Founder's Story - From Radio Obsession to Wall Street: The Untold Story of PodcastOne | Ep 217 with Kit Gray co-founder of PodcastOne

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Kit Gray, President and Co-Founder of PodcastOne (NASDAQ: PODC), reveals how he parlayed childhood radio fandom into a thriving public podcast network. From early iPod hacks with Adam Carolla to structuring live reads, community-first ad packages, and an IPO, Kit shares the timing, tactics, and tenacity behind PodcastOne’s $51M revenue and its 200-show roster.Key Discussion PointsRadio Roots & Howard Stern: How listening to sports talk and Stern’s brand-building ignited Kit’s love for audio.Selling the Download: Early deals with Adam Carolla (ProFlowers, LegalZoom) that proved CPMs & CPA tracking worked.Building a Network: Moving from one-off ad reads to 360° packages—audio, video, social—for A&E, Lady Gang, Jordan Harbinger, and more.Timing the Tides: Why the iPhone, COVID lockdowns, and YouTube’s podcast push turbocharged growth.Going Public: Lessons (and flip-flops) on spinning out, partnering with bankers, and using equity to align talent.Community over Impressions: Why buying engaged audiences beats mass buy, and how brands scale with niche pods.Key TakeawaysBe first, but stay fast: Early movers in on-demand audio captured both talent and advertisers.Proof precedes scale: Start with one host, one campaign; use hard ROI data to win bigger deals.Sell the community, not just ad slots: True influence lies in loyalty, not lowest CPM.Equity aligns interests: Offering stock to creators fosters retention and shared upside.Adapt or fade away: From iPods to social streams to IPO filings, continual reinvention is non-negotiable.Closing Thoughts Dive into how Kit Gray built a soup-to-nuts podcast empire—signing singers turned podcasters, structuring ad-stacked communities, and trading on NASDAQ—and walk away with a playbook for finding, owning, and monetizing the next great audio audience.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Notion: https://notion.com/founders* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com* Check out Square: https://square.com/go/founderAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to It Takes Energy, presented by Energy Transfer, where we talk all things oil and natural gas. Oil and gas drive our economy, ensure our country's security, and open pathways to brighter futures. The U.S. produces 13 million barrels of crude oil every day, enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools. But what is that oil used for? The gas we put in our cars is just the beginning. Nearly 50% of each barrel is refined into gasoline. Another 34% is refined into fuels like diesel and jet fuel. And the rest is used to make more than 96% of our everyday essentials like the tennis shoes you wear, the cell phone you rely on, and medicines that help save lives.

Look around and you'll see the essential role oil and gas plays in our modern lives. Our world needs oil and gas, and people rely on us to deliver it. To learn more, visit ItTakesEnergy.com. Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. Today we have Kit Gray, the president, co-founder of Podcast One, which I've been following for many years. But Podcast One is a leading podcast network, even NASDAQ under PODC, which is amazing. I cannot wait, Kit, to talk all the things through.

How is it to take a company public? But I know that podcast one has worked with the likes of A&E, Adam Carolla, Lady Gang, Justin Harbinger and 200 shows which is incredible. So Kit what was the spark for you that made you say I want to be an entrepreneur and why this industry? Yeah hey nice to meet you and thanks for having me today. Really, I became a fan of the audio medium back when I was a kid living in Boston and going to sporting events with my dad dragging me around to tennis matches or soccer matches or baseball games that I

was playing. We'd listen to Sports Talk Radio to break up the awkward silence. During commercial breaks, we would actually talk about it and have something fun to talk about. Audio has always had a special place in my heart. That kind of grew as Howard Stern came into my life and listening to him and then watching him on his TV show and then realizing how he built brands and built his show and his radio network. He really was a thought leader in that space. We talk about 360 video podcasts now.

Well, Howard did it years and years and years ago and we really did an amazing job. When you look at endorsement radio or endorsement anything, I knew that was like an extremely powerful thing early in my career. I wound up going to school not for anything in the radio or audio space, but I was an analyst. I went to business school, got my MBA in finance, and worked in a national security firm in Orlando, funny enough, with missiles and defense contracts and everything that I'm not about. But I did learn a lot from that experience and went to Chicago, worked in a bar with some friends after grad school, and then decided to take a job in New York City working

for Katz Media Group, which was part of iHeart Clear Channel. And what we did was we represented radio stations across the country and then started to pitch why certain radio stations should be on a media spend out of advertising agencies in New York. And from there, I really learned the business where the funnel of money from clients to ad agencies to planners to buyers, how it all kind of went out. That was kind of how I learned the business. I was actually opening an office for them in Los Angeles in 2004, 2005. I started to listen to podcasts, which back in the day, you had to actually download a

file on your computer, hook up your iPod or whatever device you had for MP3s at the time. And then you download and drag it over and then maybe add a tape player in your car where the wires are out and all that kind of stuff. And you could listen to on-demand content. And the reason I love that so much was I lived in Los Angeles. I hate the Lakers. I hate Dodgers.

I'm a Boston guy at heart. And so basically I had to listen to Boston radio stations on demand that were doing this and that's what we did. So I would drive and sit on the 405 in traffic, go into meetings and listening to my podcast. I started to think about the medium that I was in and there was scale that I could start to bring those to advertising. What I did on my own was there's a guy named Adam Carolla from The Man Show. He wrote for Jimmy Kimmel.

He was on Love Line, which he was with Dr. Drew, which was a national syndicated radio show at night, but also on MTV, which is funny. Dan Marugas talking about MTV and Spring Breaks and stuff like that, where I live. We just started to talk about, Adam did a podcast after he actually took over for Howard Stern on the West Coast for Syndication. It didn't last too long, unfortunately. It was a really good show.

So he decided to do a podcast and I was listening to that and I reached out to him. We started making some ad deals where Pro Flowers and Megal Zoom and Stamps.com and Citrix. We would do reads and we had great return on investment based on these tracking codes and I started to build a business. So I started my own company there, started representing Mark Maron, Bill Burr, the Nerdist, CBS News, and creating a network of shows to offer advertisers in 2012 or something like that. And it was really exciting. The medium changed tremendously with the iPhone and being able to download shows and then

figuring out what a download is and what's an impression and targetability and connecting to programmatic desks. And we've created, I sold my company two times now and I still run it podcast one because I love it and it's a great sell and I love my team and I love the shows that we work for and work with. And it's been amazing. We now do about 51 million dollars in revenue. We're publicly traded which we'll talk a little bit more about hopefully and then you know we've got about 200 shows and

mostly they are really created so they can work for advertisers right but we do IP where we have shows that we've sold to different networks to become TV programs or movies or books. We do merch, we do live shows. We really do everything kind of soup to nuts to help the podcasters monetize their content. We market them, we do talent booking, we do sales, collections, all that fun stuff to really make sure talented people like the people that you mentioned earlier, the Jordan Harbingers, the Lady Gangs, the Caitlin Bristows, the A&Es, that they can give us more content or create more content that we can try to advertise

through some models. So that's our business. You business. We've been on the NASDAQ now under PODC for about two years. And that's a whole different animal. But I you know, I really enjoy talking to you, you know the talent and in creating relationships with them and Certainly a very lucky guy in the sense that I get to deal with some of the funniest smartest people in the world So it's been fun. So I'm curious about What you say is very important when it comes to timing. Some of the most successful people that we have spoken to have told me that timing was everything for them. Whether it was timing of the idea or timing of how long they stuck it out, these all were very important to the success of the company.

How do you feel that timing was since you were so, not only were you so early on, but you've also been doing it for so long? Yeah, you know, timing is a lot to it, right? And hard work and perseverance and believing. I got lucky in the sense that, you know, this medium really took off as audio was kind of going this way and still is, this really put new life into the audio experience. And the people that really got behind it really understand how impactful audio is. And you look at radio stations and the fact that you'd have, I don't know, 6 AFN towers and 4 AM towers in the market or whatever it is, right don't know, six AFN towers and four AN towers in

the market or whatever it is, right? Each one is different, but it's so limited in what programming you can offer, not only viewers or listeners, but also advertisers, right? In this case, the internet is unlimited, right? So you can do podcasts on gardening and get an audience and monetize it and make a life if you want. I got lucky too in the sense that COVID happened and that was horrible, obviously a lot of sleepless nights, stressful times, but it actually helped the medium quite a bit because people were stuck in their homes,

a lot of solitude, had a lot of time to watch or consume content. Once that ran out, people started to get into podcasts and a lot of these types of conversations like we are having right now, where you're across the country from me, this became acceptable forms of content for people to consume. They didn't care. This is normal now, right? And that timing-wise kind of helped us and it helped the medium.

And three years ago, YouTube got into the podcasting space and now they're the number one consumption platform for podcasting and videos exploding. So we got lucky there too. No matter what your political views are, and I definitely don't want to get into that, certain people in the last election took advantage of the podcasting space and what it offers. I think Elon Musk, Ron Rogan said it perfectly, when you have an hour, two-hour interview, you can't hide. When people get to know the person they're listening to, the host, it's tremendous. I think podcasting, or I know, and I know President Trump would say it greatly helped his opportunity to be the president again. And that's pretty cool stuff for a medium that isn't that old. Really living, that's time. Yeah, I was just going to bring up these two stats. One was YouTube being the number one consumption place for podcasts.

But then also a lot of these traditional cable shows, they are creating their own podcasts now because they see the traditional side of TV, the linear side has been dropping. How did you then navigate the landscape of this being audio focused from iPod to iPhone to phones to moving into social media now, and then everyone getting into it. Like you said, I think everyone in 2020 launched a podcast.

Funny enough, that's when we launched. This show right here was the early stages of COVID. How are you navigating that? And not just the specifics, but as a founder, as a president, how do you navigate the changing landscape? As we know, business can change every five minutes, and if you're not keeping up, your company can be in trouble. Yeah, you know, to me, and I've had this debate with a lot of companies, salespeople, clients, agencies, you name it, but to me, the smartest companies out there and the ones that are gonna win the advertising world

and become the Squarespace's, the Untuckets of the world that started in podcasting and now are in Super Bowl commercials and publicly traded and worth billions of dollars. These are companies that understood buying communities. When I say we're a podcasting company, it's yes, we are and that's our focus of doing live reads and endorsements and all the stuff I've already talked about. But really when you're a brand and you're buying into a community, that's where I see the most impact.

And there's a lot of brands that work with a lot of big ad agencies and big companies that I'll leave them out of this. But when you just start putting money into it and selling mass impressions even at a small discounted rate, you're not getting what really is gonna move the needle, in my opinion. And my opinion is if you can look at 20 podcasts that have solid numbers in audio, video, social media. You put them all together

and say to a brand, hey, I can do this, this, and this, and you can actually do what I tell you you're going to do, whether it's put the State Farm Pillow in the right spot or the mug in the right spot, get the social media when they need it with the backdrops. If you can do that, those are the companies that are going to really win and see great success. So that's what we do. That's why we're different. We go into these big brands and bring 10, 15, 20 like-minded podcasts and bring video, audio, social, mass scale, and then we come through and they keep coming back because they're seeing great results. There's always a battle on how much money is going to go to these big agencies and they're going to throw it out on radio and TV and overnights to get low CPMs.

And I'm like, well, that's not us. We value our inventory, we value our community, we value the endorsements. I have a lot of clients that say no to certain brands for whatever reason, and that's okay. We will find other ones that will fit better, and we do the work that way. It's fun, man. Who knows what the next thing is going to be in this space, but I'm excited about it and it keeps growing and clients are happy and when you're a sales guy, like you need that's a dream come true.

Okay, Kit, I need you to sell me this pen. So I remember like, that was like the funniest, the most question. I looked at so many interviews where they said that. It was like, how did this become even a thing? But I am curious, what's the first thing that you sold in your life? What was the first thing that you sold? Well, I mean, first thing, like, geez, it goes back to being like 12, 13 years old

and like figuring out girls for the first time, right? And selling yourself, right?, who you are and that kind of stuff. So there's that. For podcasting, it was awesome. It's a cool story, I think, at least. When I went to Adam Carolla and said, pro flowers, cherries, berries, is on the hook. This is like 2012 and they want to do a campaign with you. I told them it's going to be like a thousand bucks to

do a read and leading up to Valentine's Day, the media buyers are like, you're crazy. That's more money than K-Rock Morning Drive in LA. I'm like, well, what about doing a CPA, which is cost per thousand thing? They're like, all right, we'll pay you 12 bucks for every person that uses Adam's code. I'm like, okay, let me see if I can sell Adam on doing it. Talk to Adam and I said, hey, this is what I'm thinking we do. You lean in heavy on this. Let's see what happens. I know that if I can get proof of concept here, they've got more advertisers. I can go to more advertisers that'll do things like this and we'll start rolling. So I got him to do it and Adam is a tremendous sales guy himself.

He's got this great audience that he could talk to them about supporting the show and if you're going to send anyone Valentine's Day flowers. got this great audience that he could talk to them about supporting the show and, you know, which you're going to send anyone Valentine's Day flowers. By the way, there's Mother's Day coming up, so don't forget. You know, so, you know, just he, I think he got, I think when we ended the campaign, it was two weeks, the buyer called me back after Valentine's Day and said, I've got some great news. I said, all right, well, let's see. What is it? He goes, we owe you $43,000.

I'm like, holy moly, man, we're on it. I knew then that this is the business. He started getting more clients involved. We did calls where Adam would get on with talent, with brands and kind of talk about that too. And so, you know, I think everything's sales, man. I mean, if you're a sales guy or a sales guy, you're selling all the time, right? So, yeah, that's what it is. So I'm wondering, I think most people would say, I want to work with a celebrity or I want to work with somebody,

but I'm too afraid to message them I'm too afraid to contact somebody who I would think is more important more special than I am more known That is very gutsy of you back then to do that and I like how you added value to him versus Trying to extract value from him you added value to him So if somebody is like hey hey, kid, I'm going to message, you know, so and so, because this could change my life. Like what happened with you? How do you think or what would you say to them as to how do I go about messaging

this person? Because this is huge. I am I know so many people that would never have done that, but you took the chance. Yeah. You know, we go back to timing, right? Adam had just lost his job at CBS, you know, being syndicated. He was starting a podcast. You know, he had like a fan, like email list. So I'm like, I'll just send it in, you know. And he got back within a day.

And I went in and met with him and his team over in Glendale and we started doing it. And nobody knew what a download was or any of that kind of stuff. We figured it out and it worked. You know what I would say? There's a million ways to reach out to talent now through Instagram and you know, all these shows that I'm, you know,

too old for now, but I would say never have any regrets in life, right? Like if you wanna do something, go make it happen. You know, and my wife of 12 years now, she, we weren't married at the time when I started the company, but she supported me along the way and, you know, gave me great beliefs and what I was doing. And, you know, that, that was really cool of her and having a supportive group around, like so when those happened and it was stressful, right?

Like after I started building the business people would start you know reaching out to Adam and I'll do it too and you know you're sort of like me and a battling turf and it got a little you know crazy. The good news is I you know I met some investors that I could start to take on some money and hire some people and get contracts going and protect my business. That's what I had founded. Back to your original thing though, if you have an idea and you believe in it, go for it. You only live once, right?

This is it. I'm one of the few lucky people living my dream. I love it. I've had a bunch of dreams, but this is one of them. And I still wake up every day and love it. I'm so lucky. You always look really relaxed. You look like you're having a good time.

You don't look stressed. So I wasted though, being the president of a publicly traded company, and how was the process of taking the company public? So that's not the first time I've heard this about not being stressed, which is so crazy because if you knew me in my head, like I'm there's a lot going on up here. And there's a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights and, you know, I've got 40 employees and they have families. There's a lot there, but I try to live it differently. I'm wearing flip-flops and wearing shorts right now. I don't think I'm your typical CEO of a publicly traded company. I go into New York and I was at a conference up there and I was speaking at it and one of the guys came

up after doing it because that was the most fun presentation. I'm like, yeah, because I don't do slides or any of that kind of stuff. I just kind of talk and it's a... One of the best things I've ever done for my personal growth was picking up a new language. Whether you're traveling, leveling up your career, or just love learning, speaking another language opens up many doors and Rosetta Stone makes it easier, more immersive, more fun. It's the leading language learning program available right on your desktop or mobile. Rosetta Stone helps you learn naturally just like you picked up your first language through real world context and conversation. Just practical skills you can use right away. What I love most is the true accent speech recognition. It gives you real-time

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slash founders and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at NorthwestRegisteredAent.com slash founders. It's a fun place and he goes, yeah, I feel like you're like wearing flip-flops. And I'm like, if I could wear flip-flops here, I would, you know, like that's, that's just kind of my personality. I lived in California and, you know, just have that. Running a public traded company is interesting. The company that bought us LiveOne, which is LVO on the NASDAQ, spun us out their offering into a new offering. That was interesting.

We worked with Gunner and then we also worked with the Roth Bank and understanding the process of going public, how that works, what is entailed in it. The reason why we did it is to make it an all-inclusive space for talent producers for talent producers to really win in it. So even when these big deals come down on Spotify or Amazon, the talent's not getting the piece of it. It's a contract and it is what it is. For us, when we go out to sign talent or work with new talent, we like to offer them stocks.

So they feel the upside, potential upside of the of the company, right? So we all are kind of swimming in the same direction together and it's it's unique so we we use stock a lot of times to help us in some of these deals and You know Hopefully keep people like Adam and Brendan's job and all these guys have worked with for years and years To stay with us because they're invested in the company. That's pretty cool.

We're continuing to grow. We have a lot of M&A conversations going on right now with a lot of different podcasting companies and non-podcasting companies where we feel we're profitable, which is great. And we feel like we have all the systems in place where we don't need any more backend stuff or really more salespeople, maybe some more producers. But if we take on more scale, that'll help. And if a company comes into us and we can take some of their things like finance and HR and payroll and all that stuff off their plates and help them monetize and market their

shows that one plus one will equal three or four, right? And everybody will roll. So it's been interesting. I mentioned it earlier. I get a chance to talk to people like Whitney Cummings who I'm going to talk to later today of just brilliant, funny, amazing people that are so talented and had so much success in their career and they're so fun to talk to. And then I got a call with an analyst, right? Which is fun but different.

So it's no offense to those analysts. I love them too. So yeah. I'm an analyst and I think I'm funded to, no I'm not really an analyst. But an unofficial analyst. So, no, this has been great kid. I could, I'm really fascinated and I'm excited

by the fact that talent can now take over and really win versus before they had to work through management and they had to work through. There's so many layers like you said in the end they don't even really make much of the money. It was very little if any at all. There's always there's too many people involved but now they can create their own show. They can have their own asset. They can build a company. I was just reading about how a diary of a CEO was offered $100 million to do a deal with whatever company was, like a Spotify or whatever,

and he turned it down and said, they can create a company around what they're doing and make more money than $100 million, and how they wouldn't even receive a lot of the $100 million in the end. And I was like, wow, this is very interesting that it seems like the talent now has almost more of the upside

or has more of the control than before where it really was like these record labels or these Hollywood studios, like they really had the control and the talent had to bend to them. But this has been amazing, Kit. If people wanna get in touch with you, they wanna find out more information. How can they do so? Yeah, happy to take any emails that kit kit at podcast one. That's O ne calm

I tried to respond to almost everybody but we we're on You know every social media platform and you can go to podcast one comm Check out our shows listen to the super talented people that have some amazing stories to tell and you'll find something you like and really enjoy it. But I've enjoyed my conversation with you guys and really appreciate your time today. Same, I know we might've met each other

in Orlando many years ago, who knows. But it was only as we're calling it In the future, but thanks for joining us today and founder story. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care guys What's standing between you and your first sale on Shopify time expertise resources What if you couldn't all three? Product descriptions? Done. Store insights? Delivered.

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