Gimlet Media: Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber

Really quick before we start the show, I want to remind you about an upcoming live recording of the podcast. It's happening in Denver on November 13th at the Paramount Theater. I'll be interviewing Kurt Richardson. He's the creator of the Otterbox phone case. And if you haven't been to one of our live shows before, they are super fun. They're a chance to see me and to meet other builders and fans of the show. It's all brought to you by American Express and we'd love to see you there. So to get tickets. Go to nprpresents dot org And I hope to see you in Denver.

Had a dream. I was at some party. And Ted Coppel was there?

How long are you gonna stay at this job? Do you want to start something on your own? And I remember telling him, like, no, Dad, I'm pretty happy. He's like, are you really? So then I woke up.

And I told my wife about that dream. And um I think that kicked it off. I just had to By the button quit.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Raz and on the show today how two public radio producers turn podcasts into profit. media company called Gimlet. Sold for more than two hundred million dollars.

So some of you may know that for most of my early career I was a news person. I covered a bunch of wars, I was posted overseas. I was a host on NPR's evening news show. But then, in twenty twelve? I left. I left to essentially relaunch a podcast. It was called The TED Radio Hour, and I still host it.

And back then, that decision, believe it or not, was like going into the wilderness of journalism. Several of my colleagues were like you're Going to do a what a Podcast? And to be honest, I was a little embarrassed myself. I was leaving the prestigious world of news for the exile of podcasts.

But of course, what eventually happened was precisely the opposite of exile. Podcasts exploded. Today, podcasts are a half a billion dollar industry. And what was once considered an afterthought, even at a place like NPR? Is now one of its most important sources of revenue.

Now back in 2014, one of my colleagues was watching this explosion really closely. His name is Alex Bloomberg. Alex is someone I've admired for a long, long time. He was a producer on This American Life, and then he went on to co-create one of my favorite shows, Planet Money. And Alex started to dream of an idea to build a production company. Like HBO except for audio for podcasts. But even then, the thought of making money off podcasts? was still a fairly new proposition.

Besides, like a lot of mature and stable organizations, NPR can be slow to innovate. And Alex realized he couldn't launch this idea inside the company. So he left. Which was a huge gamble. Lots of people in public radio thought he was nuts.

He also knew nothing about how to run a business. Now as many of you may know, Alex documented this journey on a podcast called Startup. In that show, he describes the emotional ups and downs of starting the business and how he eventually came to meet his co founder, Matt Lieber. They decided to call their company Gimlet and went on to produce a bunch of podcasts, including Reply All and Homecoming. And then in two thousand nineteen

Matt and Alex sold the company they founded to Spotify for around$200 million, which I think is fair to say is not a sum of money you often hear connected to public radio folks. Unless they are major donors. Anyway, we'll hear from Matt Lieber a bit later in the show, but first to Alex, who grew up in Cincinnati. His dad was in advertising and his mom ran a public assistance program in the city. And even though it may not seem obvious given what they did,

Alex says both of them were actually really entrepreneurial. Oh yeah. They were entrepreneurial. And yet we never use that word. Yeah. I didn't learn that word at home. I probably learned that word in college.

Um My mom Was a social worker. And she ran a public employees assistance program. But I never heard her talk about it that way.

And then my father He was always in advertising. Uh, my dad was always in advertising and he you know, he was a copywriter and then he worked with a couple b different people at different agencies and then he eventually started his own advertising agency. And then that agency and then another one that became Wolf Bloomberg Crody. So he was the Bloomberg and the Wolf Bloomberg Crody.

And like it grew pretty big. It grew like at a certain point I think they were like Seventy, eighty people. Like big. And he never talked about it. As like This is my business. Like we're building this business or anything like that. If anything, he was embarrassed about it. Why? Um

I don't think he valued it. At all. Like I think all he wanted to do was be a poet, really. Yeah. Or like an academic or a great thinker.

But he had this successful business that seemed to kind of Grow I guess just grow on its own or or grow organically. I know. I mean I remember asking him about this at one point because it was like later, later, later on the journey when we when Matt and I had started Gimbling, we were like

growing this company and it was like all I could think about and it was consuming every single sort of m thought. And One time. later I I asked him about that. I was like, How did you feel about it when you were starting it? I never heard stories from you about it. And I think what what he told me it was like he was like I just never felt like I

I never felt like those were my people, the people I worked with. Mm. Did you did you sense or notice a change in your family's lifestyle, you know, having gone from your dad working for a company, your mom doing social work, to Him running this pretty successful head agency. Oh yeah.

There is there is a there is a moment. Where My dad's company was doing very well. and business was booming and they w one of their clients was Proctoring Gamble. And all of a sudden

We had money. And it was fortunately right around the time that I was going to college. So they were able to pay for me and my sister to go to college. You went off to college, you went to Oberlin, um, and you studied political science, government. W did you did you have a sense of what you wanted to do when you went to college? Like did you think I wanna get into public service, like my mom. I wanna do some kind of social work or was that

I think I had a sense of like wanting to do something good in the world, like I remember I studied Russian because back when I was in college Russia was still the evil empire of still communism. Right. And I had this very sort of political feeling about like, you know, they're There are people just like you and me, Mr. Reagan, and I'm gonna learn their language and prove it to you. Um and I think one of the things I was um A big

consumer of narrative nonfiction from an early age. Yeah, we had magazines laying around the house. Like we had the New Yorker and Harper's that was that kind of household and and like I picked them up early and really loved them and then as I got older I loved them more and then Yeah. But I never I never saw myself as doing that. that felt like the people who did that, the people who did journalism.

Those are the kids who are like sort of on the school paper and had you know majored in journalism and had like gotten internships when they were in college and you weren't doing any of that? I wasn't doing any of that. I was like I tested well and I took A P classes. Yeah. But I was not um a motivated student. I was very comfortable. with a high B. So you graduate, um I guess you you go do you go back to Cincinnati? Well no, I went to Russia.

Spent a year in Russia. Then Spent a summer in Cincinnati and then moved to Chicago. And that's where I sort of picked up my post collegiate life was in was in Chicago. And and in Chicago you were actually a teacher, right? I was yeah, I taught school at a private school for um for four years I taught science. But it wasn't gonna be the thing you were gonna do.

But it wasn't the thing I was gonna do. No. I didn't I didn't feel like it was the thing at like at at a certain point sort of in in my second or third year, I was like, I don't think this is really what I wanna do. But like honestly, guy, I think really what happened was My girlfriend broke up with me. In Chicago. In Chicago. We've been dating for many years and we were in love and It just it really shook me. And um

When she Like, what are you gonna do? And she was like, I'm gonna move to New York and I'm gonna go to film school. And I was like, Wait, that's not fair. We weren't supposed to be actually pursuing our dreams here. Um

You're gonna actually pursue your dream. And then I was like, Oh my God, and now you're gonna go to film school and then you're gonna become a famous director, and then your name is gonna be the marquee and I'm gonna be supervising recess. And it shook me. And it shook me into realizing and I was like, Well, wait why is that wrong? I thought I liked supervising recess and then I realized like no, I I wanna I have something else that's my ambition. But you didn't know what it was.

I didn't I knew what it was at that point. Because She was she was transformative in two ways. The other way that she was transformative is she was from New York. And so she knew people in New York media.

And so through a friend of one of her friends. He was like best friends with one of the editors at Harper's Magazine. And it was like

Wait. There are people at Harper's Magazine who who are friends with the people I'm friends with. Like that seems crazy. You know, like they felt so far away and you know, like completely beyond my reach. And then here this guy was. And so I'd spent a summer in in Brooklyn interning at Harper's Magazine for free. This is like nineteen ninety six. Nineteen ninety four. Ninety four, okay. Ninety four, yeah.

And so I knew that I'd wanted to do that. I'd been really captured by that experience. So I was like, Okay, well that's my dream. I should start pursuing it. So w what did you do at that point? I dabbled I did a bunch of things. I dabbled in grad school. for a little bit. I like went to a year at grad school in in Chicago.

But basically after She broke out with me. I was thirty years old. I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life. And um I was like looking around for stuff to do and I found out about this American life. That's what happened. As a listener.

I knew about it as a listener. And I knew that it was coming out of Chicago and it was like the Incredibly hip. New thing. And

a guy th who had worked at Harper's Magazine. who had been this incredibly intimidating editor there, who I was really enthralled with, but like scared of. This guy's Paul Tuff. he was working with This Market Life in the early days and so through him I got introduced to Ira, I believe. And I was able to get a job as the administrative assistant at this American Life.

So you are in your early thirties. Just been dumped. Just been dumped. You're an administrative assistant of this American life. Yeah, was anyone like I don't know was anyone worried about you? Like did anyone feel like God were your parents sort of like wondering like uh does Alex have any direction or what I I don't know what's what what's going on in his life. The time around m medical school is running out here, son. Yeah. Were you worried or not or not really?

Oh, I was really worried. I was really worried. I was very aware of like how I presented, like I was like a loser, you know. I was like thirty years old, I'd just been dumped. and I didn't have a career and I was an administrative assistant. But

it felt like I'd spent the entire previous decade just Just like Waiting. Because I was afraid and I thought like That would keep me safe.

And then the safe thing had just resulted in intense heartbreak. And There's no excuse though not to do the scary thing. So it felt for the first time in my life, I felt like I was like where I should be. And being the administrative assistant at this American life.

It was like Ira and Three producers. And they were trying to get out an hour of like highly produced radio every single week and they were just like completely up to their necks in work and so there was lots and lots of stuff for me to do. And was Ira teaching you how to make radio?

Yeah. I mean he was. I don't think it it wasn't like he was sitting down and like He was like come here, administrative assistant, I'm gonna teach you how to make radio, but it was just such that was like the second year of this American life's existence. It had already become something of a thing in the world. It was like, you know, very well known and it was on a lot of radio stations and it was on the rise and Ira was just running.

Yeah. And never stopped. He would get there early in the morning and he would leave late late at night and everybody would. And including me. And so like He had no choice but to teach me.

How did you get your first Story onto the show. Ira came to me. And was like The ten year anniversary of

Harold Washington's death is coming up. And he was like, I'm wondering if we should do something for it. Here's this book. Read it. And see if you think there's a story there. Uh, and so he gave me this book called Fire on the Prairie by Gary Rivalin, which was all about Mayor Washington. Mayor Washington was the first black mayor of Chicago and he'd been this sort of like incredibly charismatic leader who just sort of like just tipped off this entire you know, sort of hailstorm of racist black backlash inside in Chicago.

So we started producing it together and I just like would identify all these people from the book and then we would go and interview them and I'd sort of try to help them come up with this with the questions and I remember that like the the show came out on a Friday and on Wednesday We had nothing written. Nothing produced, nothing cut. And then he just dove in and just

Right. An entire Hour long documentary in three days. Wow. It's crazy. He stayed up all night. I'd never say anything like it.

Yeah, I m I remember that episode. I think it I think it's called Herald. It's called Herald. Yeah. I remember that episode. Um it's a classic This American Life. That was the first thing you produced. Yes. That's one way of looking at it. Ha.

But It was so exciting. Yeah. Being there. It was so exciting.

And it was all that I'd wanted. And so the thing that motivated me was like I need to This is what I want to do. I wanna do this. And by a hook or crook, I'm gonna learn how to do it.

But I mean, obviously you started to do more and more and more stuff for the show. Yeah. Over the next couple years. So yeah, over time I like I started um I became sort of like one of the more experienced seasoned producers at this American Life, and that meant doing my own shows, doing my own, as well as producing other people's stories. And then there was a there's a couple years of of that.

just making stories that just felt really exciting. Okay, Alex, I wanna just uh pause for a sec uh because um Matt Lieber is next to you and he's been waiting here patiently. Yes. Sorry, I'm digesting. I'm digesting everything Alex just said. Um

I do I've never heard you s t tell all that all those stories together. Oh yeah. Can I just I just want to do like a like a split screen here for a sec. Um Because while Alex while you were working uh at This American Life, uh Matt, you were in college, I guess, around that time and and I read that you you like you were like a big fan of radio. Yeah. Do you so do you actually remember listening to to This American Life at that time? Yeah. Like it was like literally I was in the car turning the dial. And then I heard

an episode of this American life and I was and I stopped because I was like, This doesn't sound like anything else. Yeah. Which is funny,'cause now like A significant portion of the most popular podcasts on earth are this sound. But at the time it was really weird. It was unusual.

Yeah, and which I guess we should just back up for a sec to say that you You grew up in Massachusetts, um just outside of Austin and when you uh when you went to college to Bowdoin College in Maine, um, did you also get involved in like college radio? Well I had done some reading so I when I was in college

I interned at the local public radio station. So I was doing my college radio at Bowdoin, which was W B B O R And then I spent the summer interning at WBU R, which was the NPR station. And when I graduated college, I was kinda trying to figure out I had applied to be an intern at this American Life and I I spent like a week on my application. You had to like write an essay, you had to critique a story, you had to pitch a couple of stories. Yeah. I had all this like I thought like I have all this radio experience. Sure. Yeah.

I I sent in the package. And I didn't even get rejected. I just got nothing. Nothing. Like I just didn't get a response.'Cause'cause Alex threw it in the garbage. He was in Chicago. Alex must have been on the other end. What year was this?

Uh two thousand and one. Do you remember his application, Alex? No. It was that memorable. Thank God. I didn't I was not in charge of the internal applications at that point. Um all right, so you don't uh you don't get the internship. Uh so instead I guess just out of college you moved to to New York to to try to get a job in radio.

Yes, that's right. I moved to New York. On September first, two thousand and one. Wow. With the idea That I would get into Radio.

But not knowing anyone. But I figured if I wanted to be in radio and media like New York would be a good place to go and I had a friend who had a room openness in his apartment And then on the morning of September eleventh. Two thousand and one.

I was on my way into a job interview. In downtown Manhattan at a staffing firm. Mm.

It was the kind of place where they would like put you and you would be a receptionist at like an insurance company. Yeah, a temp agency. Temp agency, exactly. And On my way to the subway so this was nine eleven and on my way to the subway, like the Second plane hit the second tower. And the subway shut down.

And so I didn't go in. Manhattan that day. And on the way back from as I was going back to my apartment I Saw this guy in a park.

In downtown Brooklyn. hitting golf balls. He was just hitting a pitching wedge. And there was a whole crowd of people all around the po looking up at the That's the smoke coming from both the towers. And this guy just kept hitting golf balls.

And so I was like, This is real it was surreal. It was just surreal. Yeah. And so I ran home, I got my mini disc recorder, and I interviewed the guy. And um He was from he was a Trinidadian guy. And I was just like, How can you be

Like aren't you upset? Like why aren't you home with your family? Like why are you hitting golf balls? And he's like n he was just basically like No man, um, like this is America And in America. You know. Everything's gonna be all right.

Well. And and you actually turn that Into into a radio store, I think. Yeah. It aired on um

Weekend edition. which was a N PR show and you know, millions of people listened to it. And that was like my first That was the first piece I ever got on on a radio show. You would actually go on to spend uh the next

several years working at at a couple of different public radio stations in New York and in Boston. Um I guess like i around two thousand ten you make a big change like you decide to go to business school. Yeah. So what ha happened, what changed? Well, I had done all these jobs in radio. And um I think I I spent like a year, year and a half actually working at MTV Radio.

My job was to interview celebrities on red carpets and then cut up sound bites and send them to local music DJs. But the most of the that most of that decade I spent producing journalism news, culture, and also music. At a number of public radio shows and I happen to be on Three shows in succession.

They were canceled. And That made me doubt whether there was gonna be enough. Like Stability and

Opportunity for me. And I remember at the time my parents were always a bit bewildered. By why I was working in radio. My dad particularly was confused, not by my interest in media, but But public radio?

Right. And I remember what he would ask me, it's like He's like, Hey, maybe have you ever thought about television? He's like, Because I think you could make a better living in television. Which he was correct about. And it was at a time it was just a really hard time in media period in New York. So this was two thousand eight. There's lots of layoffs happening, the beginning of the internet.

as a like disintermediation of publishers was happening. So if you were in legacy media Yeah, you were looking around. realizing that your business model was collapsing. Yeah. And people were beginning to get laid off from like newspapers. And there was this rise of digital. And I remember reading an article

In New York magazine. About how like media was no longer gonna run New York. There were all these new startups and they were like technology and product startups.

And that was where The future was. And there were these people who were entrepreneurs who were like crazy optimistic. about what the world they could build is. And I also I was in journalism, so people are just generally like journalists are skeptical by nature.

And I thought like I kinda wanna be on the other side of this. And so That was when I decided to leave. So you went to business school with the idea of

Like I don't know, going into consulting or starting a business or something like that. No, I I I went to business school as like a last It's like a lifeline. Yeah, it was a lifeline.

I under I began to understand by that point that some of the biggest Changes in our world are driven by business. And if you understood. How markets. function and how business operates.

That's like a tool set that you could do a lot with. Alright, I'm gonna go back to you, Alex, and we'll come back to you, Matt, in a bit. Um So Alex, you you're working on this American life and be really become a like a a a part of like the ensemble. Like yeah, I think anyone who remembers that show In the two thousands remembers your name, hearing your name all the time.

And then in in two thousand eight there was a A pretty significant kind of Moment where You produced a an episode of the show called The Giant Pool of Money, and you did that with Adam Davidson. who was also a public radio reporter at the time. Um how did that how did that happen? How did that come about?

Yeah. You know what it was? It was somebody at this American Life had bought a house. And I had asked Or like well wait, how did you How did you have enough money for the down payment? And she was like, Oh, we didn't have a down payment. We just

They just gave us the loan without a down payment. I was like, really? I was like that I didn't know that happened and she was like, Oh yeah. And so then that started me like I was like that's crazy and then there's all this credit card debt out there and everybody I knew had huge credit card bills and so I was just like sort of like I was just like casually looking at this The story of debt in America, what's going on. And then the more I got into it, the more I sort of like started to understand the macroeconomics of it and how it what it had what that had to do with the Chinese central bank and

And I was friends with Adam Davidson this whole time. And Adam Davidson was a was the correspondent at M at NPR and he was the business and economics correspondent at MPR. And so we had been kicking around this idea of doing something on like Housing debt. So we reported this whole story of like the global financial system and how it had sort of led to these conditions where people were borrowing massive amounts of money without anybody checking to see whether they could pay it back or not.

And it explained this thing that was happening. All around. and explained it in a way that had like characters and people that you could h hear and hear those stories and it was funny and I think Adam and I both knew it. Like we both knew why we were making that, like We're on to something here. Like it felt like.

This very powerful thing. Yeah. the Jan Pool of Money um would go on to win like every award and It's a huge, huge piece of journalism. That year, um it got a lot of attention. And I guess the two of you

Decided hey, why don't we Why don't we start something around money? Why don't we do Why don't we Create something bigger.

Creation of planet money. Yeah. And Adam sort of said to you, I need you. to join me to m to to make this happen. And and the two of you had to kind of build a company within a co like a mini company within a company, right? I mean or like an ensemble cast like like this American Life.

Yeah. Yeah. We had uh we we came in and we were like, Okay, we're gonna do this we're gonna do this like It was daily at the beginning. It was this daily podcast. And me and Adam We're like the ones in charge of it and we'd never been in charge of anything before. We had to go to management training. learned a lot about ourselves. That is and that was sort of the experience where I sort of learned like, okay I can be a boss. Hm.

W w while you the the two of you were kind of ramping up Planet Money and as a kind of hit cruising altitude and became a really successful Podcast and radio. feature on on some of the NPR shows. Um

Did you did you I mean, you're now in your early forties. Uh were you married at that point? Did you have kids? Yes. early on, right, in the very sort of beginning of Planet Money, our first child was born my son and then And then our daughter was born, you know, less than two years later. So yeah, it was a sort of a busy time. We were starting Planet Money and I was like

Starting a family at the same time. Trying to balance it all. Eventually Adam he decides to um to take a leave to write a book and um sort of starts to move on. from the show. You are still there. At what point did you start to think maybe I don't know, maybe I should

Move on. I well I think I think it was a gradu. I think t a couple things happened over the course of Planet Money. One We did this project called the T-shirt project, which was Adam's idea. Um which was like I think he he came in one day and was like I think we should follow a t-shirt as it around the world as it gets made. Like cotton feel to the store. Yeah, exactly. We start with the farmers who make the cotton and then it gets spun into the yarn and gets woven into fabric and then cut and sewn into t-shirts and then it gets shipped back and we'll tell the whole story and it happens all over the world in all these different countries. And we'll meet the people and we'll actually make a shirt.

Yeah. And then we just started thinking about it, it was just like the super exciting i idea. So we so we You know, I think it took it like took it like another year or year and a half before we actually did it. And it was this huge hit. It was like it became this thing that our listeners went along with. We started talking about it. We would prepare all these stories about it. And then we sent all these reporters all around. And you sold a lot of t-shirts, right? And we sold a ton of t-shirts. We sold like 20,000 t shirts. Wow. And we made like almost$600,000. Which which was not like profit for you guys, right? It's just that was just NPR's money.

Yeah, that was just NPR's money, but it was also like and that's what y we used to fund the trips and everything like that. Like we knew that that was gonna we h we were hoping to earn back what we spent on like doing this crazy project, but we we made that back and more. Yeah. And we were doing these like live events where like there'd be huge theaters would show up and see us talk and people were like asked us to sign autographs. Which never had never happened to me before in my all my years of radio journalism. And so it just felt like there was something going on here. It felt like there's money to be made and it felt like there's a big opportunity, you know, to like if if we can tell if we can start a podcast, the super popular podcast about business and economics. Then then you can set a podcast about anything. Yeah.

We should we should do that. We should do more. Should do more planet money. You want to start more shows. I wanted to start more shows. I wanted to figure out a way to do it with MPR.'Cause podcasting started to really gain traction, right? Like I started uh Ted Radio Hour in twenty thirteen and We were one of the kind of the early shows that really got a big audience. I mean, people were starting to talk about podcasting.

Around that time. As as a viable business. Podcasting. Just like the numbers were just growing. And then there was people out there who would making it

Who are making a business of it independently. Like Roman Mars. Who had launched the podcast Ninety Nine Percent Invisible. Mm-hmm. was very inspiring to me. Like he he was out there on his own and he had done it. He'd been doing it for like a couple of years prior to prior to me leaving to to launch Gimlet. And he had like a small staff and he had like advertisers. And I remember asking him early on like questions about like how, you know, where do you get your advertisers? How's it work? And

And it was just working really well for him, you know? Was there excitement when you talked about this at NPR? Was there excitement where people like, yeah, this is great. Yeah. I don't I there was and some in some places there was But it was like

I also knew that it was important to me that it wasn't going to be a non profit. Mm. And the reason was If you have a large global

News outfit. With people all around the world. There might not be a viable business model for you. And you might need to make that work you You might need

foundation money and stuff like that. You might need to just like go that that route. you might not be able to actually just turn a profit. But With Planet Money I was like, No, there's you can turn a profit on Planet Money. That's like Advertisers want to be on that show. The audience is big enough.

It can be profitable. And if it can, it should be. It doesn't make sense to m to force it into a structure. That it doesn't need. And also I felt like I was creating a lot of value. Yeah.

And I wanted to have ownership of of that value. If I was gonna take this risk, I wanted to be able to be rewarded for it. So as you were kinda thinking about this idea. Did you have a clear idea of what it was gonna be? Or did you think like, okay, we're gonna have we're gonna spin this out, we're gonna create all kinds of new shows are gonna be this, this, this, and this, and we'll we'll need a team this size, or was it more

Abstract. Definitely more abstract. It was like sort of like we'll need to make the planet money of Cars and the planet money of the internet. The planet money of you know Whatever else, you know, and I and and my plan in the very beginning, before I met Matt and before like I actually had like actually talked to any investors or anything was like I just need somebody to give me a bunch of money and then I can hire some people and we can start making stuff. So at that point, I mean in two thousand this is two thousand thirteen. This is two thousand thirteen, two thousand fourteen, yeah. I mean was the challenge you were running into at NPR

That they were a nonprofit. organization and they just could not figure out Yeah, we're just no one really wanted to make a decision. Nobody wanted to kinda pull the trigger or

Or no one really thought that there were legs to this, or was it like a combination of those things? A lot all of the above. I think I was a risky venture. You know, like There's not that many places that are set up to like take that kind of risk.

Even though I didn't feel like a risk, even though I felt like well, I know how to do this and like obviously I've done it before, so But like No, that's not true. I'd done it inside institutions whose contributions I was way undervaluing. You know. If you're NPR, that's a lot of risk to take. um to just be like, Yeah, I'm gonna give you this money to try to start something that like I have no idea if you'll succeed or fail. And

There's not that many institutions set up to do that. To do that, yeah. I was frustrated though. I was frustrated. I was frustrated at the inability to like I felt like we were sitting on gold. I felt like we we they they recognize the editorial gold, but I felt like we're sitting on financial gold with planet money and people love it. And it's brand new and it's different and they're consuming it in a different way and it just feels like

You know, that you're getting these like teeny tiny ad rates and like nobody knows what it is yet and It just felt like it felt like we were just this giant. And that nobody knew about us. Yeah. Do you remember the point in your mind where you thought I'm going to leave.

You've worked for organizations your entire life. You've never run a business, you've never gone out on your own. You've got Like a family. You're forty seven.

How did you get to the I am going to do this and I will leave my safe, stable, comfortable job if I have to. That's a pretty big leap.

I don't know if this is exactly the moment, but this was a moment. I mean it's never just one moment. But here is a moment that I remember. I had a dream. Mm. I was at some party.

And Ted Coppel was there? Ha ha And Ted Couple somehow knew who I was. And uh He came up to me at the party and he was like Alex

How long am I gonna stay at this job? Hm. How ain't I do that? Don't you want to start something on your own? And I remember telling him, like, No, Dad I'm pretty happy and like, Are you really?

So then I woke up. And I told my wife about that dream. And um I think that kicked it off.

Yeah. I just had to Bite the bullet and quit. When we come back in just a moment. How Alex learns that it's a lot easier to make a podcast.

than to make a podcast company. And how he documents almost every humiliating moment of that process. On the show Star Up. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to how I built this.

From NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's twenty fourteen. And Alex Bloomberg is going to walk away not from one But from two plum jobs in public radio.

And he's gonna do this to start a podcast company. Something that at this point was not an entirely proven concept. So he decides to lay out his case. On a podcast.

Which he calls startup. Here's a clip of it. I love podcasts. Seem like someone should come up with money to invest in making new shows like these and come up with a theory about how those shows could be profitable. I kept waiting for someone to do that. And then came this thought. A thought that's gotten a lot of people

The thought. Well I can do that. And d did you think you were gonna

Do this by yourself? Was that was that the plan at the beginning? Yes. I thought that was what I was gonna do. Basically I was on my own. Um millions of people listen to This American Life and Planet Money and NPR.

And I didn't Have any personal brand. And so my big fear was like I figured I'd be able to like

Yeah. a podcast together. I just didn't know. How anybody was gonna know about us? Yeah. So I had to do something that was gonna attract attention to what we were doing and I figured like okay

A guy recording himself trying to start a company. That'll be that'll be good. It was like a marketing ploy. Doing a a an audio diary of like making this company. Yeah. Are you meeting Someone with money? This is my wife Nazanine early one morning a couple months ago, stopping me as I was on my way out the door to do something I'd never done before.

Meet a guy who works at a venture capital firm. And try to get him to give me money. Did did you in your mind have a sense of how much time you had before You could no longer Just survive off.

Nazanines. Income. No I didn't. By that point she was working at MSNBC, so she had she was making

But it wasn't long. Like we didn't have a ton of savings. Um, and I didn't have a job. Yeah. I had a couple I had maybe like I don't know.

Three, four months. Five months. Max. You were like in your apartment. You had I think two kids at this point, right? Yeah. And you just started out talking into your microphone? Yeah, I started anything I was doing, I would mark myself doing it. Any meetings I had set up, I would tell the people ahead of time, like and you know, I'm starting podcasting coming and like funny thing, I'm also making a podcast about it. Ha ha ha

gonna come out with microphone. Um And for the most part they were into it. Like it was like you know, it got me in the door in a certain way. It was like it was unusual. Yeah. You know, like if if you're a V C you've seen seventy gu five gazillion people pitch you. a different kind of like food delivery app or something, you know. But you probably haven't seen people come with a full m headgear and boom mic recording it. So it was if nothing else it was a novelty. Alright, so you leave Planet Money in March of 2014. And would you go like

just have meetings with with people who had money? Would you just try to set up meeting after meeting? Yeah. I would set up meeting after meeting. I would reach out to everybody that I knew who'd had been involved. And you just meet somebody and then they introduce you to somebody else and they introduce you to somebody else and it's all like a you know But ultimately became very clear like nobody was gonna invest. I could only tell half the story. I could only tell the story of like Here's the kind of things that I've made and here's and I'm gonna just keep doing that. And that wasn't that wasn't a business.

That wasn't the business. And your pitch was, I want to make like the HBO of audio. Yeah. I wanna make really high quality shows. It's gonna be ad supported. Maybe we'll sell stuff.

Everyone. Yeah. No, I feel like I would I would go out and I would be all pumped up and I would be practicing and I would r I'd go over my pitch and I'd go out and do it and then I'd fly out somewhere. And then I was one of like I don't know, three, four meetings that day.

And I was just one idea out of a million ideas and Other people were pitching ideas that had proprietary software or you know, like but scientific breakthroughs and they'd been like part of a lab at Stanford and I was pitching a podcasting company. And I hadn't worked in a for profit

bagger at a grocery store at school in high school. And I remember calling my wife. I think w we actually recorded one of these conversations when I called my wife after one of these things. I think it was actually ended up being in a start up episode. Oh. How are you feeling?

I'm feeling Uh I'm feeling the same sh I'm sitting there talking to the

To to to this guy. And I'm describing something That feels like the biggest thing I've ever done. Like a a a scale beyond My wildest imaginings.

Something that I can't even Tell if I can pull off. Oh. And It's totally not big enough.

Like it seems small. Damn. But like even when I was like at the depths of my depression and feeling small and stupid and like what the hell have I done, the fact that I was able to talk about it on tape. I knew it was good tape. So

The more I failed as a wannabe entrepreneur. The more I was succeeding as a as a radio documentary pro p producer. And so there was something weirdly comforting about that, like At least all this work won't be for nothing. At least I'll have a some document. Yeah. I I mean

startup r really was fascinating to listen to. now iconic moments like I think a lot of startup fans will remember that moment when you you're trying to pitch uh gimlet to the investor Chris Saka. So I'm making a network of digital podcasts. uh that we will moneti that that will that will that is gonna meet

Sorry. So what's it gonna take to do it? So It'll take A million and a half dollars, I think. Um

And take out the I think. Yeah. I was so naive. And it was like that meeting that really showed me how naive I was. All the questions he asked I had no idea how to answer. Wha what's what's What's the exit?

I was like, What's the ex what does that even mean? He was like, Well you know, I give you money. You you build the company, then how am I gonna get my money back? What's your exit? You're gonna sell two. I had no idea.

Didn't have even occurred to me. Yeah. And when people said, Oh, you know, I'll I'll offer you a little bit of money here or there How did you even know like w what percentage to give them? How how did you even know how to accept the terms on the term sheet? Did you were you consulting with a lawyer? Did you just'cause th those things are complicated. Nobody was offering me money until I literally nobody I don't think

Anybody offered money until Matt and I teamed up. I think when I was doing it by myself I didn't even get to that point. So so you come to this conclusion that you need a partner probably somebody with some experience in business, or maybe at least an MBA.

When did you meet when did you meet Matt? I met Matt over the summer. Of twenty fourteen. I believe. And

We were introduced Um by a mutual friend. In public radio. And the story that I heard was that sort of like there's another guy running all around town. with sort of the same story talking about like how there's a business to be built in audio. And he was sort of

Off in his world doing the same thing that I was doing. Um, and so we finally met. What Matt when you met Alex, what what were you doing in the summer of twenty fourteen? I had done my MBA and then And then become

a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group, which meant that I would go and work inside of large Companies. And help them. develop growth strategies or solve problems or things like that. But then I began to think about digital audio and I was listening to a lot of podcasts at the time.

And I thought. Every time. A new medium. Comes about. Yeah.

new media companies get built. Mm. This is true across the last, you know, hundred years of history and I thought someone will build a a defining media company around

on-demand digital audio and like why not me? And I told a lot of people about this. Not that I was starting a company'cause Alex was f much further advanced than I was, but just like that would be exciting. Like I think someone's gonna do that and I think You could it would be really fun. And I was I told my friend Graham. who had been a mentor to me back in my Radio career.

And he said, Oh, you should meet this other guy, Alex. When you first met, did you think? This is it. This is like A slam dunk?

I'm in. Or was it not not quite that clear? I mean f this is the thing about a like I I felt like I already knew him because I had listened to his stories. This is the thing about audio. Like when you l and s I'm sure you've experienced this guy, which is when you meet people, they've they walk up to you like they're your friend, right? Yeah. And everything he was saying about Like

I'm excited about audio and I think it's underestimated and I wanna do a business around that, I was basic I just sat there and shook my head and said, Yes, and I think this is how the business could work and I think it could be really big and That sounds exciting. And I basically said let me know how I can help. Yeah. It's a funny moment'cause really what I was looking for was a co founder.

But I didn't know my co founder yet. And so there's a lot of there's like some sort of weird dating thing that has to happen. And as we started to talk more about like what would be helpful I think You suggested like why don't we do a business plan? Right.

I think I just started working on it, basically, like nights and weekends and sending you things and what what kinds of shows we would create, which was a along the lines of what you were doing, but also how they would get distributed, who the partners would be And I was doing that not because I was like trying out to be your co founder, actually. That's the crazy thing. And I was doing a lot of work. You're doing so much work. But it w I was a the thing w this for me it was like it was a fun. Huh. And I would wake up in the morning

Just excited. to do it. Yeah. And I would get up in the morning and there early in the morning and there would be like multi page business plan that Matt had somehow produced. Like and I was like, Oh my God, this is, you know Amazing. And making a case that investors could actually get behind. But did you

Alex, did you pretty much from the beginning when When Matt started to kinda help you out and Just give you free advice. Did you think, Okay, I think this is the guy? Or or were you not quite there yet? I wasn't quite there yet because I I think we we

didn't know each other at at all. Yeah. Um we had met Like three times. Did we only meet three times when we

No, no. I mean by the time we signed we'd met more than three times. By the time we actually signed an agreement, but like I think around the business plan. Right, right, yeah. We came over Matt we had an i initial meeting sort of at my house where Matt brought over some beers and we drank beers and talked about like what was happening. Drinking briskies, hatching And I did a bunch of I did some reference checking, so I started calling around to people who had worked with Alex. You did? Yeah. I don't think all it still shocks me that you didn't do that for me. But of course, like at the time you didn't have a clue. Now you would never hire someone without like blind reference checks. So I I called a couple people who'd work with him and and they're pretty consistent, which is he's a brilliant brilliant editor, like incredibly supportive. And then I had lunch with Adam.

Davidson, your partner. Adam is a very direct person and he was also like yeah, Alex is also like Tenacious and you know, doesn't back down and is Yeah.

And actually all that turned out to be true. Like the four words to describe Alex are those. Brilliant storyteller, stubborn control freak. And I was like that's a that's those are some of the qualities you want to have in starting in the early stage. And w what about you, Alex? I mean Matt, you didn't know him at all. You just knew that he had Some experience that was in public radio and he had a business degree, but like I I had concerns about how we didn't know each other.

And I was I was worried about that. And We're pretty different people. Um Trying to think of like what our first

Major. Conflict though it was. Oh, I remember very clearly'cause I'cause I I think this is before we agreed to partner. Mm-hmm. This is gonna sound very diabolical, but

I was like we have to have a fight. So that we see how each other are going to be a little bit of a interesting. conduct ourselves uh in a in a situation with conflict. Uh huh. And I kind of forced it.

Yeah. It was like nine PM. We've d we'd both Put our kids to bed and then came over your apartment. And I think it was about It was our eternal fight, which was you were saying

This is we're just gonna make a bunch of podcasts. Like that's what we're gonna do. And I was saying First of all We're gonna make more than a couple of podcasts. We're gonna build a company and an organization and a culture. And it's gonna end up being really big and it's going to be way more work than we're doing now and it's gonna be incredibly hard and I think you're underestimating that. Because for you, you'd think you're just gonna be able to

Do the same thing you did at Planet Money. But do it a couple more times. And actually the thing we're doing is completely different. Okay. So

When you guys finally did decide to partner. Um How did it come about? Well, Alex did it as part of startup. So the final thing to discuss, uh which we had put on the agenda for last time.

Where we see this relationship going. Yeah, checking in on it. Looking back, I think you only felt comfortable having that conversation because you had the microphone. And then that began a d you know, negotiation basically about what the partnership was gonna be and I think Alex originally you you Offered like ten to fifteen percent ownership or something like that, right? No, or no. I think it was in the I think I said in the range of one to ten.

I'm key to the success of the company. And I wanna feel I wanna feel that that is reflected in the Cap cable, I guess. There's a subtext to the I am key to the success of this company, which is

You are not. Uh m you meaning me. And Matt was And you were somewhat offended by this, justifiably, I would say. I can't imagine doing this for the the numbers that you're talking about. I just can't imagine doing it.

Because if it's ninety ten, I'm like This and now it's a job. And in a job I'm not gonna like and then you're and you're the boss. I'm just not interested in that and and I don't think that will make the the company succeed.

So you guys play out this negotiation. In the podcast. Eventually, Matt, you come back, you say, Let's split it, then you say okay, about fifty three forty seven. Alex goes back, you talk to your wife, your wife is saying, No, it's too high. Finally you agree on a

sixty forty. Split. But this is all out there. Yeah. Yep. For everyone to hear. And that was great. Though everybody was happy with that.

I was. Were you? Uh yeah. I was I was just I was excited to just get started building the company. And I felt that it was a being able to get through that negotiation and get to an agreement was it it solidified our relationship. And Alex, that that entire time you were going back and forth

with Matt. Like How confident this i this company was even gonna work. You know what?

I think on some level I knew it would work. I'm not Not a big risk taker, not a serial entrepreneur. It just felt so clear to me.

But of course I didn't know it was gonna work, right? So of course you actually have anxieties. And eventually I admitted mys to myself the possibility that like, oh, this could not work out. But it was by that point we were like four years into it and it was it was definitely gonna work out like it was already growing and I was like it's funny and you know, I looked when we Eventually. sold the company to Spotify.

people were posting a Slack channel all these very, very first pictures of the very, very first office. The very, very first months of that first office. And um At the time I'd been so proud of that office and I couldn't believe that like, look, we have an office and we got people to give us money and it's all working. And then I looked back and I was and I for the first time I saw it through the eyes of Of a non true believer.

I saw it from the outside and was like, oh my God, you quit your good job to do this. in this dusty office with no infrastructure and like you guys made your own studio and like What were you possibly thinking? And all these people came along with you? Like what it was it felt like looking from in hindsight.

I somehow accessed all the all the doubts. Of course on on the Startup Podcast, um you describe uh all about that first office in Brooklyn and the people you hired and uh working with Matt and and you also talk about how early on you changed the name of the company to Gimlet. Um because I guess one of your potential investors thought your first name was just dumb.

Uh like American public w what what was it again? The American Podcasting Corporation. The American Corporation. To the original. Big media companies that were started with in the original era of like of of radio. Broadcasting company. Columbia Broadcast. Yeah. So did you like the name Gimlet at the beginning?

No, I didn't. And and it wasn't just investors who hated the name. American Broadcasting Corporation. It was also Matt. T U hated the name too. I hated the name and I I was I insisted on a new name. And then there's a there's a consulting company whose job it is to create names for new companies and new products.

And they ran us through a process that landed us on Gimlet. And I think w which you didn't like And I think part of the reason you didn't like it was maybe you didn't like the name, but I think more of the reason was you didn't like the idea that some there were some experts that we were gonna go consult in such a corporate fashion who would give us Yeah, it felt like Phone to felt phone. Yeah.

I don't know. This was this is interesting. Like I think Matt and I one of the other big fight we always had was just a around um Your gut. Like and how how you make decisions. And I'd spent like twelve to fifteen years making decisions with my gut.

Like that was the way you do it. When you're making A story for this American life. And I was taking that.

With me. Into Starting a company. And so like the fact that a a branding company had come up with our name, it just felt like It just felt wrong.

But of course it wasn't wrong. It ended up being totally fine. So as you guys roll through twenty fourteen, your first big I guess acquisition or partnership was Reply All, which was a uh a show that slightly different it was a different version of that show, but it existed. How did how did you guys convinces those guys, PJ and and Alex. to bring their show to Gimlet.

They were hungry. To to do something. It was a it was a side project? They had they had day jobs. We had to convince them that it was okay to leave their good jobs and join a shaky startup.

But It was exciting. I think a lot of people were feeling the way that I had felt. Which was that like There's more happening here than than public radio has the infrastructure to accommodate right now. And Startup put us on the map, or Pyle put us on the map. People knew about us, people were coming to us and just being like, Oh my god, I hurt, I just wasn't the startup, can I still invest? Yeah, and I guess people were actually were actually investing. You you initially

Managed to raise about a million and a half dollars. Um But I mean even with a million and a half dollars, that that wasn't really gonna be enough, right? Like could you could you scale up with that? Could you actually like start hiring a lot more people? Well, when we raised the first million and a half dollars of financing, our plan was that that would take us through to profitability and then we would fund our growth through profits. Right. We always built the company so that we could either be profitable or get to profitability based on the amount of cash we had in the bank.

And we were always over optimistic in our projections. You thought that that seed round was gonna be the only round of money that you had to raise. Every round we thought was gonna be the last round. Was it just the the reality of the of the business was that you actually could not raise The amount of money you needed to raise. It just the money wasn't coming in. Instantly.

From advertisers or whatever? It was a combination of We decided to grow faster. than we originally had, so we decided to m launch more shows. Which required.

Hiring more people. than we originally had planned to in the original plan. And the reason we decided to go faster was we saw that like podcasting as a trend and as like a cultural moment was really crystallizing and we didn't we wanted to make sure we stayed at the forefront of it. So we wanted to launch more. And so that's why we ended up raising more.

And also just like we hadn't like in the beginning, like We had so many Hits. You know, like Startup was a hit and Reply All was a hit and Mystery Show and Crime Town and

What Matt's not saying is like he built an entire infrastructure at Gimlet. He built a sales team and he built a sales marketing team and we built and built a finance operation and a and uh and a and a people ops operation and all those things were working in concert and he hired really good people to like lead those and build those. And We're monetizing.

I mean the business the so so you say the business was working well, but I have to imagine it's a media company and I I can't imagine that you were making more money than you were spending. You had to spend more money And did that worry you or did you guys both say, We're just we're not gonna make We're just not gonna make a whole lot of money in the first couple of years. We actually did make more money than we brought in, like in our second year of operations we generated

Prophets. On an accrual basis. Mm-hmm. Because the way the podcasts work is you launch a podcast and when you launch it it has an audience of zero. But you have to pay the people to make the podcast and that they're gonna work for you for a few months before you're able to launch.

And then once the podcast launches you have an audience of, you know, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of people, if you're lucky and And then over the course of a year the audience grows and there's a size of an a of audience where You multiply by the size of audience times the number of episodes you produce. times, you know, how well you're able to monetize through advertising.

And then it becomes a profitable entity. So you each podcast is like a little business inside the big company and you have to invest in them before they become profitable. Um, and we always understood that. W were you just being inundated with pitches?

Hey I w I've got this idea, I wanna do this show and and I'm assuming you were and how did you filter out? Like how did you v deal with that incoming? That's hard. That was one of the things that was really hard. It was like sort of like everybody on the pitch and like, okay, we've we've set it up to make more podcasts. And then it's like okay, which ones are we gonna watch? How are we gonna watch them? Who's gonna do them? And then everybody in the world is like, I want to do this podcast, I wanna do that podcast.

And What? We do. How do you how do you do this over and over and over again with a bunch of different people. in a bunch of different topic areas. And how do you not make it the same thing over and over again? Like how do you not make it actually the planet money of blah blah blah? Like how do we actually make them feel new and different? Um and that that was hard. That was like the part that was the thing to figure out.

I remember uh we had a conversation, Alex, I think it was probably like twenty sixteen. And I think at that point you said, you know, I'm almost at the point where I'm making as much money and income as I made at N PR. I think it was around twenty sixteen. And I thought, man, that is just such a risk. Like This guy's in his late forties, he's got two kids, and like he's just getting to that point after two years of a slog and

Wow, you know? And and and I don't know if you guys ever experienced this, but being on the outside and you know, me sort of being connected to the public radio world and the radio world, I had a lot of conversations with people who were so skeptical. Who said, You know, that thing is just not gonna work. It's it it can't work because they're not gonna be able to be as profitable as they say and their investors are You know.

they're not gonna make a a return and blah blah blah. Did you guys ever hear any of that nay saying? Or or were you sort of shielded from that? We heard it second hand. Yeah, nobody never Nobody would say it to our face. Nobody would say it to your face. Nobody nobody face date us. But I think that the we had both come out of this

amazing institution of of public media. And what we learned there informs our success and a lot of the people who where early employees and built the company came out of that same system. But I think in some places we're viewed as uh a threat. Okay. And and I think some people's natural reaction to a threat is to s is to naysay it as a form of

Self comfort, I guess. And then there were some who were like It's gonna change everything. You're gonna bring in Money. And you're gonna ruin it. I think there's a lot of people I think there's a lot of fear.

that like we were opening a Pandora's box. Did you ignore that? criticism or did you did sometimes did you did it like make you feel bad? It fueled me. Matt is fueled.

What part of it fueled you? When we first started the company when we were out pitching To raise money, we pitched the company to probably three of the biggest public radio stations. And um None of them invested.

And one of the pitches was the most insulting, condescend response we ever got from any investor ever. And that actually did fuel me. Yeah. 'Cause I was like, We are going to show you.

Do you remember what they said? Uh they said You haven't you don't understand how risky this is. You haven't evaluated the risks. The quality of your presentation deck is beneath you. Wow.

and the price that you've put on the company. is expensive bordering on outrageous. Bring on that insulting. Bordering on insulting. And I was so mad.

And I remember and you were just kinda like, Yeah, you were just disappointed. You're like, Oh, that's what happens. Yeah. For me that made me just want to prove everyone wrong. But meanwhile, I mean you were growing. And and I mean over time you you I think you you wound up raising like

I think tw twenty seven million dollars by by twenty seventeen and And why around that time you had like o around a hundred employees, right? Yeah, over a hundred. Over a hundred. As you start to hire more and more people, especially people coming from public radio, that's a challenging group of people.

Okay. Well, not comparatively easier, right? Where they cover sales teams, or they're coming in and like Th this is a group of highly intelligent, highly creative People with a million different ideas and not easy to manage. So I have to imagine

You guys ran into some challenges. Yeah. Yes. Yes we did. One of the things that I started to realize

Very late. This year was that the hard thing about any media business. Is that There is a thing at the center. of any project that you're launching, of any show you're trying to launch.

And that thing is a mystery. And The mystery is. Will people listen to this or not? And there's no way to quantify why people listen to things.

There's no way to predict whether people will listen to things. It's Unknowable. And Dealing with that mystery?

That's what every creative person is doing. And yeah, that presents a real hard management challenge. On the one hand, you have to manage the anxiety that comes with knowing that. So People who have somehow have figured out that mystery and are like d doing successful shows, they know on some level that

That They don't know why they're work why what they're doing is working. Um and so you have to manage their anxiety about that. And then For the people who are launching something that isn't working.

You can't tell them why? Because you need them to have like figured out the essential mystery. And they haven't figured it out. And so you have to just be like, You haven't figured out, I'm sorry. And It took us forever to figure it took me forever to understand that.

'Cause you had to I mean, you're a business with a with a P L and you gotta be profitable and Which means that some shows that don't work have to be killed. And some of those shows are done by people that you've known. That are friends. Which means that you are going to lose friends. Yeah. And I hired almost all my friends at the beginning.

Because all my friends were in the business. Mm. Did you have sleepless nights? Did you have I mean you y we we heard your anxiety when you were when you were starting This company in the podcast.

Did you have even more anxiety and After you started to gain traction and you started to see some success. Or did your anxiety mostly go away? Oh, the opposite. The more successful we got, I think the more anxious I became. It w it became harder and harder to sleep.

I would wake up in the middle of the night something I really had never really done before. And I think it was about like just the the more successful we get, the more The bigger the stakes are, the higher the stakes are. The more People that are that are d that are depending on you.

Um And you just have to contend with like You can't make everybody happy. And I love making people happy. It's like one of my uh essential

Character flaws. Uh, how about you, Matt? Did you did you have More anxiety as you started to Actually, I think. Success with the company? Um

Yeah, I think I did. And oftentimes like the moments of on the outside where it looked most successful. Inside it felt like The biggest mess.

And inside it felt like it was gonna fall apart. And that's And that's really hard to live through and and then and learning that actually that is the common experience of starting a company. Helps a little bit. As our coach.

says we'cause we we we go to a leadership coach says like just because you feel like Doesn't mean you are sh So we had an episode on about Yelp. And uh Yelp was offered like half a billion dollars by Google. A couple years after its launch, um

And Jeremy Stoppelman said no. We're gonna we're gonna keep going. And uh Yelp today is valued at you know over a billion dollars and et cetera, et cetera. And of course you guys were uh approached or you began conversations with Spotify. to acquire Gimlet.

They made An offer reportedly more than two hundred and thirty million dollars, a really big offer. I would have taken the money, personally. But I'm just wondering, did Was there any part of you that thought, let's let's not take this, let's just keep going?

and build this into a billion dollar company. Um There was a small part. Maybe. Not a big part. Nope. Not really. I don't know why. Alex is making that up, but no. No, because we were the company was going very well at the time. Actually we were we had the most momentum we'd ever had as a company.

This was in the fall of 2018. Our audiences were growing. faster than they had in years. We had come out of the summer. And

All of a sudden like There was more and more interest from advertisers in spending money on our podcasts. And we had a hit television show. That we had produced for Amazon. Uh called Homecoming starring Julia Roberts.

And so if you if you were around New York City at the time, like you couldn't turn around without seeing a fifty foot billboard with Julia Roberts' face on it, starring in Homecoming, which was based on our podcast. But there were a couple of things that we just weren't There were two like Basically industry level challenges. that we were confronting along with every other podcast company.

And one was Audiences are still having a really hard time discovering new podcasts. Like if if you ask people how they find out a new podcast, they would typically say, like Word of mouth, like a friend told me or I found out about it from another podcast, but discovery was is really hard. And then we weren't getting data. that we could share back with our editorial teams about how um the shows were performing, who was listening to them.

And that kind of inhibited the monetization as well. And so we thought that for podcasting to become like as an industry to become to realize its full potential those two things had to be addressed and we couldn't do those alone. And Spotify, which is the world's largest music streaming platform could do that together with us. Yeah.

Yeah. It wasn't even so much the mu like the money, it was more of like the We felt like we could achieve so much more. by joining forces than we could independently. And

Uh company like Spotify they that's their business. You know, they have this huge built in audience that's already listening to audio. And it felt like that's That's a great um

Synergy is the word I'm thinking. I can't think of an uh I can't think of a I'm gonna say synergy. If you said synergy. You would have been shamed in public radio if you used that word. I'm probably not the first person that said that word on this podcast, am I? So you so so it makes total sense, right? Because Spotify's a giant, right? And uh and full disclosure, as you know, I I did a podcast with Spotify. They

They paid a lot of money. For 'Cause it's last valuation before the sale was like fifty five million. And uh and now you've found found yourselves Very quickly. I mean, I know it it's a long slog, but five years

With a lot of money. And now you're c presumably committed to working with Spotify for a few more years. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, are you gonna I don't know, you're gonna buy a uh you know, ten Teslas and a mansion and a house in the Hamptons? What are you gonna do with your with with your life and your wealth? I

No. Um it is life it is life changing for us both. Yeah. And um Someone asked me. Uh recently

Oh, how are you? And I said well. I'm really Rich and it turns out money doesn't make you happy. Yeah.

But it does make you safe. Yeah. And so I feel an incredible amount of Safety. knowing that I gonna be able to put my kids through college.

And I don't have to worry about that. And You know, we've never owned a home and now my wife and I are Gonna buy a home. It's it is a life changing thing.

Yeah, I think right after it happened, I kept thinking like This feels like a big deal, I don't understand why I still feel the exact same way. Like it feels like a an event that should just sort of give you a whole new outlook or something. And

It didn't. It does. It it takes away this huge Hum of anxiety. It was always in the back of my mind. But like money and the future.

And that hum is gone. And that's nice. But it sort of takes away nothing else, you know? Um which is surprising. I would have thought. I would have thought it would feel different.

Um We we uh My wife's Parents came.

from another country to to this country and and we're as refugees and worked all night cleaning offices. To pay for her to like Live in America.

And and so I think when this happened it was just like It was winning the lottery for them. And then we were able to pay off the mortgage. And renovate their house and

have them come and visit our kids more often. And it's been Just an incredible blessing. Do you feel like what happened to you? The outcome. And

The story. of Gimlet happened because You're super smart and talented and worked really hard, or because you got lucky. Um, I think it's mostly luck. Um, but not in the obvious way. Like I I think um

I think for me it was the luck of like being born into the family I was born into. at the time that I was. So I had I had the luck of being in a family where my parents sent me Like paid for my college.

and then were in a position to financially support me so I could do unpaid internships. producing radio because that was my passion. And then they also sent me to business school. And that is like an extreme level of privilege. And then the other forms of luck are having met Alex when I did.

and having really good timing on the idea of starting a podcast an audio podcast company in twenty fourteen. I definitely don't think I'm like smarter or more talented than your average entrepreneur. Yeah. It's funny, I think

Both things are true though. Like I I think there's probably a lot of people Who could have tried to start this company and w it wouldn't have been successful. So I think there's something we brought something to it. Um I'm proud of that.

I am proud of that. But I think That's the part that's easy to tell and most easy to overemphasise as you're looking back and especially as you're looking back. And I think it's important to remember that that's like a a tiny part of it. Yeah.

Um, both of you guys have the potential to be on the other side of the table. from where you guys were, right? The investors. You you both can be investors now. For other startups.

And the other side to it is You both can give away a lot of money too. So do you Do either of those or both of those things appeal to you? I don't know about investing. Like I maybe. I I I don't know. Like I'm trying I'm still trying to figure out like what what this all means. Um it seems only sure only sporting that I would do that since so many people trusted us and it worked out for us and and for them. So it feels like I should sort of pay it forward in that way.

Yeah. Matt? Yes. I I will do both. Yeah, I I have made a couple of Angel investments and You have. Oh yeah. I've until no. Interesting. And it's fun. Do you even cut Alex into that, wow. Didn't even didn't even tip me in.

Do you want to be? We should talk about it. That's Matt Lieber and Alex Bloomberg, co-founders of Gimlet. And by the way, the eighth and final season of Startup launched a few months after our conversation, and in it, you can hear many more details about the past few years at the company, including some very serious money problems they got into last year and how they got out of them. Also some great fly on the wall moments from the Spotify acquisition, and a kind of surreal scene where Alex and Nazanin are having yet another sleepless night, and for whatever reason, they find themselves hunched over a screen, scrolling I kid you not, Through pictures. of the royal family.

And please do stick around because in just a moment we're gonna hear from you about the things you're building. Oscar winner Regina Kane has been acting for more than three decades. But she says it's just in the last few years that she's really coming to her own. Being a mother had a lot to do with getting me to that space. Regina King on her Hollywood long game. Next time on It's Been a Minute from NPR.

Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And this story starts back in the late 1990s when Casey Kerrigan was working at a rehabilitation hospital in Boston. I was seeing a lot of patients with knee arthritis. Especially women in their fifties and sixties. And what we found is that high heels affected pretty much. She found that high heels don't just affect knees, but hips, feet. Lower back.

Pretty much everything. Now Casey's specialty is physical medicine, so she started to do some research, and she soon realized that high heels are not the only enemy. Women's shoes in general have all sorts of problems. Too narrow of a toe box, too narrow of a forefoot. A lack of true spring in the soul. And some of Casey's younger patients would say, Yeah, I know these shoes are bad for me, but I want my feet to look great and fashionable. But gosh, do we really want to be walking around in shoes that are Doing this? I mean, let's walk around in shoes that are going to be the easiest on our joints. So at this point, around 2009, Casey decides to quit her very safe, very good paying job at the University of Virginia Medical School, and she sets out to design a kinder shoe.

for women. When I left I thought uh you know this shouldn't be too hard. just need to make a sole that's flat and springy and that accommodated the natural anatomy of a woman's foot. How hard could that be? Actually, pretty hard. For starters, no shoe factory in the world seemed set up to make the kind of shoe Casey had in mind, which was wide in the toe, totally flat on the bottom, with a super springy sole. Nothing in the design is like meant to just be pretty or everything's functionally based. So using computer assisted design software, Casey taught herself how to make those first shoes. But remember, she couldn't find a manufacturer to make them. So she and her husband took their savings, they bought an old warehouse and they filled it with all kinds of equipment. I bought this big filament winder to make these carbon fiber springs. I bought a water jet saw.

Then there's ancillary things like you need a like a Uh shoot, what do you call it? Um by the way, this is all happening when Casey is already in her late 40s. Oh chiller, that's it. So you need a water chiller. She'd been a medical doctor, then a tenured professor, and suddenly she's making shoes. Ha ha I never thought yeah, I'd ever be a cobbler, right? In about two thousand eleven, Casey's first shoe was ready to sell. It was kind of a heavy, chunky leather sneaker. You know, these were like orthopedic looking shoes, I gotta be honest. Not really attractive because they had real thick soles. But a few years later, Casey found a better material for the soles. Rubber pellets. The same stuff they make those super bouncy balls out of.

and at roughly the same time. 3D printing was becoming cheaper. And I thought, hmm, wait a minute. If we 3D print it, I can basically create the sole that I could only imagine ever making, you know, with traditional manufacturing. So now Casey could make thinner and more flexible soles for all kinds of new designs, like a tennis shoe and a ballet flat, and even a platform sandal with a flucent blue bottom. And it's comfortable, that's the thing, is when you step on our souls.

It's springy, I mean women, they'll just smile because they've never experienced it before. Casey calls the shoes OSH, which is an anagram for the word shoe. Both she and her husband run the company out of Charlottesville in Virginia. Last year, just selling from their website, they made about three quarters of a million dollars. If you want to find out more about O Shoes or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, how IbuiltThis.npr.org. В корсь, і ввоне та усю сторі. Go to build.

Dot N P R dot org. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at HIBT at npr.org, and if you want to send a tweet, It's at How I Built This or at Gy Raz. Our show is produced this week by James Dellahouse with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. Thanks to Candace Lim, Julia Carney, San Az Meshkinpur, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers.

Our intern is Sequoia Carrillo. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to how I built this.

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