StartUp Podcast: #14 Where We Are
February 17, 2015 4:42 PM - Subscribe

The final episode of Season 1. Alex reviews where he started and where the company is now. He talks to his insightful wife, Nazanin, and investor Chris Sacca. In the second half, Alex and Lisa introduce the company that will be featured in Season 2.
posted by radioamy (14 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm a little hesitant for the show to shift gears in season 2, but I agree that the show probably couldn't go on much longer just being about Gimlet. I am very happy that they are featuring a woman-owned company in Season 2.

I know this is petty but I got a little nervous at the end when Zoe Chace was mentioned in the credits, because her voice is so grating to me. I know she left Planet Money recently but according to twitter she is going to This American Life, phew.
posted by radioamy at 4:46 PM on February 17, 2015


I like the ones where Alex lets his insecurities hang out; it feels to me like he's still struggling with the whole "do I want to build an empire?" question, and maybe a bit trapped in it now? Chris Sacca's "but you're doing it with my money" did have an air to me of the trap snapping shut.

Also: holy shit, Sacca's story about the Uber founder humilitating his dad at Wii Tennis; and spinning it as somehow a good thing? I wondered if Alex was struggling to hold back a "Christ, what an asshole"; I know I let one fly when I heard it on my walk at lunchtime.

Season 2: yes, I'm glad we're going to hear from some women too. Skeptical about the "yet another dating startup" angle, although the episode did touch on that itself by noting the incumbents. And I'm glad also that they're not going to abandon covering Gimlet altogether; an occasional checkin would be interesting. (For example, Sacca's point about hitting cashflow positive too early stifling risk-taking was interesting and wasn't really unpacked in this episode; that sounds like it could become a sticky issue.)

I noticed Zoe Chace's mention in the credits too: it feels like pretty much everyone in the Planet Money/TAL orbit is spending some time moonlighting for Gimlet.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:07 PM on February 17, 2015


Oh, and I liked the inclusion of both the long pauses; Chris Sacca's hesitation was a nice echo of Nazanin's. A good choice in the edit, I thought.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:12 PM on February 17, 2015


My feeling is that either Gimlet will grow 'slowly' (e.g. reaching 100 employees in say 5-10 years) with Alex in charge; or it will grow explosively but with Alex in more of an Editorial Director role and business dealings left to someone more comfortable with that kind of high-risk/high-reward approach.

The good news for Alex is that Chris Sacca doesn't have that much control over the company so he can pretty much do whatever he wants.
posted by adrianhon at 3:21 AM on February 18, 2015


I'm disappointed they won't be going for a deeper dive into Gimlet, but I think they want to make the show more general than that. So while they can have an episode on startup burnout, and talk to people about how it feels, they don't really want to discuss the details of why people are getting burned out making podcasts.

it feels like pretty much everyone in the Planet Money/TAL orbit is spending some time moonlighting for Gimlet.

If Gimlet sells to someone, and these early employees have ownership, that's a lottery ticket that's hard to pass up.
posted by smackfu at 5:43 AM on February 18, 2015


Yeah the anecdote about Uber founder Travis Kalanick was quite off-putting to me, but I have a lot of issues with Uber so it really fit perfectly in with my existing dislike for the company.

I don't think Alex actually said out loud that he was struggling to figure out how big he wanted Gimlet to bet (and I think how much of his persona life he is willing to sacrifice) but the feeling was present. Chris Sacca clearly admires the dominate-at-all-costs mentality of entrepreneurs like Kalanick. However it doesn't appear that Kalanick has much of a personal life (he's not married and doesn't have kids) nor does he have a stellar reputation. In fact he seems to pride himself on being a jerk. Alex on the other hand has a reputation for being a pretty nice guy, and he has a family, neither of which he is willing to give up.

smackfu, I agree that stock options at Gimlet are definitely enticing. However not everyone on the credits is a FT employee, they definitely employee freelancers.
posted by radioamy at 9:10 AM on February 18, 2015


I don't know. I listen to this and I think -- you created one interesting enough podcast (I listen to it and enjoy it, but wouldn't miss it if it disappeared) and poached another, but now you think you're moving too fast and . . . that's it, two podcasts, which update once a week(ish) and on what felt like a random schedule of just about twice a month, which is now breaking for 2 months.

Maybe they are secretly looking for more podcasts, it's impossible to tell based on that one episode about burnout, which is the only one they've made about what their growth strategy is. I wanted to hear more about that, and less about whether his marriage would survive. (Because I listen to podcasts on an old ipod classic which I hope never dies, I don't care at all about the app.)

I think it's weird that they didn't even mention the name of the company.
posted by jeather at 12:23 PM on February 18, 2015


I am guessing that it was strategic to not mention the name of the company. Maybe to keep us guessing, maybe because they didn't want to bring added attention to the company while they're working on the episodes.

My guess is that there is a lot going on behind the scenes at Gimlet that we're not aware of. I'm sure they have other shows in the pipeline. Also it apparently takes a lot of people to produce a show and it's harder when you don't have the backing of a hit machine like NPR HQ or WNYC.
posted by radioamy at 12:46 PM on February 18, 2015


My guess is that there is a lot going on behind the scenes at Gimlet that we're not aware of.

Which seems . . . weird, given the premise of the podcast. They are pretending to be very open about things, but they're really not particularly open about it. I don't think that being secretive about these things is a bad idea, necessarily, but the careful wording around it is.
posted by jeather at 1:07 PM on February 18, 2015


Well they don't want to tell us what shows are launching too far before they launch. I suppose it was really obvious in hindsight that they had poached PJ & Alex, but they didn't announce it too far beforehand.
posted by radioamy at 3:31 PM on February 18, 2015


Right, Startup didn't mention Reply All, or PJ and Alex as anything other than a "help from" credit, until the show launched. I suspect that the focus on "launching a business" rather than "running our business" is deliberate: it's largely covering things as "issues all startups/founders face", but that framing also keeps the specifics of Gimlet's business development behind the curtain.

I'm curious about it, though. Reply All seems like maybe picking an easy apple as the second show: presenters, subject area, format already largely shaken out by WNYC. I suspect developing new shows in-house is going to be harder, but also is going to become necessary.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:10 PM on February 18, 2015


Given what we've heard so far I don't think there's any chance of Gimlet growing into a "media empire". Between NPR itself and all the existing/growing podcast networks, competition in the content creation biz seems pretty fierce. $1.5 million in this market sounds like Kickstarter money, and I don't think people expect much more out of a Kickstarter than a goodly bit of well produced content.

As a podcast listener, Reply All in particular seems like a lateral move, the same (okay, very similar) show moving from one RSS feed to another. The added benefit to my life has not been so much the extra Gimlet production value as that WNYC got someone to take over the TLDR desk, so there's now two groups of hosts instead of one.

At the same time, I don't think they're doing anything wrong; I want to listen to the existing content and I want to hear whatever's coming next. I just think the "lifestyle business" being brought up as a boogeyman seemed pretty bullshit. One person's "lifestyle business" is another's "sustainable business".

Did I hear correctly in the episode when they said something about $1m bookings this year? Or did I get that mixed up with the investment money numbers? Can you really make that much out of advertising revenue for two shows in the podcast world?
posted by tjgrathwell at 12:22 AM on February 19, 2015


Can you really make that much out of advertising revenue for two shows in the podcast world?

They have the #25 and #44 most popular podcasts, so I'd guess sponsorships are over $10k per episode. But I bet they are counting a lot of future bookings in that $1m.

I just think the "lifestyle business" being brought up as a boogeyman seemed pretty bullshit. One person's "lifestyle business" is another's "sustainable business".

I think the idea is that if you want a sustainable "lifestyle" business, bootstrap it yourself. If you want to spend someone else's money, you should have a plan for getting it back to them with a healthy rate of return.
posted by smackfu at 7:16 AM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


They are pretending to be very open about things, but they're really not particularly open about it.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to be absolutely transparent about everything. StartUp has been pretty eye-opening about a number of aspects of starting a business that I hadn't been aware of, and a podcast necessarily has to curate the topics it covers since (a) it would be an unwieldy mess of information, (b) the staff would have to give up even more of their privacy than they have so far, and (c) there are probably a ton of negotiations that have to take place to get new products developed that would be harmed if trumpeted too early.
posted by psoas at 11:34 AM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


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