HearMeOut Israeli Voice Integrated Social Media Company Plans Australian IPO

HearMeout, an Israeli startup which offers people a way to use their voices to post to social media, is making the unusual move of looking to Australia for its exit.

Founded in 2014 with $1.5 million in seed funding, the company hopes to raise about $5 million ($5.5 – 6.5 million AUS) with an IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange. The initial public offering will take place in the next few weeks.

So what exactly is HearMeOut and why would an Israeli company look to Australia for an IPO. Well in short HearMeOut enables every user to listen to 42 seconds of recorded audio from friends, musicians, reporters, writers, comedians and more.

The company also explains that when it comes to social media people will provide an entirely different story when speaking their minds and not just writing what’s on their minds. This can be a new joke from a comedian or a few lines of a new song from a musician.

Ever get frustrated with trying to type your text or tweets using the small sized letters on your smart phone? How much time do you waste rewriting and editing after the fact? These frustrations will be history once voice operations are fully integrated into mobile devices.

But some celebrities and politicians may come to regret this. We hear stories in the news on just about a daily basis about how someone famous said the wrong thing on social media and was forced to do an apology tour because of it. The people who just cannot help themselves when it comes to sharing whatever jumps into their heads without thinking might not want it to be even easier to do so.

Countless Israeli high tech startups have made it big in the last 20 years, either through a buy out or an IPO. But when it comes to the latter, it is usually in America on either the Dow Jones or the NASDAQ.

So why is HearMeOut going to Australia, specifically Sydney home to the Australian Securities Exchange, for its IPO? Well it has to do with the ever growing business relationship that Israel has with the continent-nation.

Two of the company’s co-founders, Moran Chamsi its CEO and Issy Livian its VP of Business Development spoke with Jewish Business News in a phone interview.

“The Israeli government began a cooperation between the two countries and Australian investors have been coming to Israel and we have met many of them, ” they explained.

“This is how it started. Now we want to make a big splash and going to Australia where we can make a bigger presence, if we went with NASDAQ we would not get as much visibility.”

Moranc Chamsi Founder-CEO

So the company already had connections in the Australian business world and it hopes to have a bigger presence as part of a smaller exchange.

Does this mean that Australia will become as important to the Israeli high tech sector as China is? Probably not. But it’s a big world out there and Israel is proving that when it comes to business and a chance to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing international boundaries disappear. Politics and boycotts be dammed.

So what motivated its founders to start HearMeOut?

“We saw in the last few years the authenticity of posts has gone. Other people run the social media for celebs and politicians, ” they said. “This lets people use their own voices when they send out tweets etc.”

Issy Livian Co Founder, VP BizDev

Moran and Issy also pointed to the advantages in voice operated social media interfaces. For one, it will cut down on traffic accidents. While driving a car people will be able to connect to Twitter, Facebook, or whichever service they choose and upload their message without having to take their hands off of the steering wheel.

If sometime soon you find yourself in your car easily sending texts and making social media posts just by talking out loud you will have Israeli ingenuity to thank for it, specifically HearMeOut.