-Record and organize conversations in real time like a secretary… Use in almost any conversation environment, such as important meetings or lectures
-The 'Second Brain' that enhances human intellectual ability
– 91% subscription renewal rate… Innovative service that turns conversations into assets
Bringing Cicero's Secretary Back to Life with AI
“The way we communicate, which has never changed in human history, is starting to change with the advent of voice AI.”
Founded in November 2023, The Plato is the developer of Tiro, an AI note-taking service that records multilingual conversations in real time and generates high-quality summary notes. Beyond simple dictation, the AI automatically structures and organizes the conversation, understands the user's context, and instantly creates a document in the desired format. The service name Tiro is named after Marcus Tullius Tiro, the personal secretary of Cicero, a politician and orator. Tiro is known to have invented Notae Tironianae, a type of shorthand method, to record Cicero's speeches and documents. Just as Cicero's secretary Tiro recorded speeches, the Tiro service serves as a digital secretary that records and organizes the user's conversations in real time using AI technology.
CEO Lim majored in mathematics and computer engineering at Seoul National University and is an AI engineer. The Plato founding team was formed by Seoul National University alumni who combined their AI technology and business experience to start a business. Director Kim Sang-cheol is a former front-end lead at Qanda, and Director Hong Yu-na worked as a VC reviewer after experiencing a startup exit. The two co-founders met at a startup crew meeting that CEO Lim has been running for three years. We met with CEO Lim Eun-seong at The Plato office in Gangnam, Seoul, to talk about the background of developing Tiro and how Tiro can change the way we communicate.
The background to CEO Lim’s development of Tiro began with his belief in the infinite potential of voice AI. He believed that voice AI was not simply a technology trend, but a technology that could change the paradigm of human history.
“Humans have been communicating verbally for about 50,000 years, and the way we communicate hasn’t changed much since then. Compared to the continuous development of text technology, such as papyrus, metal type, printing, and hypertext, speech technology has been developing slowly. The phonograph and telephone were invented only 150 years ago.”
Another significant development in voice technology began five years ago: the emergence of voice AI. Lim said, “Voice AI will bring about a similar level of innovation as the printing press, which revolutionized the information dissemination system. It solves problems we have had for a long time, and its impact is expected to affect all of humanity.”
Mr. Lim developed Tiro to solve a problem that his acquaintance was experiencing. When he was studying abroad in Germany, he saw his acquaintance recording the lectures and studying them separately because he couldn’t understand the professor’s lectures. He thought about how he could overcome the language barrier and understand the lectures in real time like a local, and that’s how he developed Tiro.
Check conversations, meetings, and conference content in real time and actively participate in meetings and conferences.
Tiro records conversations in real time. It understands the context, structures the content, and organizes it for easy reading. Tiro is used in almost all conversation environments, including video conferences (desktop, web), online lectures, and face-to-face meetings (mobile). It can also be used for personal conversations, such as family conversations.
Representative Lim turned on the Tiro app during the interview. Through Tiro, the interview between the reporter and Representative Lim could be checked in real time. The two parties involved in the conversation could immediately understand the direction in which the interview was progressing.
This is also a revolution in conversation. In real life, there are many cases where we cannot understand the content of a conversation or meeting in real time. If the conversation is an important business meeting, it can cause great damage to the business, and if it is a lecture, it can reduce the learning efficiency. The advantage of real-time recording is that you can check the content right away during the meeting or conversation. If you miss something during the conversation, you can ask, "Tell me what I just missed," and you can check it right away.
If you want to remember and share conversations, meetings, and conference content for a long time,
After the conversation ends, a customized document that the user wants is created. Even if you understand the content in a conversation, meeting, or conference, there is a limit to remembering it. CEO Lim described Tiro as a 'memory bicycle'. It is a tool that allows you to remember important issues for a long time with little effort, just like a bicycle that allows you to travel long distances quickly with little effort.
People who have had conversations often remember conversations differently. In such cases, it is necessary to share meeting content and confirm the content. Also, important business meetings often require sharing and collaboration with team members. Tiro can export created documents to various tools such as Slack, Notion, and Confluence, and notes can be jointly edited by team members.
If all my conversations are recorded and created as notes, I would be concerned about security issues. Unlike most voice-related services that store and utilize recorded voices, Tiro only uses voices temporarily and does not store them. Notes, which are text data, are also encrypted for each individual. CEO Lim emphasized Tiro’s security, saying that security-sensitive VCs and startup CEOs are highly utilizing Tiro.
Acting as a 'second brain'
“When you accumulate 1, 10, or 100 notes, that’s when your second brain starts to grow. If you ask questions and search for information in notes that you don’t remember but are filled with important information, that’s when you become your second brain.”
Tiro is a tool that expands the cognitive limits of humans. CEO Lim said, “Memory has its limits. If you record it like this and make it into a detailed note, information related to me will be completely accumulated. The more you use Tiro, the more you will have a personal assistant.”
The goal of The Plato is to create a future where every conversation is transformed into a meaningful asset. If every conversation and meeting is recorded and structured, it becomes an individual's "second brain" where important information can be retrieved and utilized at any time. When that happens, the individual's ability will increase to an unimaginable level.
Recently, as the number of one-man entrepreneurs and creators has increased, the demand for asset-based conversations has also increased. In particular, since the advent of AI, most content creation tasks have become automated and efficient, and one-man entrepreneurs who have emerged rapidly are branding themselves and conducting revenue activities, and are using Tiro to process the content to fit various SNS, with lectures and coaching as their main revenue activities.
High retention and retention rates
Since the launch of the Tiro service in late 2023, the number of subscribed users has exceeded 40,000, and the number of active users who have created notes for more than 10 minutes has exceeded 15,000. In particular, the retention rate of note creation for more than 10 minutes within 2 weeks is at 50%, which is a considerably high figure for a SaaS service.
The monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is around $30,000, and the average monthly growth rate is over 100%. Even more impressive is the subscription renewal rate of paid subscribers of 91%, which is proof that users feel real value.
Tiro's global paid users have exceeded 15%. The Playto aims to increase the global payment user ratio to 30% by 2025 and to 70% by 2027.
“As a maker, I want to contribute to changing the world.”
“For thousands of years, humans have made tools. Those tools have replaced physical labor. I think that future technologies, especially AI, will be able to expand not just the physical but also the intellectual realm. I started using computers when I was 1, and I started programming when I was 7. I have been making products. People who make products hope that their products will help change the world. The goal of Dupleto is also to contribute to changing the world through Tiro.”
Mr. Lim predicted that the new market called ‘assetization of conversation content’ will grow rapidly over the next five years. It is anticipated how well Tiro will perform in this market.
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