Jolly Roger Phone Company

VO: Get ready for your semi-regular dose of random ideas from the guys at Codelation. We like to talk about big ideas companies that are winning, and those that aren't along with current events in our crazy world of software startups. So come along with Erick and Josh, who challenge you to think big, start small and turn your ideas into something on this episode of, from idea to done.

Josh: Hey everyone, I'm Josh.

Erick: And I'm Erick and today's idea is JollyRogerTelephone.com. And this is kind of an interesting concept. Nerds have developed a robot that actually fights robocalls and Josh from a technical standpoint. Can you kind of tell us a little more of what this is?

Josh: Yeah. I, I liked that nerds to fight robocalls. It should go on a t-shirt or something. Um, what I've found out is that they use a reputation score service, uh, called true CNM as a third party service, meaning it's not them, it's somebody else. And what they do is that they take the phone number, route it through that system, and it gets a reputation score assigned to the number. And once that score is high enough, it triggers a call to get routed into their system versus going to your cell phone or your home phone, uh, from there, the pirates as they call them, use some sort of a natural language processing to pick up on the telemarketers tire talking. It's really interesting how they handle it.

Erick: And it's pretty easy to, to figure it out. No, no, no, not at all. I think it's great though. And, and personally, it would save me a lot of time because I usually actually just talk to the robo dialers and, and I get weird with them on the phone.

Josh: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's great. They've, you know, no pun intended, they've really dialed into how to mess with the telemarketer

Erick: And, and we listened to these all days and, or the different example and I just fricking love them. And so my thought is if you're bold enough to talk to anyone and everyone wasting their time, me and I guess this app can, can waste your time right back.

Josh: Yeah. I immediately thought of you and some of your stories when I saw this pitched on shark tank.

Erick: Yeah. There was one time like this past month that they kind of called in and saying, oh, Eric, you qualify for some credit something or another. And I started talking to them in binary and I figured, you know, it's kind of hypocritical if you're a robot to not accept my robot answers back on the phone. And so they, it was kind of crazy, but they stayed on the phone longer than you would think when I hit it after every question I'm like 0 1, 1 0 1, 1 0. And the ability, what I liked about this app is without having that really generic response, they were able to stay on the line with the telemar- the telemarketer for like a really long time.

Josh: Yeah. It's an interesting use case for it. And it's definitely a difficult problem to solve.

Erick: I mean, we all had, or at least heard one of our stupid friends in the early two thousands with the voicemail when you would leave voicemails back and they're like, uh, hello, hello. Can't hear you. Well, it's actually Scott and you go to Scott's voicemail. I got ya. I frigging Scott to hate you. And so there is a little more tech involved with this than tricking me for 10 seconds.

Josh: I'd say a little bit, you know, as a computer, you're able to pick up if there's audio or sound on the call, but how do you pick up what the person is saying? You know, so as a computer, if I hear a sound, how do I know the intentionality of what they're saying? So for example, if somebody said, how are you today? I could pick up on keywords or possible phrases, but it gets complicated quickly. You'd have to take that audio in real time, process the audio into something that can be analyzed and responded to. So my guess is that they've got a bucket of phrases that's prerecorded, and they can respond to the collar with, and then inject something a little bit longer or more humanlike. So they aren't just saying, ah, uh, okay. For the entire call.

Erick: And, uh, as someone who did zeros and ones, this would, this would actually save me a lot of time with coming up with new material, to mess with these guys. And instead of actually having to talk to them too, because I pick up my phone during work hours. And anyway, so my one complaint with this though, is that you have a thing called jolly Roger telephone and like none of the pre-programmed things talking pirate.

Josh: Yeah. They do have some interesting different, uh, people that they've recorded. And I saw on there, they actually have some holiday themes, one as well. So like Santa Claus will, uh, we'll pop in from time to time around Christmas time.

Erick: It's that's close. And I like it. And I'm a big fan of Santa, but like the big question here is could our nerds develop a real talking robot fighter app?

Josh: You know what? We absolutely could. The toughest things going to be is to set that trap right. For the telemarketer and make it seem talkie, you know, human talking, engaging. So the wording seems just right. Natural. But yeah, I think we could do it.

: YARG! Now that's a project I'm ready to get behind. That's terrible. I'm terrible. But they actually, they had some really fantastic samples on their website and stuff. You want a little bit of entertainment for the day. I would go listen to some of those. Thank you everybody for listening to this episode, if you know a startup that could use some advice, have them subscribe or leave a review on iTunes.