Jason is co-founder and CEO at Supercast — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Supercast is the preferred podcast subscription platform for some of the most well-monetized podcasts in the world. We’ve brought the idea of taking free listeners and moving them through to being paid premium subscribers in a way that is as natural as possible to the world that we know and love of podcasting. We work with some of the biggest names in the space, the likes of Huberman Lab and This American Life, a number of independent creators as well as bigger podcast networks. We work seamlessly with the open podcast ecosystem. So in two taps, somebody could add the premium version of the podcast, which could include bonus episodes, for example, it could include the ability to get a premium newsletter, it could also include the ability to join the community of your favorite podcast, and you can get a lot of that content into a podcast player of choice with a really simple two-tap sign up process.
Sam Sethi: You generated over $26 million in revenue last year. Is that correct?
JSH: Actually, $26 million just paid out to our top 10 creators on Supercast. Just the top 10. That has grown very steadily over time - in the beginning, after our first year, it was something like six or eight million paid to our top 10. So you can see that has grown as people have really got on board with podcast subscriptions.
SS: Every entrepreneur has their eureka moment. When did you suddenly realise that Supercast should exist?
JSH: So I think this was the intersection of a couple of different things. My previous company was 99 Designs, where I was COO, and I led the growth of that business. We helped designers, over 1.6 million of them all over the world, help money by connecting them to businesses that need logos or websites or book covers designed. I mention book covers specifically because Tim Ferris was an early customer of 99 Designs. He needed a book cover design for his second book, The Four Hour Body. And he ran a contest and got an incredible array of choice from our design community.
When he started his podcast, he invited us to be a sponsor. And we, of course, jumped at the chance to be able to work with him again. And the way he spoke to his audience about 99 Designs turned out to be the strongest acquisition channel for us for many, many years. You know, the connection that Tim has with his audience and being able to recommend products and services like 99 Designs really opened my eyes to the intimacy of podcasting and just the strength of the medium that gets formed between a host and their listeners.
So when I got connected to Andrew Wilkinson, my co-founder for Supercast up in Canada, he had just started working with Sam Harris. One of the projects that he worked on with Sam Harris was taking his existing audience and helping him build a bespoke premium subscription platform. Essentially, this was the genesis for Supercast, working with one prominent creator who at the time had his paying subscription base on Patreon. And Patreon, of course, had been around for many years prior to that, but they were a horizontal kind of solution. They’re a solution not only for podcasters, but for writers, for illustrators, for video makers. They weren’t tailor-made to this idea of getting people who were listening to your podcast on a free basis through to listening to the premium version also in your podcast player of choice. So as a result, Sam just felt it was clunky, it was a lot of steps, it wasn’t seamless, and he could be building both a more intimate experience, but a higher converting business if there were a tailor-made tool for that.
SS: What is your revenue stream? Patreon is a 8 to 10% from the subscription. Substack is 10% on whatever you bring in. What is the Supercast model?
JSH: We decided to go a different way, and we charge 59 cents per subscriber per month. So essentially the amount that we take doesn’t change as the creator decides to scale up their price. And so what you can do on Supercast is have multiple tiers. So you might have bronze, silver, and gold, for example, and bronze might start at $6, and gold could end up at $15, for example. Our fee for the service that we provide doesn’t change if you go up the tiers. And so if you have a $10 subscription price, that the likes of Huberman Lab or This American Life have, that works out to 6% of the revenue that you’re bringing in.
SS: So you’ve got the platform, you’ve got the revenue model, you’ve got the users. Is this when you suddenly found Red Seat Ventures? When do they first come and tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, do you fancy a chat?
JSH: I’ve known Chris [Balfe] for a number of years now. In the radio days, he also used to operate subscription businesses. So I knew that he was a big believer in the model. Also, just someone who’s done something pretty amazing in terms of what he’s able to build up in partnership with his creators. So about a year ago, we ended up starting to work with a creator from his portfolio. That creator has built up a stream of revenue over time that has just continued to snowball. And so after Red Seat’s acquisition by FOX’s Tubi Media Group a year ago, I reached out just to really get a sense of what that meant for him, the direction that was now leading him into, the opportunities that had opened up for him. And at the end of that call, he suggested that we go and chat to Paul Cheeseborough, who was the CEO of Tubi Media Group. We lined up another call, and about 10 minutes into that, I think we’re all kind of in strong alignment that there was a really strong strategic fit to explore here, which fast forward a little bit has obviously turned into acquisition.
SS: What does that mean for Supercast? What’s the path forward?
JSH: We will continue to run Supercast on an autonomous basis, exactly as it is today. Being creator first has got us to where we are today. Like being able to go out to the likes of This American Life and Huberman Lab and to say to them, you own your audience. We want to help you convert as many of those as possible through to paying subscribers, but ultimately you’re in charge of that revenue stream. It’ll be your Stripe account, all built under your brand - that’s a really powerful way for us to approach the market and also build trust with the creators that we serve. So it was really important to us that none of that changes. The team is staying the same. I’m continuing to lead the business and our philosophy for the way we serve creators, none of that is changing. But what does open up in terms of possibilities is being able to run faster at the things that we want to build. So obviously, Red Seat Ventures and with the backing of Tubi gives us the ability to hire more engineers, for example, hire more creator growth resources, scale out our support team, and to be able to build out the product in a way that allows us to serve our creators better and also have them grow at even faster rates than they are currently.
SS: Jason, once again, massive congratulations.
JSH: Thank you. I appreciate it. And look, uh wouldn’t be able to do it without an extremely talented team. And then the trust of a lot of our creators. At the end of the day, our philosophy at Supercast has always been that we succeed when our creators succeed. And a lot of the creators that we worked with trusted us with their audience relationships and their money well before we deserved it. So if there’s anything I would like to close with, it’s really gratitude for the creators that we’ve been able to work with.