Web based voice mail management system GotVoice announced today morning that it closed a first round of funding with $3 million from Ignition Partners, Second Avenue Partners and Cedar Grove Investments. One representative from each fund will join the GotVoice board.
GotVoice converts your voice mail to MP3 format and sends it to you via email. The company is working on a beta feature that will alow users to compose voice mail messages through the browser and deliver them to a list of recipients simultaneously. Michael Arrington reviewed GotVoice in June. He gave it a generally mixed review but said that he really liked the conversion to MP3 format. I’ve tried the service myself and had the dreadful misfortune of owning one of very few phones the company says do not work well with the system. I don’t feel a strong need for this function in the first place. Chris Pirillo loves GotVoice and interviewed the company’s CEO in January.
We wrote about another web management tool for telephony called GrandCentral in our coverage of DEMO. That service offers far more functionality in a complex leverage of VOIP, but if simplicity is what you seek then GotVoice might work well for you.
Other companies funded by Ignition Partners include Jobster, Judy’s Book and Melodio. Second Avenue Partners has invested in NewsVine, among other companies.
Our standard office phone system offers this functionality- it’s nothing new. All of my voicemail appears in my BlueTie email account as a .wav attachment to an email and the time and number of the call appear in the subject line. My understanding is that virtually any commercial phone system can do this these days.
Maybe I’m missing something here but…
http://google.com
Asterisk is changing everything…
http://www.asterisk.org/
I’m not sure I would really use this … but what would be really cool is if they (or someone else) could convert voice mail to “text” and have that resent to my cell phone as a “text message” (this would come in handy if I where in a meeting) or simply sent to my e-mail as a “text e-mail.”
(I realize that the technology required to do so would be exponentially more complicated … but at least I’d use it. The only problem – at least for myself – is that GotVoice is taking a “job that needs to be done” – listening to one’s voicemail – and is making it even more complicated. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that there are many people out there who might have a need for such a service, I only wonder what percentage of the population would actually falls under this rarefied user base?)
service is a bit wacked. not what i expected, nor really wanted. has come in minimally helpful. this service seems to check a couple of times a day for new messages and the the mp3 conversion them email thing – but i want it done immediately. that seems like it’ll require cell provider tie-ins.
The key differentiatior between GotVoice and other commercial systems is that it works for your cellular and home phone voicemail- and it’s free. Not only can you use it to listen to your voicemail, you can forward, archive and download saved messages, etc.
I use GotVoice everytime I go into my office, where cell coverage can be spotty, or whenever I travel. Check your email and your voicemail is right there.
One product worth a look is Spinvox, based in the UK. They do voice to text conversion. It’s not perfect, but I like the idea of getting gisted text for voice mail. As I recall they were offering it as a subscription in the UK only for now, but that was probably six months ago so it might be more widely available now.
> GotVoice Takes $3M in Series A Funding
Hillarious nonsense. These VC’s have their respective heads up their proverbial asses !
I used this service for a while and ended up cancelling. It seemed like a really cool idea at first, but then logging in to retrieve messages is just as time consuming as calling your voice mail. If the mp3s were sent as attachments directly to your email, I think it would be more useful.
Whats their business model?
Rich: might be the take as much venture capital as possible, pay management fat salaries until the company folds and then repeat with a new startup?
Seriously, this looks like a very simple technology and business that probably should have SOLD for no more than this Series A round.
GotVoice and GetVocal should team up to enable people to surf the web and get voice/email mail by phone *and* by web browser. GetVocal offers a speech-based web browser that allows people to surf the web, listen to audio books, and retrieve up-to-the-minute RSS feeds via the telephone. They currently don’t have the ability to check voice mails or emails yet. Perhaps GotVoice could help…just a thought.
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