My name is wish and my full-time job is to count people's arms and us and like it all started at my first day of school after my family moved from Pakistan to Tanzania I was busy sketching my dream cars in my notebook and all of a sudden I hear a voice in my direction the teacher Daanish can you please rise up and introduce yourself she had put me on the spot I was in this foreign land 30 pairs of eyes staring at me how would you feel when a teacher puts you on the spot in this kind of situation my mind went blank my heart started racing I kept quiet I started hearing giggles in the classroom and then tears ran down my cheek that was the first time I felt the fear of speaking in front of others the first time I felt the fear of public speaking fast-forward a few years I was at college here in America that fear still stuck with me it wasn't slow it was part of my soul now when I was little I had many other fears I was afraid of the dark the monsters under my bed the cockroaches and I don't mean the tiny cockroaches here but the big flying cockroaches I had back home in Pakistan in Tanzania but I outgrew these fears I overcame them as I grew older but public speaking no way I was still afraid of it but I decided enough was enough I decided to do something about it to take that step and find a solution and so I went to the one place on the internet where we all look for problems - our solution to our problems Google I searched on Google how to overcome the fear of public speaking the first link told me about the great things I could be if I overcame this fear sound like a leader get a great job share your ideas give a TED talk change the world the second link showed me all the different ways I could overcome this fear hire a speech coach talk in front of the mirror do online courses attend public speaking clubs like Toastmasters that's when I realized that I had it wrong all this time I thought you are either born a public speaker or you're not I was wrong I realized that public speaking is actually a teachable skill that means that if any one of you here wants to speak powerfully like any of your famous public speakers yes you can we all can now some of these solutions work for me others not so much like hiring a speech coach that was outside of my student budget but online courses that's where I learned how to vary my tone up and down how do talk pretty really fast that I could get someone's excited or to slow right down to get someone's attention and I practiced I practiced in front of the mirror at least that's where I had one friend who thought I was good as for the public speaking club Toastmasters that was fantastic I got to go in front of others and I got feedback on what I did good and what I did bad so I did all these things and I realized that first I was trapped in this cold dark hole where the fear of public speaking haunted at me it pulled me down and over here was this promise of sunshine of green pastures no anxiety but the path from here to here was all over the place I had to do all these things and I thought to myself there had to be one simpler way there had to be one way that I could go from here and leap to here so I went back to Google the source of all wisdom did some research and I started learning and reading a lot about artificial intelligence about these personal assistants we have in our pocket like Siri Alexa who understand what we're saying hey Siri was the next meeting I have they understand what we say what if they could also understand how you're saying something and analyze your voice what if they could be your speech coaches what if every single person in the world anywhere had their own personal on-demand speech coach can you imagine a world where anyone has this help to help them overcome this fear of public speaking to help them speak powerfully to help them share their ideas that's the idea that God has started that's the idea that helped us create or I aural AI a mobile app that counts your arms and us a mobile app that gives you personalized lessons a place to practice them quietly in privacy and an app that gives you instant feedback using artificial intelligence now a year and a half ago when my roommate and I started building this we were no experts all we knew is that we want to build something we want to create a solution we were no speech coaches we were not public speakers we were no data scientists but we had the power of the Internet so we read bunch of research papers on computational linguistics we spoke with hundreds of speech coaches trying to understand how they give feedback on their speech we watched videos on machine learning and artificial intelligence so that we could codify all these things and create this app because we believe that we can use technology to help people become better versions of ourselves and the reason I'm sharing my story with you guys today is not to tell you guys go out and build or be entrepreneurs I'm saying go out and face your fears don't burry them deep inside if you have a problem look for a solution if nothing exists create that solution if you don't have the skills go to Google find how you can improve your knowledge and create something for me it's all started when I was little that first time I felt the fear of public speaking that's what empowered me to act that's what empowered me to go on this journey of becoming a better speaker and this journey is never ending you will never see the finish line in fact there is no finish line in public speaking you can always get better remember that you can always become a better speaker you only stop if you tell yourself you're good enough thank you.
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