Tom Hewitson is CEO and founder of Labworks.io, a voice app studio in London known from some of the most popular games on Alexa such as Would You Rather, Trivia Hero, True or False and Mental Samurai hosted by actor Rob Lowe.

In this week's episode, Tom offers 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in voice based on his presentation at the All About Voice Conference in Munich. He touches on some controversial topics such as lack of discovery, how closed platforms like Alexa and Google Assistant stifle innovation, the lack of return on multimodal efforts, too much focus on persona, and lack of monetization. It's a rare dose of unvarnished honesty from a voice developer in a public forum. 

Tom Hewitson founded Labworks in 2016 as a chatbot consultancy but shifted into voice apps about a year later. Before Labworks, Tom worked as a freelance journalist and a content designer. He spent time as a digital editor for Lonely Planet and a content strategist at Facebook. He earned an M.S. in political journalism and TV production from City University London and an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Sussex.