Startup Spotlight #119: Spokn
Spokn is a podcasting platform for work.
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I got the chance to speak with Fawzy Abu Seif and Mariel Davis, co-founders of Spokn, about what they working on at their startup, and any advice they have for emerging entrepreneurs.
Spokn is a podcasting platform for work. Top startups like Superhuman, Mixpanel, and ShipBob use Spokn to improve internal communications and employee learning through asynchronous audio (recording a CEO’s weekly update, for example). Spokn also offers a library of audios from HBS, MIT, Columbia, and more to help employees develop their professional skills.
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Startup Spotlight: Spokn
Problem: Consistent communication matters more than ever when companies are remote, but existing tools weren’t built for it. Employees struggle to stay focused and engaged because Zoom fatigue is real, scheduling calls is hard, emails are impersonal, and Slack is too noisy.
Market: There are 650,000 US companies with 50+ employees, thus the TAM is estimated to be $5B+. We believe at least 20% have an employee base composed mostly of Millennials and Gen-Zs – the ‘audio generations.’
Solution: Spokn makes it easy to create and share internal podcasts that inform and engage employees – without Zoom fatigue. For example, on Spokn, a company leader can easily record a weekly recap and send it to employees in a push notification so they can listen just like their favorite podcast.
Team: Spokn was founded by Fawzy Abu Seif, who led one of the Middle East’s largest startups through hyper-scale, and Mariel Davis, a specialist in remote communications and Millennial learning. The two met in Cairo where they both lived and moved to NYC in preparation for Spokn’s launch in March 2020. Their timing was crazy: the city shut down the week after they arrived.
Recent Success:
Abu Seif: I think we’ve been pretty successful at listening carefully to what our customers tell us about the future of work and responding fast. This was by necessity. We launched Spokn over the summer of 2020 – a tough time to sell into HR departments that were ‘firefighting’ with all the instability around COVID and work-from-home. We actually launched our as a Learning & Development product first: a mobile app, with short audio content from top experts at HBS, MIT, McKinsey, Columbia, and more. But we started to hear from our customers that this skills-based learning wasn’t their only challenge. They more urgently needed a better way for remote employees to learn what was going on inside the company, and to stay in the loop on updates and in tune with company culture. Audio storytelling is a great format for this, so we started building out features for company podcasting like an in-app recorder, a creator studio, and ultra-strong security.
Recent Struggle:
Abu Seif: Paradoxically, our struggle is the same as our strength. We were ‘born into’ remote work, and because of this, we’ve been building a remote work solution at the same time as our customers are developing their own remote work plans. It’s widely accepted now that as companies go remote or hybrid, they’ll need to invest more intentionally in internal communications. But, many companies are only beginning to emerge from firefighting. They’re just starting to plan out strategic investments – hiring a ‘Director of Remote’ or an ‘Internal Comms Manager’ and building their remote comms tech stack. We’re still learning how to identify those companies that are ready to move fast in improving their internal comms, versus those that still need more time to adjust to the ‘new normal.’
Founder Advice:
Abu Seif: I think having patience is really important, especially in times of great instability. When COVID happened, we had about two months of existential crisis. All of a sudden, commutes were gone, gyms were closed, and no one was running errands or doing school pickups. “Would anyone listen to audio during lockdown?” we wondered. We had a few nail-biting months, but we tried to focus on user research and improving the product – it was all we could do until things stabilized enough to see how behavior would (or wouldn’t) change. Ultimately (and luckily), audio has become more popular, rather than less, during COVID. We’re grateful we didn’t pull the plug during those stressful months of uncertainty.
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Abu Seif: Here are three founders you should check out next!
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