This story is part of a Portland Inno series on entrepreneurs under the age of 25.
Harry Herzberg
Age: 24
Education: Oregon State University, computer science, 2023
Company: Transcribbit (formerly Alerty)
Title: CEO
What does your startup do: Transcribbit helps students manage their attention span during long lectures by alerting them when key information is shared. By providing accessible live transcription and alerts, the program prevents a moment of inattention from disrupting a student’s understanding of the material.
Founded: 2019
Have you participated in any accelerators or incubators: Oregon State Advantage Accelerator; Launch Academy at OSU and three-time Giles Fund second place winner; TiE Oregon
Have you received outside funding: Mostly friends and family and a small amount from OSU competitions and TiE. Am now looking for funding.
How did your company come about? As a student with multiple disabilities, such as ADHD and muscular dystrophy, I was failing classes in college. I became distracted easily, struggled to grasp concepts, and often felt like the class was going much too fast. I would try to ask questions, but muscular dystrophy made it difficult for me to raise my hand above my head. Once online classes started, my grades saw a steep improvement. The ability to control the flow of information by pausing, speeding up, slowing down, or rewatching the recording allowed me to understand information that I would have missed in an in-person lecture. I could take the time I needed to learn the material! If I needed to ask a question, I could easily email the teacher and link the relevant section of coursework. These experiences inspired me to develop Transcribbit, and bring the power to learn at your own pace to in-person classes.
What is your ultimate vision for the startup? A core philosophy of our company is that good accessibility technology should be useful for everyone. During a long meeting, you want to know the information that’s relevant to you and ignore any unrelated details. Using transcription in its current form for a meeting will give you 20 pages to sort through. It doesn’t solve the problems of a long meeting, it just translates them from a lot of speech to a lot of text. Imagine being in a meeting and having instant access to everything you needed to know. Transcribbit acts as a personal assistant that can follow along and ensure you never lose track of what you need to do again.
Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur? I’ve wanted to be an inventor ever since I was young. As someone with muscular dystrophy, I struggled with Legos and other physical toys, since I didn’t have the dexterity to put them together or take them apart. Once I learned how to code, I felt unstoppable. I built an anti-keylogger cybersecurity project, and worked on a machine learning program to assist surgeons with glaucoma research. Due to my struggles with disabilities, I wanted to help those who had similar problems with classroom accessibility, and that’s how I got started in entrepreneurship.
Do you ever feel like you are missing out on anything because you are following this path at such a young age? I think that I gained more than I lost from becoming an entrepreneur. During school, I had less free time, had to schedule my classes around my startup, and focused on classes that would help me develop the app and my business. But the truth is, without the use of Transcribbit in my classes, I most likely would have failed and flunked out. Not only did entrepreneurship help me stay focused, it helped me build something to help me and others like me.
Where do you go for advice and support? I am blessed with a fantastic network of mentors and advisers, and the Oregon startup community has been very welcoming. One advantage of an edtech platform designed to help students with ASD/ADHD is that people actively want to help. A few of the standout mentors I’ve had include: Todd Laurence, who teaches Entrepreneurship and Business at OSU; Dale McCauley, Sanjai Tripathi, and Michelle Marie from OSU, who all helped me get excited about this journey when I was just starting out.
Are there any business leaders you look up to or hope to emulate? Warren Buffett immediately comes to mind. He has pledged to give 99% of his wealth away by the end of his life. I’ve always wanted to make a difference and help people in my community. After creating a startup that does just that, I think it would be fitting to make it my lifelong goal.
