Introducing Aria — Voice Studio
Announcing Aria’s first round of funding led by Harry Stebbings from Stride.VC, Antoine Martin (Zenly) and Alexis Bonillo (Zenly).
Hey Siri — Say ‘Hello World!’
Since working together at Sidekick, Jean-Sébastien & I have been extremely excited about the (odly enough) nascent audio space. Between the:
- Introduction of studio-quality microphones in Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro
- Release of better & more accessible transcription technology
- Launch of AirPods as the first real computers in our ears
- Boom of podcasting
- Creation of audio-first social products
- Ubiquitous inclusion of voice-notes as a communication medium
Audio feels like a new frontier.
Andreessen Horowitz did a good summary on this here.
Mobile Voice Studio
What piqued our interest initially was how difficult audio was to manipulate on mobile.
Think: trying to edit waveforms with your thumbs, listening through dozens of 2–3 second bits to find a snippet in your favorite podcast or attempting to share a piece of audio through social media.
This is why we thought that audio needed a new mobile first voice studio — one that made it easy to search, edit and export as stunning eye-catching videos for social media.
Aria v0.1 → Aria v1.0
After building a prototype and launching on the App Store in July, we quickly saw traction from podcasters, yoga teachers, digital marketers and even artists. All loved the experience of our high quality transcription, easy-to-navigate snippets and one-tap magical video template experience. ✨
That’s why in September we decided to start working full time on Aria and build a proper v1 thanks to the thousands of beta testers that had been so generous with their feedback.
It’s during this process that Antoine introduced us to Harry from Stride.VC who was just as excited as us to by our vision for a new audio-first creator tool.
That’s why today, we are excited to announce that in October, Aria raised its first round of funding led by Harry Stebbings from Stride.VC, Antoine Martin (Zenly) and Alexis Bonillo (Zenly). 💕
Aria: Voice Studio
At Aria, our motto is ‘Tell Beautiful Stories’.
We empower a new generation of inspiring, authentic and entertaining creators to make their stories effortlessly beautiful.
Download Aria and tell your story — the world is listening ✌️
Special thanks to: Pietro Invernizzi from Stride.vc, Mathias Pastor & balthazar de Lavergne from TheFamily and immad from Mercury Bank for making this process so smooth. Kudos to Francois Hubert for helping us build such a solid v1 🥰
