SpinVox In Links: How The Story Played Out
Following our recent coverage, controversial voice-to-text firm SpinVox, which has $200 million funding, has today come under the BBC’s scrutiny for sending voicemails for transcription to contractors in far-flung countries. That’s one of the threads that emerged on these pages – but it’s only one of SpinVox’s concerns, after the company invited staff to swap salary for equity and responded to claims of unpaid wages and expenses. Here are our stories (don’t ignore the comments)…
– Jul 2: Interview: Daniel Doulton, Co-Founder, Spinvox: Carrier Plans May Need Further Funding
– Jul 13: SpinVox Paying Staff In Stock To Save On Costs
– Jul 20: Interview: Christina Domecq, CEO, Spinvox (Pt 1): Managing Through The Crunch
– Jul 22: Interview: Christina Domecq, CEO, Spinvox (Pt 2): Cashflow-Positive In 90 Days
I have been sitting on all of this for so long. It is SUCH A RELIEF that it is all out in the open now
I'm interested to understand how the VC's are reacting to this? Surely they knew where their money was going? Someone must be feeling the heat!!
Been curious about the financial backers, too. Anyone try to get there reaction? (Not that they would have one.)
What a fantastic story, Robert. You've done an amazing job of bringing the truth to light — Domecq is the Madoff of the start-up world.
And more coverage today in UK papers including an interview with CD:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/23/spinvox-answer-back
A more philosophical comment from the Telegraph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100002431/the-spinvox-story-is-enough-to-shake-your-faith-in-technology/
And a decent review by the Mirror:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology/2009/07/23/spinvox-in-a-spin-after-bbc-investigation-115875-21542623/
And a formal response on the spinvox blog to the BBC stories:
http://blog.spinvox.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8166602.stm
"The average pay in a workforce of 219 was £96,369, and the highest paid director earned £546,000"
I am guessing there are now 180 really annoyed staff, knowing they are paid 'below the average' – and are asking how a director can make £546K in a company posting losses.
Good BBC Radio 4 interview with CD yesterday evening:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8166053.stm
> 200k direct customers of SV, the rest are "carrier customers".
> "going into profitability….90-120 days for cashflow breakeven"
And follow up by Rory Cellin-Jones to his blog entry yesterday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8166602.stm
mildly, she also stated that those (i.e. SV direct) customers messages do not leave the UK – BUT they do not have any "QC" facilities in the UK. So where do they go? Are they all 100% machine handled guaranteed … leave the same message of a reasonable length and complexity three times and see if you get the same result each time… my money is on south africa, same timezone, good english etc.
Wow, so all this from one "disgruntled ex-worker who left the company more than two years ago."
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/24/spinvox-responds-to-voicemail-privacy-accusations/
This is just classic, Spinvox is now listed in Wikipedia under Hoaxes in the Mechanical Turk entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk
In July 2009 it was shown that the Spinvox voice-to-text service was to a considerable degree a modern equivalent of the Mechanical Turk, supposedly using a computer to provide the conversion, but actually relying on call-centre staff to do this manually. [83]
# ^ Rory Cellan-Jones on BBC News, "[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/07/the_spinning_of_spinvox.html 'The Spinning of Spinvox'],", 23 July 2008.