Sounder Raises $2.15M in Follow-on Seed Round to Bring Podcast Management and Monetization to Creators

Sounder (http://www.sounder.fm), the industry’s first end-to-end podcast management and monetization platform built with and for creators, today announced the completion of a $2.15M follow-on round for a total of approximately $4M of seed financing raised in the past 14 months.

The $2.15M raise was led by Ulu Ventures, and joined by new and existing investors including Newark Venture Partners and Xoogler.co, a community of Google alumni and current Google employee investors, and individual Spotify and Google executive angel investors.

“2020 was a very successful year for Sounder across product development, partnerships, and monetization, said Kal Amin, Co-founder and CEO of Sounder. “This new round of funding will allow us to continue to solve problems creators face while innovating within the overall audio landscape. It will also allow us to bring our premium product, Sounder Plus, to market.”

The company will use the proceeds to continue its mission of powering an open and thriving audio ecosystem that supports independent creators, enterprise-level publishers and developers. With this funding, the company plans to further advance its proprietary search, speech-to-text and contextualization technologies as well as establish a new R&D center of excellence in New York.

“Sounder continues to demonstrate its value proposition for media channels and podcasters, enhancing discovery and monetization across the ecosystem,” said Miriam Rivera, Co-founder and Manager Director of Ulu Ventures. “Sounder’s technology will allow audio content to be searched and discovered in a streamlined and intuitive manner, which will help expand the total market as well as enable accelerated monetization growth.”

Sounder’s new monetization solutions have already yielded meaningful impact for creators, with certain pilot partners seeing an 80%-130% increase in streams, a 40%-100% increase in bid requests, and a $9 average CPM, which is more than 25% above industry average, in Q4 2020. “Sounder is developing the next frontier of a booming audio market by streamlining monetization and expanding discovery for podcasters. As the audio space continues to experience massive growth, Sounder’s platform will serve the needs of both content creators and audiences hungry for new material,” said Allison Williams, Principal at Newark Venture Partners. “We are proud of Sounder’s journey thus far, and we look forward to what the future holds for Kal, Dan and their team.”

Creator Testimonials

“I am excited to join the Sounder family. As a content creator I am impressed and excited about Sounders’ innovative, problem solving technologies which, I believe, are the future of podcasting. I am thrilled to partner with an industry-leading, progressive company that is focused on helping creators. Sounder shares in my enthusiasm and has provided me with renewed inspiration to create the best podcast possible.“ Gus Frerotte, Former NFL Quarterback and founder of Huddle Up With Gus

“After looking at the market and where we want to grow our podcasts and creators it was obvious to Renee and me that Sounder was going to be the next leader in the podcast audio space. They have the best search and discovery technology, free transcription, and various monetization opportunities. They have a platform that is built for the future and that is how we think about our podcasts." Paul Guarino, Founder of PG Sports and Host of Average to Savage

“After meeting with the Sounder team, I was excited about their enthusiasm for Remotely Renee. They understood my strategic view for the podcast and, with their ground breaking technology, they were ready and willing to help me achieve my vision. The fit was perfect.” Renee Montgomery, 2X WNBA Champion and Founder and Host of Remotely Renee

About Sounder

Sounder is an end-to-end podcast management and monetization platform built with and for creators to help them be heard and compensated for their content. Founded in 2019 by former Google and Spotify executives, Sounder connects creators to the tools and services they need to grow audiences and revenue. Sounder’s Discovery Suite brings proprietary SEO, search, transcription and sharing technology to audio content, expanding the reach of every episode so creators can better monetize their content. Learn more and join Sounder’s community of creators at https://sounder.fm.