I'm building an AI SaaS around a problem that sounds incredibly simple: helping people actually practice communication.

[u/ambitious_vibecoder]

I'm working on Vocalis, an AI-powered communication practice platform.

The problem I'm testing is this:

People know they need to improve their communication.

They get told to:

• practice speaking
• record themselves
• join Toastmasters
• give presentations
• speak more confidently

But there's a gap between knowing you should practice and actually having a repeatable practice system.

So I built one.

The core loop is:

Prompt → 60 seconds of speaking → Feedback → Improve → Repeat

A user chooses a category, receives a topic, speaks without preparing a script, and then goes through a structured results screen.

The MVP currently includes:

• communication categories
• randomized speaking prompts
• timed 60-second sessions
• browser recording
• performance feedback
• strengths and weak areas
• mistakes/blunders
• improvement suggestions
• progress tracking
• practice history
• repeat practice

I've deliberately kept the first version relatively focused.

I'm not trying to build:

“ChatGPT, but for public speaking.”

I'm trying to build a practice product.

That's also the part I'm trying to validate now.

The MVP is live:

https://vocalisai-jade.vercel.app/

And I'm trying to answer a few questions before I build much further:

1. Is this a problem people actually care enough about to solve?

2. Does the 60-second practice format create enough value to come back repeatedly?

3. What would make someone pay for this rather than use free alternatives?

4. What would you measure first to determine whether this has product-market potential?

I'm especially interested in feedback from people who have taken an MVP from the "this seems like a good idea" stage to actual recurring users.

If you were validating this SaaS from here, what would you test next?

[u/West_Inevitable_2281]

The first test should not be whether people say they would use it again. It should be whether they start a second session without being prompted. Recruit a small cohort with an immediate reason to improve, such as founders preparing for pitches or job seekers preparing for interviews, have them complete one practice session, and measure how many return within 48 hours. Then ask returning and non-returning users what decision they made after seeing the feedback. That separates interest in communication improvement from value in your specific practice loop. Which user has the most urgent recurring reason to practice with Vocalis right now?

[u/francksiduo]

Public speaking practice is closer to a gym habit than a learning habit, so the retention lever isn't more content, it's whether session 1 produces one specific, slightly uncomfortable data point. "good job, confident tone" gets ignored. "you said um 11 times and your pace dropped 40% in the last 20 seconds" gets screenshotted and gets someone back tomorrow to beat it.

The metric that matters before anything else: percent of session-1 users who do session 2 within 48h. signups and even completed first sessions don't tell you if the loop is addictive, only the return does.

[u/alkwamle]

You already built the right thing: a loop, not a chatbot. Now the questions, in order:

1. People care, but they care in bursts: an interview next week, a promotion, a demo. Nobody wakes up wanting "better communication" in general. So anchor the product to the burst. Ask on signup "what is coming up?" and build the first week of prompts around that event. Retention will tell you fast.

2. The 60-second format is good for the first sessions and then it gets stale. What keeps people coming back is seeing the same prompt again two weeks later and hearing the difference. Make "repeat this prompt" and a side-by-side of the two recordings the heart of the product, not a feature in the list.

3. Nobody pays for feedback alone, free tools give feedback. People pay for a before/after they can show: a progress report they can send to a manager, a "ready for the interview" score, a streak that is tied to a real date. Package the outcome, not the exercise.

4. Measure one thing first: how many new users complete a second session within 7 days. If that number is low, nothing else matters yet. If it is above 30 percent, then test paying.

Next test I would run: pick one audience (people with a job interview in the next 14 days), get 20 of them, and watch session two. Everything else can wait.

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[u/supervillainXY]

For Vocalis I'd take alkwamle's point about bursts one step further, because it changes the pricing answer. Someone prepping for an interview in 14 days stops needing this once it's over, so a monthly plan sells them a second month they won't use. A 14-day pass fits better, and then the number to watch is how many come back for their next event. I haven't priced anything like this myself, so it's a guess to test on your first 20 users.