A bevy of prominent business angels have backed Voices, a Russian-founded micropodcasting startup based in California. Two million US dollars were contributed by Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, Tinder founder Justin Mateen, Shutterstock founder John Oringer, eBay founder Peter Thiel, MSQRD co-founders Sergey Gonchar, Evgeny Negen and Andrey Yanchurevich, alongside a few others.
Voices co-founder Alexey Bystrov touts Voices as something “like Substack for video.” He sees Clubhouse, TikTok and Onlyfans as “potential competitors” of the startup, which he launched in June 2020.
Micropodcast authors will be able to monetize their content through subscriptions and donations from users. “The company’s mission is to turn content creation into a mass phenomenon andcontribute to grow the middle class of the creative economy,” Bystrov explained.
Scheduled for release in the spring of this year, the app is currently in beta phase. The first users will be able to register by invitation, just like Clubhouse.
A Russian-born serial tech entrepreneur, Bystrov founded or co-founded half a dozen companies in Moscow, Amsterdam or California in the past 10 years. He co-founded Voices with Alexander Panko, CTO, who also left Russia in the mid 2010s.
Sources: CrunchBase, Linkedin, VC.RU
