About Spokeo: a field team at the service of people with hearing loss
Spokeo wasn't born from a marketing hunch. It was born from an observation made in the field, repeated over years alongside dependent seniors who had no access to a listening solution truly suited to their situation. Behind the Spokeo listening assistant, winner of the Grand Prix at the 2025 International Concours Lépine, three sensory-health professionals bring together more than twenty years of experience with vulnerable people. Here is their story.
One point guides everything else: Spokeo is for the people that the conventional hearing-care pathway leaves without a suitable solution. Those who refuse to wear a hearing aid, and those who can no longer wear one day to day because of a loss of independence or cognitive impairment.
And it turns the usual logic around: it is no longer solely up to the hard-of-hearing person to make the effort to understand; it is up to their conversation partner, a relative, a caregiver or a healthcare professional, to make their words accessible. That person wears the microphone while the listener simply listens, with no hearing aid and nothing to handle. Spokeo is not one more hearing aid: it is a listening assistant designed for a need that traditional hearing devices do not address.
The common thread: reaching those no one else serves
One driving force runs through the whole journey of the Spokeo team: spotting the blind spots, those situations where a vulnerable person is left without a solution for a need that is nonetheless simple.
It is this logic that led to the creation of Visiome in 2005, a pioneer in eyewear for people with reduced mobility and loss of independence. It was absurd that an elderly person in a care home could not get a simple pair of glasses. Obvious on paper, a blind spot in practice, because this population was deemed too complicated to serve.
Spokeo carries on exactly the same approach, this time applied to hearing. The driver stays the same: find the small stone in the works, the one no one deals with because it concerns people we don't see, and fix it.
How Spokeo began: when the solution doesn't exist, you create it
In 2015, drawing on ten years in the field of sensory health for people with loss of independence, the team extended its expertise from vision to hearing and founded Audiome. It is this daily contact with dependent seniors and care facilities that brought the problem into full view.
The observation in the field was clear-cut: conventional hearing aids do not meet the real situation of these people. Designed for independent users, traditional hearing devices are too complex to manage day to day, poorly suited to loss of independence or cognitive impairment, and most often end up abandoned in a drawer. The frustration is immense, both for the hard-of-hearing person and for the caregivers and family members trying to communicate with them.
The team then tried everything the market had to offer, without finding the right product. It was this gap that settled everything: if the solution doesn't exist, you create it. Five years of research and development later, Spokeo came to life, a listening assistant designed from the outset for people with hearing loss who do not wear a hearing aid. Its bi-conduction technology is patented and held by the company Audiome. In 2025, this approach was distinguished with the Grand Prix of the International Concours Lépine.
The team: three complementary areas of expertise, one shared goal
Jonathan Goldminc brings Spokeo his rigorous, hands-on audiological expertise. The only certified hearing care professional on the team, he ran a network of hearing centers with 24 employees, generating 3.5 million euros in revenue. That path gave him a precise view of the limits of conventional hearing solutions faced with the real needs of people losing their independence.
Within Spokeo, Jonathan carries the audiological credibility and clinical validation of the product. He is the one who ensures that every development answers a genuine hearing need, not a technological trend. His conviction: a suitable listening solution is not just about amplifying sound, it must fit into the real life of the hard-of-hearing person, with no constraint and no complex learning curve.
Raphaël Zakine leads Spokeo's product design as well as its editorial line. His legitimacy to design a listening solution and to address hearing loss does not come from a specialization in audiology: it comes from twenty years in the field alongside vulnerable people.
An optician-optometrist by training, qualified in physiological optics and contact lenses, he trained opticians, ophthalmologists and orthoptists for the CibaVision (Novartis) laboratory before founding Visiome in 2005. It was in the field of care homes and alongside seniors with reduced mobility that he developed a fine understanding of the needs of people losing their independence, an understanding that directly feeds the design of the product and the expert content published by Spokeo.
At Spokeo, he steers product design, communications, digital, the editorial line and field relationships with facilities. He shapes the product and the content from what he has seen, lived and understood in direct contact with the hard of hearing and their caregivers.
Michael Uzzan is the one who makes sure Spokeo is accessible: not just available online, but genuinely distributed where hard-of-hearing people and their caregivers can find it.
A graduate in optics and of the Institut Supérieur de Gestion (ISG), he held development and purchasing roles at Carrefour, in France and in Taiwan, then at GrandVision, before joining Visiome as a partner in late 2006. That path gave him a precise command of large-scale distribution networks and key-account relationships. Like Raphaël, he has never left the field of care homes for nearly twenty years.
At Spokeo, he steers commercial strategy, partnerships and distribution networks. It is thanks to his work that Spokeo is today available through a network of partner distributors, as close as possible to the people who need it.
The founders speak
Michael Uzzan, co-founder, introduces the Spokeo listening assistant and the conviction that drives the team.
Would you like to learn more about Spokeo?
Twenty years in the field, five years of research and development, patented technology, a Grand Prix at the International Concours Lépine and one shared conviction: hard-of-hearing people who do not wear a hearing aid deserve a simple, effective solution truly suited to their daily life. That is exactly what the team has built.
Discover the Spokeo listening assistant and start your free 30-day trial.
For your health and that of your loved ones, a consultation with an ENT doctor every two years is part of recommended good practice. Spokeo is a listening assistant: it is not intended to replace a medical hearing assessment.
