One product that uses Houndify is Hound, hence the relationship. You can think of Hound as being powered by Houndify the same way the Mercedes MBUX, “Hey Mercedes” is powered by Houndify. So, Houndify is really the platform that powers the voice and the products are the ones that take advantage of it.

Ian: So Hound is the consumer product that people can interact with and use. How about if you are a developer? Do you have an SDK? What’s the opportunity for developers? What’s the first step for them to take, to engage with the company, and investigate the opportunity?

Mike: The first thing to do is go to Houndify.com and create a free account. There’s documentation and there are tools and tutorials. Once you’re in there, you’ll see a developer experience that mirrors a lot of developer platforms. You’ll be able to build your own independent voice experience, and then apply it — whether it’s to an existing app, a new app, or a piece of hardware that can incorporate a microphone or internet connectivity. We have over a hundred domains that are available for you to take advantage of from weather to integrations with Yelp and Uber, flight tracker, and you name it.

The next step beyond that is the ability to create a custom domain. If you had a product that had its own functionality and you wanted to extend that functionality with voice, then we could work with you to build a custom domain — a private custom voice experience that is related to either a piece of content that you have or a product.

For instance, when we work with automakers, they want to voice enable their interface in their car or they want to create a voice interface for their automotive manual — those would custom domains private to them. That’s not something they would want to have as a public piece of information. Voice solutions are a combination of public domains, private custom domains, and channeling through the voice experience.

Ian: So, go to Houndify.com and go investigate for yourself and you can reach out to Michael through LinkedIn. Before we end, I want to ask about what you’re going to be speaking about at Project Voice. Can you tell us what you’ll be sharing at the event?

Mike: The title of my session is: “Succeeding as an Independent Voice Assistant and AI.” It really touches on the question about competing with Alexa or Google, even Microsoft or Siri. I think the notion of independence is a really important theme for that. What we mean by independent is that we are not part of a big technology company, nor do we have an agenda to extend our footprint into products. Currently, if you add Alexa to your product, whether it’s a microwave oven, or a car, it adds a lot of consumer value, but it’s also inviting the ecosystem into the product itself.

We believe your product should have its own voice. If you’re interacting with a product — whether it’s a car or smart speaker that you made, or an appliance — extending your relationship with your customers through voice is important. And that doesn’t have to happen exclusive of Alexa. Alexa and Google are services. They’re valuable. People use them for a variety of reasons, but that’s not a one-to one-relationship with the product experience.

The notion of independence is really important for companies like us who bring products to life. For instance, we have a branded wake word. So, when you say, “Hey, Mercedes,” you’re talking to the car and Houndify is powering the experience. But you may also say, “Alexa, add this to my shopping list,” and that’s okay too.

We believe in a multi-assistant voice world. We believe your product should have its own voice. A lot of the people in the community are going to want to develop expertise that works with Houndify, works with Alexa, and works with Google. It’s about untethering that one-to-one relationship and maintaining independence as a voice expert so that you can work across all the different platforms.