Welcome Back Audioo!
My friend Ryan Born, CEO of Audio Micro, licensed Audioo from DONE! Ventures in early 2010. He attempted to breathe new life into the business by shifting the site from a general collection of all things audio to a focus on voice mails.
Ryan’s initial efforts were very successful. We were selected as a finalist for TechCrunch Disrupt, one of only 20 companies chosen, and the publicity and enthusiasm around Audioo’s re-launch led to over 50,000 visits in both June and July…up from just a trickle of visitors. (As I wrote last May, we didn’t win, but it was a tremendous thrill to be one of the very few companies who made the cut!)
Fast forward a little less than a year, and, as it happens in entrepreneurland, Ryan got busy with other aspects of his company. Priorities shifted. He was able to close an additional round of funding to expand his “stock licensing” business from simply stock music and sound effects into four additional verticals: cartoons, infographics, celebrity photos, and tattoos. Ryan announced these new properties in February at the Launch conference in San Francisco. And less than two weeks later, Ryan exercised his option to return Audioo back to me. So, I’m back in control, and will give it another go!
Thinking back to the early days of Audioo reminds me of the exchange I had with the founders of a podcasting directory service called Odeo. The team running Odeo, led by a guy named Evan Williams, weren’t all that excited about podcasting — neither were many users, for that matter — and were considering selling Odeo to focus on a project they were calling “Twttr”…you know it today as Twitter!
Ha!