Investment Announcement: An Open Letter From Voices’s Founders

David Ciccarelli

July 12, 2017

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To our customers and supporters,

Today, we’d like to share some exciting news. Voices has closed an $18 million investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, the growth-focused private investment team within Morgan Stanley. David and I founded this company over a decade ago with the vision of connecting businesses and brands with professional voice over talent. Thanks to this investment, we will be able to scale the business and further elevate the art of storytelling, creating even more opportunities for voice actors performing on the world stage.

Looking back to our earliest days, getting one voice over job on the site a day was a triumph. Today, we see between 4000 and 5000 jobs posted on Voices every month. What used to be hundreds of voice talent using the site, has now grown into more than 200,000 actors from around the world – and we’re proud that they call our site their professional home. Growing by one client at a time, there are now almost a quarter of a million people who rely on the Voices platform to source voice talent for their projects.

Voices has broken the traditional barriers of time and geography to provide brands with access to the best global talent and this investment will help us continue to grow and enable the marketplace to help both brands and voice talent.

This exciting news is being shared to underscore what this investment means for the company and our stakeholders moving forward, why it has happened and what’s in store for Voices.

For us, this investment brings greater visibility.

“I wish I’d known about you earlier” is something we often hear from new customers. Dramatically ramping up our marketing efforts will open new doors for meeting customers who would have normally taken much longer to find us. We’ll be found in places we’re not presently advertising and have more diversification marketing-wise.

For our talent members, you will benefit from our ability to attract more companies looking to hire you. As a result, Voices will create more job opportunities to audition for. As mentioned, we’ll be collaborating with a wider circle of industry contacts who will bring jobs to Voices that would not have been posted here before.

As our promotional efforts scale, we will also be adding more staffing in our Marketing and IT departments. Their work, focusing on demand generation and attracting new business, will directly impact the reach of our existing sales force and allow us to hire more people to manage relationships around the world. Voices’s office space can accommodate up to 300 staff – that’s 200 more people than we are employing right now. We’re excited for what the future has in store for the business and for our city.

Something that is very important to us as founders is that we keep Voices in London, Ontario Canada. Our business began when we wrote the idea on a napkin at our kitchen table in the heart of downtown. Being an employer that provides Londoners with exciting careers and meaningful work in a thriving corporate culture is vital. This is home and Voices will continue to hire talented people who are curious, competitive and coachable. Together, we’ll shine from east to west.

What do we find most exhilarating about working with Morgan Stanley? This investment positions us well to fulfill our vision of connecting a critical mass of creative professionals on quests to accomplish their goals of telling stories that inform, educate and entertain.

We’ve said this before, but our goal is to have all roads lead to Voices. We’re in the process of building new infrastructures that will allow for that and are eager for you to take part.

Thank you for your business over the years. We look forward to serving you with the same heart and soul that started this company, on a much larger scale.

You can learn more about the investment announcement here.

Warm regards,

Stephanie and David Ciccarelli

Voices Founders

David Ciccarelli

David Ciccarelli is the Founder and Board Member of Voices. He's been a finalist of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award and a Canadian Innovator Award. He often writes about his entrepreneurial journey in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Forbes and for M.I.T. Executive Education. He graduated with honors from the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology and is a graduate of Harvard Business School.

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