# Univoice

Teaching the world languages through music

## Elevator pitch
Univoice helps you learn a new language through music – no singing skills required! Unlike traditional language apps that teach you ‘classroom’ speak, Univoice teaches you to speak a new language as it’s spoken in the real world - including informal and slang speech. Simply select the language / genre of music you're in the mood for, and start singing along with the artist. As you sing or speak, you will receive instant, color-coded feedback, graded on pronunciation alone (not pitch or tone).

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/univoice
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:60820
- Last updated: 2026-06-15T05:00:23Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-16T05:01:08Z

## Quick facts
- 📈 We're disrupting the $13B online language market with the scientifically-backed method of music
- 👨‍💼 Our Board consists of execs from Spotify & Babbel (world's highest-grossing language app)
- ⭐ Rated 4.6/5 on Apple Store & 4.7/5 on Play Store
- 🏆 Awarded "Top 50 Tech Innovators & Influencers" at InterCon 2020
- 💰 We've raised $560,000 (and counting) in pre-Seed round
- 😍 Our app is beating industry standards in user engagement
- 👔 Core team has 30 yrs in startup experience; early stage employees at 3 startups acquired for ~$1B
- 🚀 We're sustaining 101% monthly growth in new users and 74% monthly growth in active users

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:41548: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:34577: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
Though we established the company in 2018, the idea of Univoice has been in my mind and on my heart for decades on end. For the past 2+ years, the team has been hard at work bringing this vision to reality.Univoice is an app built to teach languages. We're utilizing the disruptive, scientifically-backed method of music to make language learning more fun, addicting, and effective.What Our Users Have to Say"Finally a way to learn languages through song, Eureka! Time to brush up on some of those friendly greetings" ---- PurpleSquirrelInc"The hardest part of learning a new language for me has always been memorization, until I started learning through songs. It’s far easier to remember lyrics than lectures and lessons." ---- Nikolaj A."Good to use with friends as a double karaoke / language learning activity." ---- Mirthful mermaid“I have been wanting to learn Spanish for a long time, but I would always get bored taking classes and using other apps. Univoice got me excited about learning again!” ---- Sydney M."I love this app! Learning a language through song...it’s genius! Can’t wait to see my progression in Spanish!" ---- KipKun"This is so cool! Been wanting to learn Spanish (fluent in English and French!) and this is SO easy/fun to use. Telling all my friends to stop binging Netflix and use this app!" ---- libbyfirer"Hemos intentado todo en mi familia para aprender inglés y esta es la forma más entretenida de hacerlo. Duolingo pero mucho mas divertidoooooo." ---- veritopw"It's incredible that something like this is so effective. I am so excited to learn a different language with songs I love." ---- JC925From age 6 to 26Ever since I could crawl, I've been woefully obsessed with 2 things: music & languages. Growing up in a trilingual household (speaking Arabic at home, French at school, & English in society), I was raised with a deep fascination for language and culture. Starting at the age of 6, I began playing piano & singing. I would also envision a world free from cultural and linguistic barriers; one in which we'd seek to see the world through one another's eyes, and - in so doing - engender a cross-cultural understanding that would turn our global conflicts into global opportunities.Fast-forward 20 years. Today, I speak 5 languages (aiming for 7 by age 30), perform music any chance I get, and am working hard to turn my dream world into our real world.Proficient in 3 months?!By the time I began self-teaching German in high school, I had become disillusioned by the language platforms out there. Every tool was either too academic, impractical in its teachings, repetitive, or didn’t stick. Until, one day, I stumbled across a German music playlist. Once I started listening, I couldn't stop. I began picking up vocabulary quickly, tracking grammatical patterns, and couldn’t get the songs out of my head. I became conversational in 3 months' time.Teaching languages through music... gone viralI started teaching languages the same way I had learned German: through music. After amassing 12 language students from ages 8 to 38 who had raved about my 'learn through music' method, I created an Instagram channel to extend my impact to the masses! Starting a video series, in which I'd write original grammar jingles to familiar Disney tracks, launched my content to virality: 10,000+ views and 150+ comments per post.Here's a sample video that drew high engagement:The 4 German Cases are "Part of Your World"From passion project to scaling startupCall it chance, call it destiny. In July of 2018, I attended a networking event, during which a venture partner from the Mercury VC Fund approached me. After a series of questions on my background, we landed at my side hustle of teaching languages."Why would I hire you as a language teacher?" he asked; "There are millions worldwide.""Well, my students from ages 8 to 38, love learning through music.""Through music? Languages through music... Have you thought of turning that into a business?"Well, your mind can fill in the rest. One question & realization after another, a company was born. Incorporated in September of 2018, soft launched March of 2019 in Austin, TX, at Louis Black's home - co-founder of the world's largest music festival: SXSW.Here at Univoice, we've built the 1st mobile app in market that teaches languages exclusively through music. We currently feature English, Spanish, French, and German, with plans to expand in the future. We run on a subscription-based model, in which users pay a monthly, weekly, quarterly, or biannual fee to access all featured songs & languages.After amassing 3500+ downloads (organically) with our beta product, we launched our first paid version in late February 2021. Since then, we have achieved some major milestones:In Q1 of 2021, we witnessed a ~101% monthly increase in new devices, ~74% monthly increase in active devices, & ~32% monthly increase in sessionsIn May (our 3rd month generating revenue), we surpassed 1% free user to paid subscriber conversion rate We drove down user acquisition costs by 31% from Feb - Apr, & are projecting another 30+% reduction by late-JulyOver 20 news mentions including CNN coverage of our U.S.-Mexico cross-border concert & a homepage feature on the American Inno: https://bit.ly/3pZWUfDHear from our investors, advisors, and team membersOn behalf of the Univoice Team, thank you for reading through and following our journey.Join us today and help us make the world a more connected and harmonious place.Rock on 🎸⚡🌎A 5 Step Guide to Learning With UnivoiceOur Subscription Business ModelLanguage Can Be ProfitableOur Clear Competitive AdvantageFAQWhat's your startup's next major milestone & how are you tracking towards it?Our next milestone is release of our Version 2 product (projected late 2021), which will feature a complete redesign, new value system, gamification and personalization features, such as: (1) customizable playlists (2) "favorites" shortlist (3) leaderboards (4) missions (5) difficulty modes (e.g. slow, medium, fast tempo) and (6) 100's of new songs, including Top 100 Billboard tracks. With this new product launch, we plan to hit the following target metrics: Cost Per Install (CPI): $1.37 Download to Lead (D2L): 50% Lead to Conversion (L2C): 2.25% Customer Lifetime Value: $24What are your key competitive advantages?We are the only language app in market utilizing music as our core method - which is scientifically proven to be the most effective learning method for long term retention and information recall 2) We are the first to teach slang, idiomatic, and colloquial speech, in addition to proper “textbook” language 3) Our pronunciation accuracy assessment is phonetic based (grading your pronunciation syllable by syllable), while many solutions - even market leaders - do a tonal assessment, which is far less accurate 4) Our app is naturally 'language flexible' - if you are a speaker of any of our supported languages, you can learn any of our other supported languages. Other apps must custom create a Spanish track for French speakers, German for English speakers, Italian for German speakers.What are your current & future streams of revenue?Our primary stream is subscription revenue; upon experiencing our 30 min / monthly freemium, users are prompted to purchase a weekly ($2.99), monthly ($8.99), quarterly ($17.99), or biannual ($35.99) subscription. Our secondary stream will be marketing revenue, in which we will target our free user base through brand-aligned, non-intrusive forms of in-app advertising. Future state: our tertiary stream will come from licensing out proprietary software currently in production - the first such tool is a content management system for managing transcription, translation, and synchronization of audio files. A second tool we are planning to build is a song-to-text algorithm that will greatly reduce the operational expense of manual transcription & synchronization.How big is the current opportunity for Univoice?The online language learning market (which excludes offline learning, such as K-12, higher education, enterprise, or government language learning) surpassed $1B in 2006, $9B in 2017, and is projected to exceed $26B by 2027. Presently, there are up to 2 billion people learning languages globally, with an increasing number shifting to online, app-based methods of learning. As you can tell by the leap in the 2027 market size, this is an exponential rate of growth, fueled both by the accelerated transition from in-person to online learning & industry trends on both the consumer preferences and product development fronts. Our plan is to tackle the market segments which will give us the greatest upfront returns, then transition into the segments that require more time and effort to nurture. Namely, we’re now solely focused on the consumer market segment, where there is the largest and quickest potential to scale. Following this, we’ll launch a direct sales effort to onboard enterprise clients, and lastly, by Years 5 or 6, we’ll tackle the education & government sectors, given that they require the most time and effort to nurture.Why doesn’t your product already exist? Has it been attempted before?It has been attempted, both by small players and big players, but failed for a variety of reasons. For small players, copyright infringement for unlicensed music content has been the leading reason for failure. For large players, the core reason was the lack of existing infrastructure. It was deemed a lot simpler for the established, 100-person didactics department to continue publishing lessons using traditional teaching methods, than to build out a whole new department for music licensing, song transcription, translation, and synchronization, document control, and more. Furthermore, a few specific barriers to entry include: (1) finding ample quality translation talent from all source languages to other languages offered; (2) building out and training an AI-driven speech recognition and scoring algorithm, which requires 100,000's to millions of data points for precision; (3) and, finally, initiating, managing, and closing music licensing deals takes anywhere between 6-18 months; in particular, the 'Big Four' music content owners, Sony, Universal, Warner Chappell, and Kobalt, manage an over-abundance in deal flow, which leads to extended negotiation timelines. And all the things mentioned above, from finding the right translation talent, to building out and training an AI engine, to closing reputable licensing deals, have been core focuses at Univoice, since our inception.Why is now the right time to build Univoice?In a series of reports and data published by Reuters and Trust Pilot, consumer preference trends in our industry include: diversified content types and learning methods (to drive maximum engagement); a desire for contextually-relevant, rather than randomized, learning, and - of course - opportunities for learning language “on the go.” On the front of product development trends, we’ve seen a growth in SMAC (which stands for social, mobile, analytics & cloud), as well as incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and gamification features for a delightful and sticky user experience. The world’s online language learners are hungry for an equally educational and engaging solution, that both hooks them with a delightful, differentiated learning experience and helps them advance quickly along their learning journey.What exactly are redemption rights and why are they being offered?Redemption rights are one of few pathways for angel investors to liquidate their startup investments. Namely, this is an opportunity for the company to buy out your shares at a 50-100% return on your investment (ROI). As per the term sheet, in this round, the redemption would occur at 50% above the purchase price for the 6 months following issuance (i.e. you buy at $0.44 per share, we buy back at $0.66 per share), and at 100% above the purchase price from months 7 - 18 post-issuance (i.e. you buy at $0.44 per share, we buy back at $0.88 per share).

## FAQ
1. **App sounds pretty cool. Your iPhone app says “you’re graded only on your pronunciation”. Are users pronunciation graded by a physical person?**
   - Univoice uses patented and patent-pending speech recognition technology that measures, word-by-word, how understandable a user might be to a native speaker. Our focus is on helping you to recognize words that sound a lot like one another, (as boat Vs. boot,) and focus your training more on those than on words that are very unique, (like rutabaga or kumquat.) This is driven by AI and machine learning technologies.
2. **I downloaded it but kept freezing / crashing, maybe still beta mode? (I am on iPhone) Also limited language selection - will u add russian at some point?**
   - Francis, thank you for your feedback! Would you be willing to email me specifics about your device, so I can ensure that we can support you properly? A part of our commitment to make Univoice a global service is ensuring that our app works on as many devices as possible! (And yes, we're in beta, and building our library fast. I can't wait to support Russian language!) bryan.riester@univoice.app​ 
3. **Do you have a "Lead Investor" as defined by Wefunder? If so, how much have they invested?**
   - Paul, thanks for your question. Yes, Eugene Bond is the campaign's Lead Investor (soon to be published on our page), with an investment of $10,500. Eugene is the former Head of Engineering at Babbel, and currently serves as Technology Advisor on our BOA.
4. **How many further rounds of financing will you engage in, that will subject my shares to dilution?**
   - That's a really great question! Firstly, it's important to note that dilution is heavily based on the number of fundraising rounds your startup undergoes. This is rooted in your exit strategy - as a frame of reference, companies who are seeking to become the next billion dollar unicorn (Facebook, Airbnb, Uber) engage in many funding rounds, given that they need $10's-100's of millions in capital to break billionaire status; these rounds include Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, Se...
5. **I really wanted to invest but the $500 minimum is too high for Reg CF. I hate Reg CF limits.**
   - Baron, appreciate you reaching out about this. In the near future, we are planning to drop the minimum investment amount to $250, for a limited time. Stay tuned!

## Team
- Sami Halabi (Founder | CEO)
- Enrique Ortiz (Chief Technology Officer)
- Ian Henderson (Board Advisor (Music Industry))
- Mark Baxter (Board Advisor (Product Growth))
- Ievgen Bondariev (Board Advisor (Technology))
- Amanda Slavin (Board Advisor (Education))
- Puran Parsani (Board Advisor (User Acquisition))

## Recent posts
- [Last Chance] 10 Reasons You Should Invest (2022-04-22T17:51:27Z)
- [7 Days Left] Product Deep Dive (2022-04-14T17:18:56Z)
- [14 Days Left] Pitch Deck Video (2022-04-08T06:42:17Z)
- 30 Days Left to Invest (2022-03-23T23:23:10Z)
- Growth Metrics On the Up & Up (2022-03-16T23:23:22Z)
- [In 24 Hours] Univoice Product Deep Dive (2022-02-08T21:56:28Z)
- [Register] Univoice Product Deep Dive (2022-02-04T00:28:08Z)
- [New Features] Song Speed & Search (2021-10-26T00:52:49Z)
- Promoting Univoice to 3.5M Followers (2021-10-19T02:09:06Z)
- [In 24 Hours] "Ask Me Anything" Live Q&A (2021-08-17T21:57:20Z)
- [Reminder] "Ask Me Anything" Live Q&A (2021-08-11T19:06:57Z)
- [Register] Live Q&A with Univoice Founder | CEO (2021-08-06T18:33:44Z)
- Our competitive analysis (2021-07-22T15:40:21Z)
- We're In The Top 100 🥇 (2021-07-15T15:10:48Z)
- 120 New Songs in Library! (2021-06-24T22:54:24Z)

## Q&A
- Q: Great work closing out the Reg CF round, looking forward to your next steps! Make sure to join the round before it closes out today!
  - A: Thanks for the support, Ryan! Yes - 45 minutes left to jump on board!
- Q: Gantuul
  - A: Hi Gantuul! Any questions I can answer?
- Q: I willing to invest pls send more details in my email pgshree@gmail.com
  - A: Thanks for touching base!
- Q: Sami, Needless to say, this current raise has fallen short of its projection from the beginning. Without enough funding to keep going with Univoice, what is the chances of this company's survival from the scale of I-------10 ? Please be truthful and no round arounds because I invested.
  - A: Richard, first off, I appreciate you investing, and for reaching out. At any given point in time, we are pursuing multiple paths for funding, and are not singularly focused on crowdfunding (Regulation CF).We have been concurrently fundraising through private placement (Regulation D), since January 2019. This was our primary funding source on through August 2020, when we launched this campaign. To this end, we continue to nurture prospective investors to participate in this Reg D offering & are in advanced conversations with a number of them.As a safety net, the company has 2 revolving line of credit agreements we can withdraw against when we are strapped for cash from other investment sources.While I cannot offer a specific guarantee (considering that risk is the middle name of the startup game), I'd say we have above average chances of survival, given this diversified investment strategy.
- Q: How do I change my investment from an individual to a trust?
  - A: Hi Dena, please email the Wefunder team at support@wefunder.com, they will take care of you!
- Q: Partner with Vampr?
  - A: Bailama, interesting suggestion. I will look into this potential partnership. Appreciate the recommendation!
- Q: Are you going to develop the app for Android?
  - A: Hi Branden, yes we intend to make our app available on Android within next 12-18 months. At the moment, we have decided to perfect one platform (iOS), given the scaling potential in our target markets. Stay tuned!
- Q: Thanks for your reply Sami. I understand what you mean but there's many quality songs that are great for language learners that are not available. I already understand some Spanish but I am trying to improve my grammar and speaking skills in Spanish. I especially want to learn how to speak Dominican Spanish because my paternal grandparents were Dominican. So I have been searching for music from the Caribbean such as Aguanile by Hector Lavoe and Willie Colón or Rébelon by Joe Arroyo or songs by Romeo Santos, Aventura.
  - A: Baron, I appreciate your comments and apologize for the delay in getting back to you. While we aim to expand the volume and representativeness of our song library day by day, the process of uploading new music onto the app dictates our growth rate on this front - namely, securing the full rights clearance, to transcription, synchronization, and translation of each track. That being said, the 300+ tracks currently live on the app equate to 300+ lessons you would find on a traditional language app at our stage of growth. Regarding the popularity of tracks (Willie Colon, Romeo Santos, etc.), we are in final stages of negotiation - and will soon be papering a deal - with 1 of the 3 "Major" publishers, who owns 30%+ of the world's Billboard 100 tracks. Stay tuned for more on this!
- Q: Hello is this a new round of fund raising for univoice.
  - A: Hello Bailama, this is a 2nd Wefunder campaign for the company, yes. However, it is still a part of the same pre-Seed round.
- Q: Is it possible to buy a lifetime account?
  - A: The longest subscription we currently have is the 6 month plan, at $35.99.
- Q: Your reconfirm,link isn't working. Todays date:8-2-2021:
  - A: We're looking into this; there does seem to be an error.
- Q: I really want to invest but I don't want my shares bought out early.
  - A: Baron, I sincerely apologize for having missed this question. For what it's worth, wanted to give it the attention it deserves. I understand your concern and can assure you that our company's leadership has taken (and will continue to take) significant measures to guard majority stake in the company, such that early investor buyouts would be unnecessary.
- Q: I am concerned because of the redemption rights, I have already had a very early exit because a company exercised this clause. I know of two other startups that did this and it was not very beneficial for us non accredited investors.
  - A: Typically buy-back rights are exercised when companies do not properly plan / pace their equity allocation to outside investors. At Univoice, we have been intentional about properly pacing how much of the company we're apportioning for external allocation, in order to avoid exercise of redemption rights.
- Q: I thought your investment is closed. If it has not closed, I would like to reduce my investment amount since you have dropped the investment amount. I would appreciate your quick response. Thanks
  - A: Darlington, can you please clarify what you mean by "since you have dropped the investment amount"?
- Q: Hi Sami, Appreciate your answer to my question below. Will you all be extending your campaign? Thanks! - Jeremy
  - A: Jeremy, we will not be extending our campaign. Our close date is on Wednesday, December 2nd!