March 20, 2008

SpinVox Translates Voice-to-Text Service Into A $100 Million Round

Erick Schonfeld

24 comments »

Voice-to-text technology is finally getting some respect. As first reported by TechCrunch UK, Goldman Sachs is investing in a $100 million private financing round for SpinVox, a London-based technology startup that transcribes voicemails to text so that they can be more easily digitized, searched, and manipulated. Other investors in the round included GLG Partners, Blue Mountain Capital Management and Toscafund Asset Management. This brings the total invested so far to $200 million, reports Reuters. The 31-year-old CEO, Christina Domecq (a member of the liquor family of the same name) says this latest round values the company at $500 million. There were rumors previously that SpinVox was pursuing an IPO, but with the markets in a tizzy the company found more private money instead.

SpinVox has some interesting Web apps, including Spin-My-Blog and Facebook and Twitter integration, but it is really a mobile play. People actually pay extra for this type of service on mobile phones. SpinVox has partnerships with twelve mobile carriers, mostly in Europe, including O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, 3, and Virgin Mobile. They still have limited availability in the U.S. for any of their services. But if people like visual voicemail on the iPhone—which simply lists voicemails like e-mails but still makes you listen to them—imagine if they could translate all of those voicemails to e-mail and simply read them.

When it comes to mobile, voice is still the best way to input information but it is not the best way to extract it. SpinVox lets you have the best of both worlds. This voice thing is gonna be big.

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unitedBIT’s RoundUp » Blog Archive » SpinVox grabs $100 Million for transcribing voicemails into text

March 21st, 2008 at 3:28 am

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March 25th, 2008 at 8:36 am

Comments

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James Siminoff

March 20th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Congrats Spinvox! That is a big round.

For those that want to try out SimulScribe here is a 30 day trial, https://apps.simulscribe.com/signup/a/techcrunch.

Jamie

James Siminoff, Founder
SimulScribe
dale

March 20th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

i will give it try.
Lloyd

March 20th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

Is it really technology? I thought all the voice-to-text guys do is send voice file to low labor cost mkts for transcription? And then fwd results to user via email?

Not saying that isn’t a valuable service, but is it really technology?
Boring Market

March 20th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

Goldman Sachs is no Venture Capitalist, Sachs isn’t known to throw $100 million of their money at a Web 2.0 company. I don’t think paying for one fifth of this company was a smart move, this company isn’t cutting edge like the iPhone visual voice mail. I could be wrong.
Rob Abbott

March 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

The value you of indexable, searchable voice transcriptions is significant. Once integrated into an application like a mail client (Gmail, Mail, Outlook…etc.), the value is clear.

The time spent transcribing important voice messages, interviews and conversations is cut by these services.

While some services, like SimulScribe and SpinVox do send the audio to markets with cheap labor, the service isn’t always optimal or exact.

I am a current user of both services and it’s of enough value for me to become dependent on once my habits change. I get previews of my voice messages sent to my iPhone in SMS form, so I know who called and most importantly, why, without having to play the message (in a meeting).

GS is investing in the distributed service and in the technology, so SpinVox is widely integrated into applications which increase productivity, and so the quality of the transcription technology involves to an accurate service, whether it be by human or machine (or both).
Ryan Merket

March 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

@3 - SpinVox is all technology — no low labor cost markets.

Congrats SpinVox!!!!!!
Tony Carter

March 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Lloyd, I work for SpinVox and have a window on the process. SpinVox employs a series of speech engines and the majority of our English conversions are automated. The Voice Message Conversion System is actually a “live learning” system that “knows what it doesn’t know”. When it encounters new language or ambient noise that confuses the automated process, it then asks a human to review that portion of the message in dispute. That person then converts the portion of the message in dispute and the complete conversion is then delivered. To date we’ve had about 4 million unique voices pass through the system which improves our ability to understand any voice.
Rob Abbott

March 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

excuse my, lack of proof reading

“The value of indexable..”

“…transcription technology evolves to an accurate service…”
MikeT

March 20th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

I think voice to text and text to voice should become free services in the near or distant future
JasonL

March 20th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

I have been using CallWave for a while which is free (for now). It converts my voicemail into a text message and texts it to me. It also send a copy to my e-mail. This has become one feature I don’t think I can live without any more. If I miss a call during a meeting, I can read the voicemail and know how to react. It’s not close to perfect yet; however, I usually get the gist.
Thilo

March 20th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

That’s what I’ve been looking for
JR

March 20th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

There’s nothing I hate more than having to check my voice mail. Since I started using Voice to Text provided by SPinVox, I just check my email. Greatest service EVER!!!!
Paul

March 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Great in theory, but I have yet to them transcribe message reliably.

A friend of mine uses SpinVox. He calls me and says things like, “Got your message that you want the elevator out of your pants by noon.” And English is my first language - imagine how it will handle the other 40% of California’s population.
Nat

March 20th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

@3 & @4 , i agree with you, overprice is well said for something you can get for now as Free live Callwave like per JasonL said. the big question how they going to monetize this old news technology, will they be able to double their investment in few years?, i doubt. If you look on all the web 2.0/3.0 company they are acquired at a highest price when there is no real proof of ROI or the website can monetize in the coming years..my thought is the reason behind the $200 million value is the latest technology and intelligent individual that Goldman Sach invested in Spinvox. congrats and Goodluck

Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
Robin Wauters

March 20th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

Amazing. TechCrunch UK breaks this story before Reuters confirms it, hearing it from a panel member at the conference I organized in Brussels, Plugg.

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/.....aised-50m/

You still credit Reuters and don’t even link to the exclusive on TCUK …
Alex

March 20th, 2008 at 10:43 pm

JESUS!

1) After recovering from my fainting episode of reading this story I recovered to my feet with the question of - WHY would Goldman Sachs invest in this company. Answer the CEO’s family is probably a very large client of Goldman.

2) This valuation is CRAZY! But, I have to tip my hat to the company. According to TechCrunch UK the company generated $865,000 revenue in ‘06. Let’s be aggressive and say that they grew revenue to $5,000,000 in ‘07. That equals a valuation of 100X revenue. HUH!!!!!
Mike Butcher

March 21st, 2008 at 1:35 am

FYI - My understanding is that Spinvox is both people and technology. An algorithm translates the voicemail but if - in the minority of cases - it is unintelligible it pops-up in a call Centre in South Africa for a human to transcribe. Some say that model doesn’t scale, but I guess it depends on how good the software can become.
xxdesmus

March 21st, 2008 at 8:21 am

Why not include a link to Callwave that also does something very similar (and for free)?
bradyo

March 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm

I’ve been using SpinVox for a year now–I am not an employee or shareholder, just a user. I love this product and consider it a must-have business tool. I used to sit in business meetings and watch my phone vibrate when a call came in, wondering what the caller had on his/her mind. Now, I get an e-mailed transcription of the voicemail sent to my phone within a few minutes that I can read without disturbing the meeting. Sure, sometimes the transcripts get the names of people and places hilariously wrong, but accuracy is generally very high. I can’t imagine doing business without it.
Ofer

March 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 am

Technology vs. Service

$100M round is great news for SpinVox. But is also an indication about their technology basis or lack of technology. They need the money to fuel their service which is great. However, people should not confuse this with a working technology for speaker independent transcription.

See further on this issue at http://speechanalytics.blogspot.com/
Liam

March 26th, 2008 at 8:26 am

Personally, I was disappointed with Spinvox. Orange pushed it on to me and there was no explanation what the service was, how much it cost, who Spinvox were… Then the transcriptions were pretty useless, with lots of blanks, question marks and a wide variety of interesting and creative interpretations of my name “Liam”.

I cancelled; after which I lost all Voicemail services from Orange.

So no, no thank you, not on my voicemail nor my inbox.
Sahara

April 8th, 2008 at 5:32 am

Is it really technology