Greg Glenday - CEO of Acast on the Future of Podcasting, Industry Consolidation, and Omni-Channel Campaigns

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are joined by a very special guest, Greg Glenday, the CEO of acast. Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me, and vice versa. Thanks for hosting me, and we're hosting you in our new studio, so thanks for being here.

Absolutely. I mean, huge congrats on the new studio. We're here in New York City and grateful to be here, so thank you for that.

Glad to be here, too. The hardest part in New York City is the soundproofing, and I think we're above a subway and we're next to a hospital. So those two things make a podcast studio very difficult to build.

So for sure. Well, thank you so much. I'm glad we want to, you know, break it in and get the show on the road.

Yeah.

So, you know, I've. I've followed the. The Acast journey for quite some time. You know, I've. I've had my own podcast for about eight years now, and as a founder that's also now building technology in the space, I so value and appreciate your just mindset and context around all things podcasting and super excited to dive into it today. And I know I already said this on LinkedIn, but congrats on stepping into the CEO role recently. That was back in June, I believe, right?

Yep. You were just over a hundred days.

And for the listeners, before we jump in, you know, Acast is a company that's paid out more than half a billion dollars to creators since the lifetime of its inception. And as someone that has had such a background in media and entertainment, from, you know, being the Chief Revenue Officer of Shazam prior to the Apple acquisition, to now stepping into this role in the ever evolving podcast industry. How has it been so far the last couple months as CEO, and what have you learned so far by stepping into this role?

Yeah. Thank you. And by the way, congrats to you on eight years of doing this. And, you know, eight years ago, nobody was thinking about this kind of thing, so I think it's really cool that you've. You've done that so consistently, and I'm honored to be. It's been a great list of guests you've had, so I'm honored to be here. You know, for me, I was. I was here for, you know, two and a half, three years as Chief Business Officer before becoming the CEO. So it's not a complete new set of eyes. You know, let's change everything. I probably had maybe two thirds of the company between content and sales and the managing directors around the world rolling into me. So this was really a little bit easier because it was just sort of opening the tent and having product and engineering. You've spent some time with our folks there, so just better alignment with those things, I think, just making it a little bit easier for all of us to collaborate. You know, it's funny I always say this, but the podcast industry is, you know, everyone likes to say it's 20 years old. Everyone acast is 10 years old. But really, I feel like we're all just beginning. And that's not a metaphor. I really think the industry is really maturing rapidly now, and I think if we did this interview last week, I'd feel differently. But Advertising week this week made it very clear that you have these sort of hypotheses and you start talking to other smart people that are not in our industry. And I'm getting more head nods than you usually get. And I've grown up in, you know, media and advertising, and I've always sort of been at that intersection of media, tech, advertising, creativity. And you throw a lot of ideas out there, and I generally can get the vibe of like, are people nodding or are they skeptical or is this going to be an uphill battle? And it feels like there's a lot of tailwinds here that I'm getting a lot of agreement from CMOs, marketers, people that hadn't really thought about their podcast consumers, but they're not thinking about how it ties into their business. So, you know, so the first hundred days, I really was focused on alignment and just getting our messaging straight. I industry has a bit of a, you know, identity crisis, you know, like, what are you. You've got people that are competitors, partners. Are we, you know, should we be collaborating? Who does? What are you a host, a network, a publisher? And, you know, that's a sign of a really cool emerging business. It's just none of it's settled science yet.

Absolutely. So it's very, very well said. And, you know, I think just for the context as well, you know, I've. I've had my show for eight years, and this was back in 2017 when I started, and I was telling the team before we jumped in, but just even for Conte, I. I started the show sort of off the back of this injury I had in high school. I was a freshman sophomore in high school, nearly got paralyzed playing football. I was in a neck brace for six months. And really, the tail end of that, coming out of that, I stumbled into marketing, heard about Podcasting. And for me it was this medium just to kind of give context where I think it was like my first one to five episodes I had Apple pair, you know, Apple headphones on the mic, no professional mic, and put in an episode and it's on the charts. And I'm like, what's going on here? And it really was. It's like the infancy it felt like or during that first, you know, newcoming of industry. And to see how much the industry has grown over the years, one from my lens of the creator. But now building a company in this space, I do find it so interesting about like the fragmentation and the identity crisis, as you said, around video podcasting, audio. And I'm curious to, to know your perspective on, you know, when you think about video and audio, this is a big question that I'm sure the listeners and the industry would appreciate your perspective on is how do you view video podcasting now into the future and what is the importance of it in this newfound era?

Yeah, well, I'll point out that I think the most expensive things in this whole office are these cameras in the studio. So sorry, but you know, we're investing in it because we believe in the open ecosystem and it's not rss. We believe in open. We want you as a creator to decide how you want to reach your audience. Right. If video makes sense. I think this is a video optional situation right here. We're having a nice conversation, but I think if your content requires that someone has their eyes on it and it works better if you're sitting on a couch and you're running that content on your tv. I'm not sure that's a podcast, you know, if it's required. We're going to have. What I think makes this beautiful is we're going to have everything from audio only shows to video highly recommended shows to some that are hybrid, some that some episodes are video, some episodes are audio. And we want ACAST to be the conduit for the creator to be able to reach his or her audience however they like. And you know, there's going to be a platform that launches. Nobody thought there was room for TikTok in the world. Like, there was no. We had Facebook, we had Snapchat, we had all these things. And no one would say there's a space for TikTok and it's bigger than all of them. So I think we're going to find things like that where it's not one or the other. It's like there's room for all of this. And there's going to be a platform that launches in 2027 that you and I can't even imagine that we're going to want podcasters to be on. So instead of, you know, picking our platforms, we're going to be very open and agnostic on that.

I love that perspective. And I think it's, you know, like, innovate or die. Right. And even one thing that I. You'd appreciate this. So back in 2019, two years into my podcast journey, I had the opportunity to sit down with Larry King. And, you know, I was 19 at the time. He was 87. And this whole conversation was not only a, like a life changing day for me, but he was someone who's 87, has, you know, worked in broadcasting for over 60 years. And we were talking about the podcasting landscape where he was starting at that time, his own podcast called the Millionth Question. And I asked him like, you know, Larry, why are you doing this? And he just talked about like, you always need to stay ahead of the curve because if you get too complacent and things, and you think that things won't change, which I feel as my perspective of, you know, this industry of raw, there's a lot of people that like, are tied to the past when the future is just unraveling right before our eyes. And one thing too that I, even for the context, you know, Larry King has a quote that I always love. He says, I've never learned anything while I was talking, therefore be a great listener. And that was sort of the influence of even the name of my company, listener.com, where everything, I believe, everything in this industry, it ties back to the listener, the viewer from advertisers that want to reach the listeners, the content we want to reach listeners, and of course the listeners that ourselves that are deciding and championing these creators. So I'm curious how you view the listener landscape and you know, from the listener's point of view of how you as a company at acas cater to them and how their appetite may be changing over time as well.

Yeah, it's interesting. And when was that?

2019.

2019. So you and Larry were probably both newlyweds at that point or close to it. So. So you had that in common. So I think you said something that I like, really think about a lot that, you know, our industry. I said this yesterday. I mentioned that I was, I don't know if it was a executive roundtable. And it was a lot of experienced people, brand marketers, a woman I worked with who was at Coca Cola 25 years ago, like really, really smart people. And the topic came up of how rapidly everything was changing. And I think people who are experienced and the reason that things take time to change. And there's a great quote, a friend of mine from an advertising guy, Rashad Tabakawala, great author, really, really good, sort of a corporate influencer. And his newsletter is called the Future doesn't fit in the Containers of the Past, which I thought was sort of a mouthful when it first came out. But now it's like, wow, this is, this is a true statement. Because all these experienced people, they, they're trading on their pattern recognition and they're 20 or 30 years of working and they know how things work. And a good example is the idea of a podcast upfront. You know, like that doesn't really make sense, but it sounds like something, it sort of feels familiar. That's what TV always did. Yeah, it's. But it's built for scarcity. It's built for, okay, well, someone's greenlit Seinfeld for NBC on Thursday and it's scarce, there's scarce inventory. So we're going to do an upfront and you're going to bid it. That's not the way our industry works. This is create content on demand. You can be nimble, you can do all these things. You have to. There really shouldn't be a podcast up front. You know, there's scarce stuff, but it's like that's just not how it works. There's audiences and I think if you watch, you know, I grew up watching, you know, digital emerge, right? And people used to buy websites. That was a few years where oh my gosh, they're buying rolling stone.com or maxim magazine.com and couple years later that doesn't happen. And all of a sudden they're buying the Internet, they're buying audiences. And the same thing happened with social and now it's going to happen. We're watching this where, you know, brands and everybody comes to us and says we want to buy these shows. And we were curious about podcasting, but what they really mean is they don't want to buy the show, they want to talk to that audience. And we haven't made it easy as an industry. We have to lock arms because I don't think anybody in the US has double digit market share for podcasting. So there is no leader to draft off of. We have to do this together and we have to push the industry orgs to do it the way we need. You know, needed to happen. So there's a lot to do. But it feel it's exciting, you know, it's exciting. So I'm tired this week because it's like we've been talking about this a lot with everybody, but it's like really, really exciting that we're at the. I feel like we're at the precipice of this next chapter. It coincides with ACAST next decade. So we're kind of tying all that together. Yeah, absolutely.

Very well said. And even something that I'm just hearing you speak about that and something that I believe we share a perspective on is the future of Omnichannel and how that applies to podcasting and, you know, talking to Millie, VP of product. She's been amazing. Just getting to know her and just what you all are building on the tech side. And I'm curious how you and your team think about, you know, what I like to say is, and what kind of our motto is like beyond the download. Right. As someone that's always been more of a video first, podcast, social first, since the inception of my show, I've always thought about clips and co marketing efforts and newsletter promotions. And we did a couple live shows in the early days of my show. And I feel like now so much of not only my focal point, but the industry's focal point is thinking about Omnichannel. How does that apply to advertisers and when does it apply to the creator overall? And I'm curious to know your viewpoint on that and really your thesis as a company of if that's something that, you know, creators and advertisers should be thinking about.

Yeah. You know, I've only worked at maybe four or five places in 30 years. So, you know, it's sort of like, you know, but they've been different. And you know, the one commonality is like, you know, if, if it's advertising supported. Right. So I think about something like Omni Channel, you've got a marketplace. And again, going back to that same, you know, going back to the same topic, I think they're tied together, right? The future and the past. If you look at how it's supposed to work, right. Podcast is audio. So if we want to go talk to big brand that has a Holdco agency, we go talk to the audio person, right? So let's pick an imaginary brand. I'll say Starbucks, this is not about Starbucks, but everyone knows what it is. So let's say Starbucks goes to their agency and says, we've got a Brand brief here's. $10 million. And we need to change the way people think about Starbucks, you know, this winter. So they give it to the agency. The agency now starts to split it out into chunks and starts to brief people million. So maybe the audio person gets a million dollars of the 10, and then they start briefing people and radio and network radio and podcast. And all of a sudden we get. So maybe acast gets our $50,000 piece of the audio pie and we're high fiving. But we don't even realize that there was a $10 million opportunity up here. And we probably could have helped Starbucks more than just the five shows they bought because they decided to buy them. So part of what we're trying to do as an industry is educate and elevate, and we're making hires and people that have these relationships, we can go tell these stories at the point of decision making. Right. Gets to you. And they're saying, we're buying podcasts. These are the five shows we want. You're negotiating for those five shows. If we can move up a level and just sort of zoom out and say, wait a minute, like, here's everything our industry can do for you, Starbucks. You know, hypothetically. But if you're watching, we would love to talk with you that, hey, maybe if you, if you want to change the way people think about Starbucks this winter and their narrative. Well, here's some data on what people are saying on podcasting now about your brand. Here's what guests are saying. Here's. Okay, here's. Here's some ideas we have on how the podcast audiences could respond to a creative idea we might have that may live in audio. Maybe there's video, maybe it's live events, maybe it's product placement. Maybe it's things that an audio buyer would never even be allowed to buy. So it's sort of like they're hamstringing themselves if they don't think about omnichannel. So it's up to us to convince the brands to do it, not the creators. Some people shouldn't be. We have one of our biggest podcasters in the history of the world, Marc Maron. What's today's date? Is today the 13th? Ninth. Okay, sorry. Way ahead of myself. His. His last show is the 13th, so he's retiring from podcasting. He may be the first person to ever do that on his own terms. Like 16 years going out on his own terms. We're so proud to have had Marc Maron. But he didn't do video and he didn't take ads. And the reason he didn't do video is he felt like when the lights are on like this and people don't let their hair down, they want their makeup right. They're afraid to say certain things because they know it's going to be. But when you're just talking and you're talking in his garage, we're not going to tell everybody they have to do video or we recommend video. It's how do you want to reach your audiences? We'll give you the data, we'll give you the tools to make those decisions, but we're not going to try and make them for you. We'll advise, but it's your show.

So very well said.

Thank you.

And I think just the omnichannel perspective there, there's no one size fits all. And I think that's the beauty of this industry. And it's something that I also, I saw there's a show called tbpn. Have you heard of it? Technology Brothers Podcast Network. And it's sort of like a live podcast they do on X. And they sat down with the the hosts of Acquired just a couple days ago and the TVPN guys are doing live shows every day and I think they'll do 250 episodes this year. And then on the flip side, Acquired announced that they're only doing eight episodes next year instead of their 12. And I think there's like this, this the extremes of like you look at the biggest in the world or the most consistent. And you really do as a creator and as a brand like need to figure out your specific lane that works best for you. And I think too from my perspective of a creator, like recently I did this campaign with Adobe and it was a handful of host read ads but really tying into the social aspect. And that's what I've always tried to do with my show innately since the beginning. And one other kind of example that I think you'd appreciate is I did this campaign with Slack a couple of years ago and outside of the host red and the social sort of pitched them this idea where leveraged me as a host where we ended up doing this LinkedIn Live podcast where it was, you know, Casey Adams, the host of the Casey Adams show, interviewing three small business owners for Small Business Saturday on the LinkedIn Live. And they drove tons of traffic to it. And it was this, you know, 360 podcast campaign that tended to be very effective. And I think that's where the creator has to also outside of the, you know, companies but individual creators to help incentivize and educate brands. Like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not just do one specific ad read. Like, how can we make this more unified as a campaign and as a.

Sponsorship overall, man, that is a great point, because I think the digital Internet for advertisers became very commoditized, right? Banner ads and things that just sort of became background noise. And it's hard to do authentic advertising. And I think every year there's words that get really annoying because people say them so much at these conferences that they start to mean nothing. And I think this year, authenticity, we're not going to let that word die because it's important. And everyone keeps saying they're looking for authenticity because there's so much algorithmic content right now. There's so much mistrust, you know, all the AI slob, all the stuff you're reading. It's just there's a lot of inauthenticity, right? There's made for advertising sites and all these things where it's just a lot of mistrust. And what we're doing right now is really authentic. It's two human beings having a conversation. It's slower. It's not, you know, blinking lights and social media and everything's five seconds and everything's as short as possible for attention spans. We're going to be one of the last things left, that is unpack a story. A brand can talk to, you know, over time, slow down, have a conversation, as opposed to, you know, I said this yesterday, but Taylor Swift probably would have announced her engagement on Instagram five years ago. This time it was a podcast for other reasons. But let's unpack that story a little more. And I think a lot of brands want to do that. They don't want to just say, we're Starbucks, we sell coffee. They want to talk about, hey, we're doing this. Here's what we've done to improve the stores. Here's how we source the beans. Here's what, you know, there's a new CEO, so if you have a story to unpack, I think we're going to be a really, really good place. We, meaning this industry, is going to be a really good place to do it. And I also mean we meaning acast.

Yeah, absolutely. And I've heard you say before where, you know, you've always been a podcast fan yourself in terms of walking dog or working out. And something that I heard you mention was you could list out, you know, X amount of brands that are associated to shows and I think so much of that like consumer trust and I think anyone listen or watching could probably do the same. If you listen to Rogan or Jay Shetty, whatever it may be, you can name the brands even if you never bought something like the brand awareness that's in your mind, share from the depth of conversation and trust you have with the audience is exactly what you're talking about in terms of like the way to activate. So to change gears a little bit here, Greg, something that I know I mentioned a little bit earlier with just all things sports. So I know your background. You were captain of lacrosse team Notre Dame, played deep research here, played midfield if I'm not mistaken and as someone that grew up playing sports, played lacrosse as well and I'm from Virginia for context, played midi. I think so much of not only this show but what I've done throughout the years is find this very cohesive like sports to business conversation around leadership. And you know I've had Matt Ishby on the show, the owner of the the Phoenix Suns to Tilman Fertitta, the owner of the Rockets and so much of that sports mentality I believe and has, you know, come up in conversation ties to leadership CEOs and curious to know your perspective from captain lacrosse team Notre Dame to now CEO role at acast. How do business and sports tie in in your perspective when it comes to leadership from the top down?

Oh, that's a great question and I hadn't thought about that. But I will tell you for those of you who don't know midfield is the part of they go back and forth, they play defense and offense so you're kind of, it's, you know, there's specialists on offense and specialists on defense and the middies go back and forth. So we're like the, the hard working sort of blue collar lunch pail position. And the analogy I use all the time, I try not to overdo sports analogies here because not everybody we've got all kinds of, I've got real estate, food analogies, sports, anything, you name it. I've got an analogy for it. But we've been talking about putting our offense on the field. I think this is our industry and company like Acast, we've been pretty conservative on how do we think about things and we're going to build this business quietly and we're going to defend ourselves. I think it's time, time to put the offense on the field that like we should go have these conversations at a higher level. So that and I also am A big fan of hiring student athletes. I think it's just such an awesome proxy for, you know, teamwork, positive energy, competitiveness, preparation, organization. You know, the idea that, you know, a college athlete, you know, you. You've got three hours of practice every day. You've got to figure out, when are you gonna write that paper after. You can't just. You can't just sort of take a nap in the afternoon. You gotta get your stuff done. So. Those people translate really well to anybody with that kind of background, so.

Very well said.

Love it.

And I think something I do wanna. I found this in doing my research, and I'm curious, when's the last time you. You saw this photo? So this was, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. What is it, 1995. You're doing the Face Off.

Oh, look at the.

And I'm curious. Take us back to that one thing I love diving into. You know, we'll hear. Talk about podcasting. We're here to talk about leadership. But, Greg, in your early career in college, what were some of your career aspirations and just early childhood instincts around not only what you want to do in life, but passions and just more so influences that you were following?

Yeah, that's. It's. It's. That's a great question. You know, I. I had a unique upbringing. I grew up in Lido beach, which I mentioned in the caption there. I. I don't remember seeing that ever. Maybe newspaper, but, you know, and the interesting thing, just tying into, you know, relationships and continuity. And when I was at Notre Dame, Coach Corrigan was the coach there, and he's from Charlottesville, Virginia, and his dad's from Virginia. Yeah, played at Virginia. And, you know, he's a. He's a terrific guy. I thought he was an old person when he was coaching me. You know, he was probably 28. I thought he was. I thought he was 45. And. And he's still there. So I have this continuity to the team and watching how they've developed and how he softened his stance on how he talks to people, and things change over time. So seeing that leadership change has been really inspiring to me. And we've hired kids from the team here and there, interns and things like that, but it is growing up. I grew up in Lido Beach, Long Island. My parents were the first people to move to this neighborhood that wound up being a fairly affluent neighborhood. My mom was a nurse. My dad was a high school teacher. And sort of around us, I grew up with seeing a lot of wealth and it was a beach town and all these things. And it was just sort of a very strange way to grow up. My parents were much older. My father was a depression era baby and went to World War II. And so I was the only kid my age who had like a World War II veteran father. It was very random, but it really drove me. My brother's in New York City, firemen. My sisters are teachers. So it was, I kind of like, I wanted to carry a briefcase. I wanted to wear a suit and tie. And it's sort of like I felt like I could do that. So I was always fascinated with business and I thought that was my, you know, I looked at some of the neighbors and the vacation they were going on, like, that looks pretty good. I want to have a. I think I want to. I didn't realize at the time. Nobody says I want to sit in a cubicle, but, but I'm like, I think there are ways if you're going to work this hard, like, you might as well get, you know, you know, some, some, some pay for it. So I think that drove me a little bit to just sort of work hard, think about, you know, business, you know, go to a school that had a great reputation so that I could do something, do something big afterwards. So that was the plan.

Very important, very well said. And I found it, it was so cool to kind of hear about Coach, who. I think they won the NCAA title like two years ago or a year ago. And I, I, so my, and I know I mentioned earlier again, but prior to me getting injured, I was a freshman in high school. You know, play was playing varsity football as a 5, 6 running back was not the best situation. But I was also playing lacrosse. And my, myself and my brother, we did this whole charity fundraising event and we brought lacrosse to our high school for the first time. And it was one of those things where my goal was like, play lacrosse and then overnight in a neck brace for six months, can never play football again, can't really do sports. And that's where this drive for business, entrepreneurship really just sort of innately change gears looking back. Yeah. So I love to kind of, I love diving into that.

Those moments are amazing. Right. It's. You don't know at the time that, you know, this changed the course of your life, you know, in a positive way. This, this negative thing. So good for you. That's really, that's such rare.

Absolutely. When it comes to the, your background. Shazam. Going to Apple. Take us back to that phase as someone that is not only when it comes to following entrepreneurs. Looking at Steve Jobs and what, you know, what Apple has become in the world today. Curious about your perspective on what you learned from Shazam, going through that acquisition to then Apple, which I believe you mentioned was like the longest acquisition ever. What did you learn through that process of being chief Revenue Officer of Shazam?

Yeah, you know, I started my career at what's now iheart and I was there almost 20 years. And you know, you do a bunch of jobs there and then it's, you know, it was the only thing I'd ever done. So I went into a, I went to run an ad network that was much more digital focused, deep end of the pool and, you know, those have all evolved. And then Shazam kind of put all that stuff together for me where I was like, you know, I started becoming who I am now. And I advise a lot of, like, we have a lot of young people in the company. Obviously it's a young industry and, you know, people coming out of college and everyone's looking for career advice and you can't plan everything. And I don't think anybody could have planned the career I had. You just have to kind of, you know, stay true to what are you good at, what does the world need? And, you know, and what do you want to do? And if you can find something in the middle, like it seems like you have where you can find something in the middle. That's the goal. And I think, you know, if you can do that and don't force it and don't, don't be too rigid with, I have to go to this school and I must work at Meet Goldman Sachs. And I have to do this and, you know, be open to opportunities, but, you know, make a plan and do it. So, you know, at Shazam, our thing was we have this great product. How do we make money with it? Like, you can't, you know, it's like people are used to things like this being free now. So what do we do? It's expensive to run a company like that and it's global and it's this beloved brand and how do we do that without upsetting the user? So that's where my reputation. I started really, really thinking about building revenue, generating products that aren't destructive, you know, that aren't intrusive. Not saying anything bad about the radio industry, but at the end, one of the things that bummed me out was the ad load on the radio stations. And it just didn't seem sustainable with the competitors coming in and streaming and People aren't going to tolerate that over time and they'll survive it. It'll be different and they'll have to make those decisions. But whenever we do something here at Acast, it's like, okay, let's think about. It's not just what's going to make us the most money. Me, it's over time, what's going to be best for the audience and the creator. And let's not do anything that's destructive to that value chain. And, you know, I was really so at Shazam. That was one of the things that Apple liked is, you know, they are, they are the most data sensitive, you know, privacy company. And that's what the feather in their cap is, privacy. And the fact that we didn't do some of the. It was very tempting at that time to sell your data to all these location companies because it was like oil and they were. Shazam had a lot of user data, always with location, a lot of information about the people. And it was very tempting. A lot of people offering you money for that data. And we had the discipline not to do that. And we tried to build other products that would be beautiful and inspiring and not so nefarious. And that wound up, when Apple showed up, it was, you know, if we had done, if we had made a wrong decision on that, they would not have gone through with, you know, they did not want to be tangled up with any privacy issues. So making good decisions usually lead to good outcomes, even if you can't, you can't see them at the time.

So. Yeah, very well said. I think that just coincides with, not to just drop another quote, but Steve Jobs quote of like, you can never connect the dots. Looking forward, only looking backwards.

Yeah.

And hearing that, I think it's so real for career advice. And as you said about the, you know, young people that work at Acecast around that, it's, it's, you know, we live in this space where there's so much access in the world and the ability to know, like, what opportunities and lead to the next and kind of hearing your journey of. You can never predict how it unfolds. I relate to that so much. You know, I think, and I was telling the team beforehand, the podcasting industry has really been the foundation of my career. Where back in 2020, just for context, you know, I've been hosting the show for three years at that point. And for me, there was always three core reasons of hosting the show. And I think, and I've always told podcasters, like, you need to be Clear of why you're doing something. For me it's always been meet great founders, learn from them and create business opportun. The full sort of slow and then big full circle moment was in mid-2020 my, myself and my prior co founder. My last startup was called mediakits.com it was the easiest way for mainly social media creators and Twitch streamers to aggregate cross platform data to better pitch and represent to brands. And I was 20 years old at the time, had no idea how to fundraise and long story short we ended up raising from 37 angel investors. And the fun fact which 36 I think you'd appreciate it it all 37 investors were past guests on the podcast and that full circle moment for me was just so like it proved to me the level of depth in relationships and how that translates and you know we had Wiz Khalifa as a partner and just so many great creators that were believing in our mission. We raised just over a million dollars and the ability to kind of have that come full circle. I always tell podcasters like there's so much inherent value in a show beyond the ad dollars, beyond the you know, likes and followers or views in terms depth you can build whether with your audience but same thing with, with guests.

Yeah.

And you know, to make a long story short, to kind of get to the next topic that I think is really exciting is so media kits. Back in 2022 we were acquired by a a company up in Toronto called Viral Nation. And one thing that's always fascinated me sort of initially as an outsider when I was building in the creator economy I was always tracking and following like all things podcast, M and A and the consolidation that was happening 2021, 2022 and that was more of when I just had my creator hat on and around your now as CEO of acast, how you and really the industry overall, how do you think about consolidation? I think I read and sounds profitable yesterday how like audioboom is potentially going to do this acquisition and I feel like every week you see you know, podcast moving, acquiring sounds profitable and it's a very exciting time for I think a lot of builders in this space and would obviously love to hear your perspective on all things consolidation and the future of how you view that as a company.

Awesome. I'll come back to consolidation in a second. I just think I, I'm still thinking about 37 investors and you know in the pandemic I was the CEO of an out of home company and we, we were, we pitched for funding and I pitched the company 67 times to close one. So I can't imagine 37, like, you know, hats off to you. That sounds exhausting.

It was the, you know, it's like anything. It's like you got to build the momentum. And then one led to three introductions and five introductions, but that's it. It was a grind. It was a 6, 7, 8, 9 month process.

And to your point about, you know, the Steve Jobs quotes, and it's funny, it's like Steve Jobs je. Those. Like, I think there's so much luck that goes into the timing. And, you know, if you're building Amazon at the time and the Internet, like, all these things have to be lined up, right? And the best people, the smartest people tend to get the luckiest. So I think there's. It's not just luck, but it's also, it's. It's sort of a blend. And, you know, Steve Jobs has a great quote that, that I love, that I use with our team all the time. And, and actually Bezos says something similar, but that don't ask the consumers what they want. Like, if you, you know, you can ask them, but don't. None of. Nobody wanted an iPhone. Like, really nobody would say, like, nobody thought. If you remember the critics on the iPad, the iPhone, the AirPods, the first, none of it is something that people would say they want. Like, they don't necessarily know what they want, so you have to listen to them, but then kind of figure out where the holes are. And then the same thing, like with, you know, with Amazon, it's like, okay, you know, Jeff Bezos thinks about, we have, you know, customers that want to do one thing and, you know, if you have anecdotes and data that don't align, you know, pay attention to the anecdotes. Which I was surprised to hear him say, you know, because we have a great research team and we do a ton of research and insights, but we're always careful. Like, if you ask creators what they want, they don't always know what they want. You know, it's like if you ask your audience to interject quickly.

Henry Ford had a quote. He said, yeah, if, if I asked the consumer what they wanted, they'd ask. They'd ask for another horse.

Yes.

And it's like the Model T from that.

Exactly. And it's. So I think those things. We have to be careful because we'll do this research. And it's like, of course, if you ask, it's like, hey, oh, come back. Like, they. The cre. The the audience doesn't want any ads. It's like, well, you know, yeah, we want, they want the show to be free, so there'll be some ads. But, you know, so it's like you can't, you can't always just do everything but, you know, make those things balance on consolidation. Again, using the pattern recognition analogy, if you looked at there's Luma Partners, the Lumascape, right. And it was this big digital thing when the Internet first started and they had all, every Internet company on there and different boxes. Who's a dsp, who's an ssp, who's an ad network, what's the. And gradually the boxes started, people started consolidating and every box went from 25 companies to like five to what? And you can see that happening here. There's like a bunch of people that are doing pieces of the industry or features that, you know, probably belong together. So, you know, I don't think it's necessarily a big roll up that's going to happen quickly, but I think, think now feels like. I know for acast, what we've done is we've consolidated our narrative so we know our identity is pretty clear to us and we know what we are. And when you lay that out on a whiteboard or wherever you see holes in it, you see like, okay, this is what we are and there's like some weak spots and that's an opportunity for acquisition. How do we, you know, can we do this organically? Can we get to where we want to get organically in the market? Market? Maybe if it's going to take three years, maybe there's a way to shortcut that. You know, is there technology that we could borrow, build or buy? You know, so, so all of those things is we want to get better. So I think, I think it's going to be consistent and it's going to be for a while. So, you know, we just, in fact, the reason we have this studio is because of our acquisition of Wonder Media Networks. They, you know, they create content, we do tons of branded content. We were always going to have a studio, but now to have it where it's going to be used, every day is a different story. So, so that's amazing.

I, I believe that was what last.

Late last year was end of December. Yep. Yeah.

Amazing. Very cool to hear and I appreciate the perspective on that because I think it's, it's so I feel like every week you'll see different deals from content to tech to just, you know, mergers, whatever it may be.

Very what we did is very similar to global buying the fellow studios in the uk which is, you know, they're essentially aqua hiring content creators in video because they didn't have it. So global could go learn how to do do it or they could acquire somebody who's doing it really well. And so I think you'll see some of that.

Yeah, absolutely. Accelerance something I heard you talk about, I think for the, for the audience, but also on my perspective, you said on this on the POD News podcast around, you know, for those that don't know, ACAS is a publicly traded company. Yes. And I know you mentioned how. And again, not to speak for you, where it's like, you know, we might relist on Nasdaq and there's a lot of technicalities that come into that that we don't need to get into the nuance. But I'm curious to know your perspective and for people that, that are here listening and maybe they're a young founder, maybe they, you know, their goal is to take a company public. I'd love to hear your perspective and also use this as an educational piece of why a company would do that. The benefits, the pros, the cons. And again, not to like talk about the ins and outs of the business, but more so the business use case and why that could or couldn't be the right decision.

Sure. And you know, and I came into this company, Acast was already public. So you know, I, I've gone back into the archives to see sort of the reasoning and why, but I, you know, it's, it's not always the best thing for everybody. I think the, you know, the macro trends, what's happening in industry, you know, do you need a war chest of cash? How does it work? So I think depending on where the industry is, it's hard to say. It's so situational. Some of the, some of the best things that have happened in my career, I've, I've been part of a company that's gone public. I've been part of a really big company that went private. When Clear Channel went private, it was the largest private equity buyout in history at that point, you know, during the housing crisis in 2000. But, but on the other side of that, going from a public company to a private company owned by private equity. I had read all these nightmares about that and actually it was really rewarding. They took a lot of the handcuffs off. They let us be really creative. We, that's when the company became Iheart and we brought so, so I think it can be, you can make the best of any of those situations, depending on where you are. For acast, I think, you know, we're in a really good position. We're in the silent period now. We have our Q3 earnings will. Will be announced on the day before Halloween, Oct. So I'll be in Stockholm for that. But you can see our Q2 earnings and you can see that there's a lot of momentum and a solid balance sheet and all those things. So I think going public for ACOs was a really smart thing because it put us in a position where for our next decade now, we're set up to win. We can be nimble, we can make decisions, we can do or don't do things based on logic and strategy, not based on we don't have any money or we've got to borrow to do it, or we've got to service debt. So I think, depending on your situation, you know, just stay disciplined. And I think most founders, you know, it's always scary and it's always risky and, you know, it feels like you're over your skis every day. But, you know, just, you know, just keep going and know that like, that there's probably a good, you know, if you, if you keep working hard and listening, there's probably a solution out there that makes sense for you.

Absolutely. I love that perspective. And there I recently had Julia Hart, who's the CEO of Eventbrite, on the podcast. And you know, Eventbrite is a publicly traded company. And when I was talking with her, you know, we're talking about, she's for context, she was one of 21 female founders who were founders of a company, took it public, and then are currently still the CEO. So she's in this, like, very small, elite class. And I was talking about taking the company to public, and she said, you know, my dream in terms of business was always to take a company public. And she says, I was at a wedding one time, I was, there's like two or three CEOs of publicly traded companies. And right before we were about to go public public, they were telling me, oh, don't do it. It's a nightmare. But she's like, you know what? That was the, the most important, like, business milestone of my life. And now she makes it a point. She's like, I will never say that to anyone because the ability to go through that process, what you learn, the, the pros, the cons, it's such a growing process for any CEO, but also the team overall. And I found that perspective very just beneficial and insightful from large companies to aspiring founders, that maybe that is their goal. And it's so very cool to hear in that context. So being here in New York City and I've heard ACAST talk about us, US expansion, obviously the Wonder Media Network was a big part of that. How do you think about the future of ACAST in the us? And one thing just to caveat, why I've personally have always loved and gravitated towards acas is, you know, and you've, you've talked about this where, you know, companies like Tier 6M or Spotify, like podcasting is a part of what they do with ACAs, podcasting is what you do. And I think for people that are listening or watching, if they don't know that distinction, I want to make that clear because I think it's really not only positions and from my perspective, but I think the industry overall is like why Acast has become the brand and company it has been as that independent podcast first company. So curious to have you your perspective on that and then also just thinking about US expansion, how you view that as a CEO and really as a company over the years.

Yeah, awesome question. I mean, that is really the, the heart of the matter. And I think, you know, we took a look at ACAST the last hundred days and I talked about alignment and our narrative and getting that clear. And you know, we probably had a dozen slightly different narratives in the marketplace for ACAST around depending on where you live, what part of the world, who you were. We, we talk to investors a little bit differently than we talk to creators and hold cos differently than, you know, performance agencies. And you know, at some point you've got to have an identity and, and yes, you can change it a little bit, but I think our core identity needs to, to, to be clear. And the thing that makes ACAST really special is our global nature. So, you know, the idea that Tony and Ryan in Australia can make money because they have 20% of their listening is in the UK and the US and we sell them there. You know, we're not like, hey, you're an Australian show. These are impressions of people living here that want. So we're able to do that and that makes us really special. We want to have a central narrative for Acast so people know what we are in general, general. But then we want people to be able to execute locally. Right. In France, the podcast industry works really differently. You know, there's a lot of influencers, there's video in Australia Radio is still huge and really cool. So we're competing with a different thing. In the uk, we have more than half the podcast market, so we have a position of strength in that market. So that's a different, you know, that's a different responsibility. We have to grow the market. We can't wait for other people. And then in the US where there's all this opportunity, I don't think anybody has double digit market share in podcasting. And our competitors here, everyone we compete with on a day to day basis for the most part, has a business that's bigger than podcasting, more important to them and shrinking or flat. And so they have this exciting speedboat in podcasting that they talk about a lot, but then they have these supertankers that are moving slowly or maybe sinking in some cases. And so when you think about Omnichannel, if my, my fake Starbucks example, if I were to follow iHeart or Sirius, and we love all these guys, like we're all collaborating, but if I were to follow Odyssey or iHeart or any of these guys in a meeting at Starbucks for Omnichannel, Sirius would be talking about satellite plus podcasting. Iheart would be talking about their festivals and all the things they do. And they're wonderful brands, but their Omnichannel means podcasting plus other things. Our Omnichannel means podcasters and the way they reach their audiences. So those are two very different things.

Things very well said. I've never heard it broken down like that. Very great perspective there. As we are nearing the end of this conversation, Greg, you know, one question that I always love asking is when you think about ACAST and the future, I know you talk about the next decade often, but what excites you the most around acast, this opportunity and really the podcast landscape overall and where it's going.

I just feel like I'm the luckiest person, maybe we all are. Because, you know, I just talked about the luck of, you know, if you build Amazon two years earlier or two years later, maybe it's not Amazon if you build, you know, and so I, I think we're, I just, you know, this might be a once in a career opportunity. And you know, I said that to the board when I moved into this role. It's like, forget everything else. I, I think this is this experience, not everybody gets to do that, where you kind of see this, this industry coming together and becoming something and we're in a place where we can like really, really not only ride that wave, but sort of control the direction Not a lot of people get to do that. And I go to a lot of industry org stuff because I think they're going to make the rules of the road. The IAB and all these, we love them, but they're going to make the rules of the road. It's like I don't want to be sitting in the dmv. I want to be behind the desk. I want to be helping make the. We should be part of this. We shouldn't be just like what does everyone else think it's going to be? Because they're all going to be self serving and our big radio partners and friends and all of the guys I just mentioned, they're going to want rules of the road that really behoove them and help their businesses. And we're going to. So I think we want to represent you, the creator, their audiences and the brands who want to get into the podcasting and we want to make it easy to do that. So I'm really excited. Just, you know, who gets to be at the ground floor when you kind of, it seems pretty obvious that this is where it's going. And so, so that's why I'm excited is we don't know what it's going to look like in two years, but we want to help create, craft it.

So I'd love to hear that. And last question before we wrap up. You've had, as you've mentioned and we've talked about today, quite the career spanning from media, entertainment, now podcasting as a vertical, and we talk about lacrosse and the college days and leadership. If you go back to that college version of you that's thinking about your career in the future, but also to founders and individuals out there that are thinking about their career. What would your number one piece of advice be for yourself but also the viewers listening around business and also. So just a personal advice.

Yeah, this is near and dear because I've got three children and my two oldest daughters are a sophomore and a freshman in college. And I find myself thinking if I could go back, I would have taken advantage of more. I didn't start really being curious and listening. I mean, I went to class, but I was like, I'm trying to get the best grade. I'm not trying to become friends with this professor and truly learn the material. And it's like, gosh, I wish I would have taken more advantage. Notre Dame's an amazing place and my kids are at great schools and just take advantage. Like if there's a world famous professor and you can't get in the class, go audit it. I, I know we're not, you know, like really take advantage of what's out there. There's just world class out your room. You don't know who you could be next to. You know, the next Steve Jobs could be in the dorm room next door to you. So you know, talk to people. Don't just, you know, don't just make it the traditional, you know, Animal House style college experience which I didn't do either. But, but take advantage of more things and I could and the kids are more mature than I was in college. Like they all are much more focused. But if I could go back it would be start that sort of curiosity and listening and taking advantage of opportunities a little bit earlier. Amazing.

I love that. Well Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today. And I know I've said it many times but I just. Huge fan of ACAST and what you guys are building here. And for people that are watching and listening up until this point, where is the best place for everyone to learn more about acast? If they're crazy, just get involved with the ecosystem and of course where can they best follow you and stay connected. Sure.

You know I think for me LinkedIn is the, you know I have a love hate relationship with it but I find it very useful and I think it's a pretty, it's a sterile environment. It's not the most fun thing but I think there's a lot of stuff there. So please, you know, follow me there. I'll have all our, any of our thought leader stuff we'll make sure is there acast.com we're in the process of revamping it. We, we have a really wonderful self serve portal that I'm so excited the growth and the potential for being able to bring products to the masses. We have a lot of customers on our self serve portal and every day what we do and last thing, I'm sorry but I just think this is so cool is our team. We basically if we have somebody that registers for self serve and they go through this process of creating an account account and putting in their info, maybe even a credit card and then they don't buy a podcast campaign. We reach out to them. They're abandoned carts kind of the way CPG people do or Amazon does and what was in your way? Why didn't you complete this? It was like and then we took their feedback. It was oh, I was confused about what to buy or I got overwhelmed by I don't know which shows make sense for me. I wasn't sure about brand safety or I don't have creative and that became our roadmap and we've solved all those problems. So now we use AI for show suggestions so they feel a little more confident and we've seen usage go up based on those things. Same thing on the creative side. I don't have the money to do a really great creative spot. Well put your brand attributes in and we'll give you some versions. We'll create something for you that either somebody great like Miles will do by hand or we'll use AI or a combination. So we're really, really psyched about that. So please check that out if you're interested and otherwise find us on acast.com and reach out there and we will, we'll try and help you out.

Amazing. Well Greg, thank you so much.

Thanks for coming. Thanks for the house call.

Of course. Yeah. Thank you all for tuning in today.