Podz is the latest startup trying to solve the podcast discovery problem with the help of investors like M13, Katie Couric and Paris Hilton.
“Although podcasts have gained a lot of momentum, they do exist 100 million people in the US who listen to podcasts – We still haven’t seen this crossover behavior where audio becomes a part of everyday life, ”argued CEO Doug Imbruce. “We think that’s because the experience of discovering and consuming podcasts is ancient. It literally feels like browsing the internet in 1997. “
Imbruce’s name may be familiar to longtime ProWellTech readers, having previously served as CEO of Qwiki, which won the 2010 startup Battlefield at ProWellTech Disrupt (Cloudflare was one of the runner-up) and was acquired by Yahoo a few years later.
According to Imbruce, Qwiki never quite fulfilled his hopes of reshaping online media consumption, but he said his vision of “machine-generated media” offered “a taste of the future” – a future he wants to usher in with Podz.
The problem the startup is trying to solve is pretty simple. Because podcasts often consist of 30 or 60 minutes or more of spoken audio, they are difficult to search through. When you discover new ones, it is usually done through word of mouth recommendations or clunky search tools.
While tools like headliners make it easier for podcasters to promote their content with short clips on social media, Podz automates this creation process and makes those clips the centerpiece of the listening experience.
Credit: Podz
In the Podz mobile app, users browse what is known as a “first audio newsfeed,” which consists of 60-second podcast clips. These clips are designed to highlight the best moment from any podcast and make it easier to sample a much wider variety of titles than the ones you are currently subscribing to. Each clip should stand on its own, but if you want to dig deeper, you can save the entire episode for later listening.
These clips are created automatically, and Imbruce said “the beating heart of the Podz platform” is a machine learning model that “identifies the most interesting parts of podcasts”. The model was trained for more than 100,000 hours of audio in consultation with journalists and audio editors.
For example, here are the clips selected from the three most recent episodes of the Original Content Podcast – our reviews of “Soul,”, “The White tiger” and “Bridgerton.” Each clip seems to be somewhat on its own, and although I was a little dismayed to find that they were all focused on me (and not my more eloquent co-hosts), a Podz spokesperson stated that the app focused on ” Highest Density Loudspeakers “concentrated. ”
The Podz newsfeed is tailored to your interests (and can also refer to the podcasts you follow on Apple Podcasts and the accounts you follow on Twitter if necessary). Imbruce said it should get smarter in time by observing listener behavior.
He added that the team hopes to roll out more creative tools and monetization tools for podcasters over time: “We’re very confident that we can increase both the amount of audio being created by 10x and the monetization of Can increase audio by 100 times. “
In addition to Imbruce, the founding team of Podz also includes CTO Seye Ojumu, design manager Rasmus Zwickson and iOS boss Greg Page. The startup raised $ 2.5 million in pre-seed funding M13, Canaan Partners, Charge Ventures, Humbition and well-known angel investors such as Couric, Hilton (who’s) start their own podcast) and Mara Schiavocampo (The trend reporter).
“We live in a golden age of audio, but only 1% of podcasts reach audiences greater than 5,000,” said Latif Peracha, general partner of M13, in a statement. “Podz plans to increase the audience for existing audio, but the real focus will be on growing new audio using the creator tools. The average podcast listener already subscribes to seven podcasts, but follows nearly 30 Podz. Early signals make us optimistic that the team can develop a transformative product in this category. “