Russian-founded micropodcasting startup receives funding from Peter Thiel and other prominent founders
A bevy of prominent business angels have backed Voices, a Russian-founded micro-podcasting start-up 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, reports East-West Digital News (EWDN).
Voices co-founder Alexey Bystrov touts Voices as something “like Substack for video.” He sees Clubhouse, TikTok and Onlyfans as “potential competitors” of the start-up, which he launched in June 2020.
Micro-podcast authors will be able to monetise their content through subscriptions and donations from users. “The company’s mission is to turn content creation into a mass phenomenon and contribute 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 has 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.
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