| Website | yapinc.com |
| @yapme | |
| Category | Mobile/Wireless |
| Phone | +1.704.960.1776 |
| info@yapinc.com | |
| Employees | |
| Founded | 5/06 |
| Description | cloud-based speech recognition |
| TOTAL | $10M |
| FUNDING TOTAL | $10M |
| Angel, 1/07 Mark Stabingas Timothy Biltz | $1.5M |
| Series A, 6/08 Sunbridge Partners Harbert Management Corporation Pittco Management Timothy Biltz | $6.5M |
| Venture Round, 10/10 Sunbridge Partners Harbert Venture Partners Pittco Capital Partners Timothy Biltz | $2M |
| DEBT TOTAL | $2M |
| Debt, 10/10 Western Technology Investment | $2M |
Yap pioneered the world’s first high accuracy, automated speech recognition platform for “long duration” dialogues. Long duration dialogues are conversations and audio content ranging from 5 seconds to several hours. Yap specializes in accurately transcribing these dialogues for a variety of different scenarios including voicemail-to-text, conference call transcriptions, analysis of customer phone calls and voice-activated mobile messaging.
The company was a TechCrunch finalist in 2007. Their management team previously worked on Apple’s iPod, Honda’s navigational systems, IBM’s ViaVoice, Microsoft’s Tellme speech division and Nuance’s Dragon products.
Yap white labels its SaaS platform – i.e., Yap Speech Cloud(TM) – to enable diverse use cases, including messaging, call analytics and voicemail-to-text. For example, Microsoft uses Yap for voice-based mobile messaging applications. Their end users can say anything they want to and have Yap’s platform transcribe it into text (far more convenient than typing on the fumbling with a devices keypad while driving). MetroPCS also is a Yap customer. Cincinnati Bell, a regional carrier, uses Yap-based technology to convert subscriber voicemails into text. The carrier was a competitive win away from SpinVox (now Nuance). Part of the allure for Yap’s service is that it’s completely automated. That means there is no need for humans listening to messages, typing them out, and then sending them back out, giving Yap a real advantage in ensuring privacy. Because Yap is completely machine powered, the company is able to offer lower costs, higher speeds and greater consistency.
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | September 17, 2007 |
| Closed Date | September 8, 2011 |
| Tags | voice-to-text |
“Yap9” was a prototype of a unified mobile client that connected to Yap’s freeform speech recognition platform. It contained a threaded text messaging application that allowed you to keep in touch with friends, family, and coworkers in realtime: by simply saying something, your words would then be converted into text within seconds, and sent out. Additionally, it unified the mobile web by allowing you to instantly access web services just by talking. You could search Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, YouTube, or interact with Facebook without having to type on your phone’s miniature keypad.
Since it’s unveiling at the TechCrunch 2007 event, this product has morphed into a white label play. Yap now powers diverse messaging clients as it repurposed itself as a B2B supplier.
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | April 1, 2008 |
| Closed Date | September 8, 2011 |
| Tags | voice-to-text |
