VoiceGem (YC S12) Brings Communication Back To The Future (opens in new tab)

I love these guys. Started using VoiceGem in beta a few weeks ago and can't stop. I am now using this with my family, who often try to reach me with no luck. The benefits are obvious - you don't have to respond to voice calls. There's an expectation on the sender's end that you will respond, eventually, but you can be in control of your time. Unlike a regular voicemail, this also allows you not to talk to the other party in real time, thus delivering your message to them, but on your time. Seriously, just try it, you'll fall in love with the app.

How is this different from other apps like blip.me (besides for the obvious web vs mobile platform)? A year ago a bunch of friends and myself installed and began to use blip, but the novelty quickly wore off. Can't remember the last time I used it.

The onboarding process on the iphone app is probably the best I've seen on any app. This is good stuff.

Edit: But it breaks my heart to think that they will give it away for free to grow fast and then do all sorts of backflips in search of a business model. The business model is straightforward here. This product is useful. It has emotional value. Just charge good money for it and focus on making it bloody brilliant.

Reminds me of Heytell. The threading of messages is a massive improvement, but still too difficult to find an old message judging only by time. Would be great to have a rudimentary speech-to-text

Speaking is faster than typing but reading is faster than listening. This is why I prefer leaving messages to writing emails and reading emails to listening to messages.

I'd love it if VoiceGem grew into a service that allows me to either listen to or read a message, depending on the context (in the car vs. in the office, high vs. low emotional value). Right now the best solution is to use Google Voice to transcribe voice mail and speech recognition to quickly type out an email, but it's not ideal.

Anyway, best of luck!

I started using the beta a while back and use it all the time now. It's super convenient and really slick. Good job guys.

Perfect for sending love to my technologically challenged parents! :)

Isn't this just voicemail? There are even services that let you leave a voicemail directly without actually calling the person. How is this different/better than that?

I think a Gmail plugin (Chrome/FF extension) would make this awesome. I'd love a [record] button in Gmail Compose window.

I wonder if this the idea that got them into YC or a pivot they made during the cycle. It's kind of disconcerting that this is in YC when there were probably better people/ideas that didn't even get an interview.