Live Audio. Ready. Go. 

February 2016 Johannes Wigand approached Alex, telling him about his search for an app-based audio transmission solution to offer simultaneous interpretation in his local church at Salzburg. At that time, no reasonable alternative to buying expensive translation hardware was available. Yet, buying old and clunky boxes was not what Johannes was looking for.

So we arrange a meeting at Infound. We sat together looking at some first drafts and rough ideas for a cloud-based streaming system for that purpose. We loved the idea and agreed to give it a try.

Some design iterations and a first working prototype were created within the following months. All this was happening on the side, next to our everyday responsibilities, for us at the agency (Infound), and for Johannes while working a full-time job at RedBull. We were determined to get as far as possible without external investors.

About a year later, we had our first version of the product, not yet perfectly reliable but promising, and also a name and design for our new brand. So we set up a “Letter of Intent”, capturing our expectations about roles and responsibilities, how to handle running costs and investments while bootstrapping this new venture, and our commitment (westing) as a founding team for at least another 4 years, in written form. This original agreement was established between Sebastian, Gregor, Johannes and Alex.

It took us about four and a half years to go from concept to working prototype, and further to a reliable web-based streaming infrastructure, including mobile apps, and a couple of first paying customers. Yet, we were still far from a viable business.

Gregor decided to step down as a founder for LiveVoice. He stayed available as part of the Infound team and kept on contributing in very essential ways, but without the hassle of all the strategic questions and financial concerns and organizational challenges of establishing this new business.

Along that journey two experienced engineers, Christian Tessarek and Thomas Krajacic, joined the LiveVoice team. Their contributions, ever since they joined, significantly improved the reliability and scalability of our systems and apps.

In December 2021 “LiveVoice” was incorporated as a separate company, including Christian and Thomas as co-founders. Within the next two years three strategic investors, who own minority shares, also joined. All of them very supportive, providing important market connections and key advice on top of the initial funding.

As a founding team we’re all coming from modest backgrounds. Making a living from digital labor, month to month. Switching from working for free on the side, to this new situation where we could finally pay ourselves a small but essential founders rate for our efforts, really had a big impact: More focus, more progress, way more productivity (for LiveVoice) than before.

Lots of talented people for mobile and web development, sys ops, marketing and customer success have joined the team since then. LiveVoice’s operations are lead by Johannes Wigand as CEO from its headquarters at Salzburg, and has a dedicated team spread across Europe.

True to our initial intention, our audio and video transmission service for live events is designed to be accessible and affordable for everybody, at any time, anywhere around the globe. Since early 2024 we’re also offering AI powered subtitles and AI speech-to-speech translation as additional services, next to the proven setup for human interpreters, audio describers and tour guides. Learn more at LiveVoice.io.