Bill Atkinson Interviews Mark McMahon, Co-Founder & CEO of AudioOne

Mark McMahon is co-founder and CEO of AudioOne Inc., a Bethesda-based start-up that is using artificial intelligence to help subscribers create a personalized news, information, and entertainment feed in audio form.

McMahon and partner Antonio Bray, who is president and chief technology officer, see an explosion of news, data and information and a developing market for busy consumers and corporations that can benefit from having written news, podcasts and music in one place and in audio form. In addition, they see exponential growth of audio, specifically podcasts and text to speech TTS.

The company’s platform offers a listening experience for personalized news, music, radio, and podcasts online that is based on the subscriber’s interests. Even better, there are no ads, just continuous playback of content and media, enabling users to get a personal radio-style experience.

This month the company announced that TEDCO, an early-stage funding arm of the state of Maryland, invested $150,000 from its Builder Fund in the company.

Interview Questions:

Q1: What does AudioOne do?

Q2: You recently received some big news from Tedco, tell us about that.

Q3: What will the Tedco investment enable AudioOne to do?

Q4: Give us some background, when did you launch AudioOne and how did you come up with the idea?

Q5: How is the market for AudioOne developing?

Q6: Who is your target market? In other words, who are the ideal users for AudioOne?

Q7: Do you see this as a B-to-B play, B to C or both?

Q8: Are there any deals that AudioOne is pursuing that you can discuss?

Q9: What does AudioOne look like five years from now?

Connect with Mark and Bill on LinkedIn

Bill Atkinson launched Atkinson Strategic Communications in January 2020 after 15 years in the public relations business and 21 years as a newspaper reporter. Clients include, Coca-Cola Consolidated, the largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the country, the American Beverage Association, Howard Bank, Ambu, a Danish medical device maker with its U.S. headquarters in Columbia, Md., and Think Systems, a Baltimore-based management consulting firm.

Prior to starting his own firm, Atkinson was a partner in 212 Communications, which he joined in June 2015, and focused on strategic and crisis communications, media relations and grassroots strategies. Before that he was a senior vice president at global public relations agency Weber Shandwick. At Weber’s Baltimore office Atkinson specialized in strategic and crisis communications as well as reputation management. Clients included Constellation Energy, Honeywell, General Motors, Bank of America, Promontory Financial Group and 1st Mariner Bank.

AudioOne is generating its early revenue growth by focusing on accessible and ready-to-pay markets including converting newsletters, blogs, and local papers to audio. The company expects to build a subscriber base, develop partnerships with content providers, support advertising, and eventually offer shares in an initial public offering.