Scott Andrews

Why I built FluentSphere

I'm Scott Andrews, founder and CEO of FluentSphere.

I love learning languages, and not really for their own sake. I love them for where they take you. Speaking someone's language has taken me places I'd never have reached as a tourist and into conversations I'd otherwise have watched from the outside. It's the difference between visiting a country and actually knowing the people who live there. A shared language turns a stranger into someone you can connect with.

I spent six years teaching English to adult immigrants and non-native speakers, and I've spent two decades learning Spanish myself, so I've sat on both sides of that room. I've been the teacher watching a sharp, capable person get passed over because of how they sounded. And I've been the learner who knows exactly what he wants to say and can't quite make it land.

Both come down to the same thing: a gap between what's in your head and what other people actually get to hear. That gap quietly keeps good people on the edge of conversations they belong in the middle of. I started FluentSphere to close it, because the people on either side of that gap deserve to actually reach each other.

The AI under the hood is something I know well: more than 15 years of machine learning, a PhD from Stanford, a stretch as VP of Technology at Synthesis AI, but the technology was never the point. The point is connection. FluentSphere gives you the honest, specific feedback a good coach would, so you can be understood and taken seriously, and a language barrier stops being the thing standing between you and the people you want to know.