Revolutionizing Accessibility: Why Ayes founders are leaving Europe to go into the US Market
“Within a month we had a 100 testers using the application. And within 3 months of releasing the app in the US we helped users cross over 200,000 streets.”
This is the phenomenal story of a few engineers who came together to help a friend. A friend who is blind.
You see one day their friend was complaining that he wished he had a way to be able to navigate intersections. Pedestrian signals work for those who can see, not for those who are visually impaired.
That’s when Willem Van de Mierop and his friends decided to dive into this and see if they could develop an app that could use AI and a smartphone’s back camera to recognize pedestrian signals.
Pretty cool huh?
Well if the technology itself doesn’t interest you, other things in this conversation will surprise you. For example, did you know:
- NY City lost a $1 billion dollar lawsuit to increase accessibility of the city or the visually impaired?
- It cost $64k to equip intersections with audible speakers for the blind?
- Sometimes it makes sense to leave the European market in favor of the US market?
Hear this fascinating story of the creation of the OKO app.
***
CONNECT
website: www.ayes.ai
📬 Subscribe to the ICL newsletter
***
SAY THANKS
Tune in to every conversation about exciting European Startups and Innovators on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon! Leave a rating and review so we can keep making amazing interviews!
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Innovators Can Laugh in your favorite podcast player.
Connect with Eric:
Visit his website: https://innovatorscanlaugh.com
For the Innovators Can Laugh newsletter in your inbox every week, subscribe at https://innovatorscanlaugh.substack.com
Past Guests:
----
Past guests on Innovators Can Laugh include Yannik Veys, Ovi Negrean, Arnaud Belinga, Csaba Zajdó, Dagobert Renouf, Andrei Zinkevich, Viktorija Cijunskyte, Lukas Kaminskis, Pija Indriunaite, Monika Paule, PhD, Vytautas Zabulis, Leon van der Laan, Ieva Vaitkevičiūtė.
-----
Additional episodes you might enjoy:
#55 Yannik Veys - From creating the Uber for service professionals to growing Hypefury
#53 Tzvete Doncheva - Overcoming barriers to get into a VC with Tzvete Doncheva
#50 V...
