Max Cutler on Selling Parcast to Spotify and Building Pave Studios for the Next Era of Podcasting

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I have a very special guest. We're joined by Max Cutler, the founder of Pave Studios. Max, thank you so much for coming the show.

Thanks for having me.

Of course, Matt.

I know we're going to do this in our studios. Of course.

It's beautiful studio. Very grateful to be here at the office. And I must say, you know, we've. We've chatted on social media for. For many years now. And I've always been so inspired by really the pioneer you have been in the world of podcasting and media and even, you know, your. Your past company, Parkast. I want you to take us back to the beginnings of podcast. You know, coming from a family where your dad was big in radio and, you know, you had this drive to start a network back in the day where it was much different than where podcasting is now. What was it at the time that you saw that inspired you to start Park House? And now over time, Pave.

Yeah, I mean, I think in. And again, thank you for having me on the show. I think in 2016. Well, there's two things. One was desperation. I needed to do something. I had another startup that was not working like I thought it was going to work. And I think through every sort of not failure, you kind of fail forwards. I believe that in entrepreneurship, and it became clear to me that that startup was about sharing content. But my love has always been audio content. Did you mention this? I was raised in a audio household. My dad was a radio producer. He was on. He was actually an FM dj. The first in Philadelphia, one of the first in Philadelphia. He became a producer on radio stations. But he's also just a creative mind that did a lot more than just radio. He wrote a book, he produced a movie, he owned nightclubs. And I think growing up in an environment where really my dad became my idol and seeing someone channel their creativity in such interesting ways made me realize how I wanted to. To be more creative than just in my life, I guess. And so in 2016, when Park House launched, which is in June of 2016, it really goes back six months before that. And what I found was I was driving back from Vegas trying to figure out what I was gonna do next. And of course, I was listening to a podcast. And as I was listening to these podcasts, I started to. And I was listening to podcasts for a long time, like I was the kid that listened to books on tape. Perspective. I found out there was ads and podcasts, and it sort of suddenly just went off. Like, wait, is there a business around podcasting? And it never really occurred to me that you can make money or build a business on podcasting. Cause that was something I just had loved so much. And that ride back, I decided that I was gonna spend the next three months learn everything I could about podcasting. At that time, it was like reading a bunch of blogs by Tim Ferriss, listening to startup at Gimlet, which is funny. Cause obviously we ended up at the same company at Spotify and just seeing how other companies were doing it. And it really was the wild, wild west back then. And I think for me to come from like a radio household that was like, you learned how to produce really thoughtful content on a weekly basis, or in his case, a daily basis. And that was really what Parkast was. I mean, I think for us, we didn't have any money to go hire the best talent in the world. We had to rely on amazing storytelling, on amazing research, and that was how we were going to be different. Um, and I think because of that, all the pre production work, all the storytelling work, we were able to stand out at that time. And again, the space, I know we're getting into this, but the space is obviously very different now. But at that time, just the storytelling and the research, the sound design made for this immersive experience that I think really gravitated to a lot of listeners and allowed, you know, one show to become two shows to become three shows to eventually lead to the exit of Spotify.

Absolutely. No. It's so cool to hear. And even, you know, the context of you. I remember you saying in an interview where you're like, so many of these hosts, it seemed like they were just reading Wikipedia pages. And you guys brought a level of production, but also sort of matching it with a marketing budget because it was equally as not only important, but like, needed to get a show out there. Sort of taking that into how you see podcasting today with Pave. You know, I've, as I mentioned, you know, I've been very inspired by the work that you guys are doing at this intersection of, like, where podcasting is going and really modern media as a whole. And one thing I want to touch on is just X and this partnership that you guys announced with Khloe Kardashian and her show going on there. I. I want to draw those two parallels of, you know, seeing, hey, podcasting needs this big revamp, therefore, what you did at podcast. And then, you know, now in this modern era, so many great produced shows, but like, what is that Next frontier. And I think you guys are just really at the cutting edge of it. I'm curious to hear your perspective on what you saw in the market which led now starting pave.

Totally. Well, I think, you know, the essence of Pave goes back a couple years. I think it became very clear to me at Spotify that creators wanted to do more, but they needed help to get to do more. And it also became very clear that these formats were starting to blend together as well as distribution partners and platforms. And what I mean by that is if you think about three years ago or four years ago was a podcast was audio only content. Then you started to, for the most part, then you started to see more podcasts start to do video and having real success across video on, on YouTube. Um, and it was like no one was really focused on that in the podcast space. And when you talk to creators, like I did a lot at Spotify, they do most, they do everything themselves for the most part. And that's a really, that's a lot on them and there's burnout, fatigue and there's a lot of things. And I just felt strongly that if there was a new studio that came into the space that was independent, that was creator first and that was focused on the creative, there was an opportunity to thrive, especially if you focus on the intersection of these lines, put it together. And that's what PAVE really is. PAVE stands for, literally, podcasts, audiobooks, video and experience. And the idea behind this is that we have the benefit of being a new company. We have the benefit of launching shows now. And so when we launch a show, we can think about, is it audio, is it video, is it video first plus audio? And that's our big advantage. We're launching a show tomorrow. I don't know when this comes out, but we're launching a show tomorrow called Clues. And I think it really does exemplify what the future of podcasting is. It's with two amazing hosts, Morgan Absher and Caitlin Moore. Both have existing podcasts and YouTube channels. One's heart starts pounding, one's two hot takes, and they're coming together to in a new genre, true crime call Clues, right, where it's really video first, but it's audio too. And by making sure we have an amazing experience in audio plus video, that's a huge advantage that we have. I think a lot of creators right now are feeling forced by platforms to do video audio first. Creators, I should say. And I don't know if that's the right strategy necessarily. Right. I think if you have an amazing audio show, maybe you should stick to doing audio. Right? There's nothing wrong with that. You built an amazing audience, you know what you're doing. And the reason I say that is we know, at least at pave, right, the average video show costs about four times as much as an audio show. It's a different production muscle, it's a different team. I mean, if you look at this studio right now, a lot of cameras, right? A lot of lighting, a lot of certain things that go into it, but it really is different. And it's hard for a creator to just make that change by themselves. And that's what PAVE is. It's like we want to partner with creators, want to control the ip. We believe that in a more complicated environment, which it is, it used to be you'd upload your audio file to an RSS feed. From there it get distributed to all the platforms. Now you have to think about and you have to be really strategic about this. Is it the right strategy to put video on Spotify? Is it the right strategy to put video on YouTube? Do I need to do video? Do I need to do a live tour merch, all these sort of things. And just because one creator is doing it or just because one platform is trying to dictate it doesn't mean you need to do that as a creator. And I think that's where we add our value prop.

Absolutely great perspective. And I. Something I want to touch on is just context on my show as well. I launched my show December 2017 and I was 17 at the time. And, and I think just as someone that's, I, I like to say like my whole career, sort of like the foundation has been through my podcast and you know, I had an audio only show for like three years before adding real video. I was in high school, I was recording on any mic I could find. And you know, it wasn't until like couple years later where the, the resurgence of like video and how important it is, where not only I latched on, but you saw these, these big deals start happening. And I want to lean into, you know, prior to joining Spotify, as, as a founder myself and as someone that in my last company raised some money and the, the early startup mentality of, you know, sort of the unknown. Like when, whenever you're building something, especially when you know you're launching your first company, you are leaning into the unknown and rallying people behind that vision. And I remember hearing that you launched it, I believe it was 2015 when you launched Parcast 2016 and you guys got acquired, like 2018, 2019, 2019, early 2019, what was that journey like for you as someone that, you know, set out to build an incredible podcast network to then get acquired by a company like Spotify?

I mean, I look back, it was the best journey. It's a factory to ever have. Right? And I think for. For me, what makes it so special? I never started Parcast to sell it to anybody. I started Parcast because I believed that these stories needed to be told. I believe that we were very different in the marketplace through our sound design, through our research, through our storytelling. And I just really wanted to give people escapism, content where I believe strongly, I still believe this today, that life's very stressful. And if we could create content that allows people to forget about the stresses in their Life for even 30 minutes a week, that's very valuable. But, you know, for me, when we started, when you started podcast, there was a lot of people that took a lot of bets on me. A lot of people, a lot of them are in this room. And the idea behind it was I was a kid, I was 25 when I started that, and I had this vision, and the vision was, we're going to grow this together, we're going to do this together, and whatever happens, we're either going to grow together as a company or we're going to fail together. And I think there's something special when you have that mentality and you get the right people to buy into that mentality. That's really important. I would say this. You know, having post Spotify, I invested a bunch of companies and help entrepreneurs. I'm very passionate about that. It's all about culture, and it's all about the team and getting people to buy into that, especially. It's a small company, right? If you're 10 employees and you have two people that don't buy in, well, guess what? That's 20% of the company. And so I think at Parcast, we really had everyone that bought into this idea that we were making a difference and that we were doing something differently. And so when Spotify called, you know, it wasn't like we. It wasn't like we ran a process. Spotify is a company that I've always loved. I've used Spotify since it came to the U.S. i thought, wow. To be part of a platform that was, you know, really devoted to growing, podcasting was an opportunity that I couldn't, you know, that I just really couldn't Pass up. And I thought it was great for Parkast. And most importantly, I knew that all the staff at Parkast would be taken care of. And when they gave me sort of those assurances, it was a no brainer for me to do that process. And what I didn't appreciate the time was how amazing Spotify would be to me in terms of, I don't want to say as a victim of Parkast success with inside of Spotify, but we ended up very quickly or I met very quickly moving inside of Spotify and helping them develop their overall creator sort of platform there, which was just an amazing experience to have at such a young age. And I love that. I think Spotify is an amazing company. I have so many friends there. But it wasn't intentional. I think what was intentional, and I would say this to other people, is do what you love. Like, I actually don't agree with do what you love. I think do what you're good at is important. But if you're just focused on the little details, things compound very quickly and a lot of times you don't notice it. And then if you look up three months later like, oh wow, we did what six months later, oh wow, we're now did well, like 20% month over month isn't bad. 50%, you know what I mean? But if, and it just happens and I think like right now, same parallel with Pave Pave is, you know, is growing. It's, it's growing exponentially. It's, it's actually surpassing our expectations, which is awesome. And it's hard though. It's hard. Like I'll, I'll be the first to admit I forgot how hard it is that first, you know, year, two years of, you know, it is rolling up your sleeves. It's doing a bunch of jobs. I love it. I think the team here loves it. But it's one of these things where, you know, we, we just looked at the last quarter. It's like, oh, wow, we accomplished a lot of things. And you kind of forget about that in the day to day process. So it is important to celebrate your, your wins, I think.

Yeah, I mean it's, you know, early start of life, you're, you're so focused on what's next that it's so easy to forget like what has been done when you're moving so quickly. You know, as I'm someone, one of my favorite books that I've read in the last year is from Brad Jacobs and I think it's how to make a few billion dollars is the title. But he talks a lot about just not only acquisitions, but integrations. And something that you've sort of spoke to is that post Spotify acquisition and more importantly the integration from the articles and just the success that Parkast had within the company. What do you think led to the success of the not acquisition, but the integration? Because, you know, you mentioned some of these deals you were just so influential with building out the creator network, doing the deals with Rogan or Alex Cooper. What, what about that do you think made it the most successful in terms of, you know, what can founders out there that are buying companies are looking to get acquired, learn about, you know, what you guys did at podcast and Spotify successfully.

I think both for the entrepreneur as well as the company that's acquiring is acquiring their startup. Everyone gets caught up in the purchase price in that moment in time. A lot of people do and they don't really think about what does this mean after the acquisition's done right. Every founder just wants it across the finish line. And I think because we didn't have to sell Parkast and because like I said, I didn't want to process, all I really cared about was post acquisition and at the time you had Courtney Holt and Don Ostroff at Spotify and we spent a lot of time mapping out of like, what would that look like for Parkast and myself? Cause it was really important, as I mentioned, it was important that all the team not only came with me, but had significant raises and then understanding their plan and at the same time realizing that the bigger company, Spotify, right, their strategy is going to evolve and change. And so we built in metrics for me that were, that were allowed built in metrics for me that were good for all of Spotify. And I think that those when incentives are aligned, it's very powerful. And I think that's why we were successful is yes, I cared about Parkast very much. We grew that a lot, a lot at Spotify. I think it was a great success. But I also cared about greater Spotify and because my sort of incentives are based off the overall performance, I think that's why we were able to be so successful together during my time there.

I love that. That's insightful. Back to Pave when I just have been a huge. Not only X user myself this past year, but I'm such a believer of the future of podcasting on X and sort of what they want to build there in terms of the everything app and especially in terms of video content. Talk to me about that. I know I've mentioned it a couple of times now, but Khloe Kardashian launching that on X, I see the. The views, the impressions that the show is having on there. Why X and how do you view X in terms of podcasting and its future on for creators?

Well, I think that, you know, first talking about Chloe. Chloe is an unbelievable creator. She's so just energized about this podcast. She comes with a strong point of view. To have the opportunity to work with her is honestly been just so exciting for both myself, but the whole entire company here, you know, in terms of X, you know, I think that the way we think about just podcasting as a whole is distribution is going to matter more and more in the future. You have a huge platform at X, just like you have a huge platform with these streamers, Netflix, Hulu, et cetera, that are going to play a role in podcasting's future. I think of podcasting as a show now more than I just think of a podcast. Right. And what really excites me is that we could be one of the first. We are one of the first companies that have obviously of distributing on X. But I think the more buyers that enter the marketplace is good for creators. And so for us, we want to continue to be pushing forward. We don't want to just be reliant on the existing sort of, you know, Spotify and Apple ecosystems. We want to get. Create an environment where all these platforms see the value in podcasts. Because what I believe is that if we're able to prove that it's not just good for us, but it's good for all these creators. And that's really why, you know, that deal happened to my run X and it's going to buy. We're going to be on other platforms too. Is is I just think that the economics of podcasting makes sense for these podcasts, for these streamers and for these big companies in a major way. And it really excites me to see the amount of investment that I believe. Right. Who knows about. Right. But that I believe will happen over the next 36 months.

Investment in terms of just podcasts to.

Other platforms, license deals, acquisition deals, things like that.

Yeah, I'm curious about that because I know something that I'm sure you saw is just the Netflix coming into podcasting. What do you think about that? I saw an artist. What do you think successful podcasting strategy looks like for a company like Netflix?

Well, I. I mean, have to talk to Netflix about what say it's the West. I generally think that if you look at where Netflix is as a company today, and you look at some of these other more mature streamers, it becomes about limiting Churn, right? So if you already have huge market share, it's how do you limit Churn? Especially if we end up going to a recession or whatever ends up happening in the future, that's where you don't want to be one of the streamers that get canceled. And the way you eliminate Churner, lower Churn is definitely time to spend on your platform. What better than podcast, YouTube content, et cetera, if you're Netflix, plain and simple.

Absolutely.

Same thing for Hulu, same thing for all these other companies out there. And if you think about the actual unit economics and the cost per hour for them, I'd be willing to bet that if they spent a hundred million on podcasts versus a hundred million on a film, they're gonna get a lot more bang for their buck on podcasts. And it's a matter of time for. They really think, figure that out. And again, it's. It's. They're gonna figure it out, and when they do, there's gonna be a lot of podcasters that are excited about this. You already had Kill Tony do a test, right? You obviously have Ms. Rachel. You have all these things happening in Mr. Beast at Amazon. There's fandom, there's community. I just think it's really exciting. Cause I think, again, like, the definition of a podcast is growing every day. Um, and if. If Pave can do a small part by helping build awareness for that on these platforms, then I think we. I think that's really exciting position to be.

Totally. No, it's so fascinating. And I think, again, like, the. The ecosystem approach of, you know, podcasts, audio, the books, the live events. You know, I. I know that, you know, someone like Alex Cooper and a lot of the bigger shows are doing these live tours. And I'm curious to know how you think about the shows within PAVE live touring and when a show should start, test like that, or if it's even, you know, best for that show in and of itself.

Well, I think about live touring as. I don't look at live touring as making money. I look at live tour. That's building a fandom and building community. And I think if you're going to be, you know, 99% of podcasts are going to do a live tour. It's about how you interact with your fans. How do you build that special connection and go deeper with them. And so, you know, Obviously you mentioned Alex Cooper. Tons of other. These creators are having amazing live touring business, are making millions and millions of dollars a year, but they're. What's not really talked about is the connection they're building when you go to one of these events. I actually went to Alex Cooper's live tour. It's like amazing what happens there.

It really is for just so the audience like paint the picture, like what happens at these live events.

I mean, the merch lines are insane. All the. Their fans are like literally taking pictures together. They're interacting. They feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. And I think what's so interesting about podcasting and when I say podcast, I'm thinking about YouTube as well, is for the creator, you just see your numbers and almost. It almost. It almost is like a moment, okay, I have a hundred thousand downloads, I have a million Downloads, I have 10 million downloads.

Right.

That's pretty cool. But to actually see a couple thousand people show up in a venue for you and bring a community that you helped build together, that you did build together, there's something so special about that. There's so the social reach, the pictures, it just grows your podcast, it just does. There's been tons of proof of that. So for us, when we think about live events, we're thinking about community. How can we tap into community, how can we grow community and how can we build fandom? And if we make some money off that, absolutely fantastic. Yeah, right. But really it's about. We know that it's an investment in the podcast and the pod and it'll end up turning more money out for the podcast.

Yeah, no, that's. Makes sense. I mean, I. Prior to my last software company, I was. I had this brand. It was called build your empire and it was like a big entrepreneurial community. And that was sort of like. For me, I always talk about like the full, full circle moment of my podcast, like the whole seven years of hosting it. The. It's kind of come full circle in many ways of like raising startup for my last ventures or even like doing live events and having past guests come out and speak. Not necessarily live shows, but hosting these events that I used to host back in Arizona. It's such an extension of that, like, personal relationship that I think you emphasize on that I feel strongly about as well. So excited to see how you guys continue to innovate in that whole ecosystem of live events.

Yeah, I mean, and it's. Listen, I think that's what PAVE is, as you mentioned, like, that's what we're meant to do is I think we're meant to help advise some creators on should he do a live tour? Should not do a lot of tour. Should you do merch? You not do merch. But at the end of the day, we're really here to amplify creators ambitions and we're always going to defer to them. We just want to make their lives easier.

Yeah. Something that I'm curious at your take on is in 2019, I'm not sure if you know, but I interviewed Larry King and it ended up being his last interview like, than he ever did in person.

That's amazing.

And I reference this because I was 19 at the time, he was 87 and I could tell the story, but it's, it could be, it's kind of a long one. Something that he said during the interview was two things. One was like, in order to, to be a great host, you have to be a great listener. And he just emphasized this whole aspect of like really being intentional with your audience and really meeting them where they are and being the best listener possible. That's what he said. You know, his, his superpower was. And you know, I think back on someone that was so innovative in radio and TV and, but also towards the end of his life, like he was starting a podcast called the Millionth Question. He was going on my show and he believed in this medium. And I want to ask you, when you think about meeting your audience where they are, where do you think podcasting will be in the next two, five years that people may not see right now?

It's a great question. I think for us, if you were just to look at the data, what you would find is audio listeners. And this is US data, right. Audio listeners in the US is growing, but growing a lot, you know, small, smaller than it was. It's probably 2 or 3% a year versus video, which is growing probably around 30 or 40% a year. And so if I had a guess, in the next three or four years, video is going to play a big role in that. And many of them on YouTube, potentially Spotify video was gonna be very important. And so when we think about. But just maybe to go back in general, when we think about releasing shows now, there's I think over 4 million podcasts out there, right. A lot of amazing content for us to launch a show. How are we different? How do we stand out? How do we add value? And I think when you talk about meeting your audience where they are, it's like we are very Intentional with the shows we launch. We do not. We're never gonna launch a hundred shows or 30 shows. We own our IP, as I mentioned before, so we wanna be very thoughtful to make sure we're adding value. I think right now, podcast to some is almost like blogs in 2008. Everyone's got one. Doesn't mean you have an audience then. We want to launch shows, have an audience and be intentional about that and meet them where they are. And so if you think about the shows you've already invested in, we're investing in niche communities. Horoscopes is a good example of Horoscope Weekly with Alisa Kelly. We obviously have Starstruck with Ali Luber. Both of these shows. We know there's a very rabid community there that we're really tapping into. It's really exciting. Obviously, crime continues to be a huge audience appetite for that. How do we make shows that feel different given there are so many amazing crime shows out there? Something we think a lot about Clues would be the prime example of that. And then this Open Mind brand, I think in a world now where there's a lot of stress, a lot of changes happen. More and more people are getting their information online. More and more people are trusting hosts. How can we help those conversations and kind of be a brand for people that are curious? I think by us developing these brands to being intentional in the shows we launch. I actually had a meeting today. It's like, hey, we're not gonna launch a couple. We're gonna limit our launches this year because I want us to nurture our community and grow our community and grow our shows. I think being patient and being intentional is very important in any business you do. Right. But definitely in podcasting right now, something.

You speaking of Open Mind and these brands within pay. For those that may not know you have Open Mind, you have Crime House. And I want to understand your mindset on the future of these niche brands within Pave as a whole versus just launching the shows within Pave. Why was it important for you and the team to really aggregate them under these sub brands of Pave in its own niche, specifically such as Open Mind?

Well, because we're a studio, right, and we own our ip. It's important. We need to find audience. You mentioned this earlier. When I started Parkast, I was 100% paranoid that I'm going to produce an amazing show and no one's going to know about it. Right. And so I'm still paranoid about that. We're going to release a show and I Hope people, you know, find it and discover it. And I think now what has changed is when I launched Parcast in 2016, there's a couple hundred thousand podcasts. Now there's millions of podcasts. And if you think about, you take a step back and say, you know, and I did this analysis right before launching Pave, you pretty much have a bunch of ad networks now don't own IP transactional relationships. You're gonna have a science show next to a crime show, next to a comedy show, et cetera. That devalues the shows in their network and that also devalues, I think in some cases the overall brand of that company. And so the way that we thought about this is, hey, we need to get an audience there. So we know that if we launch a crime brand, in this case Crime House, and we launch one show that gets a big audience, odds are people like crime content. So we've launched another crime show. They're gonna like that. If we get best in class creators in crime to together, that's going to be an interesting opportunity to move audience. And when you now have millions of podcasts and you launch a new show, you need to have a brand, you need to have an ecosystem, you need to stand for something. And that was a thought process is like, because we have this luxury of, of owning our IP and being creative first versus just being transactional on the sales side, I think we're able to go deeper with both creators, deeper with brands, by the way, and deeper in story, which is really important. And that's all. And that's why we thought about it. We've obviously launched Open Mind launch Crime House. We've been launching more brands, which is really exciting. And I think right now it's working for us. It'll be interesting to see how many more brands we can launch before maybe we hit some resistance. But right now it seems to be working.

I love it. And I think too as a founder myself, it makes so much sense. And I've always, as someone that came into this world of podcasting 17, seeing these different ad networks that just have hundreds and hundreds of shows that are very unique in their own right and different, versus like having the IP and the brand. I totally get it. I think it's a very smart take.

I mean, this goes back to being intentional. I think if I want to create, if you're trying to create a highly revenue generating business, that your cost revenue is going to be pretty astronomical. So you're going to have a pretty actually underlining, crappy multiple. Sorry My bad multiple. So people get mad at me. Then you should create a network. Right. At the end of the day, the way that we think about it is we want to create real value, we want to create real stories, and there's a marketplace for that right now. And I just think that we're very intentional with what we're doing. If we wanted to go and sell ads against a show that we don't really have a deep relationship with, I don't know, like, it's just a commodity to me. And we have amazing sales partners, and that's not in solving their business. It's just that they do such a good job at it that why would we want to compete with them? We need to be different. And I think the way that we're different is because we're producing the content and because we have amazing relationship with creators and we're really creator first. It just allows us to really stand out in the marketplace, not to be a network. Right. We're a studio. Same thing with Parcast. Like, we own everything on Parcast. It's what I'm comfortable with now. The flip side is it's a lot, I would argue riskier. It's a lot more costly to own your ip. It's a lot. You know, you're taking on that risk. But the flip, the other flip side of that is any startup is risky.

Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to not only owning your ip, but kind of taking a step back. And I think a lot of people that either have a show or interested in starting a show, you see these, these big numbers, these big deals of like, whoa, like, how do I, how does one optimize for that? And I'm so curious to get your take because, you know, you're, you're launching shows, but also you are the podcast studio business behind it and just have such a unique perspective of being in the business. What's your take on, you know, seeing these massive deals? And how should aspiring podcasters, or even someone that has a big audience that wants to, you know, go start their own show? Like, what should they really be optimizing for? And what do these big deals mean for the future of these types of, you know, creators with large audiences?

Well, you know, my take on these big deals is they fucking deserve it. They, they worked hard for it. They have a huge community and there's a reason why they're seeing these hundred million dollar deals happen. That means companies are making money and creators are making money. So it's amazing for the industry because it does help Us grow as a whole when you have these big deals happen. Now, my take for someone who maybe wants to start a podcast and how do I achieve a $100 million plus deal or things like that is you really have to be intentional. It goes back to being intentional. You have to be intentional about who you are, the show you're creating and the community you're building. And it's not gonna happen overnight. As a matter of fact, it's gonna take a couple years to get there. And you have to be consistent. And so the little things you can do is don't create a limited run show. Create an always on show, ideally weekly. Make sure the format that you create stands out from everybody else. Cause right now, a lot of interview shows out there. How do you create a show that's about you as the creator and they're tuning in for you and if it is a guest format that's additive to you. Right. It's not. They're tuning in for the guest. That's very important. And then stick at it. Because there's going to be a lot of reasons to quit in the first year. There just is. It's hard. If it wasn't easy, everybody would do it. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of times you're not going to see the metrics or your key, you know, whatever, whatever your metric is that you're really focused on working. But what I've noticed in podcasting specifically, you get to 12 episodes, something happens. You get to 20 episodes, something happens. And there is this community because I think there's also this trust that's being built. If I'm a listener and I have limited time a week to devote to a podcast or watch you on YouTube, I need to trust that it's going to be there every week. So every episode that you put out, you start trusting it more and more. I think that's really important. I think that right now, there used to be an op. I think there's like seven hours of a week of content that people are consuming the podcast. There's so much great content. You're have to kick something off, right?

Yeah, that's happened for my sleep. You know, you kind of recycle and change your listening habits 100%.

And so like, how do you stay top of mind? And I think if you look at the top podcasts, they're all really, really good at staying top of mind. They all understand marketing, they all understand their community and they're constantly super serving them. And I think that's the Key to launching successful shows now and not being broad. The other thing is be very focused.

Yeah, I love that take. And I think something just to dive into more, you know, not only launching a network, but there are many creators, you know, whether that's Jay Shetty or Alex Cooper or like Stephen Bartlett, who go out to launch their own network of creators. And I point to Alex, I think she's done it the best, in my opinion, just the way she's built unwell and signed talent. Something that came up in conversation probably two years ago now. I sat down with John Tahiti from MELK and full send and he just talked about this idea of like, so many of the top creators, top podcasters should and will go out to launch their own subset of networks. And I know, I've had conversations with friends of mine that have some bigger shows and they think about it. Curious to know, just when do you think that makes sense for a creator when it comes to their, like, their impact in their, you know, in their community and the ability to aggregate talent under one roof as a creator creator yourself?

Well, you know, first I would say every creator is different and their goals are different. And I think that's really important because a lot of there's nothing wrong with having one amazing, huge show and just doing what you love every week, right? And just super serving that audience and growing it. And I think that sometimes there's a pressure to launch a network of shows underneath you, and unless the creator really wants to do it, they shouldn't do it because it is really hard. It's really hard dealing with talent. It's really hard dealing with a team all of a sudden to execute. It's hard finding audience. And so the ones that have done this successfully, Alex, etc. They all want to do it, right? They're intentional about what they're building and they have something special about them that allows them to go out and attract other talent to lead people in an interesting way and then buy into this idea. And so, you know, assuming you're a career that wants to do more than just your show, I think the question you have to ask yourself, am I the right person to do this or do you need a team to help? And if I am the right person to do this and I want to do this, then it comes down to scale. And I think that's really important. I think off to most times people will launch a network or second show or a third show when they think they have maybe scale, but they may not have actual scale. And scale is really millions of downloads a month. Right. At the bare minimum. And so once you. And call it have 5 million downloads a month, minimum of 3 million downloads a month, then I think you can start thinking about it. But until then, be focused on your show. Right. And I just think, again, it goes back to kind of what I was saying earlier. Things compound, you know, focus is important. And your. A hundred thousand downloads is going to go to half a million downloads and then a million downloads before you know it. And then once you have an audience, you have attention. And once you have attention, every business opportunity is going to come to you. Just all about attention in this world right now.

Absolutely. I love that. Outside of Pave and the shows that you guys have, what have been some of your favorite shows over the years? And why?

I mean, so it's a great question. A while. Like one of the shows that I always talk about, still one of my favorites, Missing Legends. Right. Storytelling show. I think they did a great job and inspired a lot of podcasts from the sense of, like, how do you tell a story in a pot in an audio podcast? More recently, I find myself being more and more inspired by creators that are not just doing a great product, but know how to market themselves. You think of Alex Cooper, you think of Ashley Flowers, you think of Stephen Bartlett. They're doing really, really interesting things. The shows are obviously fantastic, but they're legitimately building business empires. And for someone that's an entrepreneur and gets excited about the business side just so much as the creative side, it's super exciting to see how those shows have evolved and changed over time. I mean, it's just there's a reason why they're all so successful. Yeah, right.

Yeah. I was watching the. I don't know if you saw the. Like, Forbes just put out an article where Stephen Bartlett reportedly, like, turned down $100 million deal. And just like you, you see that, and I think it's like, oh, my God, how would you do that? And then you understand, like, it makes total sense.

Like, well, you chose to build it. I mean, it goes back to your previous question. It's like, you can. And there's different ways to build an empire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the easiest way to think about it. And you look at what he did, and he's like, okay, in the article, I don't know personally, but in the article he talks about, okay, I could take a lot of money from some ad network platform or whoever that was, and it does come with strings attached. There's obvious limitations there's ad load. There may be some form of exclusivity across those things versus saying, hey, I'm going to build a team. And he's built what appears to be an amazing company with Flan Studio that is gonna go out and really double down himself. And I think as a creator at his scale, why wouldn't he do that? Right? He has the audience, he has the attention. That means the attention just equals monetization. So I feel like if he's willing to bet on himself, why not? And I think that's really exciting what he did. I love that article. I thought it was really fast.

Yeah, yeah, me too. It's just, it's awesome to see just Flight Studio, the shows like the last year and a half. And even to something that he's. I don't know if you've. Like his podcast software tool, Flight Gas, I believe it is. My buddy Rox, he's helping him build it and it's just, I think it's very fascinating to kind of the viewpoint of like the. The founder lens, the Critter lens, the software, the industry lens. It's really unique. A couple more questions before we wrap up here, Max. I want to take a step back. You know, there's a lot of founders that listen to this show and something that we've touched on is the acquisition and just this transition for you as a founder. And probably a year or two ago, I sat down with my buddy Sriram Krishnan, who was a former GP of a 16Z, and he talked about this white space in the life of a founder, meaning moving cities, starting a new job, selling your company, starting a new company, like this period of time where you could go in many directions and then you end up kind of narrowing down in a path. How has that white space of time been for you when maybe the direction isn't clear, maybe you have this whim, but it's like you can go in so many directions and that comes with, I'm sure there, you know, internal battles and, you know, a lot of my buddies that have sold companies, they learned so much about themselves through that process. And I'd be curious to know like, what that looked like for you back then post acquisition and how that's changed to, you know, where you are now in this new, clear mission.

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, right after the acquisition in 2019 and 2020, I was just focused on growing Parcast and having success at Spotify, as I, you know, Spotify did a great job of giving me new Roles, more responsibility, all these sort of things that kept me really engaged, which is a foundry. You want to build things. And where I give Spotify a lot of credit is they allow me to build inside of Spotify. Most companies aren't like that now. A couple years after the acquisition you want to build, you start thinking about the opportunities that present itself. And what I realized quickly at the end of my time at Spotify and post Spotify was I like challenges. I want to be a builder. I don't want to be done at 33. I don't want to think that my best was in my 20s and when I was thinking about what to do next. And there was a lot of different opportunities I was looking at. When I realized I was going to start another company, it became so apparent to me that Pave. It couldn't be a better time for Pave Media as a whole is changing, evolving. Hollywood is a dumpster fire right now. Arguably, podcasting is going through a real, real change and disruption. And when that happens, the best companies are built, and we have the opportunity to build a future forward company and not hold on to what we have. And I just think now, as opposed to 2016, there's actually less competition for what we're doing, which is crazy to think. There's millions more podcasts, literally millions more podcasts. There's a lot more companies podcast. I used to have to explain what a podcast was all the way till 2019. Haven't had to do that since Spotify. Thankfully, everyone knows what a podcast is, but everyone's trying to optimize for the past. We're trying to optimize for the future. And so, you know, how is. I golf a lot. My handicap got real too good, honestly. And I was like, all right, it's time to go, time to go work. But as I was golfing, to think about this is like, I started getting energized, man. Like, really, really energized, you know, because if it's not gonna be me, it's gonna be somebody else. Yeah. And as someone that has a little bit of competition and competitive, you know, it's gonna be paved. And I just think that what we're doing is special. I think that the team we were able to assemble so far has been really special. It's been so cool to see that a lot of them come for me from both Parkast, from Spotify, in some cases, through a whole entire journey. And this is just the next evolution. You know, I think something that is interesting, as I was asked recently, it's like, if you were to start, you know, how would parcast do in 2025 or whatever, I'd be like, well, I'm watching Pave. And Pave is the version of Parkast in 2025. And that's what's really exciting to me.

I love that. That's really great. Dear. And last question before we wrap up. On a personal note, I think it'll be great to look back on. First, I wanted to say congratulations on a baby recently. Thank you. You know, we were chatting before, but I get married this weekend, and I want to ask you, what would be your biggest piece of marriage advice, but also founder advice when you have young kids? And how are you balancing this at this phase in your life? And maybe I can look back on this in a handful of years and take this advice to heart.

Two, time goes by really, really fast. It doesn't feel that long ago that I launched Parcast. It doesn't feel long ago that I got married. It doesn't feel long ago that Kobe was born and he's only six months old. But, like, it's just unbelievable when you see the first six months. It really gives you an amazing. It just makes you realize how fast time goes, that growth. It's so every day. And so one, time goes by fast. And two, not just to David, but is listen, listening. I think listening as a founder is very important. Your employees, which I don't even think. I think that's my team. Right. I think that as a founder, you work for them. In many cases, listening to them is really important. They tend to see things that maybe you don't notice because you're out of the weeds. So listening to them and in marriage, listening to your wife is really important. Not necessarily. This is about making sure they're heard. You're somebody that is very driven. You're going to have this multi. You're going to have this internal crisis. A lot of work and family. And work and family. Don't sacrifice the work for the family. That's just my biggest thing is I think there's an amazing balance that could be had. And it really does start with listening, understanding your partner. It starts with your partnerships in business, but also starts listening to your staff as well.

I love that. Well, Max, appreciate that advice so much. And once again, I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I know you don't do interviews like, like this often, so it really does mean the world. And I really am so excited to just continue seeing how Pave unfolds. And as I said before, I'm very inspired by how you guys are leading the charge in this new modern podcast here. So thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for everything.

Thank you for having me super excited. Thank you again.