52/52: Talk Machine
#CapitalAtRisk
The 2010s was the decade of the Entrepreneur.
The 2020s will be the decade of the Investor.
“Hello, I’m Matthew. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
— Me (although I didn’t actually record that message), above
Bus Mystery → Bus Mastery
Azmat first came to 9others in October 2012. He was working on something called ‘BusMapper’ and it was superb. Until BusMapper came along I never got the bus in London — I’m not *that* daft but it was just far too confusing.
BusMapper became CityMapper and, millions of users later, it’s an essential app for getting around dozens and dozens of cities all over the world (I used it loads in New York last month).
Obscure → Obvious
These days Azmat is working on Talk Machine and I’m a fan. On the surface it looks like a simple app to send voice notes back & forth. That seems rather straight forward, if a little obscure, but, when I first came across it in June this year, it got me curious…
You might say, “Oh, you can send voice notes with WhatsApp”, and that’s true. But the thing is, that’s also obvious. What intrigues me is Azmat must be thinking about something beyond that — he’s a smart guy and because, “You can send voice notes on WhatsApp” is so obvious he’ll have thought of that too. Yet he still created TalkMachine. What do you think Azmat knows that the rest of us just haven’t thought of yet?
Don’t call, talk 🎙️
I like voice notes — sometimes I want to read them, not listen. And sometimes I want to write them, and not talk. Talk Machine lets me do this and Azmat has been kind enough to give me ‘@mstafford’ as my handle, so it matches my handle on X.
If you’re also curious you can sign up and leave me a voice note here to let me know what you think.
In other news
🎂 Monday was 9others’s 14th birthday. If you’d like to come along check out the events here and subscribe to the 9others Substack here 🍽️
📵 Tomorrow I’m having breakfast with Hector of Unplugged. They’ve had a terrific year and are still fundraising so if you’re keen ‘TalkMachine me’ 💰
📝 In a Substack subscriber chat Tom Morgan was asking about the good things we’ve come across in 2025 — books, videos, blogs, that sort of thing. I mentioned a few things that came to mind so I’ll do a 2025 review here shortly.
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Important: None of these posts are investment advice. If you are thinking about investing you should seek the advice of a suitably qualified independent advisor.
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