Serenade
Serenade is a speech-to-code engine designed for developers to write code using natural speech. The platform is fully open-source and aims to make programming accessible to everyone, particularly developers with repetitive strain injuries or those looking to prevent them.
Founding Story
Matt Wiethoff was a machine learning engineer at Quora when he developed a debilitating repetitive strain injury that made it so painful to type that he could no longer work. He had to quit his job. Matt looked for alternatives but was unsatisfied with the current offerings, which were brittle and inaccurate. Determined to regain his productivity, Matt realized he'd have to build something great himself. He called on his former colleague, Tommy MacWilliam, who was Head of Platform Engineering at Quora at the time. Together they founded Serenade in 2019 with the goal of making programming accessible to everyone and changing the lives of developers sidelined by carpal tunnel and other repetitive strain injuries.
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Leadership
Founders
Tommy MacWilliam
Former Head of Platform Engineering at Quora (2018-2019), Engineering Manager and Mobile Engineer at Quora (2013-2018), worked at Box as Software Engineering Intern (2011). Lead Developer at CS50 and Instructor at Harvard University. Currently at Figma (joined 2022) as AI Platforms.
Matt Wiethoff
Former Machine Learning Engineer at Quora (2013-2017). Developed a severe repetitive stress injury while working at Quora that made it painful to type, which led him to start Serenade. Served as CTO of Serenade (2019-2022). Later joined OpenAI as Member of Technical Staff (2022-2023) and Google DeepMind as Research Engineer (2023-2025).
Executive Team
Tommy MacWilliam
Co-Founder
Former Head of Platform Engineering at Quora. Currently at Figma as AI Platforms (joined 2022).
Matt Wiethoff
Co-Founder / CTO
Former Machine Learning Engineer at Quora. Served as CTO through 2022. Later joined OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Open-source software with freemium model. Originally offered Serenade Pro as a paid commercial version. Now fully open-source (as of June 2022). Platform is available for free download.
Pricing Tiers
Full access to open-source speech-to-code engine with all features
First commercial version launched in November 2020, product became fully open-source in June 2022
Target Markets
- Software developers and programmers
- Developers with repetitive strain injuries (RSI) or carpal tunnel
- Developers seeking injury prevention
- Machine learning engineers
- Full-stack developers
- Mobile developers
- Coding for developers with repetitive strain injuries (RSI) or carpal tunnel
- Preventing hand and wrist injuries for developers
- Breaking up workflow to reduce typing strain
- Hands-free coding
- Writing code, documentation, reviews, emails, and Slack messages
- Running builds and cloning repositories by voice
History & Milestones
Added support for C#, Rust, Go, and Ruby (bringing total to 15 languages)
Made Serenade fully open-source
Launched mini-mode feature for smaller window overlay
Open-sourced the Serenade Protocol for creating custom plugins
Released terminal plugins for iTerm2 and Hyper
