Gadgetell Interview: James Siminoff, SimulScribe
Posted April 9, 2008 at 04:42 PM by JG Mason
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Mobile, Features, Interviews
CTIA exposed a bunch of new companies getting into the voice to text game and it is expected to be a fast growing area. This morning saw my post on Nuance, a company bringing voice to text to GPS (in addition to a voicemail to text service), last month we saw Spinvox get $100 million in investment to grow internationally. Today, I got the opportunity to mix it up with James Siminoff, CEO of SimulScribe whose company is a leader in voicemail to text serivce and get the pulse of his company and where he believes the market is headed. Simulscribe also extended a 30 day free trial for Gadgetell readers. See the end of the post for link.
Gadgetell: CTIA has brought has fleshed out a bunch more players in your sandbox, nervous?
JS: Nope. SimulScribe, besides investing over $4 Million in our company and technology, is the leader in voicemail to text functionality. We’ve worked extremely hard to gain our loyal customers.
Gadgetell: This morning I noted that Nuance is bringing their experience to the game with voice to text for GPS and they claim to be courting the teleco carriers. What do you make of this?
JS: Nuance is a company I really like, they have fantastic experience with their Dragon products. However, I don’t understand how they can do that. Truely, I don’t get it. I think they are a great company but to put a package together for a carrier is scary. They may get a deal or two, but to not have the experience of handling in volume and make that pitch is tough.
Gadgetell: Is it safe to assume SimulScribe is working with carriers as well?
JS: We do work with Vonage, M5, Broadsoft and others. We like the unique opportunities where our service is going to be valued. You can’t get the value proposition across to an AT&T who only sees how much they are bringing to the table.
Gadgetell: So, say if other services tie up the carriers, will SimulScribe survive?
JS: Absolutely. SimulScribes real value is in the unified messaging solution. Your work, home and cell phone can all be tied into our service, giving you one contact point for all your messaging. It doesn’t matter if your work has AT&T, your home is Verizon and your cell phone is T-Mobile, they all work equally well on our unified system. No one can match our offerings.
Gadgetell: Many of these other new players want to bring voice to texting and voice to searching and voice to everything on your phone. Is this a direction SimulScribe will head?
JS: No. Our focus is voicemail, it is what we know best. You won’t see a non-voicemail product from SimulScribe.
Gadgetell: Let’s talk Spanish for a moment? Are you ready to roll out Spanish translation?
JS: Almost. We’ve been hard at work on this and it is in beta now. Today, we get lots of calls from bilingual customers that we deliver and we’ve turned on the service randomly to see how it reacts. This will be rolled out in the near future.
Gadgetell: *nervously* You’ve made war with some bloggers, is that just a marketing tactic or is it personal.
JS: *laughs* You mean TechCrunch?
Gadgetell: We can start there
JS: techcrunch put something out there, I couldn’t help myself. It was the wrong thing to do, we’ve made up and made friends with TechCrunch and Michael. We are (and I am ) willing to speak out. Sometimes I am wrong. Spinvox is trying to drown us with some sizable offers. We’ve tried to be friends to the bloggers. I am happy our comments are more edgy; the world doesn’t need a boring start-up.
Gadgetell: I couldn’t agree more. Thanks.
See what all the hubbub is about and try out SimulScribe for 30 days by visiting here.