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Rory Cellan-Jones

Spinvox stays in the game

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 21 Mar 08, 10:42 GMT

, and now - three British technology companies (or at least with some British roots) which have made big money for their founders over the last year. But here's the difference - while the founders of Bebo and last.fm have sold up to giant American businesses, Spinvox is still independent and its owners are not yet cashing in their chips.

Spinvox is built on one very simple (and some might say niche) idea - turning voice into text. It started with a service which listens to your voicemails and sends them to you as texts and emails - and is now branching out into areas like allowing you to "speak" new blog postings. Not sure I'm ready for that kind of stream of consciousness.....

Anyway, this idea has apparently caught on with a number of mobile operators around the world, and Spinvox has now attracted big funding from some very big names. Goldman Sachs, perhaps the ritziest of the investment banks, and GLG, a big European hedge fund, are among the investors who have put $100m into the business, at a valuation of $500m.

Now that is a big price-tag on a company in its early years which has yet to prove that it can be profitable. It does claim to have some and has just taken on a Cambridge scientist who is a leader in the field. But when I met executives from Spinvox the other day they mentioned that a couple of other firms are also trying to move into this territory. Nobody big - just Google and Microsoft. The executives saw that as encouraging evidence that speech is hot right now. Others might see it as a warning that they are about to be steam-rollered.

Which makes it all the more brave (or perhaps foolhardy) for Spinvox's founders to decide they are staying in the game while others have cashed out. Bebo (like Facebook with Microsoft) could have offered a minority stake to a big investor and stayed independent, instead of selling up to AOL for $850m. Last.fm could have grown further before selling to CBS for $280m. But both decided that it was time to seek the shelter of a wealthy parent. There's no shame in that - after all, very few start-ups get as far as they did.

But watching Spinvox's attempt to continue growing - with the assistance of that hundred million dollars - as an independent British company will be a lot of fun.

Comments

  • 1.
  • At 04:29 PM on 21 Mar 2008,
  • Thomas Brownlee wrote:

I think the main difference is that before reading this I had heard of Bebo and last.fm (and use the latter regularly for various music projects) but I had never heard of Spinvox.

However, now I think I may give it a go to see what it's like.

I have to be honest, I see why Spinvox has made less of an impact that Bebo and Last.fm, both of which offer something to virtually everyone, and particularly young people online, whereas I personally would have no use for Spinvox.
Don't get me wrong, some people would, but I just don't!
It is a more specialised service and attractive to a more specialised clientele.
Personally I do use both Bebo and Last.fm (not much) but I see no reason to use Spinvox whatsoever!

  • 3.
  • At 01:45 PM on 23 Mar 2008,
  • Romi Parmar wrote:

I'm a little disappointed with the slight negativity of this post towards a UK company that is trying to build itself beyond the "lets cash out quick" model normally taken by nervous UK tech companies.

We have yet to see a google/microsoft business model that enables mobile operators to make profit from voice to text and I don't see operators letting either get access to voicemail in the next twelve months but i know that Spinvox have lots of agreements in place today which are helping them to continue improving their offering.

Spinvox may be having trouble making lots of profits but they are getting loads of paying subscribers to discover and become familiar with a new and pretty unique service that works everywhere and something that's useful and addictive. Oh and it also makes mobile operators lots of highly profitable new revenues.

How about writing something congratulatory and wishing them some good luck?

  • 4.
  • At 06:25 PM on 23 Mar 2008,
  • Mike wrote:

I've been testing SpinVox for my company (tier 1 investment bank) for the last 6 months or so and I have to say it has increased my productivity significantly. If they can roll out to companies like mine (over 10,000 potential subscribers in the UK alone) then they're going to be as successful as they deserve to be. I only hope they branch out to landline voicemail as well then I could continue to ignore the red light but actually read my voicemails.

Whatever happens with SpinVox, this will become the norm for voicemail.

  • 5.
  • At 08:19 PM on 23 Mar 2008,
  • Mark Emanuelson wrote:

It is good to see UK companies successfully profiting from their innovations. British companies like SpinVox, Last.fm, Bebo, and the others are just the tip of the iceberg of what entrepreneurs in this country are capable of. While Silicon Valley in California attracts more overall venture investment, UK companies are getting a larger share these days. And, the government is keen to spark more innovative companies by efforts like the Technology Strategy Board.

I've been trialing spinvox for the past year and have to agree that this has been a major productivity boost. I have literally gone a year without rudely interrupting meetings to take phone calls safe in the knowledge that a sideways glance 2 minutes later to the message will be sufficient to know the gravity of the call.

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