How I Built This with Guy Raz - Wondery: Hernan Lopez

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

When Hernan Lopez founded Wondery in 2016, podcasts were just starting to go mainstream. Five years later, his team had scored a number of hit shows and sold to Amazon for a reported $300 million. Not bad for an immigrant from Argentina who moved to the U.S. in his late 20s with “terrible” English skills.  Before launching Wondery, Hernan worked his way up in television, eventually becoming CEO of Fox International Channels. But despite his experience and connections, he struggled to attract investors and break through in an emerging industry. After the success of shows like Dirty John, Wondery began to take off, and today it’s one of the largest podcast networks in the world, with hundreds of shows in comedy, crime, sports, history and business—including this one! This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei.Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Alex Cheng.Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Maggie Luthar.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This show is in partnership with Airbnb. This past summer I took my family to Vienna, and it was incredible. We spent our days wandering the old streets, stopping for coffee and pastries, visiting museums, and just soaking up the history of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And one of the things that made the trip so special was the home we booked on Airbnb. It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb.

Your place, with all of its personal touches and its amazing location, could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com. Hey, before we start the show, a quick thought about imposter syndrome, which is something that comes up often in how I built this interviews. I recently interviewed Kerry Brownstein, who worked with Fred Armisen to create Portlandia, which is one of the funniest TV shows of the 2010s. And Carrie talked about feeling nervous and unprepared in the writer's room. And eventually, how she found her place there. If you want to hear more about it, check out my conversation with Kerry over on my other podcast.

It's called The Great Creators. Just search for the Great Creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts or go to the great creators.com. And now on to today's show. I remember looking at the P&L statement by the end of that month and we had maybe $10,000 in revenue. And you had a staff of six? We had a staff of six. And $10,000, ain't going to cover those. those costs?

No, no, they wasn't. Like even if we get to 10 times this, 100 times this is not going to be a big business of the scale that I thought that it would. And I remember thinking, oh my God, what did I do? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today how Ernan Lopez saw the early promise of podcasts and left a corporate job to start wondering, a podcast platform that eventually sold to Amazon for hundreds of millions of dollars. Back in 2012, I left the world of broadcast radio and went into the world of podcasting.

And at the time, it was like going into exile. Up to that point, I'd only ever been a print, radio, and TV. TV reporter. So when I started in podcasting, many of the people I knew in traditional media took pity on me. Who listens to podcasts? A very famous colleague asked me at the time, and why would you listen to one subject for a whole hour? And to be honest, I asked myself the same questions. I had no idea if anyone would ever listen. But just two years into my own journey, another podcast managed to turn the whole industry mainstream. That show was season one of cereal,

and it would help usher in a podcast boom that inspired thousands of people to get into the space. One of them was a TV executive named Ernan Lopez. At the time, he was the CEO of Fox International channels, and when Ernan heard cereal, he realized the audio industry might be at an inflection point similar to what he'd seen happen to television in the early 2000s. Back then, a new technology called TiVo allowed viewers to record their favorite shows and watch them anytime.

And this allowed TV writers and producers to create an entirely different kind of program. TV shows that told long, complicated stories over the course of a season. It was the dawn of the prestige era in television. And Arnan believed that audio was prime. to go through the same revolution. So in 2016, he left his job at Fox to launch a podcast network called Wonderry. After struggling to pitch the idea to early investors and coming close to running out of cash, Arnon and a small team managed to score a hit with a true crime podcast called Dirty John. And soon enough, Wondery became the target of acquisition offers from bigger players,

including Amazon, which did acquire Wondry in 2021, reportedly for around $300 million. Ernan left the company shortly thereafter, in part to fight an indictment he faced, related to his time at Fox. He was found not guilty, but the ordeal lasted nearly three years, which we'll hear about. Also, to address the elephant in the room, yes, how I built this is distributed by Wondery, And no, they didn't ask us to make this episode. In fact, they didn't even know about it until just a few days ago. The thing is, I wanted to interview Ernan because he's one of the most successful podcast entrepreneurs in the business. And his story is somewhat unlikely.

In fact, he barely spoke English until his early 20s when he emigrated to the U.S. from Argentina. He grew up in Buenos Aires. His dad ran an auto parts store and his mom was an accountant. And Ernan came of age in the 1970s and 80s, a time of massive social change in South America. We grew up for as long as I remember in this military dictatorship. And when I was 13, I remember we transitioned to democracy. And the whole country celebrated as if it was 10 times Christmas. There was joy in the air.

And there was this enthusiasm with a newfound freedom of press. And I remember at the time going to the city to celebrate the new democratic government. And also at the same time, this is 1983, it was 13, something else was happening in my life. I was coming to the realization that I was gay and, of course, a Catholic country, not something that was easy to accept. And this also happened to be at the same time of the AIDS crisis. I got to see the awful headlines that were being written about gay people in this context and reading headlines that were just not true and feeling if people knew what the truth is, they just would not be printing with the printing.

I think that's probably when I got the bug that I wanted to work in media. I went to write for the school newspaper and then becoming the editor of the newspaper. And so when you were a teenager, and your parents or, you know, because Argentina is a sort of, and certainly then, very machismo culture, right? And so as a teenager growing up, were there other young men that, I don't know, that you could, that, I mean, was there a community that you found? Was there like an underground? No, no, not when I was a teenage. Well, I guess when I went to college to study advertising and communications, that was the first time that I talked to somebody.

told them what I was feeling, and they were open and welcomed. It was a straight guy. He was a musician. And then after that, as would happen, I met a guy and I fell in love. And any plan of being in the closet just went out of the window. How did your parents react when you told them? Not great. I think they were coming from the point of love, right? They were concerned about me, and they were having the same concerns that any parent would have.

at that time or any time at that age so they wanted me to get therapy and really believe whether it was a temporary phase or not. But they came around and they became loving and accepting and so did my siblings. I have an amazing relationship with them. I talk to them every weekend. They're still in Argentina. And so growing up, do you remember feeling like having big aspirations to do big aspirations to do big things were you, do you remember feeling ambitious as a, even as a teenager? I had a little bit of an entrepreneurial streak. I remember when I was 18 with four friends of mine. We bought airtime

on a neighborhood radio station. This was late on 9 on Thursday at 11 p.m. And we had a radio show and we financed it by selling advertising. And that show was the equivalent of what a podcast today would be. And one with 10 listeners, and that's assuming that every one of us got both of our pants to listen. But it was short-lived because then I got a real full-time job at a radio and cable company. He did so well selling ads that eventually Ernan got an offer to move to the U.S. to work for Fox International channels. And we're fast-forwarding a bit here, but while he was in the U.S., Ernan got an MBA at the University of Miami. And then rose through the ranks at Fox with almost unbelievable speed.

By age 30, he became the senior vice president for Fox Latin America, a job that partly involved adapting U.S. shows for a Spanish-speaking audience. I was in charge of programming and marketing, and I, with my team, was in charge of deciding the programming schedule and how we would market them and how we would launch them. So what kind of shows? 2000, I'm thinking like, what, what are you? Fox have, Simpsons X-Files, I think, right?

Simpsons X-Files, Ali MacBee, Buffy, the Vampire, Angel. Shows, wow. It was really a beginning of a renaissance for the 20th century Fox studio. Totally. And I didn't know this at the time, but that was the dawn of what's today considered the golden age of television. If you think about it, that was the time when the Sopranos and Six Feet Under were launching and our sister channel effects in the U.S.

was about to start that revolution with the Shield, which was their way of going after the character-driven, very greedy, incredibly well-produced drama. And I was just very fortunate to be there to witness it all. All right. So while you were sort of rising up the ranks at Foxland America, I read about this really, something you wrote about a couple years ago, and it was about your accent because, you know, having learned English only a few years earlier, you had a pretty heavy accent when you spoke English. And I guess you got advice from like a mentor.

Tell me, tell me about what happened. What happened was that in 2001, I started to report to a new boss, David Haslinden, and I learned so much. much from him. He was an amazing mentor and coach, the person that took time to develop the skills from each of the executives that he took interesting. And my career was making progress. But I had this hunch that there was something that was keeping me from going further. And his boss had sent word on the had sent a suggestion that I should take accent reduction classes. Accent reduction classes. I don't even know they exist. Of course they exist. Of course. But who knew? So was your accent hard to understand? Was it hard for being able to understand you when you spoke English? In hindsight, yes. And I remember being at meetings and seeing faces of people frowning. And I remember that being the cue that, oh, I said something that people are not understanding. And that got in the way of my ability to communicate and to inspire people and to.

get my points across. And I remember hearing that advice and say, oh my God, what a gift. How did I not see this before? How did I not know that their accent reduction coaches? So I remember finding one in LA as far as time spent versus impact on my career, one of the best decisions I ever made and I recommended this to so many people over the years. It's so interesting because I've lived all over the world as a reporter in my past life. And in countries like Germany and France, accent is really appreciated and valued. And I think in the United States today, no boss would ever give somebody this advice. They would not give this advice because it would be considered to be toxic, right?

To say, hey, you might want to take a class to work on your accent. So you're, you know, but you know what I mean? Like, nobody would have told you that in 2023 at all. 1,000 percent. And I remember the same executive gave that advice to somebody else who did get offended and didn't work on it. And you still probably can see that. I still have an accident. It's not that it completely went away.

But think about it if you are at a meeting with your peers and you come up with a great idea, but you're not communicating it well in a way that comes across. And then another colleague who has a perfect accent and is a great communicator picks up on your idea, but then communicates it in a way that inspires people, that gets people to say, oh, wow, that's a great idea. Who do you think get traded for the idea? Yeah. Yeah. I read an interview you gave a few years ago. You said, I don't think I would have made it to the C-suite level at Fox if I hadn't taken those accent classes.

A thousand percent. I don't think I would have. It's just so interesting how little tweaks, and it's not like you did this for years and years. It was a couple of months of taking classes and then practicing on your own. It's like physical therapy. You go, you get to physical therapy,

but then you got to do the work on your own. That's right. And now there are apps that allow you to do it and it give you instant feedback, so it's a lot easier now that it was before. All right. So you are now, this is early 2000s, 2003, you became president of Latin America and the GM for the UK for Fox International

Channel. So you were really, clearly you had people there who really liked you, were impressed at the work you were doing. Did you, were you good at finding mentors? I think most importantly, David, my direct boss was the best mentor and he gave me chances and opportunities to learn. But I was always somebody who was reaching out to other people and trying to learn. I heard this amazing expression that if you work in international, you have the ability to, quote, unquote, read tomorrow's newspaper.

Because you're in a country and you're seeing a trend. And that trend probably happened at some other country five years before, two years before, three years before. And so you're much more able to predict trends that are going to happen from one place to the next. So, for example, my boss, David, gave me the chance to launch a television channel in the UK. And that would become the FX channel in the UK. And remember, flying in, we only had six months to get from zero to launch. And noticing that the television market was hyper fragmented because every household had digital penetration. and they had multiplex channels.

They had a number of things that weren't even available in the U.S. And I remember thinking, this is the way that multi-channel television will go everywhere, not just the UK. So in the future, we're going to go through a world of hyper fragmentation of audiences. So that's when I started to realize that we need a new set of skills to create shows and market them in a way that would be. breakthrough.

All right. And meanwhile, you're continuing to move up the ladder at Fox. And we're fast forwarding again here a little bit. But I guess around 2011, you're promoted to president and CEO of all of Fox international channels, which again is a pretty incredible rise. I mean, you've reached sort of the top of the food chain overseeing TV channels, production houses, digital assets all over the world. And you probably were thinking, I imagine, that maybe one day you'll be the head of Fox, I don't know, or maybe the head of another studio.

Was that the trajectory you felt you were on? Part of me felt that I wanted to see whether I could go and lead another company. And at the time, I also was curious about entrepreneurship. And I remember part of my job was in business development, talking to founders, talking to entrepreneurs and seeing how they went from zero to 100. And actually, there's a moment I remember in 2015. There's this bank that generated or published a valuation

of the whole company of Fox is called a sum of the parts valuation where they go and value each part of the business. And there's FIC, which at the time had grown into one of the biggest parts of the Fox organizations, was valued at $10 billion. Wow.

And part of me wondered if I could create even a small version of that starting from scratch without the benefit of a large organization with amazing brands, of amazing colleagues, And so I had that nagging sense. And at the time, I felt that at Fox, I probably had reason as far as I would. And we're going to talk a little more about where your head was at in a second.

But I also want to pause and ask about your personal life because by this point, you'd also gotten married and had kids, right? Yeah, so I got married to my now ex-husband. In 2008, we had met while on vacation and very quickly, the very first day that we talked about having kids. And we were trying through IVF initially that just didn't work out. And then we got on the adoption list. And in 2010, we were blessed with our son. And then within nine months, we were blessed with our daughter. So that was a busy, busy time at our husband.

Meanwhile, in the background, you, like many people, started to listen to podcasts. I got into podcasting in 2012, so I'm like a dinosaur in this industry. And I remember very distinctly, because I had started, you know, with this show, the TED Radio Hour, that it really, everything changed for everybody with cereal. Serial, it really kind of floated all boats. You know, it was such a phenomenon that people were like, wait, what's this podcasting thing? And then they discovered other shows. You also had that experience. This is a consumer, a listener of podcasts, I think, right?

That's right. I had a number of friends, not a lot, but they came to me and they all used the same language. You have to listen to cereal. And I remember listening to it and saying, whoa. Now I understand. This is just something that I had never experienced before in audio. It was so good. That first season was unbelievable.

Unbelievable. I remember I listened to maybe the first four episodes over a month and then the final four. And binge listened to them on a flight back from Europe. And I remember crying and feeling that it was an incredible story so emotional and so well told. And so I said, okay, seriously. was great, what's next? And then somebody recommended startup, the show that Alex Bloomberg... Because he started his company around then, Gimlet, around 2014, I think.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I remember listening to it and liking it every bit as much because not only was an amazing narrative serial story, but it also happened to be about the creation of a company. And again, loved it. And I looked for other shows like those and Zilch. You were listening to Ted Radio Hour, my show at the time?

I was listening to Ted Radio. Yes, sir. It was not a serialized show. It was not a serialized story. Exactly. I was looking for the serialized stories. Because remember, one of the things that I learned at Fox was, and this was true of any entertainment company, there was a lot of value to be created out of having a library of evergreen IP.

So I thought that serial, one of the reasons why you could spend the time in making a show, That was that people could listen it two years, three years, four years later will still be current. Yeah. And that's something that I aspire to do. And you knew that there was something about this evergreen idea, right? Which is you make content that has a lifespan beyond it's that week or beyond that month, that it could live. I mean, this is how I think about this show. Like if you go back, seven or eight years on this show, the stories, they don't change.

I mean, elements change, but they stand. They're evergreen. You can hear them in 10 or 20 years are still valuable. That's right. And when you talk to anybody who has run a movie studio or a television studio, they will tell you that library funds new production, right? The profits and the cash flow that comes from library typically is what funds new production because new production is expensive and risky and more new production doesn't work, whereas library, you only monetize what actually has worked. So essentially, when people watch, you know, Halloween horror movies around Halloween or Christmas movies, Home Alone, around Christmas, that actually, what's you're talking about, that those libraries are just, they live forever. And they can generate, they generate enough money to fund new projects. That's right. And that happens in music as well.

So it's a dynamic that has been well known. And one of the reasons why libraries are valued as much as they are. And that, again, true of many, many areas of IP. So, all right, you're listening to these podcasts, but you're a listener to them. I mean, you've got this job at Fox, very successful executive. But I have to imagine it wasn't right away where you're thinking, that's it. That's what I can do. It didn't take a long time, to be honest, because I always felt that timing is important.

And it's, you can be right on time too late or too early. Too late, you cannot go back from. Too early is also bad. But if you have to choose, you better be too early than too late. It's always better to be just a tad little early before everybody else goes into one trend. Yeah. And I went and studied the history of what happened in public radio in other countries and noticed that there were audio dramas being produced in the UK and Canada. Yeah, I mean, the BBC still does.

The archers or, you know, the whole. That was what the BBC, the golden age of the BBC was. It was radio dramas. Even in the U.S. they existed. That's right. That's right. Back in the post-war, right, and they were replaced by television. And if you remember in the 90s, the most popular television shows were episodic.

Yeah. For procedurals and sitcoms, you can watch what episode, skip the next. And in the turn of the century, TiVo gets invented and with it on-demand television. So people are able to watch television on their own time. surprisingly or not, the Sopranos, six feet under, and that new golden age of television, of character-driven drama, starts at that time. That's when showrunners know that they're going to be able to tell stories over an arc of a season, so character development becomes more or as important as plot.

So the minute TiVo happens, that enables what we now call sort of the golden age of television because you could record them and watch them on your own time. That's exactly right. So my analogy was that if episodic was a past and TiVo happened and that led to the golden age of television, which led to the new age of not only HBO, but FX and AMC and eventually Netflix, then podcasts were the TiVo moment. Maybe serial was HBO, but there was an opportunity. to create FX, Showtime, AMC, all of that amazing IP that followed.

And I just happened to be witnessing a potential inflection point in what then became the golden age of audio. And everybody had a smartphone, which was like a TiVo in their pocket for audio. That's right. And the shows were funded by advertising. So there was very little friction. and you can promote shows through the Apple podcast chart and the app. And there were so many things lining up that I felt that this was an amazing opportunity. I'll be crazy not to take it.

When we come back in just a moment, Ernan takes the leap to start his own podcast company and learns that despite his skills and connections, a leap can feel more like a plunge. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. This episode is brought to you by 8 Sleep. Sleep science shows that in order to sleep our best, our body temperature needs to drop in the early and middle part of sleep and rise in the morning. I used to be a terrible sleeper, but I can tell you that I've been sleeping on the pod cover by 8 sleep for a few months now, and it is a total game changer. Seriously, it's absolutely incredible.

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And when I first submitted my product idea to a manufacturer, they thought the same thing. And it was kind of an aha moment for me of, okay, maybe I'm on to something. So I'm grateful for that inspiration and all of the episodes and wealth of knowledge that you share with us. If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is and why? A lot like the voice memo you just heard. and email it to us at hibt at id.wondry.com and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now back to the show. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2016 and Ernan Lopez has a top job in television.

But after becoming a fan of podcasts like Serial, he starts to think about launching his own podcast company. When I talked to my boss at the time, Peter Rice, and I told them, well, I want to start this podcast company, and this is what I like to do. And he said, oh, my God, that sounds like such a fun idea. I don't know that it will be commercially successful, but I believe in you and we'll make the first investment. Wow. As Fox. And so they put a $250,000 check. So my question, I mean, here you are now.

you are, you know, at this point, you know, you're going to start a business and you have a lot of connections, obviously, and a lot of experience, but still risky because it's 2016. Podcasting is, you know, it's blowing up, but it's still, you know, not clear. Did a part of you think, well, I'll try this and if it doesn't work, I'm sure I can go back and work as an executive at a media company? Part of me thought that that was a fallback and I talked to a lot of people in my internal circle. And to be frank, a lot of people thought I was crazy about going into this new space because the whole industry was thought to be worth $125 million. Yeah, which is nothing. I mean, you know, a bunch of people are competing for market trade or competing for $3, $5 million, $10 million. That's right.

And I'm saying thought to be because the industry itself didn't. didn't have an official estimate. So at the time, this is 2016, you leave Fox and you decide you're going to start your own podcast network. And let's talk a little bit about what that was going to be because obviously you were inspired by Gimlet and what Alex Bloomberg and Matt Liebrew were doing there. We did an episode on them a couple years ago on this show, which is really interesting story and worth listening to.

But let's start with the reaction. I mean, I'm sure most people around you are like, you know, this is great. Hernandez, go for it. Did you feel any sort of, I don't know, underneath the surface that there was, people are like, this is a weird idea. Like, what is he doing? Oh, no, they did. It wasn't very much under the surface.

I remember talking to colleagues that were wondering, like, what the heck is Hernan doing? And it was just very, 2016 was tough. It was in the number of ways because we had that $250,000 check from Fox. And then a few friends and former colleagues also offered to invest. And we raised another $200,000. And I thought, okay, this is easy. But then this is where it gets interesting. I try to go and raise money from venture capital the way that Gimlet had raised money.

And the phones stop ringing. You couldn't. Even with all of your industry experience in your background, you couldn't raise any venture capital money. 2016. I could not. I got a guy I talked to I stopped counting the nose after I hit 50 and venture capitalists and they all had different versions of different reasons and they were legitimate by the way. So the industry was super small. I was a solo founder in my 40s with no experiencing starting a business from the point of view of they were looking at it and

had spent too much time at what they thought was a cushy corporate job. Yeah. And so, yeah, we just hit a wall. Well, tell me a little bit more about this. I mean, you're going from a guy who flies to Buenos Aires or Berlin or, you know, Singapore, wherever. And, like, you're being chauffered into these boardrooms and you're the boss from Fox and you're meeting with all these people. All of a sudden now, you're, like, being brought in for meetings and, you know, sitting in conference room where everyone's like, okay, why are you wasting our time? What is this about? pretty much and sitting up my own printer and then trying to find out how to do payroll and

gets worse actually so on top of that that my husband at the time was in the hospital for a couple of months and then was unable to work for the rest of I was yeah taking care of him deeping into my own savings every month because we're unable to fund the company and and there were many points in 2016 that I said, what am I doing? And I was ready to give up. How many people were you able to hire from that initial seed funding? We had six people very early on. We had somebody in sales and ahead of the operating office,

a chief content office who had been with Fox for 20 years. And this is a major sort of figure. So he probably got some equity because you couldn't possibly pay him what he was getting paid at Fox. That's right. That's right. Yes, he did. And we had somebody in charge of recruiting shows. One of the things I learned at Fox was that it's almost impossible to create a media brand with just your own content.

You have to combine content that you produce with content that you license from others. And that was the model for Wanderie as well. So, Anon, you, when you started this out, right, you mean, you've got to raise the money and start a business. But at the same time, you had to make great shows, right? And you wanted to do something different than what was being done in public radio at the time or a company like Gimlet. So what was it that you wanted to do? So I wanted to bring everything that I learned in 25 years in television to the area of podcasting from storytelling, style to marketing to business model.

But the first product that we wanted to launch were audio dramas. It hadn't been done much. It was only maybe one or two audio dramas. And I essentially wanted to create those Hollywood soundscapes with characters and sound design and essentially turn it into scripted audio. And we did. We launched this great show, I thought. or we all thought at the time called Secrets, Crimes, and Audio Tape.

It was an ongoing audio drama. And it hit only number two on Apple Podcasts. And we couldn't get to number one because there was this one other show that launched at the same time called How I Build This. Have you heard of it? Wow. Didn't I know that? Yeah. Sorry about that.

That's when I became a listener of How I Build This. And again, I think what we learned in Secrets Crimes was that, There were so many people that the audience for an audio drama was limited. But podcast listeners loved true stories. That's how I fell in love with podcasts. So the inside was that we could actually tell true stories, but following the Hollywood playbook of character development, cliffhangers, high stakes, and sound design.

And also, I should say that at Fox, we paid a lot of attention to sound. We were often fond of saying that sound is where the motion comes from. I'm sure you heard the story that you watch a horror movie with the sound turned off and it's not scary at all. And then the marketing playbook of trailers and super trailers and podcasts about the podcast and how to build momentum. One of the most difficult things is how to create urgency for something that is. Evergreen, that's something that my colleagues in the movie studio used to talk about a lot. It's interesting because what you were doing was sort of reviving old-style radio drama, but updating it and modernizing it.

And I guess the difference, the big difference was that public radio, right, or even Gimlet, which was rooted in public radio, was still about journalism. And that's not what you wanted to do. You could actually tell stories in a different way that were more focused on entertainment. That's right. And by the way, the reason why I didn't follow what Alex and Matt and other people in that space were doing was that they were so good at it that I did not think that I could do a better job at doing what they were doing. So there was a space to do something completely different. I mean, when you listen to a show like Radio Lab or This American Life that are so beautifully produced, they're very, very hard to make.

I mean, most people don't understand the amount of work. And so that was not what you did not, I mean, you were not trying to recreate that. You couldn't compete with that. I could not compete with that. And quite honestly, felt that there was a bigger opportunity in the one space that Wanderie was creating in which we were alone. And by the way, that first year, did you even attract any advertising? I did, but just didn't make enough money to pay for the cost. So the first year, we lost a ton of money.

I remember looking at the P&L statement by the end of that month, and we had maybe $10,000 in revenue. And you had a staff of six? We had a staff of six. And $10,000 ain't going to cover those costs. Nope. No, they wasn't. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, what did I do? Like, even if we get to 10 times this, this is still not a lot.

going to cover the cost. Even if we get to 100 times this, it's not going to be a big business of the scale that I thought that it would. But look, I mean, there are times in which you have to overcome every no that you get and you have to be able to distinguish between the helpful knows and the unhelpful knows. And I got some of both. every time that I went to a venture capital meaning and they told me

no we cannot fund you because the time is just not there that was one thing and it was hard to respond to that but there were times where they were saying look we cannot find you now because we don't want to fund a business that relies primarily on third party content

because we think that at the end of your agreement, that those margins can be completed away, we can fund you if you bring a significant amount of your revenue coming from your own content. If you own a property. Right. And I said, but that's precisely what I'm doing. That's our plan.

Believe me. Yeah. And they say, yeah, come when you've done it. So you get to 2016 and you get to 2017 to launch Hollywood crimes. Yeah, Hollywood and crime. Hollywood crime. And that show was a hit. But what was it about that show that like?

Because I think that show really changed how you thought about what Wondry should be doing. That was the first show in which we realized that if we tell a true story with the Hollywood playbook, with character development and with stakes and with sound design, then people were going to listen. And it was also the show in which we tried the marketing playbook of having a launch campaign that allowed people to get excited about the show. It wasn't an accident that we launched in the first week of January. We knew that nobody else was going to launch a show at the same time. So our chances of getting to the top of the Apple podcast chart, which at the time was really important, yeah. It was a way of really getting more people to see you and see you. see your show and see your brand and see what the Wondry logo was,

just we put a lot of attention into all those details and that sometimes are overlooked. Let me ask you about how you sourced producers at the time, even, you know, 2016, 2017. I mean, now there's lots of people who know how to make audio because podcasting has exploded. But then it was pretty much the only people who knew how to make really high-quality audio programs were in public radio. That is true. And we really were paying attention to who was out of the market. We're going to podcast meetups. And I think it helped that we were the only ones in L.A.

Everybody else in the East Coast was competing with the same pool of talent. And we're the only ones in LA. And people who were in our world sometimes were really working for Hollywood projects that essentially allowed them to pay the bills. And they were doing audio as a passion project on the side. How did you, you'd gone from, let's be honest, having people, you know, kiss your butt when you're running Fox, okay, being this guy like, oh, you know, Arana's coming to the building guys, you know, or I've seen this, I've seen this, I've been places where people talk about the boss like they're a god, you know, which I think is unhealthy, but it happens, especially in Hollywood, to going to the guy who's like going to podcast meetups at like dive bars and, you know, in Los Angeles with like 12 people showing up and you telling them about this. this new thing you're starting. But I think that has always been one of my skills that have been always adaptable.

I remember growing up in Argentina and just seeing how realities can change from one moment to the next. I think that gives anybody who comes from a similar environmental background the ability to just adapt. And at the same time, there was this sense of community in the podcast industry that everybody was excited. every time they met somebody who understood what they understood. And we all felt that over time, everybody else will get it too. But we just are excited to be at the early stage of what we now realize was a new golden age of audio. All right. So by 2017, you've made your first few shows, right?

And you're starting to bring in some advertising revenue. But you're still struggling to attract investors, right? because you haven't really had a hit show yet. But then, of course, something happens. I guess the story I understand is that the LA Times basically approaches Wondery because they want to launch their own podcast. I mean, at this point, other media outlets like the New York Times were jumping into podcasting, right? So understandably, the L.A. Times wants to get in on the action. And so what?

Do they just call a meeting to bat around ideas with you? That's right. And they went around the room and they pitched different stories that they had been working on. And at the third one, I said, that's the one. What was the story they told you? It was Dirty John. And what was the actual story? It was the story about a woman in Orange County who had been tricked by this grifter who obviously pretended to be who he was not.

And she fell in love with him. His name was John Meehan. John Meehan, exactly. And her daughters really did not like him. And there was a really high-stakes family drama of two generations of people who are not seen eye to eye. And it was this incredibly rich psychological thriller with a completely unexpected ending. And then finally, we went to the Apple podcast team and actually shared with them.

the first episode of the show, they loved it so much that they agreed to give us what at the time was called the Beyonce treatment, you know, the takeover of the top carousel of the Apple podcast app. And this put us on the map. It could prove the concept of, even if you didn't own this IP, you could show that what you were able to do with it and that presumably would convince people that there was a huge potential here. That's right. And we could go to any meeting and say, we are the company that made Dirty John. Yeah. In the middle of that happening, we got an approach finally looked like we were going to raise money. And one major company agreed to essentially fund our CSA at $5 million at a $25 million valuation.

They give you $5 million at a $25 million valuation. This is a major, I know who it is, but you can't, you don't want to talk about it, specifically who was, is a major LA player. That's right. I will even call it a global player. Global player, okay. And they made an offer. It's not an investment firm.

This is a player in the industry. And they made an offer to make a 20% investment in Wondry. So that was exciting. That was good news. That was very exciting. I felt, okay, now we are finally going to be able to take this to the next level. We shook hands. And then don't hear anything for a couple of weeks.

And the corporate team calls me back and says, actually, we've been looking at the deal and we decided that instead of investing, we want to buy your company outright for the same valuation. For $25 million. That's right. And tempting, yes. You probably could have walked away with $15 million. Maybe even more than that at the time. But I said, no, what I really wanted to do is what you guys promised and we shook hands on, which is do an investment around it so that we can make this company a lot bigger and have big plans.

And there's this dirty John thing that you guys don't know how big it's going to be. And believe me, it's going to be great. And they said, well, either we buy the company or nothing, there's no investment. And all stuff. But I ultimately decided to just not take the offer. because I just was confident that we were about to hit something big. When we come back in just a moment, why Arnan says no to a new offer to buy Wondery

before saying yes to Amazon. And how his life turns upside down when he's embroiled in a federal bribery case. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017, and Ernan has just turned down a $25 million offer to buy Wondry. The company, he started less than two years earlier. And instead, he's betting on the success of the new podcast that he's about to launch with the LA Times.

So you were taking a risk. I mean, even if Dirty John was a success, it wasn't necessarily going to make tons of money. Not only that, but also I'm sure you heard this before, that is very often that has. happens that a company that makes you an offer, you're turning it down, you're done with a company. It's not that they're going to come next year. Sometimes they do. I mean, their cases where a company keeps chasing the valuation up, but more often than

not, you're done with a company because they're going to feel bad that you turn them down. And it kind of poisons a relationship. In some respects. And this was a company that you need a relationship with. I did. And look, we're all good. We still remain in a relationship, but yes, I was. very mindful of okay that's that's not going to be ultimately the buyer of my company but um i so you know

we went and launched dirty john in october of 2017 and it really hit the side guys he was number one on apple podcast for 30 days straight it made some like two million listeners within the first month per episode um more way more than we have predicted and and so all adds on. But you know, guy, the one thing that made me proud us of was that we kept hearing all these stories about mothers talking to daughters and vice versa about listening to Dirty John and saying, you should listen to Dirty John to find out about toxic relationships and red flags. And that's where we finally hit what Wonder was meant to be. We came up with a name for it, what we called emotionally immersive storytelling.

True stories with a perspective that allowed listeners to immerse themselves in the shoes of all the people in the story and to understand what was happening to them. And I think that was from that moment on the defining trait of every Wanderie show. So once that show really kind of hit, I have to imagine you're coming back. Now when you're going to investors, because you're still at this point working on the initial seed money and the money you're putting in.

And just ballpark, do you know how much you were in, like from your own cash? Seven figures. I can tell you exactly how much, but it was seven figures. And that was, I mean, you clearly were, you know, I made good money as an executive at Fox. Was that scary to you or were you like, you know what, I can put in seven figures. I've got it in the bank. Oh, God, it was scary. Yes, because I had two kids. And my husband, ex, at the time, had gone back to work, but he was still building his medical practice.

This is your retirement money. That's right. Yes. And again, there was a non-zero chance that this could go nowhere, that there would be no buyer or there would be no wandering in the future that nobody would see the value in it. So you in 2018, with the momentum of Dirty John, go back to the investors. Did you go back to any of the investors that you talked to previously? Well, actually, one of them called me back. In October of 17, I got a call from Alan Patrickoff. Of Greycroft. Of Greycroft. And many people consider him the father of modern venture capital. He called me up for a meeting in New York.

And he eventually became the lead investor alongside with Lair Hippo and Advancing, Jerry Redstone Company. But that took several months. But it was easier to attract the money at that point. It was easy because at the same time, he had listened to the region every episode, so he understood emotionally. And also, we felt that we couldn't rely on only miniseries. So at the time, we came up with this concept of the always. on shows that also came from the emotionally immersive storytelling. The first one was American history tellers.

It was a show that allowed people to put themselves in historical moments. And so that was the first show. And then we had also lined up business wars, what the second show that we created in that. And that allowed us to essentially have wholly on Wanderie shows that in the future would allow us to have a library that made Wondry Plus possible. And Wondry Plus is your paid subscription service.

That's right. So in that year, 2018, really, this is the, because you start in January 2016, tough year, 2017, start to get some momentum, and then Dirty John, and then 2018, now you're working on, you know, other programs. You're going to have Dr. Death, which is going to be another huge success and gladiator. But I guess in that year, 2018, you actually started to talk to a serious acquirer just, you know, two years in about buying you out. This, they called us, and again, this was a call that I wasn't expecting. It was maybe nine months after, or maybe eight months after we closed our CSA run, which had valid the company at $22 million, so less than. Is the gray crop craft in? investment that they led, that valued the company at $22 million.

$22 million, so less than what I expected a year before. And this company says, Hernan, we've been following, and they hadn't bought any companies in the podcast space. Can you tell us which company was? I'd rather not. Can you give us a hint? Like, was it what kind of company? It's a tech company that a lot of people use every day.

And it's a what kind of tech? Content tech. It's essentially or media. Yeah. It's both media and tech. And at that point, they had not purchased any podcast companies. No. So they contact you.

They contacted me and said, Hernan, we actually were fans of what you've been doing and we've been following. And we would like to make an offer for your company. And so first I told them, look, thank you. I'm very flattered. But quite honestly, we just literally raise money, as you know, from VCs. And VCs are not in the business of investing so that. Somebody just will buy the company in nine months. So in order to make this work for their perspective, you would have to value the company

at something that just wouldn't make sense for you. Yeah. And they said, well, can we try? So we exchanged an NDA some basic information. They came with an offer that was four times when we had raised that. It's over 80 million bucks. again, hard to say no from the perspective of, okay, if this was my business, maybe it would have been tempting. But it wasn't my business anymore.

I had great investors and a great team. And it were just scratching the surface of what we could do. And we knew that, again, Dr. Death had come out. Gladiero had come out. And we knew that the following year would do that times two or maybe more. but we, yeah, we turn them down. I mean, this was a, I mean, 80 million, you would have probably walked away with maybe half of that, maybe a little bit more. Your investors would have been happy.

They would have gotten a pretty decent return. That would have been an amazing outcome. But at this point, you felt like the momentum was on your side, that you could confidently say no. I had. So for that, for all those reasons, it was a scary thing to do. but I was having a lot of fun and I always thought that there was a chance that we could even take the company public one day. So there were a number of options, but regardless, I felt that I had taken investment from some of the best and brightest investors in the venture capital world. And it would have been disappointing to them to essentially sell that quickly and even if it was four times what they invested at.

How are you, what about your pipeline of like content creators? How did you develop a pipeline, especially as there was more money coming into the industry with other content companies who were now starting to write checks, significant checks, how were you able to compete when, you know, you didn't have an endless pool of money to do that? I think it really helped us that we were in L.A. and we're kind of alone in L.A. and a lot of people had listened to the region. And the other thing that helped us was the fact that Dirty John, even though it was owned by the LA Times, very quickly got optioned to television. It was turning to a very successful television show for Bravo. And it really put us in a position where because we were in Hollywood, we could give creators the potential of having their show be turned into a television show because we were starting to show that there was attractive. record but every time that a pitch came to us we thought could this be turned into a high-stakes character-driven interesting human story that would resonate with

showrunners because it would resonate with viewers for example if somebody came to us and said I have this open case and nobody has been to solve it and I want to create a show and me trying to solve it, we would always say no,

thank you because one of the most tried and true things in Hollywood is that you

need to have a satisfying ending to a story. And when you don't

have a clear ending, people will not recommend the show to other

people. It's just as simple as that. In 2019, Gimlet gets

acquired by Spotify. It was really one of the first major acquisitions of a podcast company as big is over $200 million, you must have thought that was a good sign for wondering.

I thought so, yes. I mean, you knew that this thing that you were starting, I mean, I think you were clear about it. Your goal was to eventually get it, have it be acquired by a larger player in the industry or in media. When you take an investment from venture capital, that's something that you have to accept, that venture capital will want an exit and the only two ways of exiting a company are either selling to another company or going public. And I thought the more likely outcome was to be acquired, but it was a chance if the company had a lot bigger to go public as well.

And were you ever concerned already in 2019, you know, Gimlet gets acquired and now the advertising is starting to really grow. And it was clear that podcast advertising was going to grow. At the same time, more podcasts were coming online, so the competition was going to also grow. But in the back of your mind, did you ever think, you know, we cannot depend on advertising revenue alone because look what happened into newspapers. And, you know, ads not just print ads, but online ads were declining. And you know, and you could see that that could happen in podcasting. There was going to be a race to the bottom to charge the least. amount of money. Were you thinking about that? Were you like, we got to figure something

out here to develop new revenue streams? Yes. And remember that's what attracted me to cable television at the very beginning, the fact that they had dual revenue streams. And so when we raise our series A, I presented to our investors a five-year plan, not year by year, but essentially told them, look, in 2022, I want to be here. And I want us to have so many listeners and so much revenue. And of that revenue, so much needs to come from our own original content. And so much needs to come from international. So much needs to come from sources other than advertising.

We were putting all in a bucket. And yes, revenue diversification was a key goal of ours from an early. All right. 2020, Gimlet had sold the year before. It's looking very good for the future of Wondery, and you find out that you have been indicted by the federal government, alleging that when you were at Fox, your previous career, that you were involved in a bribery scheme to acquire the rights to soccer, TV soccer games for Fox networks. First of all, were you aware that you were being investigated?

I was shocked, a thousand percent shocked, as was my lawyer. This actually happened in April of 2020. So we had just gone to work from home, everybody in the team. I had two third graders doing school from home, and we were being hit with advertiser cancellations and listener dropping, and we felt all this great thing that we had built. It was crumbling. was under question. But I first, let me take you back to what happened. Remember when I was at Fox, this is 10 years before.

Our business had hundreds of entities all over the world. Some of them were wholly owned. Some were joint ventures. One of them, a joint venture in South America, was being run by a partner who, unbeknownst to us, had been bribing soccer officials in South America and taking tens of millions of dollars for himself for years before we bought into the joint venture. And when he got caught in 2015, he decided to become a witness for the government, and he falsely implicated a number of people, including my colleague and myself, as being aware of what he was doing and not stopping him, which for US law is the same as doing something. But your point was that, yes, I hear you. There was clearly the evidence shows that bribery happened, but me as a Fox executive, I was not aware of it. That's right.

So this guy said that I knew what he was doing and I did not stop him, and that's a lie. You pleaded not guilty and you had to post bail because you faced prison time, which I'm sure was very stressful. the thing is you decided that you would not leave, step down from Wondry, that you would continue to run it in light of this indictment. Did you have investors who were like, hey, maybe you should step aside for a while and just deal with this? Not a single one of that. We had, if anything, the one thing that got me through, Guy, was an amazing group of friends and my family, my now husband at the time we were just. starting dating, my employees, every single person supported me because they knew my character. They knew that what this guy was saying was a lie, and they were just determined to help me

get through. So how are you, I mean, obviously the case was not going to go to trial for a while, but you are now in the process of dealing with just the psychological effects of having to prepare for trial and lawyers. And from what I gather, I think Fox, now at this point owned by Disney, covered your legal costs. But you still had to sit for, you were going to have to sit for depositions. You were going to have to talk to lawyers. You're going to have to a considerable amount of your day-to-day time, which already was probably full, spending it on trying to make wondering bigger.

You'd have to carve out maybe up to a quarter of your time, maybe a third of your time, and devote it to this trial and this lawsuit. It wasn't as much ever because the process works in slow ways. And there are times, obviously, preparing for trial, but that was not for two years later. That yes, I was spending a lot more time. I eventually had to wait three years to get my case hurt before a jury. Meantime, you were also, you know, you were the face of wondering. But everybody around you, you say, said, don't, you know, stay, do this. You were committed to doing this.

You were committed to growing the company, but I wonder at that time whether you start to think that maybe this would be the year to sell Wondry. So around that time in the summer, we were approached by investment bank that had been working with saying that was renewed interest in Wondry. Stitcher had just been bought by XM and serial productions by the New York Times. The ringer was bought by Spotify. There were a number of acquisitions, but there were multiple people that were still interested in the space. And we had hundreds of shareholders, including every single employee in Wanderry, was a stakeholder. And we had, you know, at the time was the minority owner with my family of Wanderie. I had a significant stake, but more people than me on the majority of the company.

and there were lots of conversations in the board, and some people wanted us to continue to build. But ultimately, we came to the conclusion that taking the deal with Amazon was in the best interest of the company. So you got offered, it's not only reported to the exact amount, but anywhere from between $2 to $400 million by Amazon

to acquire Wondery. And pretty great, pretty great result. for you know, for you and for the shareholders and stakeholders. Yes, yes. And most importantly, for me as a founder, would allow me to see Wondry become the best possible version of what it could become. I knew that Amazon had the resources and the whirl and the motivation just to turn it into something a lot bigger than I could probably do on my own. And so I'm very happy that we ended up.

doing that deal. So, okay, so you're, and you leave wondering in 2021 after the acquisition goes through, but it was bittersweet because you now had to deal with this lawsuit, this, this indictment. And in March of 2023, you were found guilty of these allegations by, by the federal government, that you were involved in this scam. The case relied very heavily on testimony from this one man who had already pleaded guilty in 2015, Alejandro Borzaco. You knew that you were going to appeal. You appealed immediately, but still, it's like, okay, here we go again. And in that time between the appeal and then what eventually happened, which we'll talk about in a moment, how did you just get through the day? I mean, you faced 20 years in prison at that point. I mean, how did you just you? You faced 20 years in prison at that point.

I mean, how did you react to that possibility? It's really something that you just need to find you in yourself. And I talked to a lot of people who went through adversity that they did not expect. I read this book called Ikigai. It's essentially a Japanese philosophy about how to live a longer, a more fruitful life. And that's the other thing that helped me get through reading. lots of meditation, trying to stay with my routine as much as I could, trying to spend a lot of time with the kids, spend more time virtually with my parents who came to visit me. Yeah, all of that.

So September of 2023, a federal judge throughout the conviction, basically determining there was not enough evidence to convict you of wire fraud and bribery. That must have been an unbelievable relief. I can't describe it. I mean, getting that call on that Friday night on Friday before going into a long weekend from my lawyers. They themselves could not find the worst because we were always confident that this was going to be the outcome ultimately. We just didn't think that it was going to happen at this particular stage necessarily. But we were all confident that this was going to ultimately be the outcome. But yes, I was obviously very happy.

I mean, there could still be the possibility of an appeal from federal prosecutors, right? I mean, there's still a possibility. There is a possibility, yes. But I am living my life as if this chapter is over because I know that the truth is in my side. And having seen the strength and the weaknesses of our legal system, and actually there's research. even despite the presumption of innocence that we all thought in school people that go to serve on a jury, believe that indicted equals guilty. And deep down, I was one of them.

And I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was one of them. And it took me to go through this grueling experience to realize that not only indicted doesn't equal guilty, but sometimes guilty doesn't equal guilty. You work in podcasts. I worked in podcasts. I'm sure you listen to many stories of wrongful convictions, and you just don't think that it could happen to you until it does. And I'm curious to get your take on podcasting, the industry in general,

because, you know, there's still money that's being made in podcasting, no question about it, but it's changed a lot since 2016, since 2012 when I started. There are millions and millions podcasts now in English alone, and it's harder for new shows to scale. Advertising is more competitive. There have been all kinds of articles about, and there have been budgets cut and layoffs at, you know, places like Spotify.

I mean, they basically shut down Gimlet. There have been layoffs at NPR and box media and Sony. I mean, it's, I wonder if you think this is just part of the cycle of any business, or do you think this bodes badly? for the future of podcasting. I think, look, I don't know much about specifics because I don't get the data that I used to get when I was in the industry,

but yes, there might be pockets that are less financially viable than the word before, but as a whole, the industry continues to grow. And in fact, there are lots of companies that are pushing to add more video to podcasts. And there's, I think we're still in the early innings of podcasts in different languages. So I think the industry has lots of room for growth, absolutely.

Do you feel like your timing was fortuitous? I definitely remember at the beginning I talked about being too early or too late, and maybe I was a year too early. But yes, my timing was really fortuitous in that if I tried to launch Wander, the exact same version of Wanderer, in 2018, I don't know that it would have gotten to where it did. Because by that point, it was already too competitive. It was already a lot more competitive.

So, I mean, here you are this guy who came from Argentina with Broken English to the U.S. when he was 27 to try and make a life, you know, and rose up the ranks at Fox. And here you are, you know, 25 years later, wealthy. and having created a pretty significant business that has had a cultural impact on American media. And so when you kind of reflect on your story, Ernan, on where you got to, where you are now, how much of where you are do you think has to do with your skill and your work ethic, and how much do you think has to do with getting lucky? I think that over my life, I've probably been at the point one percent of lucky and at the point one percent of unlucky at different points in my life. And sometimes you don't know when bad luck can become good luck later on.

But he can't control that. No matter how much luck you have or don't have in your life, hard work is essentially. Yes, there's always some degree of luck in every success story. But people often don't tell you about the degrees of bad luck that happen in success story. And again, you can only control what you do and how you respond to events around you. That's Ernan Lopez, founder of Wondery. Since leaving the company in 2021, he's co-founded another business called Danvis, which makes digital displays for showcasing NFTs and other kinds of digital art.

Anon has also launched a nonprofit that helps young professionals from marginalized communities get ahead in their careers, which, by the way, often includes accent coaching. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Chris Messini, with music composed by Rumtin Arablewey. It was edited by Neba Grant with research help from Alex Chung.

Our audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Maggie Luthar. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, J.C. Howard, John Isabella, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, Malia Agudello, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.