A startup based in London called LOVEEstimated at $ 17 million following its pre-seed funding, aims to redefine how people stay in touch with close relatives and friends. The company starts a messaging app that offers a combination of video calls and asynchronous video and audio messages in an ad-free, privacy-conscious experience with a range of bells and whistles, including artistic filters and real-time transcription and translation capabilities.
But perhaps the bigger differentiator of LOVE is not just the product, but rather the company’s mission.
LOVE aims to have its product orientation democratically guided by its user base, rather than letting an elite few at the top of a corporate hierarchy determine its future. Additionally, the company’s ultimate longer-term goal is to pass ownership of the app and its governance to its users, according to the company.
As part of larger trends, these concepts are becoming a kind of “Web 3.0,“Or the next phase of Internet development, in which services are decentralized, user privacy is increased, data is protected and transactions in digital ledgers, such as a blockchain, are more distributed.
The founders of LOVE are proponents of this new model, including serial entrepreneurs Samantha Radocchiawho previously founded three companies and co-founded. used the blockchain early on timeline, an enterprise blockchain company focused on the pharmaceutical supply chain.
As someone who has been interested in new technologies since her anthropology work on currency exchange in the virtual world of “Second Life”, she is now a lecturer at Singularity University, where she lectures on blockchain, AI, the Internet of Things and the future of work. and other topics. She also wrote an introduction to the blockchain with her Book “Bitcoin Pizza.”
Co-founder Christopher SchlaefferDuring this time, he held various positions at Deutsche Telekom, including Chief Product & Innovation Officer, Corporate Development Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, where, together with Google managers, he presented the first mobile phone with Android. He was also Chief Digital Officer at the telecommunications service company VEON.
The two paths crossed after Schlaeffer had already started to organize a team to bring LOVE to the public, which also includes the co-founders, Chief Technologist Jim Reeves, also previously from VEON, and chief designer Timm Kekeritz, previously Interaction Designer at the international design company IDEO in San Francisco, Design Director at IXDS and founder of the design consultancy Raureif in Berlin.
Photo credits: LOVE
What attracted her as CEO, Radocchia explained, was the potential to start a new company that has more positive values than you often see today – in fact, the brand name “LOVE” refers to that goal. She was also interested in the potential to think through what she calls “new business models that don’t rely on advertising or collecting our users’ data,” she says.
For this purpose, LOVE is planning a monetization without advertisement. The company isn’t ready to fully explain its business model, but it would Inclusion of users who sign up for services through granular permissions and membership, we are told.
“We assume that our users will be more willing to pay for consciously used services and consents in a certain context than their data being used for a simply non-transparent advertising model,” says Radocchia.
LOVE expects to share more about the model next year.
The LOVE app itself is a pretty sophisticated mobile messenger that offers an interesting combination of features. As with any other video chat app, you can video calls with friends and family, either one-on-one or in groups. LOVE currently supports up to five call participants, but assumes that this will be expanded as it scales. The app also supports video and audio messaging for asynchronous conversations. Of course, there are already tools on the market that offer such functions – such as WhatsApp with support for audio messages or video messengers Marco Polo. But they don’t quite offer the same expanded functionality.
Photo credits: LOVE
To start with, LOVE limits its video messages to 60 seconds for the sake of brevity. (As anyone who’s used Marco Polo knows, videos can get a bit dissipated, making it harder to catch up when you’re lagging behind in group chats.) Plus, LOVE lets you watch the video content as well as the. read real-time transcription of what was said – the latter comes in handy not only for accessibility, but also when you want to hear someone’s news but are not in a private place to listen or do not have headphones. Conversations can also be translated into 50 languages.
“Many of the traditional communication or messenger products come from a paradigm that has always been text-based,” explains Radocchia. “We approach it very differently. While other platforms have a lot of the same features that we have, I think that … the perspective we were approaching turned them completely upside down, ”she continues. “In contrast to the connection of video messages to a mainly text-based interface, [LOVE is] In fact, you’re doing it the other way around, adding text as a kind of magically transcribed add-on – and something that hopefully you’ll never have to type on your keyboard again, ”she adds.
The app’s user interface is designed to encourage eye contact with the speaker so conversations feel more natural. It does this through design elements where bubbles float around as you speak and the bubble grows with the current speaker to take your focus away from looking at yourself. The company also works with the curator of Serpentine gallery in London, Hans Ulrich-Obrist, to create new filters that are not about embellishment or gimmicks, but about the introduction of a new visual form of expression that people feel more comfortable with in front of the camera.
For the time being, this resulted in a filter that slightly abstracts your appearance, almost in the style of an animation or another form of visual art.
The app claims to use end-to-end encryption and automatically delete its contents after seven days – with the exception of messages you have recorded yourself if you choose to save them as “memorable moments”.
“One of our obligations is privacy and the right to be forgotten,” says Radocchia. “We don’t want or need to save any of this information.”
LOVE was introduced as a soft launch on the App Store where it has been used by a number of testers and is working to organically grow its user base through an onboarding invitation mechanism that prompts users to invite at least three people to join. That same onboarding process also carefully explains why LOVE asks for permissions – like using speech recognition to create closed captions.
According to LOVE, the pre-seed investment valuation of a combination of traditional startup investors and strategic angel investors from a variety of industries including technology, film, media, TV, and financial services is approximately $ 17 million. The company will be running a seed round this fall.
The app is currently available on iOS, but an Android version will arrive later in the year. (Note that LOVE does not currently support the iOS 15 beta software which has language transcription issues and other areas. That should be fixed next week after an app update that is now in the works.)
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