Aflorithmic Labs will be among the 74 startups in the Fit4Start competition, and one winner will receive grants of up to €150,000, plus 16 weeks’ coaching, free access to coworking space and an invaluable network.

“I’ve done pitches to private individuals before, but it’s my first pitch competition which is slightly different because there’s the element of competition dynamics,” Coyle told Delano from London, where the project is based, adding he was “very much preparing”. 

Feedback for podcasts, other audio content

Coyle, a machine learning engineer and open-source developer, co-founded Aflorithmic Labs with two Germans: Dr Timo Kunz, a data scientist, musician and audio processing expert with a focus in audio personalisation; and Bjorn Uhss, a serial entrepreneur and speaker who has run a marketing and innovation experiment agency specialising in validating new ventures within 100 days. The team now counts 7, although Coyle says 4 of them are doing this full-time.  

He calls Aflorithmic Labs the equivalent of Wix for audio. While the user interface is “still very nascent”, the platform aims to allow users to upload their content and receive immediate feedback on aspects such as length of content, word repetition, and more. “Particularly if you use synthetic voice, it can be very repetitive,” Coyle says, adding that robotic voices can “sound very nauseating to users” since there’s not really change in intonation. 

Interestingly, their first customer was a pastor at an English-speaking church in Barcelona who wanted to keep his diasporic community up-to-date via weekly audio. But others who have shown interest include sports clubs and leadership or executive coaches, who may have limited face-time with their contacts but want to reach out to them in a personal way, like through an audio newsletter. 

“Some aspects of content work better with audio, specifically if there’s a social stigma,” Coyle said. “We’re seeing in the audio space the rise of therapist-focused audio content, since people don’t necessarily want to be seen reading [that content] on the train or whatever.”

But there’s still work ahead of them. Coyle says he thinks it will take 6-12 months before he’s satisfied with it, and that for the moment there is still some tweaking to do. But there’s plenty of ideas on the roadmap ahead--from more research into psychological and user experience aspects to potentially including a library of sound clips to enhance, for example, podcasts.

“Nobody wants to be the first”

When Coyle heads to Luxembourg for the 3 October competition, it won’t be his first visit to the country: he was based in the grand duchy for 5 years before moving to London and even received his master’s in mathematics from the University of Luxembourg. 

So what is Coyle most looking forward to if Aflorithmic Labs wins? “There’s a certain element of validation and branding these things bring, that’s possibly more important than the money,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges in early-stage startups is nobody wants to be the first in anything--first customer, investor, employee… winning something like this makes it easier the second time because you can refer to [the first win].”