“People who stutter face macro and micro aggressions every day.”

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What makes stuttering worse is the compounding effect of the fear of stuttering. Every time someone stutters in public, they can feel the reaction and judgments of others, real or imagined, and these reactions add to the anxiety of the person who stutters. The path to treating these anxieties is acceptance. Owning the ability to stutter as a part of yourself can take a while, but it makes a huge difference in moving forward with confidence and mental health. However, the speech therapy world is woefully undereducated about stuttering, with only about 0.1% of speech therapists specializing in stuttering, almost all of which are in private practice and not covered by health insurance.

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Juggling two careers, an international non-profit and medical school, Nathan attributes his abilities to an incredible board for Myspeech. The support of technology, advisors, and volunteers is the only way this could happen. But Nathan also pointed out that when you are passionate about something, you make time for it. Habits and focus make a big difference in making progress on such a big project. Making sure his mind is focused on one priority at a time, versus several, has been hugely helpful in this chapter of his life.

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“The idea of belonging to a group really helped me by one, understanding that I’m not alone and two, by connecting with people over a shared experience where we can identify strengths, character qualities, and be a source of inspiration to each other.”

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Nathan was a freshman in college, in 2017, when he went to a stuttering conference in Dallas. There were only 1000 people at the conference, but Nathan knew that there were millions around the world who dealt with stuttering. As he realized that the resources available were amazing, but they weren’t getting to the majority of people who needed them, his idea for a social impact organization was born. He started with a narrow focus, the cost of speech therapy, and got to work. He raised money for scholarships for people who stutter, formed a network of qualified therapists that he had met at conferences, and connected the two groups. He found that as he helped his community, he was helping himself. The friendships, relationships, and connections he made were invaluable, as well as the education he received from speech therapists.

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“Myspeech has changed my life just from me leading and building it.”

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Finding a product market fit was a process of iteration and failure. Nathan points out that you will know it when it’s happening. People will hear about your product organically, you’ll start to get a lot of emails about what’s going on, and you’ll start to get awards. Instead of focusing on achieving a milestone labeled “product market fit,” Nathan suggests focusing on your work and impact and the fit will appear in time. When Myspeech was getting going, they were struggling to find people who stutter and their growth was stagnant. They thought through who was the community adjacent to people who stutter, which led them to speech therapists, and that’s when they started to find and get shared by students who stutter. They have now evolved to be a marketplace where those who stutter and those who help them can meet, work together, and build community and education.

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When looking at measuring impact, Myspeech’s goal is to reach 500,000 people by the end of 2025, or 0.02% of the population of people who stutter. They are focused on quality of impact over quantity, looking at whether their help is helping in this phase. They are tracking if quality of life and emotional wellbeing is increasing through using Myspeech before they try scaling to impact more people.