StartUp podcast

Every day I spend about 25 minutes driving to and from work, which is a great time to listen to podcasts. There are so many good podcasts available nowadays and it’s so easy to play them on car audio systems through your phone, that it’s surprising that not more people do this. For me podcasts are a way to relax (especially after work) and to learn new things. I don’t like to waste time during the day, so I prefer podcasts that are entertaining but also give me new ideas or teach me stuff.

This week I listened to episode 7 of StartUp, a fantastic new podcast series that follows a the first couple of months of a new start-up. Alex Blumberg (of among others ‘This American Life’ and ‘Planet Money’ fame, podcasts I also listen to regularly) decided to set up a podcasting company and record most of his conversations and thoughts during the start-up phase of the company. The result is one of the best podcast series I have ever listened to, so good that I decided to blog about it.

I have been involved with a large number of start-ups over the years, either as a (co-)founder, CEO, board member, advisor or investor. One thing I learned is that the first few months are always remarkably similar. You have the best business idea in the world (you think – but most start-ups eventually change their business model because it doesn’t work), you are super motivated to get it off the ground, you try to find a good name, you look for co-founders and early employees, you start raising funds and finally you release your first product.

This is what Alex captured on digital tape and put together in this 25-30 min/episode podcast. It’s great to hear how he grows from a super naive first-time entrepreneur to someone who starts to understand a little bit how the start-up world works in the later episodes. The podcast covers topics such as raising money and he even records the conversations he has with VCs (even some well-known ones), and how they react to his pitch.

Other topics he covers are how he finds his co-founder including the hilarious decision making process on who gets how many shares. I am glad they eventually solved that, because if I had been in the shoes of his eventual co-founder I would have probably walked off after Alex’ lowball offer. To be fair, Alex really had no clue about what it means to be a co-founder instead of an employee, and he mainly listened to friends who had no clue either.

Another interesting episode is the search for a name. The original name of American Podcasting Corporation is not good enough and the process they go through to find a name that everybody is happy with is very recognizable. It also shows that Alex is not a real business person but more of a creative: in the end he finally likes the name they come up with but after sleeping on it for a night he is not happy with the process they used to get the name. He wanted to change it because of that… That would drive me nuts as a co-founder, you often need creative people in your business but it’s not always easy to work with them.

When I started listening to the podcast I was 100% sure I would never consider investing in Alex’ venture, but after 5 episodes he almost convinced me to call him up and ask to join in the round. I started to like him and the way he talks about his business plans. I believe he could build an interesting business with his podcasts and I would have been willing to bet some private money on that. That is, until I heard his valuation. $10 million for a start-up that is just starting out seems very high to me, but they still managed to raise $1.5 million on it (incl. $200K from listeners in a crowdfunding episode!). Good for them, but I hope they will be able to raise subsequent rounds at such a hefty seed round valuation.

The company is certainly off to a good start, because this podcast is quickly becoming one of the more famous ones on iTunes and Soundcloud. If you are thinking about doing your own start-up this is a “must-listen-to” podcast. The same if you are a start-up investor who has never built a business from scratch him (or her)self.  If you just want to learn how a start-up works and about the problems entrepreneurs face in the early stage of their business venture, you should check this out. It’s well produced, very entertaining (even the ads are so good that you don’t want to skip them) and you’ll certainly learn a thing or two. The series is not finished yet, I hope Alex will keep on producing new StartUp episodes for a while.