah, in 10 languages. Real Time closed captioning. If you use a competitor, you have to send out a meeting invite with us. No, just pick up your phone in either someone. It’s super cool what we’re able to accomplish.

Brian Taylor 14:19
I love that that’s, you know, I think it’s a real game changer for a lot of people in practice. So all you hearing care professionals out there, imagine the number of patients that you see everywhere from mild hearing loss to severe profound, that struggle in places that are acoustically challenging either because the voices are too soft, or because there’s too much noise. Now you can recommend to them a portable real time closed captioning device that works right along with their with their smartphone. All they have to do is download the app. And that brings me to some of the this is a subscription model right. So maybe just talk a little bit about how people can access So your app,

John Prieve 15:02
you bet thank you for that. And Brian, we have we are following a subscription model currently for an launch. And we’d like to change this over time. But just to get established in the marketplace, what we created, were two different pricing plans, and then a top up for people that want to buy additional video, chat and text message, instant messaging, minutes, if you will. So we have a basic plan, and we designed this ad for individuals who just want Hi There the video chat call. And you’re probably wondering, Well, why would you have? Why wouldn’t you have both all in one? Well, we have that with premium. But Brian, we know this in our market research, we learned that 90% of the Deaf are actually born to hearing parents or have hearing families around them. So we know that, that for example, deaf individuals would certainly want to use the premium plan and have Hi There and just talk. Whereas maybe their family or friends who are hearing and want to have a video chat call and be able to have their deaf or hard of hearing him individual friend have captions. So we just have the basic plan where those individuals would just use the, the Hi there solution, we’ve priced these very, very reasonably, for example, the basic plan of just Hi There only, even though it’s a upfront charge of $23.99. At a tier one level, Brian, that equates to the cost of a candy bar bought at a gas station, once a month. So again, very reasonable, right? The premium plan, yes, there’s an upfront charge for tier one of $71.99. It’s an annual charge an annual subscription. However, when you break it down to monthly, that’s the cost of a grande iced cafe latte with extra whipped cream, once a month, I mean, that’s how reasonable we we’ve priced our products in terms of being able to be inclusive, provide another accessibility accommodation, for for the Deaf and hard of hearing and their family and friends. So no one ever misses the word.

Brian Taylor 17:20
That’s great. I would think also that some hearing care professionals out there might want to bundle this subscription into the purchase of hearing aids and service package for people that want comprehensive care along with devices they might purchase. So all kinds of opportunities out there. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you can be contacted, where people can find more information about this? Yeah,

John Prieve 17:53
come back here to our homescreen. And Brian, we and we will provide this you can put it in the link below, we have a terrific website. Hitheresolutions.com. Here’s our here’s our front page, if you will. And tell us a little bit about the products. It’s got both high there and just talk beautifully displayed here in the middle, we have, we’ve got a button, you can press to learn more that will take you out to our YouTube channel in order to learn a little bit more about learn a little bit more about as we put user or customer videos in there. And of course, we’re also accessible on all the major platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. And then of course, you can see we’re both available on Apple and Google Play stores.

Chase Prieve 18:46
That’s right. And then we’re our website is available in different languages as well. So if you have viewers that maybe speak Spanish, Portuguese, French, hey, we’re available, as well. We’re all about inclusivity and accessibility. That’s that’s what we think. And believe that’s our mission.

Brian Taylor 19:07
That’s great. That’s great to hear. And I love your logo. I love the Hi there logo there. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for your time John and Chase Prieve cofounders of high their solutions really cool. App for the deaf and hard of hearing. Thanks for your time. Great to have you on our broadcast.

Chase Prieve 19:27
awesome, thank you very much really appreciate you Brian.

Brian Taylor 19:30
Welcome.