Renewed JoeSpeaking.com for another 3 years

Renewed JoeSpeaking.com for another 3 years.

I still remember the last day of 2025. I was heading out on a trip in a friend's car, still not 100% sure about the name.

He told me, “If you don’t buy the domain, I will. I already know the name anyway.”

So I bought it right there from the passenger seat.

Just 1 year, though. I had no idea what it would turn into.

Now I’ve renewed it for another 3 years, because I know I’ll keep building it for at least that long.

It’s been wild watching Joe Speaking evolve along the way: custom GPT → hackathon prototype → BYOK website → an actual cross-platform product.

Right now, I’m spending a lot of time strengthening the real-time voice infrastructure so the experience becomes smoother, more reliable, and ready to scale.

I still don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to launch a version that people in mainland China can use without a VPN, with the complete real-time voice experience. But that is what I’m working toward.

Joe Speaking is my first real attempt at building my own product from scratch. Even with Codex and Claude Code, it’s been harder than expected, but also an invaluable learning experience

The early feedback and support made me realize that this was worth continuing. Not because everything was already working perfectly, but because people were already finding value in it.

The natural voice-to-voice experience still blows me away. I genuinely believe it will become foundational to how we interact with computers. That’s why I’ve invested so heavily in making it reliable, well beyond what's needed for a simple English-learning demo.

The funny thing is, this started just for fun🤣. I never expected it to go this far.

To me, this represents the future of building: solve a problem you personally face, make it genuinely useful, and watch others find value in it too.