Marvee Founder Heidi Culbertson Discusses Voice in Aging and Her New Book (Episode 158)

Welcome, Heidi Culbertson!

Heidi is the Founder and CEO of Marvee, which is a voice strategy conversation design studio. Marvee creates experiences and helps others create experiences that are specific to the over 50 cohorts with a focus on active aging.

How Heidi Got Her Start in the Voice Industry:

Heidi spent the last several decades in emerging tech. She has always been on the front end of what’s new in technology. Heidi is drawn towards capability, potential, and what’s important. Heidi entered the voice industry because her elderly mom lost her sight. Amazon Echo shortly came out and Heidi realized that it could help replace some things that were impacted when her mom lost her sight. Even though they installed Dragon Dictation, her mom still wasn’t able to see the button. Heidi built a skill when Echo came out to be able to send out an “I am okay” message to the family. Back in 2015, creating technical skills was still a challenge. There was nothing pre-built for this and that is how Marvee was created. Heidi did a lot of research on the elderly population. Heidi built a mobile app where family members could speak into SIRI and it would deliver it back to ECHO.  Heidi was always very business-oriented and recognized the market opportunity and decided to turn it into a business.  For Heidi, it was important to pay attention to design nuances and accessibility.

Heidi Tells Us About Her New Book

Heidi is writing a book called “Voice Brings Back Simple.” The book is about an entrepreneur’s journey into conversational design. The idea for the book came about because Heidi realized there was a need to evangelize. The book is targeted towards both entrepreneurs and voice technologists who are either thinking about entering the voice startup world, are already working in that space, or want to broaden their perspective. Heidi believes that it doesn’t matter who you are creating for; what’s more important is how you vet the idea, and how you understand the user story. Heidi envisioned that older adults would have some independence and that adult children would have visibility and these are the things that Heidi based her success metrics on. As of right now, Heidi does not have a plan to launch the book with an audio version but it will come in the future. To learn more about Heidi’s new book, visit her website.

Learn More About Heidi Culbertson and Marvee

Visit Marvee Website 

Heidi’s Coaching Website

Follow Heidi on Twitter 

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn 

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