Ultimate Guide to Voice Assistants
Curation of startups, resources, people, posts etc in the voice-space
This is my first guide posted on GitHub, bear with me. You can submit a pull request with anything else you think should be added here.
Image credit — CNET: Kids try to stump
Alexa
It will come as no surprise to those of you reading this (thanks!), that the interest and applications of ‘Voice-Assistants’ is growing rapidly. Amazon Alexa recently hit 10,000 skills and there is talk around what will drive adoption for the next 10,000. I wont be diving into specifics and discussing issues like retention. That is not what this post is about.
There are lots of resources & tools, tons of cool products, frameworks, articles and people out there to help you learn about the landscape.
💫 Here are some that I find particularly useful 💫
"2017 will be a defining moment for voice. Voice-first devices shipped by year:
2015: 1.7 million,
2016: 6.6 million,
2017: 24.5 million"
The 2017 Voice Report
by VoiceLabs
🤔 How To Use This
📰 News: There is very little on the newsletter front focusing on Voice-Assistants. Matt Hartman does the best one IMO.
I’m thinking of starting one too —if you’re interested, sign up!
🍜 Startups: Always interesting to see the companies operating in these spaces. They are broken down into different categories so you can easily jump into ‘Building’, ‘Products’, ‘Analytics’ etc. If you think there are some that need adding,tell me here.
🤑 Funding: This is just to outline some companies/funds that are very focused in the space right now. Again, if I’ve missed some worthwhile,tell me here.
👥 People & Posts: These are some of the awesome people I follow and have come across. I’ve linked them all, you should check them out. If I’ve missed some worthwhile, you know to tell me here.
Enjoy 😊!
🚀 I’ve added a little note about an experiment I’m working on at the end of this post.
A community helping facilitate connections to;
- Get a skill made/make skills for people/companies
- Find investors active in the field
- Intros to other active enthusiasts
- Bounce ideas around with others
- Advice & mentorship from experienced individuals
- Resources and tools to help you build
- Discover interesting products and companies
📰 News
🗞 Newsletters
The Official Amazon Alexa Developer Newsletter
(General Google news + Google Home. Subscribe at bottom of their page)
🖥 Websites/Sources
VentureBeat - Voice Assistants
📜 General news in space (not Voice specific)
Messaging Weekly — curated by the Smooch team
Chatbots Weekly — Curated by Omar Pera and the Reply.ai team
🍜 Startups
🗣 Platforms
👔 Companies
☁️ Cloud Services
🛠 Build
- SDKs & Frameworks
- Extras
This post by Brian Donohue is a great place to get started: Build your first Alexa skill
How to Build your First Amazon Alexa Skill (eBook) by Rocket Insights
Build an Alexa Skill in 7 Minutes Flat with Node.js and StdLib
💼 Agencies
[Solstice](http://www.solstice.com/alexa?utm_source=Amazon Alexa Partner Page&utm_campaign=Amazon Alexa Partner Page)
Unified Computer Intelligence Corporation
📈 Analytics
🎙 Products
Alexa Skills Store App on iOS and Android
🤖 Hardware
🤑 Fundraising
Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars
Betaworks — Get Support from the Alexa Team at Betaworks’Voicecamp
💵 Alexa Fund (All the companies announced)
👥 People & Posts
M.G. Siegler — General Partner GV. On Twitter
Matt Hartman- partner at betaworks + runs Hearing Voices Newsletter. On Twitter
Sarah Guo— people-first investor Greylock Partners. On Twitter
Sarah Perez— Reporter at TechCrunch. On Twitter
Patrick Montague— vp at betaworks. On Twitter
Owen Williams— Freelance writer + developer. On Twitter
Shane Mac— CEO Assist. On Twitter
Hugh Durkin— Senior Product Manager, Intercom.On Twitter
Aaron Batalion— Partner,Lightspeed. On Twitter
Johna Paolino— UX / product design General Assembly. On Twitter
Adam Marchick— Trying to build a better company, every day @VoiceLabsCo and Kahuna.
Alexandre Linares— Co-Founder @VoiceLabsCo / EIR @ The Chernin Group. On Twitter
Oren Jacob— CEO and CoFounder, PullString. Prev, Pixar. On Twitter
Brian Roemmele — Founder + Editor at Multiplex. On Twitter
Chris Messina— Invented the hashtag; X Uber; Xoogler. On Twitter
Cathy Pearl— Director of User Experience @Sense_ly. Author of the O’Reilly book Designing Voice User Interfaces. On Twitter
Trip ODell— Strategically-oriented product design leader @Amazon. On Twitter
David Beisel— Co-founder & Partner at NextView Ventures. On Twitter
Nithya Thadani — CEO of Rain
Dave Balter—I’m an Innovation-Obsessed Founder at Mylestone. On Twitter
Jeremy Liew— Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. On Twitter
Dag Kittlaus— Co-Founder/CEO Siri & Viv Labs. On Twitter
🚀 I am working on an experiment-
A community helping facilitate connections to;
- Get a skill made/make skills for people/companies
- Find investors active in the field
- Intros to other active enthusiasts
- Bounce ideas around with others
- Advice & mentorship from experienced individuals
- Resources and tools to help you build
- Discover interesting products and companies
👉 Feel free to follow and reach out on Twitter
🙏 Thanks to everyone who looked at this draft very early on! And perhaps I’ll see you all in the newsletter or Build Voices 😉
Side Note:
I have ‘borrowed’ this template from The Non-Technical Guide to Machine Learning & ArtificialIntelligence which is an awesome post & newsletter I use to learn about Machine Learning. Thanks Sam DeBrule 🙌