Y Combinator Startup Podcast - #57 - Alex Blumberg of Gimlet Media

Episode Date: January 17, 2018

Alex Blumberg is the cofounder of Gimlet Media. Gimlet makes several podcasts you’ve probably heard of–StartUp, The Pitch, and Reply All are a few.Before Gimlet Alex worked on This American Life and Planet Money.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Why Combinators podcast. Today's episode is with Alex Bloomberg. Alex is a co-founder of Gimlet Media, and Gimlet makes a bunch of podcasts that you probably heard of, like startup and the pitch and reply all. And before Gimlet, Alex worked on This American Life and Planet Money. All right, here we go. Maybe the best place to start is, which seemingly was the most common question, Ro asked it and a couple other people on Twitter. How do you source stories? That's a really good question. And it's one that we're sort of working to answer sort of more systematically.

So right now, stories have come like sort of like, well, so part of it, part of it's like we're not sourcing stories. We're sourcing podcasts. Uh-huh. So on one level, the people who are sourcing stories are the actual teams themselves. So like the nod, one of our podcasts, it has a whole editorial process around finding stories that they're going to do. And startup has a whole editorial process. And Replyle has a whole editorial process. So that's team by team.

And those teams know sort of like what their shows are about and what their audiences are into. So they have a process by doing that. And it's sort of a normal process of just sort of like reading. wildly, talking to people on the phone, going out, hearing stories at cocktail parties, whatever it is, you know, and it's sort of like, uh, finding something in the news that piques your interest in making some phone calls. Like, that's always, that's, that's the way stories are sort of like, there's no magic formula to it. You just, you sort of try to be curious to the world. So then thinking about sourcing podcasts, are people pitching you? So sourcing podcast is

a very different thing because you need, it needs to be sort of like, it's like, um, it's not the actual plot line. It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's, It's this sort of, like, I remember this, somebody, for a while, like, somebody at This American Life was friends with one of the people who started Friends, the TV show Friends. And, and Alexa, it was her name. And she was like, she was on the show a couple of them. She did a couple episodes. And I remember, I think somebody was telling me a secondhand story about, like, how she talked about, like, sort of coming up with the idea of her friends. And she was, like, starting a TV show is like, you wanted to be just specific enough so that there's something that you can remember about it.

but then also very, very open. And basically you always need a couch. Sort of like where action can happen, you know. And so I feel like sourcing a podcast is sort of similar to that. You need like what's, it needs to be about something, but it can't be, the concept can't be too binding. Otherwise you're not going to be able to find enough stories to sort of keep it going.

Yeah. Now sometimes it can be sort of a limited series and we do a couple of those and we're, and like we go back and forth and sort of like what the model is for that and can they, you know, can they be profitable or not? So some of it goes back to economics. But if like the basic unit is this, is the regularly occurring sort of weekly

or almost weekly podcast. Like let's say that's the basic sort of like template of podcasting. Those come to us a couple different ways. Sometimes people inside the company have ideas and we'll sort of do a piloting process to try to see if we can sort of make it, we'll make it and see how.

how it sounds. People pitch us from the outside. Sometimes we will acquire shows that already exist out in the world. And we've done that and we've done it a bunch of different ways. Yeah, because it's sort of, it's not all that different from, you know, someone interested in doing a startup sizing a market. And so when someone pitches you an idea, are you like, hmm, intuitively this feels like it has legs or do you do any kind of like analytical process around the picking a show? We don't do any kind of analytical process around it. And partly because it's not like,

it's like we don't, right now the, the, sort of like the main, the capital that we need to start a show is, is human capital. Right? We need somebody who has a vision, has expertise, and can sort of make it happen.

So we need somebody who can sort of like take it and run. And so a lot of times what we're looking for is somebody who has a vision. Okay. Like that's, it's like sort of like the startup equivalent is sort of you bet on the founder. I think that's even more the case in podcasting if that's possible. Just like, and that was one of the mistakes I made early on is sort of like I had a background in doing this. I'd worked on this American life. I'd helped start Planet Money with Adam Davidson.

Like I had like this experience doing this. And so I sort of just thought that, like, okay, I can, I can sort of help start all these other ones, but I don't have enough time or bandwidth to sort of like be involved with in more than one or two. And if the company is growing, I don't have any bandwidth to do that anyway. So, so we need people sort of like showrunner types or sort of like hosts who can sort of like lead the vision. And so that's that's a complicated set of qualities. You need, they need skill. They need sort of like they need a vision. They need like, they need a vision. they need leadership ability. You know, there's like, it's, it's tricky. So we're looking for people like that. And what do you look for in an acquisition, aside from content and, you know, kind of founders host that you believe in, are there particular numbers that you look for when

you're going to, you're going to make an acquisition of some content? Yeah. I mean, we're looking for somebody who could, who could be a good fit. Yeah. Obviously. We're looking for somebody who pops. So like Wendy Zuckerman is a good example. Like that was a show that we acquired.

She had the, her show is called Science. versus. And that was something that she was doing out of Australia. And we heard it. And what it, so she had a pretty good audience on our own, like that she'd sort of built more or less independently with just her and her producer, Caitlin. Can you talk about that specifically, like roughly what that was? Yeah. So we heard it. We really, like, she was just like clearly, like, just like a magnetic host, right? Like she's just like, she's so funny, so smart, just so, so engaging. And the premise seemed really good. We talked to her about like sort of like what her audience was like.

And it was pretty solid, especially given that she'd been doing it all by herself. Is that like 100,000 downloads? Is that 10,000 downloads? Is that a million? It's not a million. No, I mean, I think if you're, if you've gotten over, if you've gotten up to 100,000 independently, you're doing really well. You're big time.

Yeah, yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. So, so it was like, and so we're looking for something like, like if you're, But if you're getting, if you're somewhere in that, you know, sort of getting close to that number. Okay. Okay. That's, that's a pretty good sign.

Okay. And then it's just a matter of like sort of like, how much can we help? How much can we expose? How many more people can we expose you to? How much, you know, sort of like how much can we help with marketing and stuff? So with Wendy, it was, it worked, it worked really well. We were able to sort of like take her audience and sort of multiple it, you know, several times over. and surround her with the team to make it possible for her to get more work out at a quality

that she was striving for, but just by herself was really, really hard to get to. She didn't have the luxury of sort of like auditioning sort of different experts on a topic and finding the best one. You know what I mean? She had to go with the expert that she got and sometimes they were just dry as dust. And so that shows in the product. So if she can sort of cycle through a couple experts until she finds the one who's like more engaging to talk to, that's a win.

It's such a huge advantage because I previously before YC was doing a podcast on my own with my friend. And we were fortunate in that, you know, like we knew someone at MailChimp. So they would help out. And that's great. But it really becomes a grind when you're doing it on your own. So observing you guys from afar, I was like, oh, my God, this is such a perfect opportunity to start acquiring content. Because as a sole creator, you have like no support behind you. Well, and that's exact.

So that, so our latest acquisition is the pitch, which I'm sure. your listeners are familiar with. And that's a perfect example of that. Like Josh Muchio, you know, started this podcast sort of like by himself out of his, him and his wife sort of working from his house in Florida. And he, and he's exactly sort of like he's got this drive. He's got a vision for what he's trying to do. He's like been tweaking. He's been learning. He's like sort of like learned all he can on his own. He's read every single thing that's ever been put up on Transom, you know, the sort of like radio website. And, and he was just ready, you know, to sort of like have, you know, take it further and like sort of go to the next, next level with, with his show. And so

that's, it was just like, it seemed like a very obvious sort of fit. And what about the new people? What about someone who's, you know, maybe just graduating college and wants to work at Gimlet? Like, what are the qualities you look for in them to be like, oh, man, you might be. You might have a fit here. We're looking for, so we're looking for, um, a couple of things. We're looking for sort of creativity, obviously. We're looking for like the ability to get shit done. Do you do a trial? We, I mean, we have like an application process. A lot of times with a lot of the jobs that we do, we'll have like some sort of like a homework assignment that we'll give people sort of like a trial,

you know, sort of like edit this interview or sort of like, you know, sort of like give us, you know, sort of like critique this story, something like that just to sort of get a sense of how they think editorially. Curiosity is really important sense of humor. You know, we just, we, um, and, and empathy is like a big, big part of, of, of what we believe is important. Like, you have to, you, you have to be motivated by a desire to understand, um, you know, as much as a desire as any other desire. Like, sometimes, like, a lot of people get into sort of like this line of work for a variety

of reasons. Sometimes it's like, they really want to, like, they feel passionately about an issue and they want to sort of bring attention to that issue. Yeah. All that is, is true. but we want like we want it to be you know so proceed from curiosity and understanding and are you guys kind of agnostic to what issue that is because historically i always thought npr and then you know all the npr diaspora like people working on their own content had a certain

type of generally like left leaning audience that like fit into brooklyn or wherever yeah um do you guys care if like you know it's completely different than that we don't so this is i mean i think honestly this is a sort of a a complicated issue now for media companies that I'm that I'm trying to grapple with like I feel like at NPR we were perceived as being liberal we and probably like the majority of the people working there would sort of like call themselves liberal but we really did strive for objectivity or at least trying to understand both sides of the issue we would never just sort of like yeah you know and and and I think the listenership wasn't as like I think it was pretty even it was it wasn't like it wasn't like it wasn't down the middle yeah but that was like there was something like 30 to 40 percent of the listeners were identified as conservative and it was it was a pretty big you should check that number but it's it was it's a when people hear it's a surprising number yeah huh um and certainly the feedback I get like you know sort of like for the first season of startup you know it was like it seemed like pretty you know sort of like you know sort of like

evangelical pastors and sort of like Brooklyn hipsters and everybody in between we're listening to to start up and I think you know and we'll still like occasionally like on reply all there was like they they had a they had something that sort of like let listeners understand that how one of them felt about Trump you know and we received a couple of letters saying like I'm I voted for Trump like I love the show why are you you know sort of like where are you saying that? So it's like, yeah,

it's not, I don't think, um, so I don't, I don't, and, and honestly, like,

I like, I, I feel like, I understand there's like, I, it's tricky. There's like, a lot of fear and anger.

Um, and especially among communities, like, that are not white, right? Like, especially like, um,

and I think, and so I, and I want to give voice to that. You know what I mean? I think there, I think we do live in a racist society. Like, and there is white supremacy. And like, that is real. And it's not a political statement. It's a fact. And it's based on historical, you know, things that happened, you know, and 400 years of slavery and a civil war that we never dealt with. And like, you know, and, and so like that is all, that's not political in my mind to say that. So, but, but people perceive it politically. And so, and so when you, and so when you, so one of our

shows is, you know, a show about the Civil War. And I'm shocked by how, uh, when I listened to it, by how fresh and unusual it sounds. And it sounds fresh and unusual. We just did, the most recent episode was called The Takedown and it was sort of like, it was, it was a live show that they, that they put on at the Bell House. It was crazy. It featured Nicole Hannah-Jones, who just wanted him, Carthair Grant, Al Letson, who's like a prominent podcast host, and Christy Coleman, the CEO of the American Civil War Museum. And then the host, Chandraicumanyika, and his other host, Jack Hitt. And what was, and it was like, it was sort of like, they were talking about the sort of the most pervasive

myths about the civil war that they constantly encounter on Twitter and what was and the shocking thing that felt so fresh and knew about it was that four of the five people on the stage were black and like

that almost never happens you know, in conversations about the civil war which was about slavery you know and so and so like and by the way that's one of the myths that it wasn't about slavery

It was about slavery. And so, and so, and, and, like, that's sort of crazy that, like, that, like, you have so much conversation about the Civil War and how often black voices are not represented in that conversation. Yeah. When black people in America were at the center of the, of the conflict and, and, and the legacy of America results from the Civil War. And so, and so that.

I know that and I know people listen to that and like we you know every once in a while we'll get a comment like that feels political to people and and I guess it I guess it is but I but it just feels like true right it just feels like this is crazy that like it's 2017 and this feels new that we have like four of the five intellectuals on stage talking about the Civil War of Black and that feels new and revelatory so yeah so I so so I so And I think I have a media company now. Yeah. And there are a lot of voices that don't get represented in media. And it feels like, yeah, I want to use that platform to help represent those voices. Right. Because I've kind of been wondering how you're driven, you know, obviously there are podcasts like that one, maybe like Dan Carlin, hardcore history that are super educational. Right.

And where you guys are kind of drawing the line in terms of like, this is our mission. We're educating about certain issues or it's just about compelling storytelling or maybe it's something else entirely. Like, do you guys have a defined goal as to what your products are and what they do? Right. I don't, so we don't, like, I would never want to say that like, I mean, we take engagement very seriously. So anything that is like, it was really informative, but it wasn't very fun to listen to.

Like, that's a lose. Right. Like, you definitely want to be. I don't want people to feel like they should listen to it, but they don't want to. Yeah. It would be like the, you know, the Thomas Pickety of podcasts. And I will read Wikipedia. Yes, exactly.

So, but I feel like the, but I feel like here's, the way I think about it is sort of like there's like, I think there's three big buckets of why people listen to podcasts. Okay. So one of them is to just be, one of them is because they, they, they, is for companionship. Like they like the hosts and like it's fun to hang out with them. And like there's a whole bunch of podcasts that are that are like that. Joe Rogan, I think is a great example. Like right? Like just people, Howard Stern.

Oh, like Rush. You know, sort of like glimba. There's like you feel like, oh, they're your buddy. You know, we're all speaking. We're all talking together and it's fun to hang out with you and you guys are funny. And like and even like the Slate Gab Fest, a lot of those are sort of like, there's this sort of, these are friends that I they feel like friends the hosts so that's one uh second I think they just want to be told a good gripping story we've been telling stories to each other since

we came up with the ability to speak uh and like podcasting is just the sort of extension of that and so like I feel like you get dirty John a lot of the a lot of the big you know sort of like a lot of our stuff a lot of like the sort of like um s town you know it was just sort of like like just narrative And the bulk of it is just narrative. And then the third big bucket is like they want to learn something. So a lot of, so podcasting is one of the things that you can do while you're not doing something else. You don't need to be able to screen.

So you're cleaning the house or working out or, you know, sort of like, you know, driving to work or whatever. And it's, it, you feel like, oh, I'm multitasking now in a way that feels productive. And so I get to learn something. And so like, you know, like a big example. And so so learning, I think, is a. big use case for podcasting. So we just try to figure out like, okay, what are we doing? And right now we've, and we try to do all of them. Like the big ones can sort of bring storytelling, bring that

companionship and bring something that you learn. And those feel like, you know, and I feel like, reply all often does that. They definitely have the companionship and they definitely have the storytelling down. A lot of times you're learning something along the way as well. You know, I think so a lot of our podcasts are doing, are trying to try to do all three. focus more on one or the other. Interesting. So a lot of our listeners are also founders and are also thinking about spaces as both just like interesting, but markets where they could potentially build something. So maybe it does make a little bit of sense to talk about the podcast industry more specifically than just the content stuff. You guys started three years ago. How has it changed since

you started and where do you see it going given like the current proliferation of like audio stuff in your home, AirPods, all that kind of stuff. Right. So it's, I mean, it's changed quite a bit. Like, I think, I think it has changed much more quickly than I thought. Like, I was in this for a long time, you know, like starting, like, I remember when we first put our, first put out this American Life as a podcast. And there was like, I think, I don't know, 5,000 people listen to it or something like that, you know. And then, you know, sort of like I was doing planet money for like five years before leaving.

and so and just sort of like it was like sort of changing and evolving and growing but not at the clip and then sort of like then we started and serial came along and then boom and everything just like sort of I think I think in large part because of serial in large part because of us I think and then just sort of timing like all the ones who were already there were sort of like started picking up and it just became just a lot more a lot more mainstream awareness a lot more advertising dollars slowing into it and a lot more content creators coming on board So that's great. I mean,

overall, that's fantastic. I think the ecosystem is, is growing. It changes things a little bit, like in terms of sort of like, you've got to bring your A game when it comes to sort of like content, but also sort of like have a much more robust marketing strategy.

You know, it becomes a little bit more sort of like a traditional media company where you got to figure out like, what's your marketing plan, who are your partners and, you know, sort of rolling it out, that sort of thing.

And then I think people are paying more attention to it. Like the platforms are paying a lot more attention to it now. So like Spotify, tune in. And of course, Apple. Apple was the dominant just sort of like by accident. They created the category. You know, thank you very much, Apple. And sort of created this whole ecosystem.

But like the ecosystem, even though it was getting larger by our standards, by Apple standards, was still like a tiny, you know, sort of rounding error. Totally. And now it's gotten beyond rounding. error status and so they're starting to pay attention as well um which is all you know so like i think now there the platforms are like starting to starting to sort of like compete a little bit and you see you know sort of like deals around content happening and that sort of thing so so that's that's that's also really exciting because distribution is so difficult still i mean it's been

hard but now it's like both hard to discover and competitive yeah and so what do you guys do when you have a brand new show and you're like we need to start this out with i don't know like whatever your benchmark is for like a good amount of listeners in the beginning how do you make that happen yeah i mean that's changed a little bit like we it used to be um that we didn't have to do as much you know i think the landscape has gotten more crowded i think also like politics has become a much bigger storyline and you've got shows coming out like potse of america in the daily that have brought a lot of new people into podcasting, but it's like a, you know, they're focused on sort of like the craziest story that's happening right now, which is, you know, sort of like,

you know, the presidency. And so, so that's, that's, that's, that's been interesting. So, but what we do is what we, you know, we have a nice network now of, of, you know, sort of of of listeners. And we have, you know, millions of unique, of unique listeners now that we can sort of put new shows in front of. That works. We also need to start finding other audiences, right? So, like, we have, you know, sort of millions of unique listeners. But then there's, like, lots of other people who sort of would listen, but don't know about

podcasting or don't know. And so, and those people are, like, sort of, like, they are, there's, like, this continual drift, right? The category is growing, for sure. but that just takes more work and it's just sort of like a longer sort of like it's like you've got to give shows time basically like we've got to sort of like we part of it is like you got to get the editorial sort of like where it's as cranking and so like shows almost every show that we ever launched has been sort of like a little editorially wobbling in the beginning as it gets

its feet it's like it's like it's just a crazy yeah it's like yeah exactly they're startups. Their own little startups. So they come out, they get solid, they start producing sort of work at a consistent quality. Then they get written about. Maybe they become guests on other shows. Maybe they sort of like start doing partnerships with other publications, you know, just sort of like getting their name out into the, into the world. Maybe they do like a joint production with a larger, with a larger podcast out there. There's all sorts of strategies. Like, I mean, the best place to find podcast listeners is, is on other podcasts. That's, that's, that's, that's still true.

We haven't figured out a great way of sort of migrating people from sort of like the realm of Facebook and Twitter into the realm of listening. Yeah. You know, it's tricky. Well, we do YouTube for that exact reason. Yeah. And it's been super effective. How does that work?

So tell me about how it works. Yeah, totally. So like I said, the podcast I did previously, we were always struggling with your same issue. Like, how do people find it? And then how do people find the episode from like two years ago? Right. Which, it sucks.

It's still bad. Like, there are lots of things you can do around transcription, which is somewhat helpful. But if you Google anything, look where the videos show up in the ranking. Yeah. It's super high. Yeah. So, like, the actual way it works is we record video when we do the podcast. I edit the video, which is then exported to the podcast.

Right. And then I title that, like, you know, interview with Alex Bloomberg of Gimlet Media. And then I cut up the video into like five more videos that have very specific titles. For instance, how to make a podcast, how to market your podcast, like how Gimlet works. Right. And those numbers will dwarf like the actual interview, listen numbers. Our podcast numbers are still really high, but this, like, you don't have retention data. So I don't actually know because they're just subscribers.

Right. So, you know, like you have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but how engaged are they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically what we try and do is like use YouTube as marketing for the podcast. Right. And just own those like subscriber channels. It's been pretty good so far. Especially when you get a big name person.

Right. With the little names, it's like still not the same. But yeah, it's been super effective. So what, how much more, like, how many more views do you have on the YouTube segments than you do on, then you do listeners on the podcast? So our podcast do like 10 to 100,000 downloads per episode. Okay. And then the YouTube views will, depending on the person, will be about the same. Uh-huh.

which is amazing. Because I don't think they're the same people. And I think a lot of people are finding the podcast through that. Because those often get shared, whereas the podcast don't get shared in the same way. Right. Yes. Podcast sharing, it's hard to share podcasts. It's so difficult.

It's really, it's very, very, you don't, you can't just like shoot it at work. And part of the problem, I think, so one of the, to me, I think this is like one of the paradoxes, one of the many paradoxes of sort of building a media business based on audio. the great thing about audio is that like it does exist in this sort of separate realm right like when you most of the time like if if I'm at my desk or I'm on my screen or I'm looking at something I'm using my eyes to say read an article I'm like that article is competing from my eyes attention with a gazillion other things it's competing with Facebook and Twitter and movies and like all every single you know sort of like name on the planet who's launching their person. stage television series and like every you know sort of like everything out there um is competing with for my eyes then you've got like audio which is over here you're not gonna you're not gonna necessarily listen to audio while you're streaming while you're like sort of on your phone looking through twitter or whatever you're gonna listen to audio while you're mowing the lawn where you can't be doing those other

things so it's it's separate and like in a nice way you know you're driving to work whatever you can't be looking at a screen so all audio is competing with is other audio or music basically basically, right? So that's great for us. Like, it feels like much more, like we don't have nearly the menace that every, if I was launching sort of like a digital media company right now, just sort of like, like trying to write articles or video or whatever, the landscape is so crowded. So it's good. The bad part of that is that like you don't like in this world while you're driving to work, like you're not going to just be like, oh, that's funny. I'm going to put it on my Facebook. There's not like, there's not the mechanism even to share. If you wanted to,

it's consumed in a different way, so it's harder to even figure out. Like, you get lost in it and you're not like, the distractiveness of like sort of like eye-based media, you know, is that like is its advantage when it comes to sharing because you're always like sort of checking something out. You're always doing two things at once. And so it's easy to just sort of like be watching something and then pop it over into your Facebook feed and share it like instantaneously. And the sharing doesn't even, the sharing doesn't capture the magic.

It's like if you were to tell me a joke and then I were to write one line down and then share It's like usually that's only used against you. Yeah. Like you see your comedians complain about this all the time. It's like, that was out of context. Yes. And similarly with podcasts. Like, yeah.

Yeah. You know, have this great conversation and one part is particularly funny. Only if you know the background. Yeah. And if you've had all the buildup to it and everything like that and like the moment by itself won't work unless you've had all the, yeah, no.

I mean, yeah, that's the problem with narrative. So in the one hand, it's our advantage. And I feel like it's like sort of allows us to build this business. You're sort of pioneer. in this space. On the other hand, like, how do we get people into the space? How do we get other people who are already in the space to know about us? Like, that's still a challenge that we're trying to figure out. Where do you guys fall now on, because in season one of startup, you were talking a lot about technology, maybe building technology. Yeah. How is your thinking changed in the

past couple years around that? So, well, I think early on, we made the decision that's sort of like to focus on our strengths. And if you look around here, we've got like, you know, we've got 80. some people hear, you know, the vast majority of those people are editorial-based. Like they're making podcasts either random podcast for Gimlet Creative or editorial podcast for Gimlet Media. And up until like a couple, up until about a month ago, we didn't have one technology person on the team. Really? Yeah. That's awesome.

So we were very old school. at this point we we have recently hired somebody ahead of product and we recently and we're and and I think that's going to be that will definitely be a larger part of what we do yeah how exactly we use technology is is still TBD yeah it does it seems less likely that if we were ever going to build like our own platform, that seems less and less likely.

Like just because, you know, the Spotify's and the tune-ins and the apples are definitely, like for a while, like they weren't really paying attention. Now they're definitely paying attention. And so it just seems like that's to take that space now. It just seems like it's like a big long shot and we're not at all set up to even try to do that. Right. Well, especially if it's you. Because like individual podcast hosts are incentivized for downloads.

So they actually don't want to be captured by platforms. And so if I'm a host, I'm like, I don't care. where I put it. This is not obvious to people who download podcasts from iTunes, but it doesn't work the same way as a song. It's an RSS feed. And so it's just, you can point it at anything and have it go out there. Yeah. And I think the only people right now are just doing maybe like paid apps.

So like I think Mark Marin still does this, right? He has a Marin app. So you get the 50 most recent episodes. Right. You can get the old ones. Right. Maybe that's good for individual creators. But for you guys. Yeah. I don't know. No, we would, we would want to be. And I think there is, there is a, We would like to go direct to listener somehow. Yeah. And like sort of like just because like that's, you know, like we want to deepen our relationship with the listener. And like we want to.

And then I think there might be other sort of revenue opportunities associated with like a direct, a more direct connection with the listener. But how exactly do we do that? What's the mechanism? It will involve technology. What that technology will look like. We're still not sure of. So one question that came from Twitter, I want to get there, NEM, right? Yeah.

Is, oh, Swing Ventures asked, are you concerned about how the podcast landscape may change when more analytics become available? For example, chart beats impact on journalism. I mean, I'm concerned about everything. Probably a lot of them. And that is one of them. I don't, you know, it's, you know, like everything, there's a good side to bad side, right? Like so so like right now there's a lot of advertisers who would be interested in advertising and podcasting who are sitting on the sidelines because you just can't provide the same kind of analytics that you can in other forms of digital media. So they're just like, well, until we know what we're getting with our money, we're not going to spend here.

And so analytics will absolutely help the overall sort of like advertising landscape, which more advertisers being interested in the space should theoretically. help us. Like, you know, that more demand for the inventory should mean a higher price for the inventory, even if we discover that, like, that, like, you know, there's certain listen-through rates are different than what we expected or whatever. Right. I don't think we're going to be that surprised. Like, we have access to some of that information already through some of these other platforms.

Like, you know, some of the other platforms let you sort of see, like, what the decay rates are, that sort of thing. So we can see analytics are getting better. a lot better. So we sort of know. And then a lot of the, and then for a lot of the advertisers, especially the direct response advertisers,

like the Squarespace and the, and the Caspers and people like that, like where it's sort of like, it is very sort of like, it's not like, oh, this sort of like murky sort of like proposition where like we're going to advertise here and hopefully people feel better about us.

It's a very much like a, people sign up for Squarespace. It's a four. mail-mail. Yeah. And they know, like, here's how much we spend. Here's how many, like, customers we get. Here's life-down value of those customers. It is worth it for us to advertise at these rates or not. Right. And so, so that's also a pretty good market test. Like, people are advertising at the rates that we're charging and they continue to sign up. Yeah. And so, so that means that it's working. Do you have strong opinions on what type of content

is going to, is, will be doing well in the future? Like, I, The landscape has seemed to have shifted a little bit. I mean, it's probably just broadening, so there's room for everything. Yeah. But are you seeing trends in like certain types of content, whether it's like subject matter, length, type of host, style of host that's just like coming out of nowhere and really dominating? Yeah, I mean, well, clearly like crime, true crime. People love crime.

Yeah, it's like, and I think that was like sort of like serial inadvertently. sort of like cracked that open and and it's just been sort of like it's been nonstop ever since. So like after a serial and that was like I don't think that was I know obviously I'm very close with all the people who worked on the serial team and that was that was a story that they were interested in personally but they don't have they're not like interested in true crime as a genre. Yeah. So it was like largely accidental I think. But but um so but that like ever since serial there's been like tons and tons of true crime.

and like they've all they've all done very well. It's seemingly sort of like, sort of like across the spectrum of sort of like produced, non-produced sort of like, you know, there's some that are like talk shows just sort of discussing sort of like what they find online. There's some that are sort of like following a single case throughout twists and turns.

There's some all in the middle. And like they all, they all do pretty well. You know, we launched, you know, sort of a crime-related show, Crime Town, which is sort of like about crime and politics and sort of the interplay between the two. And that did really well for us. You know, I think there's a lot of mobsters and gangsters.

And it's, you know, it's interesting, you know. What about stuff like lore? I saw that they have an, I think it's an Amazon show now. Is that transition to video interesting to you guys? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We're doing that. There are a couple questions about it.

We have a bunch of projects in the works, sort of translating stuff that first appeared an audio into video. It was notably, I guess, is the ABC sitcom. Alex, Inc., which is going to come out, I guess, this winter, which is based on season one of startup, sort of like the Alex character is played by Zach Braff. There's, you know, our fiction podcasts, our first fiction podcast, Homecoming,

is going to be made into, we got a two-sexuals. season deal with Amazon. That's going to launch sometime in 2018. And that's exciting. That's starring Julie Roberts in the lead role. Life is weird. That's bizarre. What about the stuff you had to kill or you just decided to kill along the way?

Like, how are you making those choices? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is sort of like, it's like it all comes down to sustainability. Okay. And that can mean a couple of different things. Like sometimes there's like, sometimes the concept is like just too complicated to pull off at the frequency we need to pull it off. And it's hard. Like I come from this background of like sort of like when we were first pitching this,

I was talking about like sort of like how we were going to be distinguished like, you know, several years ago. I was pitching investors. How are we going to distinguish our material from like, podcast out there and I was just sort of like oh ours is going to be produced and we're going to like sort of like you know so we're going to like hire teams and we take this very seriously the craft of it and one of our investors I remember saying so it's he's like so it sounds like you're just saying you're going to do whatever else does but just it's going to be a lot more expensive to produce and I sort of am saying that and and the hope is which has been somewhat borne out by the facts

largely borne out by the facts is that like when you take the attention to detail you crack through to a different realm of audience than something that isn't that that isn't as highly produced. Yeah. Now, there was lots of caveats. Number one being, like, you can have like a talk show. Joe Rogan is a perfect example where it's just like it does monster numbers. It has monster engagement. And like, and like there's there's not, it doesn't take months to produce each episode.

No. Yeah. So, and it's great. You know what I mean? And it's like, it's great. Like there's, there's great live. A lot of the great things about like that are showing up in our episodes are showing up on, you know, in, in his podcast as well. And like there's some people who are just great live.

And like that's sort of lightning in a bottle. Those people are, that is much harder than. I have so much respect for that. Doing this video stuff is is an absolute education in holding conversations with people. Because before when I did just an audio podcast, editing is magic. And all of a sudden, everyone's smarter and funnier. And it's just like really zippy.

And now I've really had to learn about like how to control the energy in a room when you're having a conversation. Yeah. Because we edit this, but not nearly as much as we used to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah. Yeah. So, so that we were making these sort of more expensive. But then like sometimes like the like and like a lot of times like you can have like this amazing sort of concept in it. And it's like. Yeah. It's thrilling.

And people. everybody becomes the thing that people discuss and people want to hear it. But like if we can't, if it can't be sustainable, if it can't come out a certain number of times a year, then there's no way to, there's no way to make it money. Sometimes it's sort of like the, is it, are the, is the team passionate about the thing that they're doing? And if not, it doesn't make sense to continue. It's better to find something that the host is passionate about rather than try to sort of match the host with some. sort of material that you think could work. And that was a lesson we learned early on.

Interesting. I think with, you know, with Sampler, for example, was a show, it was like a podcast about podcasts. And the host was Britney Loose,

who we'd heard, you know, sort of hosting another show for colored nerds. And we really, she's, she's great. She's got this great energy on the mic. And so we were like,

hey, Britney come and host this thing. And she was like, yeah, that's great. But it's like, and it was, it was,

it was a pretty good podcast. And she did a really good podcast. like we liked it, but it wasn't like her passion. And like it was, he was doing fine, but it wasn't doing gangbusters. And so we were like, well, let's just, let's just have you host a show that you like cared deeply about. And let's see if we can do that.

And so we sort of shut that down, we started, he hired her other co-host Eric Eddings. And we launched The Nod, which is sort of like a celebration of black culture. Their sort of tagline is blackness as biggest fans. And like that show is like, you know that that and and like the energy of that show and just sort of the the the feeling of it is

just like it's it's really exciting so like they just they just feel it and they're like it's like it's got a lot of energy i think that's so critical like people underestimate how important it is to just come in really strong and have that vibe because most podcast um listeners have picked their favorite shows in my experience because they just they engage with this person like you were saying before that first category. There's that like Joe Rogan type person where folks just bond with them. And when that's done poorly, it puts people off. More often than not when I talk about like, hey, we do a podcast with YC, you know, we interview people that are interested in tech or kind of in that space. They're like, oh, is it just a bunch of like dudes talking around mics like goofing on

each other? Right. And that's like, let's put a dent in the podcast world. It seems like it slowed it down quite a bit. Yeah. Because more often than not, that's how people were introduced to it. Yeah, that's how people think, that's what people think of podcast is. It's just sort of like a bunch of people sort of like, you know, pontificating around, you know, mics, you know, to each other and cracking jokes or whatever. And, and like, I think there's a lot of great, like, a lot of people, there's a lot of podcasts like that that have, like, very devoted fan bases that, like, that, like, that love that.

And, like, if you love the subject matter that, like, those, that people are wisecracking about, then you're down for that. Like, that's great. And you make a habit of listening to that podcast and those grow and do well. It's just like to cut through to get beyond like the the small group of people that are going to be interested in, whatever it is, you're talking about, you know, just already. Yeah. Like you need to bring, you need to bring some production to it to sort of like grow the audience beyond that. So if I wanted to start a podcast today and I was a solo person, not affiliated with a big company, not within a podcast network, what would you recommend?

I do to educate myself before I get started? So I think, well, there's like a lot of online resources. I did a course. I did a course on Creative Live, which was pretty much everything I know about making audio combined into two days of listening and watching, which I think it's definitely still available. And it's like you have to buy it. But it's like sometimes they run specials.

And I'd say it's definitely worth it. there's like a bunch of free resources on transom.org, which is like a, it's run by this great guy, Jay Allison, who's like a long time public radio sort of like mench basically. He's just been, he's like, he's great. And he was like early on in my career. He was like really helpful. And he's just, he runs this invaluable thing called Transom where he just gets everybody from across mostly public radio. but like a lot of like the best sort of most exciting people inside the public radio world. So that strain of the podcasting universe,

they just sort of lay out these manifestos where they just sort of talk about their tricks. They also have like field guide recorder reviews and sort of like it's just like invaluable stuff like that. There's a guy Pat Flynn who does like the passive, I think it's called the passive income podcast. I've listened to that one. Yeah. Yeah. And he has a couple of YouTube tutorials. I think that are just sort of like, here's how you set up your, your system to do it.

He's focused much more on sort of like the sort of daily. Here's how, you know, here's how you do something. Yeah. But that's, but it's like he's, they're good, solid like, you know, sort of like tutorials. And then, and then I think just doing it. Like to me, the big, the big thing is to find your, find a friend who, who you trust and who's easily bored. And just like do it, get better at like, like just build stuff.

Like whatever you want to do, like whoever your hero is, copy them and understand that you're going to be so much worse than whoever your hero is. And you're also going to be different. And you think you're copying them, but you're not. But that's okay. You'll get to the difference later. Just try to be as close as you can in the beginning. And I think that's like, I mean, Ira Glass,

gives us advice, you know, sort of who's my mentor and sort of like, which is sort of like, you have to start with some, with a vision of what you want to be. And then like, you copy that. And then eventually you'll find your way to your own voice through copying. But like, if you're just starting out, I'm an original. I'm going to do it my way. Like, it's really hard. I think there are people who can do that. And maybe you will be the TSLA of podcasting and publish your masterpiece at 21. And like, that's fine. But I don't think, uh, I don't think that happens that often. Much more often, I think, you just, you, you, you try to copy somebody who you admire, you suck at it, and along the way you learn some things. You learn a lot because, you know,

you talk to someone and so many things go unsaid, because either they're assumed or it's just style and it's like innate. Were there any things that, um, kind of like non-obvious interviewing strategies that you picked up, whether it's here or at NPR? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, so a big part is like, um, I think, I think interviewing, well, people respond to when you're interviewing somebody. So if you're doing the kind of podcasts that we do, mostly, the fundamental building block of that kind of podcast is the interview. And the fundamental building block of a good interview is two things. One, you want people to tell you stories. Like there was this one thing that happened to me this one day. I was at home. I went outside,

blah, blah, blah. You want like a story. It has a beginning. It has a middle. It has a punchline. That's building block number one. If you have people who are telling you stories, that's great. The other fundamental building block is emotion, is like emotional honesty, where people are talking in a real way about something. And some people are just good at that in general. They talk, they're emotionally present when they talk. And those people are generally better interviews. But then some people are like more guarded. Most people are more guarded. But occasionally you'll get to a moment of genuine emotional honesty. And I'm not talking about it has to be sad.

Sometimes it can be happy. Sometimes it can be laughter. Sometimes it can be confusion. Whatever. But something real that's the other building block of an interview. And so I always say that a good interview is like a good therapy session where you're just trying to get people to put their feelings into words. And so a lot of times if you're talking about something that has any kind of emotional stakes to it, there's there's a moment where you're going to sort of like

hear something in somebody's voice and you're going to want to press further and you're going to want to try to get to like there's a funny feeling and the thing that they said and you're going to want to try to explore that funny feeling and that's where the gold is so trying training yourself to sort of be aware of that and sort of like getting people to talk about it without prying and without being confrontational

but just sort of like getting them to open up about it and feel comfortable opening up. So part, the best thing you can do in an interview is listen. Like, that's the number one thing. Um, be yourself. Understanding that like you as the interviewer are part of the drama. Like there's like a great question with a great answer is is riveting. Nobody will turn it off.

If you ask a great question, like I remember there was this when I, I sort of more sort of transform like a big turning point in my career was. this show I did for this American life, me and Adam Davidson did it together. It was called the giant pool of money. It was about the mortgage crisis. And it was like an hour long sort of explainer. It came out in 2008, sort of like what's going on with the housing bubble and sort of all that stuff that's happened. It was this big long thing we reported out for for months and months and months and it started with this question where this guy had, we were talking to this guy at a foreclosure sort of like event where he was like sort of talking about like this massive loan

that the bank had given him. And he was saying like, at the time he didn't have a full-time job. He had three not very steady part-time jobs. He was making a combined income of maybe $45,000 a year. And he got a half million dollar loan from the bank without any paperwork. Basically, they didn't ask him any questions. And he was telling us about like how weird it was. And so he was talking about like, yeah, they didn't ask me any questions. They didn't, like there was paperwork and stuff like that. But nobody asked how much money I made, how much money I had in the bank, anything like that, what my job was. And I asked him, I was like, would you have loaned? you the money. And like the minute you hear me ask that question, nobody is going to turn off

the radio, right? Everyone wants to hear the answer. And like, and so, and he was like, no, I wouldn't have loaned me the money. Nobody I know would have loaned me the money. I have guys that are criminals who wouldn't have lent me that money. And they would break their kneecaps. Like, I remember, like, you know, it was just sort of like that. And it was this great answer and it was sort of perfectly set up the whole question, which is sort of like, why did the banks loan people the money when they themselves wouldn't have loaned the money, right? Like, what's going on? So, but like that drama of the question and the answer is something that's very real.

And if I had screwed up the question, if I'd just been nervous about it, or if I hadn't asked it right or whatever, if I hadn't been like present and just sort of like taking my job seriously and just asking the questions, I would have, you know, I would have, it wouldn't have worked. So that's the thing to also keep in mind is just sort of like you in audio more than anything, you are part of the, you are part of the show. And so just remember that. I think that's a great, great place to wrap it up. Yeah. Cool. Thanks, man. All right, thank you. All right, thanks for listening. So as always, you can check out the transcript and the video at blog.commodator.com. And if you have some time, please leave us a rating and review wherever you find your

podcast. See you next time.