Anchors Aweigh
GV’s Series A investment in Anchor
“The jazz lamp has been lit.” That was the way my grandfather would open his radio show decades ago in Ohio, so I thought it a fitting way to open my post talking about GV’s latest investment.
Anchor is a service that’s trying to re-think audio in the mobile age. Their tagline, “radio, reinvented” is a succinct and clear way to put it. But the ambitions are actually a bit broader in scope.
The term “radio” carries a lot of baggage. Well over 100 years worth, actually. And while newer services like Sirius, Pandora, and TuneIn have done a nice job modernizing the format, they’re still fundamentally about one-to-many broadcasts.¹
Two things Anchor is aiming to do differently:
- Make it easy for anyone to create and spread audio
- Make the format a far more interactive and social one
In the first regard, it may be easier to think of Anchor in relation to podcasts. That format, of course, is another modern tangent of a radio show. And one thing that’s great about the format is that it’s technically possible for anyone to publish a podcast.
Of course, that is a lot easier said than done. I recall trying to publish one back in 2005, and it was anything but easy or seamless. It took a long time. And it wasn’t long before I gave up. A dozen years later, incredibly, the song remains the same.²
Anchor’s app, available for iOS and Android, allows anyone to record audio right from their phone and post it in a few easy steps. Once live on Anchor, anyone can subscribe and listen to a users’ content — using a nifty newfangled radio-dial UI. But Anchor has also made it easy for creators to group together these recordings to then export in podcast form to places like Apple Podcasts and Google Play Music. It’s at least a thousand times easier than the old way of doing things. Maybe a million.
But back to the app, Anchor is an environment that offers a number of ways to interact with said audio. Beyond listening, a user can applaud during a recording to show their approval, comment on specific parts (which the creator of the content can choose to display alongside the recording), and even do something decidedly old school: call in.
In the heyday of radio, this was the only real method of interaction. But it involved picking up a phone — a real, live telephone — dialing a number, and waiting on hold, hoping your call got picked up. With Anchor, things are decidedly more modern. Yes, you’re technically still using your phone — but no one thinks of it that way anymore — you simply click a button, record you thoughts, and send them off to the host. If they like them, they may post them. Or they may even post-and-respond to them.
You can also use the app to call another person and record the conversation. The (remote) interview, reborn and rethought.
Anchor also has created a brilliant way to share audio socially. Because video has gotten much of the love in recent years on the various social networks, Anchor came up with a way to automatically transcribe any audio and create a nifty read-along video element that can be shared anywhere.
Tools such as these create a compelling reason for even professional podcasters — those who know how to and willingly jump through the aforementioned hoops to publish their content — to use Anchor. It’s a different type of network, with different types of interactions and tools available.³
Anyway, enough explanation of Anchor. If you’re at all interested in this space, you should try it out yourself.
I actually recorded my first Anchor almost exactly two years ago (embedded below). That version of Anchor was a bit different — far less robust — but the core concept was the same. And I’ve been talking to the co-founders of the company, Mike and Nir, ever since then.
You know that guy with AirPods in 99% of the time you see them? I’m that guy. I’m almost always listening to something, be it music, or podcasts, or audiobooks, or even articles I save to read later. With the launch of version 2.0 of the Anchor app several months back, I found a few of the channels there breaking into my daily habit (their Rundown is very good, FYI).
And so I’m thrilled today to announce that GV has led the Series A round of financing for Anchor. I’ll be joining the board of the company alongside Brian O’Malley at Accel, which led the Series Seed financing and invested again alongside us here — as did our friends at Betaworks, The Chernin Group, Eniac Ventures, Homebrew, and a handful of individuals.
A few years ago, it seemed like everyone was worried about audio. Music sales were in an absolute free fall, radio was very much in a state of transition, and it wasn’t clear how the broader industry would look like with everyone increasingly glued to their smartphones all the time. Fast forward to today and millions of people have smart speakers/assistants in their homes thanks to Amazon’s Echo and Google Home.⁴ The HomePod is coming soon. The aforementioned AirPods are amazing and popping up everywhere. Audible computing is becoming a thing, and as a result, audio is having a renaissance.
And Anchor is tuning in…
More coverage:
Aside: Some folks may wonder why the title is “Anchors Aweigh” versus “Anchors Away”. The latter is often used for obvious reasons, but technically, it should be aweigh… Per Wikipedia:
To “weigh anchor” is to bring it aboard a vessel in preparation for departure. The phrase “anchors aweigh” is a report that the anchors are clear of the sea bottom and, therefore, the ship is officially underway.
¹ TuneIn is also a GV portfolio company.
² SoundCloud was able to build a nice set of tools to allow people to publish audio on the web, but obviously the focus there gravitated far more towards the music end of the spectrum.
³ Plus, Anchor has a simple web-based tool for uploading any audio file — including full-length podcasts, if one wanted to do that…
⁴ Amazon seemingly released 400 new Alexa devices yesterday alone.
