TranscribeMe - speaking to the world

Alexei Dunayev, chief executive of transcription service TranscribeMe. File photo / NZ Herald

From statisticians in Belarus to stay-at-home mums in the United States, Auckland-based TranscribeMe is a truly global business.

The three-year-old company that combines speech recognition technology with real-life transcribers employs a workforce of 40,000 to provide perfect quality transcripts to its client-base of academics, market researchers, call centres, media companies and the legal industry.

Co-founder Alexei Dunayev said previously alternatives to TranscribeMe's service were either automated algorithms, which were fast and cheap but inaccurate, or hiring a transcriber, which improved accuracy but took forever.

TranscribeMe has refined the technology using several million dollars of Silicon Valley funding and relies on its part-time workforce around the world to bring the accuracy up to the perfect levels demanded by clients.

After filing the audio, clients can have a transcript back in between one and five days, paying from $1.50 to $2.50 a minute depending on the number of speakers.
Audio is sliced into micro-tasks, which also helps preserve confidentiality, and allows the transcription workforce largely made up of stay-at-home mums to log in and work during their downtime.

"We can tap into a huge pool of talent of professionals that are now in a position where they can't dedicate a continuous eight hours of work but they still have legal degrees, they're doctors, they're nurses, they're business people."

Dunayev said after several years of hard work the company's growth is exceeding forecasts, with a fourth office opening in Japan mid-year a little more than six months after the firm created a base in Belarus to take advantage of the speech recognition expertise there.

The bulk of the technology development is run out of New Zealand with Silicon Valley the base for sales, marketing and finance functions.
Dunayev is now looking to tap external expertise guide the company through the next stage of growth and has turned to the University of Auckland Business School Entrepreneurs' Challenge EC-35 fund, which underwrites the cost of advisors or directors.

"Bringing on board really senior talent who understand not just how to build a start-up and get a small company off the ground and build technology but really build and scale a global venture, which is where we are now."

Winners of the Entrepreneurs' Challenge and the EC-35 will be announced on October 20.