Alexander Levy

Alexander Levy
CEO & Lead Designer of MyVoice Inc.

Location: Toronto, ON
Employees: 10
Age: 24

For an extended profile of Alexander Levy, click here.

For decades, people with communications disorders, such as those caused by stroke, autism and ALS, have had to use super-expensive electronic devices in order to speak. As a result, only 7% of North Americans who could use a speech-assistance device do so. Now, thanks to Alexander Levy and MyVoice, they can make themselves heard much more easily with the company’s app for Apple and Android smartphones and tablet PCs. Levy came up with a prototype of the app (which allows users to communicate aurally by keying in words and phrases) while working as a student researcher at the University of Toronto. His intent wasn’t to start a business. But as he demonstrated the technology to clinicians and families, he found—much to his surprise—an overwhelming percentage of them wanted to pay to use it. That realization led him to launch MyVoice earlier this year. The basic version of the app is free, and almost 9,000 users—nearly double the number Levy had forecast—in 30 countries have downloaded it in 30 countries. “Our products materially improve the lives of thousands of people with disabilities,” he says. And a growing number of them are paying a $29 monthly subscription fee to use the Plus edition, which allows users to personalize their “voice” via features such as custom vocabularies. As word spreads and consumer electronics drop in price, Levy expects subscribers to multiply in the years to come. The logic is simple: his main competitor’s offering works on its own hardware, costs upwards of $10,000 and cannot be easily customized. Even though that company has only tapped a small fraction of the potential market, its annual revenue tops US$100 million. As a cheaper, more user-friendly entrant into an underserved market, MyVoice’s business prospects look bright.

What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as an entrepreneur?
It is essential to distill your ideas and strategy down to the clearest, purest, smallest possible concept. At MyVoice, we have the simple but ambitious goal of helping people with speech and language disabilities communicate better by building smarter yet more affordable communication aids. Being able to articulate your dreams so simply is the best tool I’ve found for getting customers to love our product, for attracting and motivating our team and for deciding where to direct our resources.

What is your best advice for young entrepreneurs?
When you make your big strategic decisions, focus as much on finding the things you need to stop doing as you do on the new things you might start. We all have a tendency to propose sparkling new initiatives as the solutions to our challenges. But so often, it’s the mountain of things you’re already doing, the accumulated scar tissue of a hundred previous initiatives, that holds you back.

What has been the biggest surprise about being an entrepreneur?
Negative: everything takes more time, effort and tenacity than you could have possibly predicted. Positive: you adapt, grow and one day realize that you are accomplishing greater things, with fewer resources, in less time than you ever imagined.