Hi, my name is Daniela Semeco. Here’s my colorful startup story!

Life, I know from experience, is a crooked street. My invention, the PolyKeyboard, illustrates this truth. It sprang from a lucky accident in my life’s journey, which has been a diverse one geographically, linguistically and culturally. I was born in Venezuela, grew up in Georgia, and studied music for a few years in Caracas. The idea first came to me a little after returning to the U.S. from France and Berlin, where I'd studied the German language and interned in art galleries. I was visiting my dad in Georgia, applying for work, writing resumes. I was determined to move to San Francisco.

One skill I had was being able to speed-type using several different keyboard layouts. I thought about this for a second and realized that this skill wouldn’t help me get an interview.  And then I thought: Why are there so many keyboard layouts in the world?

That's when it hit me: I would invent a multilingual keyboard for polyglots, like myself!

It would include English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and German. I printed out the various keyboard layouts and started comparing them, trying to combine them fairly while minimizing changes. I quickly realized that there were too many characters; including them all would overcrowd my keyboard. I pondered the solution. 

One day, I was joking around and asked my dad, a computer scientist, if it would be possible to make a shift key that would turn things upside-down. He said it was possible. “It'd be great for the Spanish upside-down question mark,” he stated. The way I saw it, the upside-down shift key would flip symbols by rotating them 180 degrees, (e.g. ¿ ? ; [ ] ; ^ ˇ). The more we brainstormed, the more we realized how many symbols could be turned upside-down. It would also reduce traffic on the overcrowded keyboard. We searched the Internet and it appeared my idea was unique. Luckily, I had my dad to show me how the mind of a techie works. He built the first prototype and installed it on my computer.

After a month and a half in Georgia, though, I was desperate to get to San Francisco. I'd never been to the West or even seen the Pacific Ocean, didn't know anybody there—all I knew was that I was destined to go. I'd managed to sell some odds and ends and come up with $250. My dad thought I was crazy, but finally agreed to buy me a one-way ticket (which was all he could afford). I arranged for couches to crash on in advance. On March 28 2011, I left for the City with $250 and a dream.

For two and a half months I rode the couch-surfing wave before settling into my own place in San Francisco. In the meantime, I continued to work on developing the PolyKeyboard, and filed my first provisional patent shortly thereafter. I would come home after work to tinker with it. We worked for months improving and reiterating the product, and I was able to add more and more languages.

I was experiencing a lot of challenges at the time. I'd embraced local politics and become a freegan (someone who lives for free). I’d hooked up with Food Not Bombs and was eating for free, putting every penny I made towards the business. A local street kid designed my first logo. He was living on a roof when I met him, and I took him in and paid him in food and beer. To this day, he calls me “Momma.”

I founded Polyglotte Inc. as a benefit corporation on Jan. 1, 2013. Shortly after, I was approved by Legal Services for Entrepreneurs, a program offered by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Thanks to them, I now have many pro bono attorneys.

It’s been an adventure bootstrapping and getting to where we are today. On October 31 2013 we released our first product, the PolyKeyboard for iPad and iPad mini. Since then, we’ve released five other products, including a third-party keyboard for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/polykb-one/id946591425?mt=8

Besides making great products, we also care deeply about privacy and security, which is why our keyboards have the highest security standards. We firmly believe in Blockchain and look forward to supporting more cryptocurrency symbols (e.g. Ⓑ)!

Daniela Semeco

President

Polyglotte Inc.

www.polykeyboards.com

¿Questions?:

[email protected]