Woman-owned tech company in Wyoming strikes major opportunity

“I discovered that when a company is going global, they want to support more than just the United States,” Shoemaker said. “They want to be able to sell their product in Germany, France and Japan. The biggest challenge that they faced wasn’t what I was doing, which was refactoring their source code. … The messier challenge that they faced was, ‘How do I provide multilingual customer support?’”

Based in Cheyenne, Shoemaker’s company, Language I/O, provides technology that enables a monolingual customer support team to chat, email and provide self-service support in over 100 languages in real-time. Using unique machine translation technology, they equip customers with accurate, secure translations.

The tech originally developed by Shoemaker, though it has since been modified by her team, eliminates the need for neural machine translation engine training. Instead, it selects the neural machine translation engine that will best translate the content, like Google Translate. It also includes company-specific terminology in the translation so that phrases are understood well, rather than just directly translated.

The technology has implications beyond customer service. For example, it could be used to allow online gamers to communicate instantaneously, despite a language barrier, or help sales personnel connect with international clients.

“We recognize that there’s much broader application for our technology, which means there’s much more revenue to be generated through our technology,” Shoemaker said. “Enter generative AI, ChatGPT, etc., that’s just another form of AI that we can very easily integrate into our platform to speed up our accuracy improvements, and it’s beyond just translation, large language models.”

To protect their customers and their business, Language I/O does not keep a record of translations in their system; they keep information about the accuracy of the translation, as well as feedback, but the words themselves are wiped from the system.

Though this technology has fostered competition in the field, getting the company off the ground was no small feat. Shoemaker said she faced prejudice when seeking funding and is often questioned about her choice of location.

“I knew there wasn’t a lot of tech in Wyoming, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to kind of grow the tech ecosystem here,” Shoemaker said. “At that point, I was mature enough to know that that was important for the health of the state, Wyoming is very much a non-diversified economy … I didn’t realize how hard it was gonna be.”

Because of her former position with eCollege, which was acquired by Pearson Education, she was able to bootstrap her business in the early years. In 2011, she registered her business with the state, but it wasn’t until 2018 that she really focused on it and began to let it grow naturally. But once she realized other companies were catching onto the opportunity, she knew she needed to look for more funding.

Being originally from Alaska, Shoemaker moved to Wyoming to be with her husband, {span}Don Shoemaker{/span}. They met at Rodeo Days in Sheridan. Shoemaker found that she loved the wide-open spaces, lack of people and independent mindset. The Cowboy State reminded her of home.

A love for those wide-open spaces and independence is shared by many residents of the state, and as Shoemaker developed a relationship with the University of Wyoming, she found that many young computer science majors were thrilled to know that she could provide them opportunities close to home.

Convincing venture capitalists to believe that the company was lucrative and in the right place proved a bigger challenge than connecting with talented graduates.

“Many (venture capitalists) are not accustomed to women founders,” Shoemaker said. “And they didn’t know what to make of us because we were in Wyoming, and I’m a woman.”

Silicon Valley, where normally a business like this would reside, is saturated with young men founding tech companies, said Shoemaker. Being a woman, a mother of two, married and in Wyoming, she wasn’t always seen for the value of her business; rather, she was met with comments about her gender.

“If I had founded a company that had anything to do with baby diapers, or fashion, or food or things where women are stereotypically experts, then that would have been normal,” Shoemaker said. “But because this is deep tech, this is AI that we built, they were just like, ‘Who are you? And why are you here?’ One even said to me, ‘You know, if you were an older man with a long white beard, it would be so much more believable.’”

Finally, through a series of connections, Shoemaker met Jerad Stack, a founding member of the angel investment group in Casper called Breakthrough307.

Breakthrough 307 and Jackson-based Silicon Couloir Angel Group investors made the initial investments in the company, and that served as the leverage she needed to inspire more investors. Additional Wyoming team members were able to be hired, and that spiked product and business growth globally.

“Coupled with Wyoming’s remote and relatively small economy, today’s market climate makes it challenging to raise venture capital,” Wyoming Business Council equity portfolio manager Gordon Finnegan said. “Language I/O’s ability to close this funding round and add a runway to scale and stay in front of the burgeoning artificial intelligence curve will allow their language translation technology to continue to be in a great market position.”

Language I/O has raised almost $23 million and will be using the investments to further its technology and grow the team. Shoemaker is passionate about hiring in Wyoming. Her business allowed for remote work prior to the pandemic, and because of this model, she can hire people from anywhere in the state without making them move.

“That makes it easier to find people in Wyoming because, let’s be honest, there aren’t that many people in Wyoming,” Shoemaker said. “... To really staff up in Wyoming, we’re gonna have to take people wherever we can find them, and not insist that they all go to Cheyenne.”

This investment in Wyoming and its growth, while still valuing the lifestyle that attracts people here in the first place, has made Shoemaker and her business stand out to several investors and garnered her funds from the Wyoming Venture Capital Fund.

“Heather has helped foster a culture of community involvement and advancement in Wyoming. The creation and innovation of Language I/O have bolstered our local economy and brought our state to the cutting edge of burgeoning technologies,” Finnegan continued. “Our goal is to elevate Wyoming startups so they can go beyond the initial check, and Language I/O is the ideal first investment for this initiative. We are thrilled to support Heather and her team, and are confident they’ll continue to grow successfully.”

This company is a major step for the state in diversifying its economy. And as a female CEO, Shoemaker has found that Wyomingites are more than comfortable with her leading the way.

“Wyoming has a rich history of empowering its local communities, including women leaders. Known as the Equality State, it was the first to grant women the right to vote, and is now at the forefront of elevating the tech ecosystem,” she said. “I am proud to be a part of this program, alongside the rest of my team at Language I/O, and look forward to working with WYVC to continue paving the way for future generations of female entrepreneurs.”