The problem

Speech and language is a crucial early step in learning. Children who face speech and language problems which go unresolved will see significant knock-on effects further down the line. They are twice as likely to experience mental health problems, and twice as likely to be unemployed as adults. 

This problem is at breaking point. In the UK alone, 1.9M children have speech and language needs—disproportionately impacting lower income families, where around 50% of children experience these challenges. Families face up to four years on an NHS waiting list, while private therapy is simply not an affordable option. 

The existing community of speech and language therapists (SLTs) are bearing a huge burden of this problem. 60% of SLTs report burnout, while 25% of positions go unfilled.

The team

Louise Weiss (CEO & co-founder)

Louise is a seasoned entrepreneur and Cognitive Neuroscientist. She has a PhD in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience from the UCL Institute of Child Health. Prior to Ogma, she co-founded dotte, the UK’s leading resale platform for children’s clothing. 

Cole Robertson (CTO & co-founder)

Cole brings deep technical expertise in the overlap of AI and cognitive processes. He has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics. He was also CTO at Texture AI, an organisation exploring the interaction between language, behaviour, and cognition. 

What Ogma is looking to get out of the programme

• Raise £400k to get us to a point where we are financially self-sustainable with £100k MRR in line of sight

• Collect our proprietary data set and build our phoneme level speech recognition model

• Get an MVP AI therapeutic agent into market