StartUp Podcast: #9 We Made A Mistake
December 10, 2014 7:49 PM - Subscribe

Gimlet Media addresses a company mistake.

The Gimlet crew joyously uploads the first episode of the new show, Reply All, only to realize that one of the interview subjects for their Squarespace ads, a nine year-old boy and his mom, were unaware that the interview was for an advertisement.
posted by sparklemotion (7 comments total)
 
I missed the "twitter storm" about this so I was pretty surprised to hear this story. I can absolutely understand why the mom was upset by the situation, and it seems like she was able to talk reasonably about it once the mistake was fully explained to her.
posted by sparklemotion at 7:50 PM on December 10, 2014


I enjoyed the episode - have loved the podcast since it started. I kept waiting to find out what they did to make it up to the kid though!!
posted by bq at 7:52 PM on December 10, 2014


I keep wondering when they're hiring plan is going to move on from taking people from a public radio background.

Also, it was great to hear a woman's voice in this show that wasn't the wife of one of the male employees.
posted by garlic at 12:03 PM on December 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


That wife is one of the smartest people on the show.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:19 PM on December 11, 2014


This is the first episode of StartUp I've listened to. Before this, somehow, I didn't think a podcast about making (a) podcast(s) would be worthwhile. But this episode was fascinating.

The thing that interested me most was the nature of the disconnect between what caused the problem (a dumb mistake) and how it was immediately perceived by others (mildly malicious intent). This kind of thing happens all the time, but usually I'm seeing it from the other perspective; it's interesting to hear about it from the side that made the error.
posted by ocherdraco at 1:41 PM on December 11, 2014


Most of the earlier episodes are actually less about making podcasts and more about how you go about getting funding to start a company these days.
posted by sparklemotion at 1:45 PM on December 11, 2014


I really enjoyed this episode. I had listened to the Replyall ep and saw the issue unfold on Twitter, and I thought they handled it well. It was great to hear more from the Gimlet crew, and also from the mom herself. I felt that Gimlet handled this really well.

I felt really bad for the girl who wrote the original email. You can tell by reading it that she wasn't being intentionally misleading, she just wrote a sloppy email. She sounded so upset and embarrassed about the whole thing, like she was afraid she was going to lose her job. (I would have been really disappointed in Blumberg had he fired her, FWIW.) We've all done some dumb shit at work but fortunately for most of us our mistakes aren't so public.
posted by radioamy at 8:49 PM on December 17, 2014


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