Swedish VoiceHER wants to connect women in a healing, supportive and thriving community, driven by audio only.
“We don’t have to give anyone a voice, everyone has a voice. You have it in you. But to bring out your voice, you sometimes need a supportive, inclusive community around you that allows you to thrive.”
VoiceHER is a voice-only app for women and non-binary people, founded in late 2020 by Swedish entrepreneurs Viktoria Elman and Sanna Dahlin. One can say it’s like Clubhouse, but for women. The early startup is a social media platform that cares about people’s wellbeing. It works hard to create a safe space where women can share their thoughts, be vulnerable, feel empowerment and belonging, to be a social media platform that leaves you feeling better every time.
Founders Viktoria Elman and Sanna Dahlin met during an incubator programme at Antler in Stockholm, sharing the same impact-driven mentality. “We both want to make the world a better place. The more you have, the greater your responsibility to give something back. Sanna and I talked a lot about the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and our own personal experiences,” Viktoria says. “We also knew that audio-tech was up and coming, and we decided to build a company within social media, that focus on your wellbeing, but with audio-only, that lowers the barrier to participation for introverts.”
Audio technology went mainstream mainly through the launch of Clubhouse in April 2020, and the VoiceHER app features similar drop-in audio conversations in different rooms based on the interest of the user.
I chatted with Viktoria back in April as the app had started to enjoy an impressive growth curve, to learn more about how VoiceHER was founded, and where it is headed.
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How did you arrive at the idea of VoiceHER?
Viktoria Elman: The majority of us women are like the glue in conversations and relationships. We want to focus on these genuine conversations and listen to each other, talk to each other, which is something we have done for hundreds & thousands of years, but have lost in some parts of the world. So we have to recreate those social rooms to feel good about ourselves, where we dare to be open and vulnerable. And that is how VoiceHER came about.
Why did you choose to create this platform for only women?
Viktoria Elman: I often get questions about why we created this forum for women instead of doing it in existing forums. And these are questions I get from a lot of men but very rarely from women, and the answer is that to empower the woman’s position towards herself is so fundamental in our vision that it can not be marginalized in any other type of small context. [When women’s voices are heard] We see that women get more power and economy, we get better prosperity, a better global economy, better conditions and healthier environments. It’s so important, on so many different levels.
Are men allowed to listen in on VoiceHER?
Viktoria Elman: It’s an app made by women for women. We are constantly working to keep this community a safe place and ensure that it is as inclusive as possible for women and non-binary people. I can understand that men find it interesting to come in and listen, but so far it has not been relevant.
Will there be an increased need for online safe spaces, especially for women and non-binary people?
Viktoria Elman: Definitely, but for all people, regardless gender, background, wealth, nationality etc ! As we move into a more digital world we need to keep it safe.
Today we have community managers, but in the long run we also want to work with AI to maintain this safe place and use speech recognition so that when certain conversations get out of hand, you can shut down the room.
What’s next for VoiceHER?
Viktoria Elman: We are working hard to bring and contain value to our community, building a solid platform that becomes your daily self-care routine that you need to feel good. We will add a subscription model for our premium users and expand globally.
Viktoria Elman’s advice to entrepreneurs:
- Dare to take risks.
- Surround yourself with people you look up to and who inspire you.
- Don’t be too harsh on yourself. It is through failures that we learn. Women in general are very strict with themselves.
- Ask for help. Many people actually want to help you.
- Execute, piece by piece, day by day.
- Just like the sentence in the movie ‘Finding Dory’: “Keep swimming” – Persistence is key
Image Credits: Justina Rosengren & Michael Hudson
