Women in Audio: Meet Amelia Santos of Innuos

“I love the fact that I have an engineering background because today, for example, I understand a lot more about what we do, and I can talk about it,” Amelia Santos, the co-founder, and chief executive officer of Innuos, told me when I interviewed her over facetime recently. This was Amelia’s first interview for the audio industry press, so before I go much further, I want to thank her for the opportunity to share her story.

Amelia, met her husband, Nuno Vitorino, in college. He also earned a degree in engineering and he is the co-founder of Innuos and chief technology officer in charge of R&D. Together with their talented and growing team of employees they develop and market highly-regarded digital music servers/streamers. Since launching their brand in 2016, their products have rapidly gained respect in the relatively new but fast-growing category of components for streaming digital music.

As we talked, it became clear that each step in Amelia’s career path prepared her for where she is today. After graduating from college, she worked in consulting, strategy, sales development, and a number of other roles at SAP Portugal and SAP Germany. Within a few years, she decided to pursue an MBA. “I needed to know more about business because I was working more in the area of business development.”

After earning the MBA, Amelia joined Nuno in London where she worked in management for Tesco, a major online and brick-and-mortar retail store. “I did different projects for them working on the convenience stores, on non-food, and then I moved to manage a part of their online store for non-food working on electronics, clothing and a lot of different areas.” 

“Oh, We Built It”

As we talked, it also became clear that for Amelia and Nuno, listening to music is like breathing air. You just have to have it to live. Amelia says they have always felt a real need to have music in their home. “I still remember early on when we got married, we went to buy our HiFi. Nuno decided to build a device where we could store all of our music so we could hear it on our HiFi without having to use a CD player or turntable with the restrictions that they have.” At the time, she says, a lot of content was moving to digital. “We were not happy with just a computer itself or with an app, we wanted to build something specific, so we did.”

When friends came over, people would ask, “Where did you get that?” We would say, “Oh, we built it.” With this interest from friends, Amelia says she started looking about and thinking. Finally, she said to Nuno, “Maybe you should put it on eBay just to see what it would get to.”

After six months, they had sold about 200 units on eBay. “I looked at that,” she added, “and I knew a lot of people from my MBA class had started their own companies. I thought we might have something here.  I was a little risk-averse. We were doing corporate careers, which makes it a lot harder to drop everything to step out on your own. At that time, Nuno was a senior manager for Deloitte. We also had a small kid, and we were living in London, which is quite an expensive place to live. All of that complicated things.”

Early Days of Innuos

“When we first started, I remember Nuno’s workbench was our dining table. I had to shoo Nuno away so I could put dinner on the table. It was very hard as we were working all the time, but we really thought there was a market potential.” Amelia recalled that in the beginning, they were both getting very tired of their heavy corporate work schedules and wanted more time to work on building something new. In 2011, Nuno quit his job to start work on what would become their first Innuos product. Amelia joined him in 2012. While it took some time to make the decision, Amelia said they thought it was the right decision to make the move.

In those early days, the chassis was more off the shelf and the software had some tricks. They soon started developing more of their own things, especially the hardware and software. “We have always been very close to the market, really understanding what people wanted from a music server and streamer,” Amelia added. They also decided that while it made sense to continue in the UK, they also needed to establish a base in Portugal where they could develop the products and be closer to family.

Launching the Brand

In 2014, they recruited their first hire. They launched the Innuos brand in 2016. The company has now grown to 36 employees, 3 offices in Europe, and people in the US. Looking back she said, “We were overwhelmed and humbled by the amount of positive feedback we had from the press when they started trying the product and by the endorsements we got from very established and well-respected brands. They really realized when they started using our music servers and streamers the sound quality of their speakers, their amplifiers, and their DACs improved. They also realized how easy our servers and streamers are to use, and that they were stable.”

“We were not expecting the great feedback. You always have high hopes, but we were not expecting the market response that we have received. The brand is now in 40 different markets.” She also says that 99% of the resellers that work with Innuos come to them. “They discover the brand somehow and they get in touch with us and want to work with us. That’s how we’ve been growing. We have over 300 resellers.”

Family Life

As their business has grown, so has their family. Amelia and Nuno now have a 10-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son. “It’s hard at times to juggle family life,” she admits and adds that Nuno is a hands-on dad. “I think the way we have learned to cope is by really focusing on what we are doing at the time. If we are with the kids, we try to really focus on being with them and provide them with quality time. It’s really hard, but that’s what we try to aim for.” Sometimes, she admits the balance tips a little.

The Pandemic and Business

Amelia says that one thing they really believe in and want to teach their children is social responsibility. “We looked around us this past year and felt that there are a lot of people who are less fortunate than us. So, we also decided to get involved in social responsibility like giving scholarships to kids in engineering, supporting food programs, and supporting a music school that gives kids from poor neighborhoods the same opportunity as kids who can afford to pay.”

“We were fortunate in that we still grew quite a lot last year. We had to adjust our operations to do drop ship delivery to the end customer instead of delivering to the stores because the stores were closed.” Amelia admits that in the beginning working with logistics companies was a nightmare. Sometimes these companies just did not deliver things.

As we all realize, the pandemic has had a huge impact on the audio industry. Amelia said, “I feel music has become more important and will continue to be so. We have also tried to do little bits with music to support line workers.” One of the things we miss is shows. Once the pandemic is under control, I think we will need to find ways to keep in touch.”

Innuos in Five Years

I couldn’t wrap up the interview without asking Amelia where she thinks Innuos will be in five years. Her first response was, “It depends on the pandemic.” We both quickly agreed that we hope the pandemic is under control soon.

As for what’s in the future for Innuos, Amelia says that while HiFi is core to their business, she also sees the company expanding into other areas of digital audio. “I see us developing into other areas such as custom installation. We already have quite a few installers in commercial and residential installations that are using our music servers. I think we can continue to develop the products further to meet their needs.”

Professional audio is another area where Amelia sees an opportunity, and some studios are testing some of their products. “We feel that we can make a difference for them listening to the music they are producing and mastering to help them hear it in the best way.” She says the Innuos PhoenixUSB is an example of a product that is being used in professional studios because it improves the sound quality of recorded digital music.

Future Growth

To wrap up the interview, I asked Amelia about plans for Innuos’ growth. “We have been focusing more in Europe and North America and a few countries in South America. We also have countries like Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Australia. We haven’t entered bigger markets like China, South Korea, and Japan. We’ve been having demand from those markets, but I preferred to have our operation stable and more structured to make sure that we properly take care of the markets we are already in.” While she sees the big markets in Asia as culturally very different from the Western world, she says, “I feel we are getting to a point where we are ready to start addressing them. I think we are getting there.”

Wrapping up the interview, Amelia said, “I see it [the music industry] more long term. I wish more people had access to high-quality music. I feel that music has been a big loss. We have focused more on convenience, and we lost the sound quality. We should try to expose more people to the joy of experiencing music the way a high-end system allows you to because of the joy, the emotion, and everything it can bring from being immersed in the music.”