Umano App Reads the News To You With Help From Voice Actors

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Name: SoThree

One-Liner Pitch: SoThree's first app, Umano, reads articles aloud so you can catch up on the news while driving or working out at the gym.

Why It's Taking Off: The founders believe that audio recordings may help publishers generate more engagement and revenue for news stories on mobile.

After having known each other for years and worked together at Google, Ian Mendiola, Anton Lopyrev, and Prabhdeep Gill knew they wanted to start a company together. They just didn't know what they wanted it to be.

"We started the company having no idea what we were going to work on," Mendiola told Mashable in an interview. The trio went through various ideas before settling on something that had bugged them for awhile: consuming news on the go. "We were the type that were totally into all the tech blogs that were out there, but not always in front of the computer and pretty active in our daily lives."

Until that point, podcasts were really the best option for people looking to multitask consuming news while doing other activities. Mendiola and his co-founders thought they could do something similar by using text-to-speech technology to read articles aloud to user. The problem, as he put it to us, is that listening to text-to-speech becomes "unbearable" after about 15 seconds.

With that in mind, they decided to do something a little different and recruit voice actors to read news stories instead. This resulted in the startup's first app, Umano, which was released on iPhone in October and on Android earlier this year.

"We posted an ad on Craigslist and realized there was this huge supply of voice talent all around the U.S. that were willing to work and record stuff for very low amounts [of money]," Mendiola said. "We have some people that record for free as well."

Umano relies on a mix of algorithms and editorial oversight to curate important news stories each day and then has voice actors — each of whom are vetted by sending in demos — to record audio clips of those stories. The app offers articles across genres, but according to Mendiola, the emphasis is on "analytical and thoughtful" pieces that have a longer shelf life than breaking news stories.

Mendiola says the primary use cases for the app so far are people who want to catch up on the news while driving or working out at the gym — though if you're a carless, gym-hating New Yorker like myself, you might also find it useful while walking to and from work.

Since the app launched, there have been more than seven million article listens. Mendiola says the team has noticed that users make a habit of using the app several times a week during the same time period.

By giving users an alternative way to consume news on their smartphones, SoThree's teams believe they may also eventually be able to help publications boost engagement and revenue from their stories on mobile. Mendiola says his team has been "actively engaging with publishers" to find ways to work together.

The startup raised about $1 million in a seed funding round announced this week, which the team plans to use to hire more engineering talent and cover content acquisition costs for articles.

Images courtesy of Umano