Yap, a company that translates voice into SMS text messages, has raised $6.5 million in a Series A funding round led by SunBridge Partners. Also participating in the round were Harbert Management Corportaion and Pittco Management.
The site, which was a member of TechCrunch40, makes texting easier by using voice recognition software to transcribe spoken messages to text. The service runs on a small application installed on the phone, which captures the spoken message and uploads to Yap’s servers, which (hopefully) returns the spoken phrase. Yap aims to help cut down on the number of people who “text and drive”, by reducing the amount of time they’ll need to fumble with their phone. Of course, you’ll still need to look at the phone to read a response to your text message, so this isn’t totally solving the problem.
As part of the deal SunBridge and Harbert Management Corporation will add partners to Yap’s Board of Directors.
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$6.5 wow thats a ton of dough that will require one hell of sweet exit or some serious profitability - but they are getting a ton of press and have a very cool product so more power to them, just seems like too much VC to me.
” Yap aims to help cut down on the number of people who “text and drive”,”
I guess, yap, see wrong results, yap again, see wrong results, curse and yell and pound the steering wheel and drive is a lot safer.
Uh huh. yeah.
Future coming soon.
Great idea if they have open APIs to integrate this into something like Babel Fish to translate the SMS text into a foreign language…. Then maybe convert the translated text back into the foreign language as an audio file?
That’s gr8 - bow I won’t have to come up with silly shorts and can still keep p with the teens
We do the same thing but on a group basis. ie call a toll free number from your mobile phone, just say your group and record your message, message gets delivered to everyone as voice or SMS or even email. Oh, and we translate to Spanish too. But we’re not free, and we’re certainly not funded
I’m pretty sure they’ve already invented this…
Wasn’t this originally called the TELEPHONE?
Jason, appreciate the write-up! In fact, this is a total solution; you do not need to look at your phone as our platform dynamically generates text-to-speech for incoming messages or results.
@1 It’s a reflection of the complexity involved on the server side to make this experience fast, accurate, and scaleable.
@2 This does not use the telephone line but runs over the data channel, so it can be more responsive in case you want to also perform web services transactions.
@4 Announcement coming soon…
@5 You’ll enjoy the fact that we optionally convert what you say into text speak automatically.
@7 Excellent point, but I would compare a phone call to an email message, where you’re providing deeper context/focus, while this is more the voice equivalent of instant messaging.
They already have SpinVox for this, however at their prices a little competition is needed.
Congratulations Igor. Very happy for you and the team.
Now lets get an iPhone ap out so that we can do all of our email and texting by voice!
@Igor, You say the $6.5M in funding is “…a reflection of the complexity involved on the server side to make this experience fast, accurate, and scaleable.”
Yet, the obvious revenue model is to integrate advertising in some fashion. Are you really saying that Yap will not utilize any of this capital to establish, build, and maintain the business relationships necessary to become a marketing channel?
From Yap about page:
“While other startups may claim the same, those guys use mostly humans on the back end to manually transcribe your messages.”
Wow… bold claims. I know for a fact that SpinVox uses true voice to text technology… in MULTIPLE languages.
Oh, and they raised A LOT more money than Yap.
@9 Namco, while SpinVox is a worthy adversary, they use a blend of automation+human transcription which is what makes their solution both expensive, difficult to scale, not as fast and somewhat concerning from a privacy standpoint. They actually started as more of a call center, while we approached it from the technology side.
@10 We will have an announcement that will go well beyond this shortly.
@11 Frank, while that business model seems an obvious route for this work, we are already profitable due to the contributions of one of our unannounced business units. That said, we have discovered/secured the IP required to inject realtime advertisements based on the context of incoming/outgoing messages. One of the device maker CEOs called this capability “push search” and you can see an early version of it in our website’s admittedly poor “Travel Demo” (watch what happens after I say “I need a coffee”.
@12 Ryan, the market is unfortunately misinformed; they raised debt to support the burden of having thousands of transcribers working for them.
How does this compare to Jott’s service?” Anyone here used both?
@Igor, Thanks for the response. Great sign from your company.
However, my point was technology does not get you relationships with those companies that have $$$ to spend on marketing. A company must spend something to develop those business reltionships. McDonald’s CMO doesn’t just say, “Cool technology, sign me up.”
A company has to have direct relationships with companies or relationships with agencies that control their ad-spend, and those relationships require massive capital (look at Federated Media, that’s their primary value add, not the open-source ad serving technology).
Igor, very impressive technology. Congrats!!!
Question - why did you not approach Kleiner, Bessemer, Index or other Tier 1 VC to participate? - I’m not knocking your existing VC’s. I realize that you stuck to the east coast where Greylock is located…of course I wouldn’t go to Greylock either.
Why don’t they just have it read it back to you. Driving, bluetooth, voice text. read back to me, send. Bara bing bara boom.
@15 Frank, agree with you 100% on the importance of those interconnections; it was not our intention to announce those relationships at this time.
@16 Peter, there’s always an opportunity for them to participate when we formulate our strategic alliances in a succeeding round. We’re quite confident with SB/HVP supporting our near term strategies. And being “stuck” in the East Coast is quite deliberate, since we want to stay in business in the long term.
@17 Aandarian, already implemented!
Excellent news! I am just creating Yads, a new startup. Our revolutionary service will be able to read your SMS aloud.
Imagine the possibilities: by combining the strengths of Yads and Yap, you will be soon able to leave a voice message to anyone using a cellphone. Yads and Yap will redefine the way humans communicate by sending voice messages as mail.
Our new service, Voice-Mail Beta 1.0 will be released soon.
For more info, please call us at 123 555 0010 and leave a message after the tone.
YADS Inc
Yet Another Dumb Startup Incorporated
42 VC Street - 94087 - Palo Alto
Igor,
SpinVox uses technology first… and if the message does not pass QA — it goes to a team that transcribes the messages for accuracy. How do I know this? Because I contracted with them on a project.
What you are saying is borderline libel. I would be very careful…
Ryan
@19 While I appreciate your sense of wit, one of the applications of that scenario is for accessibility purposes (similar to Apple’s VoiceOver feature in Mac OS X). Not every technical innovation is targeted towards you.
@20 Ryan, there’s no reason to get defensive; I characterized their solution as being a hybrid similar to your assertion, so I’m not sure that we’re not saying the same thing. That said, calling their mixed platform the next stage of evolution in speech recognition is like announcing that my eyeballs are the newest innovation in HD video recording; but that’s a marketing distinction not a technical one. Compare that to other entities that are more upfront about their solutions, which work quite well for their intended uses. While I appreciate your experiences therein, my perspective is formed after interacting with a number of their (talented) executives and…wait for it…my somewhat relevant background as a speech scientist.
Congrats Igor on closing the round! As someone else in the industry, I can testify that their technology really does work as well as claimed - and I think they’ve really got a great team in place there.
Their technology works so well that…
What is the audio to text technology being used by these companies? Is it open source?
@Igor,
what about Vlingo. It seems they have a compelling offer in this space as well along with seasoned management, and good funding. Or maybe this is a market big enough for multiple vendors?
@23 Mark, unfortunately this is closed source/proprietary but I believe CMU has a starter engine you could use to educate yourself with.
@24 Val, we’re quite respectful of Vlingo’s contributions to date in advancing the art, especially within the search vertical (while we were founded on the premise of messaging). Although with over 1 BILLION phones shipping per year (as your intuition already reinforced), I’m certain there’ll be plenty of room for all interested parties. That said, it requires a deeper level of discussion for me to describe how our platforms differ when you look at them end-to-end. I’m not sure this venue is appropriate for that but I’m happy to do so offline (send me an email if interested).
Igor, one thing I like about Jott is that it handles emails on my Blackberry, as well as text messages. Any plans in this respect?
I find this a bit of and odd idea as generally I use text message when I can’t be heard. i.e. in a bar or sporting event.
@ #27 - Dave, I think it’s geared more for when you’re driving or something similar. As for myself, I was pretty good at texting accurately without having to even look at my screen or keypad when I had a simple phone, but after I moved to Blackberry I find it next to impossible to text and drive in a safe manner. There are simply too many buttons!
@26 Jason, good question; at the end of the day though there’s so many potential use cases herein we’re certainly looking for creating partnerships to take advantage of the platform.
This is a good idea, but not great.
People are texting when then could be calling.
If you able to talk into you phone, then just call (and leave a voice message if you have to).
Texting is good for situations when you can’t talk, or when a quick (yes/no) reply will do.
If the next software to come out is somethign that reads you text messages back to you, then yes we’ve sort of solved the “texting while driving” problem, but isn’t an actual phone call better then having software like YAP act as a middleman? think about it…
@30, you raised good point but I’d consider this as an analog to existing push-to-talk (PTT) platforms not phone calls, with a bonus that you get a textual representation in parallel. We’re essentially giving the freedom for both sides of the conversation to choose audio/text input/output based on their needs at the time. As a bonus, having the text has interesting implications for advertising, search, etc.