Tom Hewitson's guest appearances

Tom Hewitson

The Voicebot Podcast

VUX World

Ben Sauer

Alan Nichol

Zohaib Ahmed

Tim Kahle

Ahmed Bouzid

Adva Levin

Amy Stapleton

Heidi Culbertson

Hannes Heikinheimo

Tim McElreath

Dominik Meissner

Braden Ream

Mark Webster

Jo Jaquinta

Rebecca Evanhoe

OwlTail

Tom Hewitson, Founder and CEO, Labworks.io, joins us to share how he built a business on Alexa and Google Assistant, how he finds, keeps hold and monetises users, design best practice and advice for those looking to do the same.In 2017 and 2018, when Amazon Alexa began rolling our in-skill purchasing (ISP), many thought that there'd be a gold rush on the Alexa platform. Business will be built, money will be made and all will be well. It happened with the App Store on mobile, after all.There was two problem that most developers were facing: how do you create something that's good enough to keep users coming back for more, and then how do you create an offer for those users that's worth paying for?Those challenges turned out to be pretty difficult to overcome and, to date, only three companies have managed to reach the levels of success many were aiming for in the Alexa space: Matchbox, with their suite of quizzes and kids games, Invoked apps with it's load of sleep and ambient sounds and, our guest this week, Labworks, with Voice Arcade.One weekend, wanting to explore Alexa for investigatory purposes, in case any clients were to ask about it in future, Tom Hewiston, founder of then-chatbot agency, Labworks, set about building a game.After launching the game and pretty much forgetting about it, some months later, Tom received a call from Amazon. Turns out, Tom's game was the third most popular game on the Alexa platform. Amazon were starting to pay developers for having popular skills as an incentive for them to continue improving skills and developing new skills.These rewards were enough for Tom to employ someone to help build out more games. Labworks pivoted from building chatbots for clients and into building games for Alexa and the rest is history.We chat to Tom about his journey, what he's learned, his thoughts on the industry and advice for others looking to build successful skills and actions on Alexa and Google Assistant.Here's the running order:00:02:50​ About Tom Hewitson and Labworks.io00:05:50​ Last year's Alexa skills usage00:09:30​ Was it good timing to launch Voice Arcade?00:11:15​ Ten hot takes on voice: what's changed in voice since 2019?00:13:00​ What's changed for the better?00:15:20​ Developer rewards: how helpful were they?00:19:15​ What works and what doesn't for in-skill purchasing?00:20:00​ What's the difference in typical ISPs vs Voice Arcade?00:22:15​ Challenges with ISPs, offering more value than you're asking for in return00:24:30​ How are you showing value?00:26:00​ Vishnu Saran: How are you solving discoverability?00:30:40​ Marek Mis: Advice for hobbyist voice devs wanting to go pro?00:33:40​ Is there much experimentation left?00:38:40​ How do you prioritise and test features?00:40:55​ Any new platform features you're excited about?00:43:00​ Matt Buck: Have you thought about putting your games in apps or on web?00:47:09​ Katy Boungard: Brand identity and sonic branding00:49:20​ Richard Warzecha: Discovering features within skills00:50:00​ How much time is spent on happy path vs everything else?00:55:44​ Manual testing vs code testing00:57:05​ Example of something that took a lot of iteration to get right00:58:35: Richard Warzecha: Transferable principles from games to other voice experiences01:03:00​ Tooling and Jovo01:04:00​ General takeaways and contact detailsLinksLabworks.ioFollow Tom Hewitson on TwitterJoin Tom Hewitson on LinkedInSay "Alexa, open Voice Arcade"Say "Hey Google, open Voice Arcade" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Hewitson, Founder and CEO, <a href="http://Labworks.io" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Labworks.io</a>, joins us to share how he built a business on Alexa and Google Assistant, how he finds, keeps hold and monetises users, design best practice and advice for those looking to do the same.In 2017 and 2018, when Amazon Alexa began rolling our in-skill purchasing (ISP), many thought that there'd be a gold rush on the Alexa platform. Business will be built, money will be made and all will be well. It happened with the App Store on mobile, after all.There was two problem that most developers were facing: how do you create something that's good enough to keep users coming back for more, and then how do you create an offer for those users that's worth paying for?Those challenges turned out to be pretty difficult to overcome and, to date, only three companies have managed to reach the levels of success many were aiming for in the Alexa space: <a href="https://vux.world/matchbox-io/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Matchbox</a>, with their suite of quizzes and kids games, <a href="https://vux.world/in-skill-purchases-developer-rewards/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Invoked apps</a> with it's load of sleep and ambient sounds and, our guest this week, Labworks, with Voice Arcade.One weekend, wanting to explore Alexa for investigatory purposes, in case any clients were to ask about it in future, Tom Hewiston, founder of then-chatbot agency, Labworks, set about building a game.After launching the game and pretty much forgetting about it, some months later, Tom received a call from Amazon. Turns out, Tom's game was the third most popular game on the Alexa platform. Amazon were starting to pay developers for having popular skills as an incentive for them to continue improving skills and developing new skills.These rewards were enough for Tom to employ someone to help build out more games. Labworks pivoted from building chatbots for clients and into building games for Alexa and the rest is history.We chat to Tom about his journey, what he's learned, his thoughts on the industry and advice for others looking to build successful skills and actions on Alexa and Google Assistant.Here's the running order:00:02:50​ About Tom Hewitson and <a href="http://Labworks.io" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Labworks.io</a>00:05:50​ Last year's Alexa skills usage00:09:30​ Was it good timing to launch Voice Arcade?00:11:15​ Ten hot takes on voice: what's changed in voice since 2019?00:13:00​ What's changed for the better?00:15:20​ Developer rewards: how helpful were they?00:19:15​ What works and what doesn't for in-skill purchasing?00:20:00​ What's the difference in typical ISPs vs Voice Arcade?00:22:15​ Challenges with ISPs, offering more value than you're asking for in return00:24:30​ How are you showing value?00:26:00​ Vishnu Saran: How are you solving discoverability?00:30:40​ Marek Mis: Advice for hobbyist voice devs wanting to go pro?00:33:40​ Is there much experimentation left?00:38:40​ How do you prioritise and test features?00:40:55​ Any new platform features you're excited about?00:43:00​ Matt Buck: Have you thought about putting your games in apps or on web?00:47:09​ Katy Boungard: Brand identity and sonic branding00:49:20​ Richard Warzecha: Discovering features within skills00:50:00​ How much time is spent on happy path vs everything else?00:55:44​ Manual testing vs code testing00:57:05​ Example of something that took a lot of iteration to get right00:58:35: Richard Warzecha: Transferable principles from games to other voice experiences01:03:00​ Tooling and Jovo01:04:00​ General takeaways and contact detailsLinks<a href="https://labworks.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Labworks.io</a><a href="https://twitter.com/tomhewitson" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Follow Tom Hewitson on Twitter</a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhewitson/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Join Tom Hewitson on LinkedIn</a>Say "Alexa, open Voice Arcade"Say "Hey Google, open Voice Arcade" Hosted on Acast. See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.

Building a business on Alexa and Google Assistant with Tom Hewitson

Tom Hewitson is CEO and founder of Labworks.io, a voice app studio in London known from some of the most popular games on Alexa such as Would You Rather, Trivia Hero, True or False and Mental Samurai hosted by actor Rob Lowe. In this week's episode, Tom offers 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in voice based on his presentation at the All About Voice Conference in Munich. He touches on some controversial topics such as lack of discovery, how closed platforms like Alexa and Google Assistant stifle innovation, the lack of return on multimodal efforts, too much focus on persona, and lack of monetization. It's a rare dose of unvarnished honesty from a voice developer in a public forum.  Tom Hewitson founded Labworks in 2016 as a chatbot consultancy but shifted into voice apps about a year later. Before Labworks, Tom worked as a freelance journalist and a content designer. He spent time as a digital editor for Lonely Planet and a content strategist at Facebook. He earned an M.S. in political journalism and TV production from City University London and an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Sussex.

Tom Hewitson is CEO and founder of <a href="http://Labworks.io" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Labworks.io</a>, a voice app studio in London known from some of the most popular games on Alexa such as Would You Rather, Trivia Hero, True or False and Mental Samurai hosted by actor Rob Lowe. In this week's episode, Tom offers 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in voice based on his presentation at the All About Voice Conference in Munich. He touches on some controversial topics such as lack of discovery, how closed platforms like Alexa and Google Assistant stifle innovation, the lack of return on multimodal efforts, too much focus on persona, and lack of monetization. It's a rare dose of unvarnished honesty from a voice developer in a public forum.  Tom Hewitson founded Labworks in 2016 as a chatbot consultancy but shifted into voice apps about a year later. Before Labworks, Tom worked as a freelance journalist and a content designer. He spent time as a digital editor for Lonely Planet and a content strategist at Facebook. He earned an M.S. in political journalism and TV production from City University London and an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Sussex.

Tom Hewitson CEO of Labworks Shares 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 124