Beyond the online chatter, there was also the media — bloggers, influencers, news outlets. Basically three camps: the fans who just praised everything, the critics who nitpicked and smeared, and the neutral crowd trying to stay objective.
Since they didn't really have direct competitors yet, the usual paid-troll and fake-review nonsense hadn't really shown up.
Compared to the relatively chill domestic scene, things overseas were rougher. After that first news network report, a bunch of other outlets piled on with the same tone — clearly biased, clearly slanted.
Plenty of outlets and sites gave them fair, positive coverage too, but it wasn't enough to undo years of built-in Western skepticism.
Even so, sales stayed strong. Overseas orders had already crossed four million units. Nowhere near the domestic explosion, but still enough to top a bunch of electronics sales charts.
Meanwhile, early overseas buyers were posting their experiences on social media, one after another.
That word-of-mouth kept fueling sales growth. But naturally, some hiccups came up along the way too.
For instance, the voice assistant usually worked paired with a phone, and some features needed to hook into apps on that phone.
Stuff like maps, weather, food delivery — all needed integration with the big platforms. Google was the obvious leader there, but for various reasons, a partnership with Google never came together.
Nick's team wanted to fix this, but the two sides just couldn't agree on some key terms. So some features stayed limited — not ideal, but unavoidable. The overseas landscape isn't like home, especially around mobile app ecosystems, which tend to be a lot more locked down.
That created some friction for users, hurting the experience a bit.
They tried partnering with other app providers for similar functionality, results were mixed at best.
Big reason: the infrastructure just wasn't there yet. Mobile payments and QR codes are everywhere back home, but a lot of the West still leans on credit cards, cash, even checks — let alone anything fancier.
Still, none of that overshadowed the strengths. Even without those extras, the voice assistant blew most users away. On top of the great core voice system, the live interpretation feature turned out to be a huge hit — especially in the UK and France.
Those two countries are tightly linked, tons of people living in both, and the language gap between them had always been a real headache.
Sure, plenty of French folks understand a bit of English. But they will not speak it — the French take real pride in their language and mostly just... don't bother learning English. Most of them fall into the "understand a little, speak none" camp.
Same deal with the British side. Given the complicated history between the two countries, official or otherwise, they're not exactly best friends, and neither side's exactly rushing to learn the other's language.
But people from both countries love to travel, and the live interpretation feature became a word-of-mouth hit, even landing in travel magazines in both countries.
Local retailers in both markets ran demo events, and the experience won over a lot of people fast.
Of course, at times like this, some Western press couldn't help throwing in a sour comment to spoil the mood.
Normally, Nick's team didn't respond to this stuff — mostly because they didn't want to give it more oxygen. Hyping it up might help sales short-term, but they knew the saying: the tallest tree catches the most wind. No point handing certain countries more ammo right now.
Their priority right now was simple: grab market share, aggressively. Once they hit a big enough user base, even if the critics kept talking, it wouldn't hurt as much.
Still, sometimes you gotta push back. If an official statement wasn't the right move, they'd go through informal channels — European distributors, the marketing director, folks like Tyler.
As Nick's profile had grown, he'd been careful about what he said publicly, trying to stay measured. But sometimes silence isn't the right call. So in response to the latest overseas smear campaign, Nick posted straight to his social accounts, domestic and international both.
"The slanderous attacks from certain media outlets against us are false, and outright defamation. We reserve the right to pursue legal action.
We've always taken user data privacy seriously, and our track record on that front speaks for itself. I can say with full confidence — there are no issues here.
We welcome real feedback from users, it genuinely helps us improve. But we will not tolerate baseless slander. If you've got evidence, show it. Don't just throw accusations around.
As for the claim that we stole tech from other companies — come on, that's almost funny. How exactly do you steal technology that didn't even exist yet?
In the year-plus since our voice system launched, plenty of people have tried to copy us. Not one has matched us, let alone beaten us. I'll say it straight: right now, we're the best there is.
So I guess my question is — did we steal it from aliens?
Militech has always been about giving users the best possible voice tech experience. We hope our work actually makes life easier for people and helps those who need it.
And honestly, I hope the people spreading all this negativity can find a little more positivity in themselves. The world's still a pretty good place — there's not as much conspiracy in it as you think."
Nick's response spread fast, domestically and abroad. Along with it, more people started digging into who this guy actually was.
And when they realized this whole thing — the company, the tech, all of it — was built by a twenty-four-year-old, the reactions were basically all the same.
This guy might actually be an alien.