Journalist to entrepreneur: one man’s journey
Innovation often begins with necessity. In my case it was sparked by my son Benjamin jumping off the bus one day excitedly, saying that army tanks had visited his school.
Ben’s school is in the tiny picturesque farming town of Elsthorpe in Central Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, and has about 50 students. He said the tanks were coming back tomorrow. So, as a regional journalist for RNZ, I decided to find out why.
The next morning I headed to Elsthorpe School for a professional nose around . Sure enough, there were three large armored personnel carriers (APCs) with mounted cannons parked up in the middle of Elsthorpe.
So I started taking photos and being nosy, as you do. The guys in the gun turrets were busy but managed to tell me their camp was on River Road before roaring off.
A couple of cigarettes with the camp sentries and before long I had the battalion commander sitting next to me inside the base, ready for an interview about why they had suddenly “invaded” Elsthorpe. But at that moment, I discovered the cord that connects the microphone to my recorder was in the office, an hour’s drive away, and I was freaking out.
“Just one moment please, Colonel.” I called the “Q” of RNZ, Simon Dickinson. Simon had installed recording software on our phones and told me to use that. Panic over, and busy military types still present and ready to interview.
That day I conducted all my interviews that day on my mobile phone. What struck me was the quality. When my story aired nobody probably noticed that it wasn’t recorded with a $4,000 digital recorder.
A product is born
One of the challenges radio stations suffer from is poor audio quality when they interact with the audience via the phone. Crackling, faint, talking-in-a-tunnel type recordings are common. What struck me first about the tank experience was this could be a solution to improving the sound quality of audience feedback on radio.
I couldn’t find any radio stations using a smartphone app that allowed the audience to record a comment with reliable sound quality and send it directly to them. All of us were instead using cumbersome telephone numbers. So I decided to build one.
It would also transcribe voice to text in real-time to allow easier scrutiny of what large numbers of people were saying. This would help radio producers find the most relevant comments swiftly.
The voice to text transcription also enables the creation of a new type of social media which is primarily voice controlled and can produce and publish audio, video and text content without touching a device. We need to unglue ourselves from technology and make the machines beholden to us, rather us to them. Key to this is voice and language recognition technology with big companies pouring billions into the field.
I originally called it VoxPox, but people told me too much like a disease. So I settled on “VoxPop — the voice of the people”. It’s an app that can be customised according to individual radio station needs.
I’m a journalist but have been experimenting with entrepreneurship for years.
My attempts at enterprise include creating my own alpaca fashion label; a machine-learning newsroom; a zombie shooting range and survival school (left) and “glamping” in a native bird reserve on my farm.
Some have been successful and some have failed miserably, but along the way I have learned a lot of lessons about starting up businesses.
The first lesson is don’t give up.
Only a few years ago, being in the field as a radio reporter without a functional microphone would have been a deal-breaker. But because I didn’t give up and continued to improvise, I achieved what I thought was impossible by discovering an entirely new tool.
Avoid echo chambers
In startups (and the media) it is easy to be part of an echo chamber where the only thing you hear is positive feedback. No one wants to tell you what you are doing wrong. You have to find your real friends — the ones who will be honest with you — because you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken.
Equally if your idea is universally condemned, even if politely, by the people you respect. Think about why. Remember they don’t understand it as well as you do. Are they missing something, or are you?
In 1995, I started warning newspapers were in danger of being wiped out by the information superhighway that U.S. Vice President Al Gore was talking about.
My argument was they simply would not be able to compete with news being delivered to an individual in real-time in a multi-media format.
I met with almost universal condemnation and ridicule with the newspaper industry leading the charge. “You can’t read a computer on the beach or the toilet,” they said. But that was about the extent of their argument. They had their heads in the sand.
At the heart of this was their belief among media that the internet was just a thing for computer nerds and was “a bit like CB radio” and would never go anywhere.
I’ve discovered that people often reject ideas not because the ideas are visionary but because the people hearing about them don’t understand them. It is your job to help them see how this thing can change their lives and each time you do this, you grow your business by another little bit.
Get everything in writing
If you bring on partners, get agreements in writing at the beginning. Be clear about the ownerships of the assets you have created and agree on an exit strategy with your partners.
If the business crashes and burns and your best friend becomes your biggest menace, having a pre-agreed plan will make it a whole lot less messy and stressful and allow everyone to move on.
Find partners who can help you
Six months after scribbling notes in my journal about what VoxPop would look like, I made an elevator pitch to RNZ CEO Paul Thompson. He got very excited about VoxPop and offered RNZ’s support.
One of my followers on Twitter was from a big radio station in the United States, so I sent an elevator pitch direct message to him. He sent back the email address of an executive and within a week I was on Skype talking to him about VoxPop. He believed it was a game changer and offered insights I hadn’t thought of.
Only problem was I didn’t have a clue how to build a skinnable sound-recording app that transcribed voice to text!
You may have noticed that startups often have two founders. One is often the Evangelist — the Steve or Bill type — who comes up with the idea and gets people excited about it and the other is the Wizard, who makes it all happen.
VoxPop’s Wizard is my good friend Andrew McMillan, who had just finished stint with Google in Dublin. When I told him what I wanted to build he got excited. We agreed to form a company and away he went.
This has led to a trial on NPR affiliate WAMU’s 1A programme, which starts in early September.
With the support of RNZ Chief Executive Paul Thompson, in early January this year we trialled the Android version of VoxPop on Summer Days with Jesse Mulligan on RNZ National. And it was a great success.
The audience took to it, and by the end of the week we were getting responses four minutes after Jesse would ask a question.
On the strength of this, RNZ came on board and assisted with the construction of the iOS version of VoxPop.
VoxPop proper was fully launched on RNZ National in July. We had 350 downloads by the end of the first week and an audience engaging with us in a way that had never been possible before.
The launch has already sparked interest from people with ideas for its use we hadn’t even considered. Journalism academics are presenting it to conferences as an example of innovation in the news media.
It’s chaos. But it’s the kind of chaos I dreamed it would be after that day the tanks came to Elsthorpe.
To download VoxPop:
Get the Android version here: http://bit.ly/2sze7QD
And the iTunes version here: https://appsto.re/nz/t4Qkjb.i
Peter Fowler has a passion for public broadcasting and is a digital news pioneer. His latest innovation “VoxPop” is a radio studio in your pocket. In 1996 he founded the Internet news service newsroom.co.nz, which utilised a subscription model and pioneered online and mobile phone news services. He sold the business to stock exchange operator NZX in 2007. Peter has a keen interest in machine-learning newsrooms and automation of news. Twitter: @hapua
