Shaping the Future of Voice Technology

Native Voice founder and CEO John Goscha comes from a long line of entrepreneurs, so it’s no surprise he became one himself.

“My father was an entrepreneur [and] my grandfather was an entrepreneur, and so I probably learned more playing on the floor of my dad's office growing up than I really realized,” he says. “I I love consumer technology, and so I've been fortunate to start three companies in the past, all different technologies but in that same consumer tech space.”

John’s first company was a golf business that he started in high school out of his parents’ garage, which eventually made six figures. “... [I]t got to the point where I couldn't make the clubs,” he says. “We had too many orders, and so I had a nice system set up where the orders would come in, they would automatically get faxed to golf club, custom club makers around the city, and they would ship out the products. So my job at that point was just doing marketing and running credit cards.”

John says he finds that there’s often a “gap between technology and market” – one that he has tried to fill with his various startups. “A lot of technologies don't make it to market [at all] or don't make it to market in the right way. And so I love thinking about the application of technology. What kind of new technology, what big problem can it solve? That gap is where I've spent most of my career.”

One such market gap has to do with the proliferating number of voice assistants like Amazons’ Alexa and Apple’s Siri. According to John, many of these voice assistants aren’t as effective as they could be.

“A lot of the voice assistants… haven't been very good,” he says. “[O]one of the problems that these voice assistants have had is they try to do it all. And so by going a mile wide, they can only go an inch deep. And we've all had a... kind of a lackluster experience. And so the first problem we're solving is for the end user, when you want something on the tip of your tongue, you want to be able to say it and get it instantly, and you want it to work every single time. [That] is job number one” for Native Voice.

John also says that society will eventually move away from smartphones toward something he calls “ambient computing,” where people naturally talk to devices more than they swipe or tap. 

“I think it's strange that we've been interacting with computers using our fingers for decades, with mice and keyboards and touchscreens. And so if we fast forward this movie, five years, 10 years, 20 years, I believe that we'll have a seamless experience across all of our brands, all of our services, where you'll be walking down the street wearing a pair of headphones, be able to call the particular service, a particular product, whatever you might need. Be able to get in your car, put your headphones away, pick up that same conversation right where you left off, get home, walk in the living room and the same thing.”

Native Voice is helping to make that vision a reality by allowing end users to talk to their favorite products and services without having to pull out their phone, John explains. In a nutshell, Native Voice is an app from which you can control multiple voice assistants by just specifying which one you’re talking to and giving it a command.

Native Voice is compatible with many products that are voice-enabled, such as wireless earbuds, speakers, and more. As such, the company has positioned itself to take advantage of the growing capabilities of these “smart” internet-connected devices.

John notes that Native Voice recently launched an app in partnership with Skullcandy headphones, giving those devices access to voice assistants and conversational AIs. 

“Skullcandy is the second best-selling headphone in the country, second only to Apple, which is pretty incredible,” he says. “I'm [also] really happy that we recently launched Hey I Heart [Radio], [which is] exclusive to us. And we have a couple of additional big brands that we all will recognize launching here in the coming months.”

John is also enthusiastic about getting into the automotive market, as new vehicles are basically becoming rolling internet-connected computers and Wi-Fi hotspots. Plus, the utility of voice control is obvious for an activity like driving.

“I'm really excited about launching an automotive accessory with one of the largest retailers in the world. I think the automotive space is really interesting from a use case where when you're driving, you don't wanna be looking down at your phone…. I see a lot of the electric cars are going voice-first as an interface and doing multi-voice. That's an exciting market for us. I think you can expect to see an automotive accessory from us [or see us] enable an automotive accessory from a large retailer this year as well.”