Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

In Anna McClure’s freshman year of high school, she cried about the thought of delivering a speech in front of her entire class. Today, she’s the founder of a company that evaluates the performance and persuasiveness of public speeches.

“In high school, my instructor said to me: You’re the person that I would hire to write the speech, but not to give it,” McClure said. “I think that there’s an inherent irony that I ended up researching so much about public presentations, became very capable of delivering speeches, and even  started a business about it.”

Her comapny, ValidBound LLC, was founded at the tail end of 2025 to solve a major time issue for public speaking coaches everywhere. She coaches students in public speaking at the University of Tennessee (UTK), so it’s an issue she’s experienced firsthand.

The founding of ValidBound LLC

McClure earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree with an emphasis in technical writing, both at Lipscomb University. She then moved to Knoxville to pursue a doctorate in instructional communication at UTK and graduated in 2025.

Her dissertation became the eventual backbone of her company, ValidBound LLC. She examined the way professors evaluate speeches for skills like communication apprehension, nervousness, intercultural communication, competence, pace, and focus. However, her research revealed how much instructor characteristics matter; for example, different instructors focus on different parts of a speech.

So over the 2025 winter break, McClure started experimenting with AI tools to develop speech evaluation software that could help instructors with grading. She returned from break with a working prototype and showed it to her former doctoral adviser, John Haas.

“He was very excited about it, and we ultimately went through the IP disclosure process,” she said.

A few months later, McClure joined the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship (ACEI) Summer Studio to begin building out the business side of her product.

“One of my first goals in Summer Studio was building myself a curriculum of resources to read through and trying to learn about business,” she said. “And that’s the great thing – Once you get a Ph.D., you’re no longer intimidated to learn anything.”

How it works

ValidBound LLC evaluates speeches based on rubrics the instructor provides, giving a holistic picture of the presentation’s effectiveness. McClure intentionally designed the system with a human in the loop, meaning the instructor makes the final call, and the model learns from those corrections over time.

“It has the rubrics you would expect to see, like persuasive speech, informative speech, and self-introduction. But you can also build custom rubrics for things like pitch competitions or group projects for different kinds of classes,” she said.

Her goal is to help professors and coaches save a lot of time.

Imagine a speech class with 25 students giving five speeches a semester, each averaging 10 minutes… That teacher would have to spend more than 1,250 minutes (nearly 21 hours) listening to speeches the first time around, which doesn’t include the time it takes to rewatch videos, review, and write grades and comments.

Now imagine a teacher with more than one class a semester. That’s why McClure said a platform like ValidBound LLC is needed.

Next steps for the startup

“We need to formalize the platform to be able to offer it to universities,” McClure said, sharing how her next goal is to begin commercialization.

Thanks to her connection with UT’s AI Tech X, she is also exploring how the tool could be used in other verticals beyond speech evaluation. Some of AI Tech X’s industry partners see a potential fit for the platform in sales training and leadership development.

McClure’s goal is to start seeking customers and contracts in early 2027.

“I want people to know that this is an endeavor that is built on a foundation of passion and knowledge for an industry I love,” she said.

Check out more about ValidBound LLC.

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