Capti Voice

Dr. Yevgen Borodin is the CEO of Capti Voice and a Research Professor at Stony Brook University. He is a leading researcher and entrepreneur in the field of computer accessibility. He invented an array of methods and assistive technology for improving accessibility for students with disabilities. Dr. Borodin co-authored 50+ peer-reviewed publications and received numerous awards, including the MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 and the FCC Chairman’s Award for Advancing Accessibility. His research has been consistently funded by federal grant awards from the U.S. Department of Education, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Administration for Community Living.

1. At least 10% of students worldwide have specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and other impairments that can impede reading comprehension. It is difficult to support such students in the classroom, it is even hard to do it remotely in the COVID-19 world.

2. We propose Capti Voice - a literacy tool helping teachers Assess, Accommodate, and Accelerate learning for struggling readers, especially those with disabilities, both in the class and remotely.

3. Capti will enable teachers to support struggling readers in both classroom and remote education settings, which is critical when students are out sick, can't get to school, or when there is a pandemic. The expected outcome of using Capti will be improved reading comprehension, which will lead to better grades and graduation rates for students with disabilities.

Once students get to the 3rd grade, even more so, graduate from elementary school, they are assumed to have learned to read and are expected to read to learn. However, due to a limited reading proficiency, Special Ed. students often struggle to read and keep up with the curriculum.

Research shows that personalized instruction can help improve student outcomes. Students learn much better if their teachers find a personalized approach and provide individualized accommodations, e.g., text to speech, extra time. Regrettably, it is impossible for content teachers to provide personalized support because they know little about literacy and accommodations and they have a schedule to follow; and personalization is very time-consuming.

In the end, even in the U.S. 35% of Special Ed. students do not graduate in 4 years of high school (compared to 15% overall rate), 17% never get the High School diploma, and 10% get an alternative certificate. Of all graduates, 66% are not able to read at college level.

Personalized instruction, literacy support, and accommodations are even more difficult when students cannot come to school, e.g., due to illness or COVID-19. However, education technology has the potential to help teachers personalize instruction more effectively.

In 50+ K-12 educator interviews, we uncovered an unmet need and a “blueprint” for the “ideal literacy solution” – an all-in-one tool that can assess, accommodate, and improve reading! There is, however, no single tool integrating all three of these capabilities. This results in a disconnect between tools used for assessment,The accommodation, and intervention (there is no automation, no data exchange, and no cross-benefit), leading to wasted time and lower instructional effectiveness.

Our Team developed Capti Voice - a unique product that helps teachers assess, accommodate, and improve reading for K-12 students struggling with reading, especially for students with disabilities. Capti Voice is grounded in the existing research on literacy, assessments, and assistive technology.

Capti enables teachers to accommodate students with disabilities so that the latter could keep up with the curriculum. We enable students to improve specific foundational reading skills while staying focused on the curriculum and enable teachers to provide personalized intervention with less effort. If the solution is fully developed, it would help students with disabilities progress much faster and, for some, even catch up with the curriculum.

We are serving K-12 teachers and students, especially English language learners and students with disabilities. We use the Lean Startup, Agile Scrum, and Participatory Design to shape product design. We seek stakeholder input and identify weak points at the design stage. We engage all stakeholders and conducting interviews with customers, iteratively refining the product. 

Our project not only provides disability accommodations, but also combines them with assessment and intervention capabilities and can be used in and out of classroom will lead to better outcomes for students and improve graduation rates. This will, in turn, provide students with more opportunities for education and employment.

This project will elevate opportunities for all people who are struggling to develop reading skills, especially those with disabilities who are traditionally left behind even in developed countries such as the U.S., U.K., and Canada. In the COVID-19 world, when they have no access to special education teachers, such students are completely disenfranchised. Our goal is to ensure that all people have access to equitable quality education.

I was studying to become a ESL teachers in Ukraine. Computer programming was my hobby. I won a student exchange program to come to study in the U.S. on the promise that I will develop education software to help students improve their language skills. 20 years later, I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus on helping people with disabilities access computers. I excited students and professors around me to create a company and create an education technology product to help everyone read. To develop the product, I combined my language learner/educator background, and my understanding of the needs of students with disabilities and their teachers. With the funding from U.S. federal grants, we built the initial product that helps teachers accommodate students with disabilities. LearnLaunch Accelerator has been instrumental in our finding the product-market fit last year. A partnership with the Education Testing Service (ETS) has made it possible to get on the path of developing the complete product that helps Assess, Accommodate, and Accelerate reading for all students.

The problem I am addressing is important to me because:

a. I cannot stand the inequity of access and a waste of human potential
b. Nowhere is it as bad as in education that determines who how far we go
c. I feel that my whole life I was prepared to solve this enormous problem

1. Having grown up in Ukraine, I first struggled to learn English myself.
2. I was teaching English to ELS students and felt technology could help.
3. I pursued a dream to come to the U.S. and develop Education tech.
4. I aspired to get the top degree and pursued B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
5. I saw how difficult it was to read for students with disabilities
6. I had an entrepreneurial "bug" and launched a start up to fix inequity

I have 30 years of computer programming, 10 years of computer science education, and 15 years of Computer Accessibility research experience. Over the past decade, I have been in charge of 19 federal R&D grant awards amounting to nearly $10 million U.S. Dollars, For the past 5 years, I have been working with K-12 students, teachers, admins, and researchers to develop the Capti Voice literacy and learning platform. At this point, I am not only an experienced educator and R&D manager, but I have also gained substantial experience in sales, marketing, and support. I assembled a business development team, raised investor funding, landed partnerships with Google, ETS, and Schoology.

All my life I have been told "No":

- No, you cannot go to study to the U.S. for free
- No, you cannot immigrate to the U.S. and have to go back to Ukraine
- No, you cannot have the investment to build your dream product

I am the definition of grit and perseverance.
I called 500 colleges when you couldn't easily reach people online.
I found a full scholarship and got 10 years of free education.
It took me several attempts and 10 years to overcome the U.S. imposed 2-year home residence requirement with recommendations from 20+ international scientists and a U.S. congressman, and immigrate as an "Alien of Extraordinary Ability". When there is a challenge, I work around it.
When I fail, and I fail often, I try again and squeeze lemonade out of lemons. When I get a grant proposal rejection, next time I submit two and get both. When VCs wouldn't invest, I raised from friends and family. 

I inspired tens of students to pursue a career in accessible technology. I have initiated and brought to conclusion 5+ research projects to help people with disabilities. I inspired several of my co-founders to pursue a startup instead of a lucrative career in the technology sector. I now lead a company of 10 people on a daily basis. I have established technology partnerships with Google, PowerSchool/Schoology, and Education Testing Service.

Capti Voice combines reading assessment, intervention, and accommodation into a single solution. Combining all 3 capabilities in one product means that all parts can share data  and inform each other. Capti uses the assessment component to suggest and potentially set up the appropriate reading accommodations. Using the assessment results, Capti can personalize the intervention for best results. The accommodation component can track the words and concepts that the student struggles with and further inform the intervention component. The intervention component can help students improve their reading skills while doing reading exercises composed for the same texts that students need to read for class. In this way, Capti can help students improve their reading skills, while, at the same time, helping them better understand the texts they need to read for class.

The uniqueness of our project is in that: 1) it uses a deep diagnostic assessment (ETS ReadReady) to help understand students’ needs in foundational reading skills; 2) it provides an intervention that automatically composes reading exercises from any curriculum texts, personalizing the exercises for every student based on the assessment; and 3) it aggregates a wide range of assistive tools enabling teachers to help their students to cope with various disabilities and keep up with reading.

We have over 150k users.

In one year, we expect to grow to 300k

In 5 years, we will be serving 10M students

Within 5 years, we would like to change lives of 10M students.

For any new company entering EdTech market, the main barriers to entry are a the need for a significant investment into software development, compounded by a lack of investors interested in pre-Series A companies with revenues under $1M.

Investors and entrepreneurs alike are deterred from EdTech by the seasonal nature and long sales cycles, limited growth, and a long time to scale the business. 

We will overcome the barriers through partnerships, see the next section.

Charmtech has already established several partnerships that will be critical to its growth. Capti is a Google Partner for Education and a Schoology/PowerSchool Preferred Partner. These companies will help us introduce Capti to the 70%-80% of the U.S. K-12 school districts. Capti developed a referrer relationship with SERP Institute and is starting to work on integrating their reading intervention. Capti has a strong partnership with Benetech/Bookshare. These relationships will help overcome market hurdles that make it difficult for new products to gain visibility.

We have attracted investments from angels and institutional investors including the Education Testing Service (ETS), LearnLaunch, and Arc Capital. These take an active role in helping Capti grow and provide access to a wide network of investors and advisors. 

We are collecting revenue from both consumers and institutions, but we focus on a SaaS model. We focus on K-12, but higher ed. institutions purchase Capti Voice as well. We have a freemium model for consumers worldwide: $20/year for the premium plan and more for in-app purchases. We sell annual subscription licenses to education institutions in the U.S.. Pricing per student is scaled, starting at $30 per student per year. We have been selling at $4k per school site wide on average, but a recent addition of reading assessments we can double the price to $8k. We estimate at least 50%+ profitability at scale.

Capti Voice is already in the process of commercialization. Capti already has 150k+ users; it is used in 100+ schools. It reached $150k in annual recurring sales in 2019, and it is expected to reach $300k in 2020. We seek investments to scale. And we apply for federal grants to fund R&D.

Details on funding sources are available upon request

We seek grants - several are pending review

We seek investment in the $500k-$1M range

$500k - fully funded.

We seek funding for 2021

We need funding to complete the development of the product, we need mentorship that will help us make the right product and business decisions, we need resources to scale the team, sales, and marketing. the Elevate prize can help us accomplish all of the above.

We need investors, ideally strategic investors who can help us scale.

We need mentorship and coaching on marketing and sales

Any organizations that can amplify our reach to prospective customers through either or both marketing and sales.