Reinventing Audio with $10M in New Series A Funding, Led by GV
Today, we’re taking a giant step towards building the future of audio and continuing to grow the best audio-first team in NYC
Anchor was started with a straightforward mission: to democratize the creation and consumption of audio. This mission was driven by both personal experiences and observations of a rapidly growing audio market. Thanks to smartphones, digital audio, not surprisingly, is exploding, with 61 percent of Americans now listening to digital radio monthly and 24 percent of Americans now listening to podcasts monthly. And as a team made up of lifelong musicians and aspiring podcasters, we witnessed firsthand how difficult it was to make (and distribute) compelling audio.
Studio time and clunky recording equipment costs creators hundreds, or even thousands of dollars. Publishing and distributing audio content requires technical expertise (hello, RSS feeds, we’re looking at you 👀). These hurdles hold people back, but they shouldn’t; at this point, we’re all literally carrying powerful, internet-connected microphones in our pockets. So we set out to change all that.
The early experimentation of that mission evolved into the Anchor platform, the easiest way to create, share and interact with audio, all from your phone. Anchor quickly gave people all over the world a mobile recording studio in their pockets by removing barriers to creating and distributing quality audio (zero experience required). It also gave listeners a more fun, interactive, and social way to listen to audio and share their favorite segments anywhere.
But we didn’t stop there. We soon made publishing a real podcast to Apple Podcasts and Google Play as simple as tapping a single button (really). We figured out how to make audio social with Anchor Videos, enabling audio to go viral on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And we even invented a fun and simple way to edit audio on smartphones, leveraging automatic, word-for-word audio transcription instead of clunky, technical waveforms. Anchor is audio made easy.
A host of industry-first releases, alongside our signature, bite-sized format of listening attracts people from nearly 200 countries throughout the world, including both new creators and professionals. We’re incredibly proud that Anchor truly is a place where anyone and everyone can create and consume audio effortlessly.
Now we’ll get to further pursue our mission with $10M in Series A funding, led by GV, bringing our total amount raised to nearly $15M. This means we’ll get to push ahead to democratize the creation and consumption of audio. And we’ll continue building the world’s best audio-first team, right here in New York City: home to some of the most creative people in the world.
We’re joined by a host of partners who believe in an audio-first future: Accel, Betaworks (Anchor’s first-ever investor, now investing out of their new Betaworks Ventures fund), The Chernin Group, Eniac Ventures, Homebrew, Atlantic Records’ CEO Craig Kallman, and acclaimed author and podcaster Nir Eyal. We couldn’t be more excited to continue our work alongside these partners, as well as our collaborators M.G. Siegler of GV and Brian O’Malley of Accel, both of whom will be joining Anchor’s Board of Directors.
At Anchor, we believe everyone should have the ability to get their voice heard — literally. We’re so proud of the progress we’ve made, but this is only the beginning and we can’t wait to show you what’s next — for Anchor and for audio. If you haven’t yet, we hope you’ll try out Anchor (you can download our app for free on iOS or Android). We can’t wait to hear from you.
