Though he has appeared in the Economist and Financial Times, British journalist Nicholas Barrett always felt anxiety when submitting an article because he has dyslexia.
It only became easier for the journalist to avoid “traps in writing” when he started using the services of Ukrainian tech startup Grammarly. The firm’s artificial intelligence application corrected his spelling mistakes, punctuation and grammar, giving Barrett “peace of mind and confidence.”
“It deserves some credit for everything I’ve written in the past two to three years,” he says.
Barrett is not the only one who feels this computer program can help alleviate anxiety about writing. In fact, there is an army of 20 million people using Grammarly daily.
Such success has helped the startup thrive financially and attracted attention from the world’s biggest investors. On Oct. 10, Grammarly announced it had raised $90 million, bringing its total investments to $200 million so far.
More importantly, investors have valued the startup at more than $1 billion. Tech industry players label such expensive startups “unicorns.” They include renowned firms like Uber, Xiaomi, Airbnb, SpaceX and Spotify. Now Grammarly has joined this exclusive club, becoming the second Ukrainian startup worth $1 billion, following programming platform Gitlab.
Role of investment
Grammarly could have gotten by without the investments — it has been profitable for the past eight years — but the team decided to raise money to expand their business faster, according to one of the startup’s three co-founders, Dmytro Lider.
“For us, this funding round is about accelerating our growth,” Lider told the Kyiv Post.
He said that the company retains a vision of building a comprehensive communication assistant that helps people connect and understand one another.
“We don’t look at funding events as goals,” he said. “They are merely milestones on a long journey toward that vision. Our goal is to make Grammarly available everywhere where English writing happens.”
Algorythmic proofreader
Grammarly uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to proofread any text a user inputs. It can be a Facebook message, an email, or a text in Google Docs, given that the app works as a web browser extension. It also checks text in desktop apps, on smartphones with special Grammarly keyboards and as an add-on for Microsoft Office.
Apart from grammar and spelling, the program provides suggestions on tone and context-specific language, clarity, engagement and delivery.
Recently, the startup has released a tone detector. Its algorithms help people identify how a message is likely to sound to someone reading it so the senders can adjust their message accordingly. It can say, for example, if an email is written in a friendly, joyful or formal way.
As it brings in new investments, the startup may go beyond identifying a message’s tone to suggesting how a person might alter their tone to say what they want in the way they intend, Lider said.
Grammarly also learns from the vast amount of writing it processes and adjusts its recommendations based upon usage. Users can also select whether they want to write in American or British English.
The basic spelling and punctuation checker is free. More sophisticated services that check for genre-specific writing, tone and consistency and detect plagiarism cost from $29.95 for a single month to $139.92 for a year (roughly $11 per month).
Rapid growth
Grammarly was named one of the most innovative firms in the sphere of artificial intelligence in 2019, according to U.S. business magazine Fast Company.
With digital communication becoming more and more important for professional and personal success, Grammarly expects demand for its product to continue to grow. Its number of users has tripled over the past two years. By holding the second investment round, the startup wanted to make sure it grows as quickly as its user base.
It plans now to enlarge its current Kyiv office to 1,300 square meters. The company’s other three offices in Vancouver, New York and San Francisco will expand too, hiring more people.
The company now employs 240 people, more than half of whom work from the Kyiv office. The people are exactly what makes the firm so cutting-edge, says Hemant Taneja, the managing director of General Catalyst, a U.S. venture firm that has invested in Grammarly for the second time in a row.
“The company’s ability to attract the talent needed to grow that platform continues to impress us,” Taneja said.
The startup was founded in 2009 by three Ukrainians: Alex Shevchenko, Max Lytvyn, and Lider. The techies started the venture with 10 other Ukrainians with their own money until their first investment round in 2017 raised $110 million.
Working for 10 years on Grammarly, Lider has never lost his inspiration. He and his team see how the product they have built helps people like journalist Barrett progress in their education and careers.
“All of us have trembled while crafting an important message or a document,” he says. “This feeling is especially familiar to people who deal with dyslexia, like Barrett.”
Lider hopes his company can help as many people as possible by alleviating anxiety about choosing the right word.
“Our vision,” he says, “is to empower people to focus on ideas and goals, freely communicate what they mean, and worry less about the mechanics of putting their thoughts into language.”
The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum. The content is independent of the donors.
