Founder's Story - He Built a Startup That Books 5% of All Podcast Interviews—With No Code. | Ep. 275 with Parker Olson Co-Founder of Podpitch

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

In this episode of Founder’s Story, Daniel Robbins sits down with Parker Olson, the creator of PodPitch—the fast-growing platform now responsible for 4–5% of all weekly English-speaking podcast bookings. Parker breaks down the exact zero-to-one steps behind building software without code, finding product-market fit, securing early revenue, and surviving the mental collapse moments that nearly ended his career. Key Discussion Points: Parker shares how a VA using a no-code scraper for influencer outreach accidentally inspired the entire PodPitch engine. He reveals why the biggest mistake founders make is trying to build products they themselves don’t use, and how he validated PodPitch by asking prospects a single uncomfortable question: “Why won’t you give me $10 right now?”He goes deep into pricing strategy, experimenting in real time on sales calls, and how one tiny feature unlocked the entire business. Parker also opens up about living in a tent for two years, getting bed bugs in his camper van, dropping spoiled CPG samples across 60 stores, and being wrongfully arrested—all while bootstrapping his previous company. The conversation expands into the rise of solopreneurs, why “painkillers beat vitamins,” and how AI is shifting the future of work faster than anyone is ready for. Takeaways The best software companies are built by founders solving their own painful problems—not chasing trends. Early traction isn’t about flashy branding; it’s about finding the first person who will pay real money. No-code tools have erased excuses—anyone can build an MVP today. Entrepreneurship is 90% psychological endurance, 10% execution, and the future belongs to solopreneurs solving hyper-specific problems using AI and automation. Closing Thoughts This conversation is a masterclass in honesty, resilience, and the simple frameworks that actually build successful products. If you’ve ever wanted to launch an app—or escape the traditional 9–5—this episode will flip a switch inside you. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Parker, man, it's good to have you today because you and I had a really fun conversation last time. This time we started off with dreams and how you're taking magnesium now. And your dreams have just been crazy off the wall. You gave me one. It sounded like a movie. But I think something that I'm really interested to talk with you is I've always dreamt about creating an app, creating software, but it always failed. And at the same time, I use your app and software pod pitch on a daily basis. So I wanted to see from you the whole entire process as if somebody like myself, I want to solve a problem.

I know a software I want to build. But I don't know this, you know, the zero to 100, I'm confused. I don't know what to do. So I'd love go through with you this whole process. So can you go back to the beginning stage of how did you come up with the problem to solve? Absolutely, yeah. So the first place I think is worthwhile starting is like a lot of people want to start with the end in mind, right? How can I get to do $100 million? The reality is I think up front, like being curious is sort of stage number one. So rewind right, two, three years ago was working with a VA at the time and she was doing influencer outreach for us. And all of a sudden she was she was able to reach like custom messaging to, influencers on TikTok at like three or 400 like an hour. And I was like, what are you doing?

And she's like, oh, I found this cool new tool. It's called Bardeen. It's a web scraping tool. It allows me to like basically like code it without actually coding, right? It's a code free tool where it scrapes all the data off of TikTok off of search results. And it pulls it into the spreadsheet and I can super quickly automate the outreach. And I'm like, damn, that's super cool. And around that same time, I had been invited on some podcasts.

and had sort of, it had sort of brought some interesting traction to my old company that I used to run is called Forage. And, you know, some people had listened to it and reached out and wanted to carry it. It was a food product in their grocery stores. And so in my mind, right, my problem statement was like, okay, cool, I want to go on more podcasts. And how can I do that? And, you know, I was sort of going the traditional route that a lot of people still do today, which is I was sort of like manually looking up podcasts. I was trying to find them, trying to find their contact information, listen to a bit of an episode and like send an email. And, you know, I'm like, damn, this sucks.

I'm not going to be, I'm not going to do this for a long time. I can guarantee that. And then I was just kind of hanging out and this other tool that I was loving. I was just like, I want to, I want to like dig into this other tool. It feels like there's something really powerful here. Like, how could I use it to sort of perform like a fun project that would be meaningful for our business? And what I thought about was, you know, why can't I use this to help pull in a bunch of

information about relevant podcasts and then sort of help me scale out like the research identification and outreach process to these podcasts. So I think like early on it was just like this sort of natural curious intuition that like, whoa, this tool could be really powerful. Like what's the current problem I have today that like this could help solve? And part of it was just playing around. I would just get on there and play around and like mess around in this tool. It's called it. It's called Bardeen still, still around. So so works really well. And so I always think like step number one is like figure out and like go out and play with some of these code free tools right another great tool that i think is a lovely example is clay clay is just like there's so much power there you can

pull in data sources you can transform data sources with lMs really easily and you can create output and it's all code free so does that does that sort of help sort of like set the scene in terms of like i'm thinking day one if you want to build the software like get onto some of these tools that are code free and can help sort of transform data and create an output that can potentially solve a problem. Yeah, you know, when I built some softwares before, I think the problem looking back was I was trying to solve a problem that I didn't really have. So I didn't necessarily, I wasn't so bought into it because I wouldn't use it myself. And I was more replicating what I knew was on the market. Like I worked with something and I knew, okay, I'm going to replicate this because

it came out first. I'm going to be second to market, but I never would even use it. And then a lot of issues came about because it was first. I didn't anticipate. And so I love your idea of you build something that you use. And then if you use it, then you know other people will definitely have the same problem and use it too. So now, okay, so you built it. I love what you're saying around. You can create an MVP now without any knowledge, which is insane. Like it's insanity. How how the times we're living in. So you build this app, you get this data, you put it together. And then how do you actually get traction?

Because I think that's the other piece that people are like, okay, I build something, but it's not easy to get significant traction. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Just one last point on that, and then we'll go to traction. I also think a lot of people who are non-technical get caught up and like to spend time on like the visual component or like the user interface or the like front end component. and it's like, oh, I'm going to like build wireframes and Claude.

And like, that's all great. Like, like that can be helpful. But like I would say really focus on getting like like a concrete like something that's actually being created or happening. Right. My general mental framework is like transforming data to create an output that has value to some audience. Now, to your point, you know, actually gaining traction way harder than everybody thinks.

Everybody thinks, oh, I'm going to build a great product and then I'm just going to sell it and then I'm going to be a millionaire. And like the reality is great companies die every single day because they can't find customers and or communicate to potential customers in a really effective way and put together a good offer or a good price. That makes it easy for a customer to say yes. And growth and demand generation is really challenging. This took us about, man, six months to like even crack.

And what I'll say is, and I come back to this. Like if I was going to start another company to me, tomorrow, like I would start here, honestly, is like, find the person who's willing to actually give you money for whatever you're building. And, and of course, that sounds somewhat intuitive, but, but the important part here is give you money, like actually exchange dollars, right? It's very easy for somebody to say, oh, this tool's really cool. Great job. Wow. Yeah, yeah, this would solve a lot of our problems. Wow. Yes, this is so great. But if they're not going to be money, then it's really not great. And so what I used to do, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

think I think this is a super easy playbook. I actually, I met a woman who's working on a software here locally in Brooklyn at a party. And she's running this playbook right now, which I'm pretending is awesome, is, okay, let's say you think you've built something that that creates value or solves a problem. But you don't know how to find people. You don't know how to sell it. If I were to go back again, I would kind of run the same playbook. I would first theorize, okay, who has this problem? Who has this, like, where does this problem exist?

And then I would go on to LinkedIn and I would spend, you know, 50 to 80 bucks. a month to create like a LinkedIn outreach automation to this audience and say, hey, you know, I like think I solve this problem. You know, I have no experience. Like do you have 10 minutes for feedback? Like, and I like to play the card of being like, I'm helpless. I don't know, but I think I can solve your problem. Like people like to help other people. And we ran that and I was, you know, I was getting on the phone with people in public relations who we thought was maybe our primary use case of our tool. I'd maybe get on the phone with like five to 10 people in PR a week. And I was really kind of not there to sell, but of course, you're there to sell, right?

It's a fine line. And what I would show them is I would show them the product and what we're building and how it looks and what it does. And they're like, yeah, wow, that solves a lot of, that solves a big problem for us, right? Like doing media outreach is really time consuming and challenging and finding podcasts is hard. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, awesome. And what we realized is over time for like three months, everybody was giving great feedback, but nobody was like, I want to pay for for this right now. And so we sort of changed our strategy where what we would do is I would tell

people, I'd be like, look, at the end of this call, I'm going to ask you an uncomfortable conversation. And I would lead with that and they're kind of like, oh, ha, ha, like, okay. And we'd go through it and they'd be like, wow, this is so cool. And I'd be like, okay. So like, I have to ask like, like, like for the sake of our company. Like, why will you not pay for this right now? Like, $10. Like, like, you know, like, why wouldn't you give me $10 for this right now? Like, I could, accept your money over this phone and tell me why. And that's where people, they're like, oh, and that's where they give you like the real feedback.

You know, they're like, oh, well, like, I can't spend money in anything. That's my boss's decision. Or they're like, oh, well, like, we actually have this other tool. It kind of already does the same thing, but your tool could be better. But like, you know, teaching my team the tool would be really painful and like, you know, like we're really busy. And you're like, okay, so it's not that relevant, right? or in our case, which I think is a natural progression,

it finally got to the point where the woman was like, I would give you money right now if it could do this one additional other thing. And in my mind, we had already built that. We just weren't showing it because all the positive feedback we were getting wasn't about that little small other thing. And when we finally added that small little thing in and literally what happened, I said, okay, I'm going to come back on the phone with you in three hours. Give me three hours.

Went back, put it together, came back on the phone, showed her that it worked and she goes, here, pulls out her credit card. And she paid us on the spot. And that was the product that ended up scaling. And that's where that was like the first unlock where we're like, this is actually something is like something that like this type of customers willing to give us money for. But I think that like subtlety of like, oh, like let me get feedback. Everybody says it's great, which means it's going to sell is is not the fuck. Excuse me.

It's not the reality. Everybody's nice. Everybody gives good feedback. Once you can find people who are really actually willing to give you a dollar or $2 or real money, that's how you know you're sort of on to something. That's kind of how we got started. You think of you and I, because I was like, hey, I got this email and it says this one thing. And you're like, oh, wow.

Okay, let me fix that. And you like, da, da, da, that. Okay, fixed. But you bring up something really interesting, a couple, many things, something I'm going to go back to because this happened to me, too, is originally I thought I was. Originally, I thought I was going to be serving more of a certain B to C customer. But when I found out that I can actually help businesses who are serving those people, it actually allowed me to lead gen at basically almost a free rate because they were referring me to other people, referring to me other people.

Also, I barely had to do any sales because I knew they needed it, where if I had to sell direct to like B to C, I have to do a lot. a lot of the selling and it the process is longer even though our margin would be higher, but still in the end, they're not going to, they're going to churn faster. So I'm like, so I when I found, okay, I can actually help agencies. That wasn't unlocked for us in terms of a significant growth trajectory while at the same time, you know, the slower the B to C style. So I can totally see that.

And the other part of like you're saying, is somebody willing to get. you money because people are very positive when i phone like you said people never want to tell you the truth i don't know if they want to hurt your feelings or what but i i like the digging man that's like an old that reminds me like old school sales training tactics right there where it's like the the overcoming objections if they say this what is it zig ziggler it was like everyone says no it was like this no means this this no means that uh i i forget the the quote i i i pictured it but but that's i think that I can totally relate to those things. And I would imagine most apps or software, they die because of that, because they're not really focused on getting the money,

which if you don't have any money or you just do it for free, how long, unless you're raising hundreds of millions and eventually you'll run out of money. So it sounds like you unlocked it. You started getting revenue. You figured out what the what the people really want. And then what? Yes. So then it's sort of like, it's like pricing and like scale, you know, how do you attract this audience at scale and like, you know, pricing is really challenging. Pricing is still something we, we mess around with and think about all the time because it's one of those things where it's a lot of trial and error. You know, you could think about cost plus pricing. You could think about competitor like based pricing. You could think about value creation based pricing. There's pros and cons to all them. Like we've sort of gone down a bit of like a value based. pricing ethos. And the reality is, is like, you kind of just have to try things. It's going to be super messy early, but like, the important thing is getting money in the door. And so what we used to do is like, we'd be like, okay, cool, like we're going to sell it. Well, initially off the bat, we knew that, okay, we want to build a business model that is, that is reoccurring. By design,

reoccurring business models are more valuable than transactional business models. And so that, that was like a non-negotiable. The other non-negotiable is like, we wanted it to be a really fast sales cycle because again, it's like, look, if this is a 10, 10 week sales cycle, we're not getting feedback until 10 weeks from now. And so how do we sell something where somebody could make a decision really quickly? Again, part of it was like, we need to eat and like live. But the other part of it is like, you get a lot of feedback data really fast. So we are like, okay, we need to craft an offer that is reoccurring. And so, you know, we did subscription based pricing. And we started with like, okay, we'll do like maybe an intro price.

And then we tested different price points. And on calls, we would literally like somebody to be sold. They'd be like, cool, like, how much is this? Right. And that's after you sold it. Like, like, you kind of know this type of person's willing to buy. This is a real problem they have. And it's just like, cool.

It's $2.99 a month. It's $3.99 a month. It's $5.99 a month. Right. And you start to get a sense of like where you start to get a gauge, right? of sort of like where most people are landing. And that I think is a really good initial step. I think the step two of that, which like, I don't think we've done an excellent job at

and it's something we're working on right now is thinking about tiered pricing for like the different type of customer. You know, our kind of pricing sort of opts out certain smaller types of customers because it's too expensive for them. And then really big customers like, they're like, oh, this is nothing, right? And so like in reality, like paying attention to that over time and setting up tiers where it's like, okay, you can kind of get more coverage on your on your customer base while providing specifically to their needs, I think is sort of that next step. But it's super trial and error off the bat and understanding, okay, what's scalable, what actually builds a good business model. So that's pricing. It's a,

it's a huge challenge for everyone. There is no magic bullet. The second component is how do you actually grow? How do you actually reach the audience? And for us, you know, it's just like, okay, where does our audience hang out? Like, and a lot of it, again, is trial and error. But what we found early on is like, we tried kind of advertising. We tried to do. doing different outreach methods. And then we, we partnered with a substack newsletter that, that like, you know, was to PR agencies. It was pretty small.

They have like 900 followers, maybe not even, like 500 followers. And we placed one advertisement in there. And we booked like 75 demos in three days. And we were like, holy shit. Like, okay, like clearly the messaging is hitting on like a real pain point, right? And like, the audience is clearly right here. And like, that was sort of the start. for us, but we had to do a lot of discovery and trying different things to find that type of like

intro or like that type of sort of spark. So how many people do you have using it now? I think we have over like 5,000 active users. We like over 5,000 active users were responsible for about anywhere from like 4 to 5% of all English speaking podcast interviews that get booked every week. Those those are some of the high level stats. Where do you want to be? And where do you want to take this? Like you said in the beginning, many people like, I want to build this app because I want to be a billionaire. And we are probably not going to happen. But where do you, where do you see the future of this? And how do you want to be 35% of all podcasts?

Yeah, I mean, look, I don't know. I think, yeah, it's like podcasts. We'd love to continue to be focused. Like, you know, at this point, it's like, cool, we know who are customers. We'd love to continue solving problems for them, right? And like that also looks outside of the podcast realm, right? It looks sort of at like the media realm as a whole. So I think really building more into this like alternative media worlds, but broad media worlds as a whole.

Because our problem that we're solving for podcasts, right, that this sort of media outreach process exists in other channels as well. And we've built a lot of infrastructure to support that. So, you know, why not solve that problem in adjacent categories as well, where our exact same customer has that exact same problem? I like it's like this. You solve one problem and you be damn good at solving that one. problem and then once you get those people you realize the other problems that they have that are kind of aligned with what you're doing and then you bring one in you bring one in i think sometimes i've seen people do like 10 things at one time and it's like how do you

sell all that and it's complicated you know nobody but you know confused minds don't buy the other thing that my wife always told me uh my wife always told me was be the medicine not the supplement and i always oh god love that yeah vitamin pain till not vitamin there's there's there's there's a few frameworks that I like hold very dearly that that was one early on I was like look like we cannot build a vitamin because and and maybe to break it down for people like another framework I really like this is from an entrepreneurship class at an undergrad is like most businesses operate in successful businesses operate in in three realms they either solve jobs right solve or like remedy pain or or create a gain or create a gain

Right. And when we think across all three of those, solving a job that somebody has to complete is inherently valuable for them because they have to do it no matter what, right? Like at the end of the day, like that has to get ticked. And if you can solve that job really well for them, it's really valuable. Remedying a pain, right? Somebody is in a lot of pain. Like, you know, they have a horrible backache. Well, if you give them a pill and you say, wow, you take this pill, you're going to have no pain, super valuable. People hate pain. They'll do anything to get rid of pain. And then you have gains, right? Creating a gain can be valuable, right? Oh, I want to be hydrated right now. right okay i could go buy some electrolytes salts but that is inherently a supplement and that is not

something where if i have a pain or a job to do is going to be a priority it's sort of is like the the like de-prioritized quadrant now if you can do all three of those things it's like fucking magic right but when thinking about the framing of like what type of solution does our product provide is it a supplement which is sort of the gain or or is it a pain pill right which is sort of this job and pain concept, it's definitely, you definitely do not want to build a company around a vitamin. You do not want to do that. It reminds me of those old school copy people are like, move people away from pain. Don't move people to pleasure. Because if you really want to close, you've got to focus on moving people away from pain because that's really what everybody wants.

What is one of the craziest or standout stories during your whole life of entrepreneurship? Was there a moment where it was like, I'm losing everything. You know, like the high is like, I just closed a million dollar deal. And then the next five, I just lost the two million dollar deal. You know, like what are those moments, like this standout moment in your life? Yeah, I mean, man, I feel like I blacked them out. But so probably probably at a company. Yeah, yeah, probably at a company. Okay, I have a few ones. So early on, I built a Twitter account to like 750,000 followers. And one day it got hacked. and I lost access to it for like two months and then was able to regain access through this like complicated Twitter process. But I remember waking up that morning and being like, oh my God, like somebody hacked.

And I thought like that was going to like make my life. You know, I thought my life was like made. So that was maybe one. And then the other one is for my last business forage, which was like a health food startup. You know, again, it was it was a vitamin concepts. Big learnings. CPG is really hard. I moved into, so I lived out of a tent for,

two years in my backyard in Seattle. And I threw up my bed and we used the bedroom as like our office, which was I think just awesome. But probably more notably, after that stint, I moved into a pop-up camper van and I drove around the country for about a year. And I would stop at grocery headquarters and try and sell our product in. And I remember one day like I was carrying a lot of product in the van, but it was really hot like in the south.

And like one day I like dropped off a ton of samples to like six. locations of stores and they were all spoiled, like, like had gone like literally bad and were like, like, like, like, like, smelled like throw up. And I remember like my heart sinking. And then a week later, I, uh, I was, I like, I was at a thrift store. I bought something. And I got bedbugs in the van from this thing I thrifted. And then I got wrongfully arrested for a felony like three weeks later and and I was I was really low you could say I was I was really the dark place that's why I say like entrepreneurship is is for the 1% and it's not because every like everyone can do it and I hope everyone can do it or does do it because I want them to have the freedom I want them to be

able to do something meaningful without just being fired from your corporate job but at the same time the mind the it's a mental game that is like like every time I hear a story of like this person was successful, I want to ask them, like, what, what percentage of time were you just, like, scared, depressed, like, versus, you know, you got the exit or you got the whatever success, but, you know, what cost? How many relationships did you give? We've had so many billionaires on this show, and they're, like, all divorced. And they always tell us the same thing. Like, it always was at the cost of every relationship they ever had, whether it was their kids, their wife or husband, their spouse.

So it's great that you share. I think it's always good for people to hear this. At the same time, we're going through an interesting era where AI is, for sure, AI is going to replace so many jobs. Like Amazon just laid 14,000 people up and even said it was partially probably 90% due to AI. I'm just guessing. And so these people, what are they going to do?

These are people most likely making decent salaries that probably can't find the same thing very quickly at another job that's going to replace them. So I think people are going to listen to this Parker. Parker Olson from Podpitch co-founder. People are going to listen to this. And they're going to be like, holy crap, I'm going to solve that problem because it's never been a better time to do it. And then I'm going to tell Parker about the problem I'm solving. then I'm going to go and get pod pitch because I need to get on podcasts and talk about it. Well, just actually circling it back to the beginning, right?

I kind of heard this take that I really liked, which is like, yeah, like, there's sort of this like degrading of jobs and people who are smart. And there's a hypothesis that like the explosion in solopreneurs is like happening right now. And like people are going to be building these like hyper niche like super niche like super. specific softwares or companies that solve a very specific problem and like live an excellent lifestyle you know like you don't have to build a hundred million dollar company to like win and like and like be flexible and like have a good income like you could build a 500,000 dollar a year company and be the only employee and you know take home a salary of 300k and and make your own hours and not work a ton like that I think is like going to be a really interesting reality for a lot

of people and people who are willing and open-minded to kind of like continue to work with these tools and really see the value of them. I think times have changed. Like you said, it's it used to be the only success was to do the big exit. And in the U.S., other countries is not always the same. I know Asia, it's really about legacy. Like, I know people that have been a part of their family business for a hundred years. Like, I don't even know anyone in the U.S. that's been a part of a company for, I don't even know anyone's kids that want to take over a business, right? But yeah, it's like, you got to sell the business, which means you got to raise a bunch of money and you got to do this. And then I know people that raise a bunch of money.

It looks great, but they own like 0.01% and they exit and they make like $10,000. And they sold for like $100 million. And you're like, what the heck happened? So I'm with you. Somebody told me a few years ago, a good friend of mine, after he exited, he was like, look, I think what's going to happen is like everyone's going to be like on a freelance basis. Like you said, kind of the solopreneur style. Like they're not going to want a job.

They're not going to want to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week for one person. They're going to take on multiple people. They're going to do different things. And I think we're seeing that with younger people. They don't want to work. I don't know many people under the age of 30 that want to work 50 hours a week for one company. Like they know. They know it's not stable.

They're seeing their parents, their people, their older siblings getting fired, things changing. and also I think we realized like you said happiness like what's the cost of the hustle that you know if if you can be happy you make good decent money take home but parker this has been great by the way I started with CPG so I know I when you started talking about I used to go to grocery stores and selling it is it is a people do not understand how hard don't start a CPG company inventory. Oh, my Amazon. I have a story by Amazon that like I can't even talk about it.

It was so bad. But if people would have got in touch with you, Parker, they want to find out more about Podpitch. How can they do so? You know, Podpitch.com or, you know, find me on LinkedIn. I'm probably decently active on LinkedIn. Or you drop me an email, right, Parker at Podpitch.com. So I got to say, I've used pretty much every single pitching.

This is not just to plug or sell your software. But I've used pretty much every pitching software. and I have to say pod pitch is by far the best I've seen. And it's pretty far ahead of any competitor that I've used. I've used pretty much all of them. We actually are, I think, how long have I been using now? Like a week? I think we've booked, I think we've booked five shows.

I think, yeah. Awesome. We make five shows. I think it's been a week. And we haven't even really figured out like, like dialed the thing. Yeah, dialed in and all that. But, man, thank you for today. I hope that we inspire other people to go out there, start something, and build something and change the future, man.

Yeah, let's do it, brother. It's good to chat. And thanks for the sleep supplement recommendation, as always. And good, good to see you. I know, right? I don't want to say their name because they don't sponsor us anymore. But try some magnesium. If you're having hard time sleeping, there's some good magnesium out there.

But Barker, this is great. Thanks for joining you today. See, yeah.