StartUp Podcast: #11 Know Your Customer
January 6, 2015 8:47 PM - Subscribe

Lessons on building an audience.

After casually assuming in Episode 10 that the Venn diagram of Serial and StartUp listeners must have a 100% overlap, Alex was surprised to hear from a flood of listeners who had never heard of The World's Most Popular Podcast. He realizes that his audience is more diverse than he first thought, and he speaks to a few listeners, including an atheist bible salesman.

In the spirit of this episode, I thought it'd be neat if we all mentioned how we learned about StartUp, and maybe podcasting in general.
posted by radioamy (11 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oddly enough, I was looking for another long-term, one-story podcast after Serial, and someone suggested StartUp. I wasn't too sure about it (the host is a little too winkingly self-effacing at times), but I've come to like it. I'm not too sure how representative this is of most startups, though, since the capital he's been able to raise on his own cachet alone is pretty amazing. I would like to see a season 2 follow another startup, one that has a few more bumps in the road.
posted by xingcat at 7:09 AM on January 7, 2015


I've been listening since the Giant Pool of Money.
posted by bq at 8:49 AM on January 7, 2015


I didn't see the connection between the two halves of the podcast, but they were both pretty cool.
posted by bq at 8:50 AM on January 7, 2015


I got into StartUp via PlanetMoney. I pretty much find out about most podcasts from other podcasts/hosts - either during the show or on Twitter.

Actually this is one of the things that I really like about the podcast world - there is a definite sense of community. The people at This American Life encouraged Alex to leave and start Planet Money, and the Planet Money folks seem genuinely enthused about StartUp. I love that many shows actually insert other shows into theirs. I think they've realized that they all benefit from each others' success because it grows the podcasting audience as a whole.

xingcat I agree that Blumberg's story might not be totally typical because he's well-known in the radio world, but I think a lot of his hurdles and anxieties are very common. I work for a tech startup and introduced my CEO to the podcast, and he said that he totally related to many things that Alex has said. He said he totally fumbled during his initial investor pitches and that it was way harder than he expected.
posted by radioamy at 9:17 AM on January 7, 2015


I got into StartUp via PlanetMoney. I pretty much find out about most podcasts from other podcasts/hosts

Same here. I was driving cross-country and heard the episode of PM where Alex comes back to introduce StartUp and I realized I'd never noticed he was gone; I think he and Adam Davidson were pretty much interchangeable in my mind.

When I thought about it for even a second, it seemed odd to me that he assumed the podcasting world was so centralized; I mean, yes I'd heard of Serial because it's a capital-P Phenomenon, but (for example) Welcome to Night Vale was a big deal long before I'd heard of it (on MeFi, as it happens) and it's not like I could name any of the sporting or literary or medical podcasts out there, popular as they may be - they're just not in my ambit.

I love that many shows actually insert other shows into theirs.

Indeed; I'm not that knowledgeable of the James Bond oeuvre, but when the How Did This Get Made? team hosted the James Bonding guys for A View to a Kill, it was delightful.
posted by psoas at 11:18 AM on January 8, 2015


I didn't see the connection between the two halves of the podcast

Me neither; and both really seemed like wheel-spinning compared to the normal "events in the life of a startup business" content.

The end of this one suggests that Startup is going to transition away from being about Alex and Gimlet and into broader areas. I'm a bit saddened by that; what made it good was that it was exactly that -- and that it presented it in a remarkably honest and transparent way. If it becomes a more general "stories about entrepreneurship" thing, like the bible-app story in the second half of this one: well, that's less interesting to me and it's kinda already well-covered by Planet Money.

Maybe in part this is a consequence of Startup having caught up to real time? I got the impression that there was a lot of telescoping of time in the early episodes -- that for example the jump between "first terrible awkward pitch" and "first investment" was a few weeks in podcast time but probably more like a few months in real time. Now that it's up-to-date, maybe there's not enough new (and publicly-disclosable) Gimlet business-development material to justify a dedicated podcast?

Maybe also a consequence of Startup having served its initial purpose -- of being a calling card for Gimlet, an example of "here's the kind of content we're going to produce, and here's the kind of audience it'll get." Now that Gimlet's fully funded, and now it has Reply All up and running, maybe Startup doesn't have as significant a "promoting our business" role to play?

Interesting to see what will happen.

Also, the teased "a new co-host": any predictions? I suspect it'll be a This American Life or Planet Money alum. I'm hoping it's a woman, because both Startup and Reply All are presented by men. And I'm wondering< if the intersection of those is Starlee Kine, who has been getting "editing help" credits on Startup and Reply All for a while now.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:19 PM on January 8, 2015


Now that Gimlet's fully funded, and now it has Reply All up and running, maybe Startup doesn't have as significant a "promoting our business" role to play?

I was also under the impression that StartUp was ending soon: Alex made a biggish deal at the beginning about it being a "miniseries" so I was a little startled at the end of Episode 10 when they announced "coming up next..." since it seems like they've gotten Gimlet off the ground now.
posted by psoas at 9:15 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am also interested to see where this goes. I am not sure I want a cohost or another season. I like the show I think because Alex really lets you inside his head. However I do trust him to make good radio* so if this is the direction he wants to go then lets see what happens.

*Roman Mars still calls it radio so I will too.
posted by radioamy at 10:38 PM on January 8, 2015


Another who got into StartUp via Planet Money, but also seeing it rec'd wide and far. I was fascinated by the idea of podcast fans who'd never heard of Serial - I love things like that, when you discover people who are part of a culture but completely unaware of some huge aspect of it (is there a better way to describe that? I mean, I recall selling a book about the theatre to man and finding out somehow that he had no idea who Al Pacino was. Not that you have to know one to know the other, but it seemed like a strange blindspot. And a friend of a friend who asked me advice on getting into the book industry because she wanted to be a writer, but never heard of Jane Eyre or the Bronte sisters. Of course, I have my own blindspots! Cultural knowledge isn't evenly dispersed, and it's fascinating how we get hold of it).
posted by Gin and Broadband at 5:23 AM on January 10, 2015


As the title says, this episode does really illustrate how important it is to know your customer, and how often companies get it wrong. I work in marketing and we've been very surprised by some of the survey results we've gotten.
posted by radioamy at 10:11 AM on January 10, 2015


Having listened to the next ep: I'm claiming 2-out-of-3 on my co-host predictions.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:00 PM on January 20, 2015


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