We are long-time friends who once worked together, sharing many common interests and the ability to communicate openly. This isn’t the first project we’ve discussed—many ideas were disproven during our conversations. But after repeatedly analyzing the market, users, and costs, we realized this was a market worth investing in. So, in our spare time, we built a testable product and validated it in real work scenarios.
During a meeting with a Japanese client, the interpreter asked me what product I was using, saying she couldn’t find it online. I replied that it was something I developed but hadn’t released to the public yet—we were using it to solve our own problems first. She told me to inform her once it launched, as many project managers in her company deal with Japanese clients and would need such a tool. This was a strong validation of market demand, showing that the need was not yet well served.
We were once very concerned about costs. Competing products were either free, like Google Translate, but with high latency and poor user experience; or they were priced at around 299 RMB/month or even $100, like Felo, Cuckoo, and Talo—making real-time bidirectional translation tools hard to scale. Seeing similar overseas products like Pinch and Cuckoo enter Y Combinator in recent months gave us even more confidence.
Thanks to the release of the latest speech large language models, and our improvements on top of them, we can now offer ultra-low-cost dual-channel translation—giving us highly competitive pricing. Combined with the model’s strong understanding of industry-specific terminology, I later had another meeting with a Japanese client, and it was able to essentially replace the human interpreter. We knew it was worth dedicating more energy to building a product that enables seamless, real-time, cross-language conversations.
Designed for online meetings, offline business negotiations, and travel scenarios, our solution works across platforms (not limited like the upcoming iOS 19 AirPods pairing), offers high accuracy, low latency, and affordable pricing. It’s a broad, fast-growing market—and we’re ready to serve it.
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