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SiriusXM acquires Simplecast to double down on podcasts with distribution and analytics tools

Published June 17, 2020

Podcasting continues to see a strong trajectory in the world of streamed audio content, and today comes the latest development on that front. SiriusXM, owner of Pandora and backer of SoundCloud, said that it is acquiring Simplecast, a podcast management platform used by creators to publish and distribute podcasts, and subsequently analyse how they are consumed. SiriusXM plans to integrate Simplecast with AdsWizz, a digital audio advertising company that it acquired in 2018 for $66.3 million in cash plus shares to power ads on Pandora .

The company is not disclosing any of the financial terms for the Simplecast acquisition but we have asked and will update if we learn more. As a startup, New York-based Simplecast, which will continue to be led by its founder and CEO Brad Smith, had raised a modest $7.87 million in funding from investors since launching in 2013, per PitchBook data.

The deal is interesting because it is bringing one of the more popular independent platforms and set of tools used by streamers under the wing of a platform. Simplecast’s many podcasts and users today include Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Netflix, Maximum Fun, Cloud10, QCODE, Anna Faris is Unqualified, Blue Wire, Revision Path and (disclaimer) TechCrunch, who use it to distribute content over multiple, and sometimes competing, networks, including Apple, Spotify, Google and Overcast. (Business plans currently range in price and start at $15/month and go up to $85/month or more depending on podcast size, number of users and features that you need.)

Pandora (with help from SiriusXM, which has a large and popular stable of talk radio shows on its channels) has been building up its own spoken-word content, of course, so there is a direct opportunity to push more on-demand podcasts to that platform in particular, as well as offer more interesting terms for doing so, as well as bring in a much wider spectrum of podcasts to run AdsWizz’s inventory, which currently is seen by more than 100 million people each month across the U.S. and Canada (SiriusXM’s and Pandora’s footprint in vehicles, online and more).

We have asked SiriusXM if the plan will be to keep all of Simplecast’s services as-is after the deal closes.

What’s clearer is that, with SiriusXM also making a key investment in SoundCloud last year, the company is — like Spotify (which acquired a Simplecast competitor, Anchor, last year) — building up its music-business tools to complement its position as a content provider: This is a key role to play in the brave new world of digital music, where monetisation remains a challenge for most, and the tools to distribute, analyse and (yes) monetise one’s creative content continue to get more sophisticated, so much so that getting that part of the equation right can make or break an artist or wider creative or media endeavour.

“Our goal is to provide audio publishers with state-of-the-art platforms and give them everything they need to be successful,” said Alexis van de Wyer, CEO of AdsWizz, in a statement. “Empowering podcasters of any size to create, distribute, analyze, and monetize their work is the next natural step in pursuing our vision.”

“From the beginning, Simplecast’s mantra and mission was to remain laser-focused on podcast creators – building the best tools for publishing and insights,” said Brad Smith, the founder & CEO of Simplecast, in a statement of his own. “The opportunity and alignment with AdsWizz allows our product — and our customers — access to a powerful monetization platform. Two best-in-class platforms are now able to align with the shared mission of helping publishers succeed, while each team continues to focus on their respective areas of expertise.”

Equity Monday: Quibi, two Boston rounds and a shift to pessimism

Published June 15, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our short-form week-starter in which we go over the weekend, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds and dig into what is stuck on our minds.

So, by section then:

The weekend:

The market narrative seems to have changed from optimism to pessimism, impacting stock prices and possibly closing the IPO window some, after it had unexpectedly opened.
Quibi news is out that isn’t great: The mobile-first launch that came during a lockdown hasn’t helped the hugely funded service that had to convince the world that its content format was great. We calculate its effective cost-per-subscriber number and it isn’t super great.

The week ahead:

Earnings from Groupon and Oracle. The former could tell us a little bit about the health of the consumer perhaps? And Oracle is a player in the cloud space, so its earnings might help us understand what’s up in that world. See, not everything cloud-related comes from Seattle.
And we note the grip of tech conferences that were put on hold due to COVID-19, wondering what they might look like next year; do we ever go back to the way that things used to be?

Funding rounds:

Duck Creek raises $230 million, which Bloomberg notes as a pre-IPO round.
Appfire, also from Boston, raises a $49 million round. We want to read this S-1, badly.
Tonik raises $21 million to launch a Southeast Asian digital bank.

What’s on our minds:

The Exchange launches today, which you can learn more about over on TechCrunch.com. Check out the archive!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Podhero launches a $5.99 subscription app where you can support your favorite podcasts

Published June 9, 2020

Podhero is offering listeners a new way to pay their favorite podcasters.

The startup behind the app is led by Pete Curley and Garret Heaton, who previously founded HipChat (sold to Atlassian) and launched Swoot last year, which was focused on helping you find new podcasts through sharing.

In a Medium post published today, Curley wrote that despite Swoot’s “great retention and passionate users,” the team realized that podcasters faced a bigger problem: “It’s really hard to make money,” with 97.2% of podcasts not monetizing at all.

You’re probably used to hearing ads in some of your favorite podcasts, but Curley said only 1.4% of podcasts have ads. Meanwhile, he suggested that “subscription services are the most fair and predictable way for creators to make money,” and that “if 50% of podcast listeners paid for ad-free shows — creators would make $3.7 billion/year, nearly 6x more than ads made in 2019.”

So Podhero has launched its own subscription podcast app, but unlike Luminary — which has been criticized for taking a more closed approach to the previously open podcast ecosystem — it’s not trying to lure listeners to pay for exclusive content. Instead, it’s taking something closer to the Patreon approach of financially supporting creators.

Of course, podcasters can already ask for support via Patreon, but Curley argued that the service isn’t right for many podcasters, due to the extra work involved, the 8% cut taken by Patreon, the pressure to create bonus content and the fact that they simply don’t like asking for money.

Podhero is supposed to make it easier for both the podcaster and the listener, who pays a $5.99 subscription fee every month. That includes an optional $1 fee for Podhero, plus $4.99 that’s divvied up among podcasts.

Podhero will automatically create a list of podcasts based on your listening activity, but you can adjust the list and the percentages at any time. And Curley isn’t fully giving up on sharing as a discovery mechanism — listeners can also recommend podcast episodes, which affects their payouts as well.

While Podhero is launching today, the company says it’s already populated with more than 1 million podcasts. Most of those podcasters don’t work with Podhero — for example, TechCrunch’s podcasts are in the app even though we don’t have a business relationship. Curley told me via email that if a podcaster isn’t working with the startup yet, any money contributed by fans will be saved for whenever they claim their Podhero profile.

“We may have to do something with unclaimed money at some point, but [that’s] not a problem we’ll be worrying about for some time,” he said.

Will podcast ad revenue bounce back after COVID-19?

Stop with the Vroom and gloom on Wall Street

Published June 9, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This time around we’re recording what we call an Equity Shot, a single-topic show that we pull together whenever there’s a news item of sufficient weight that it demands we break our regular cadence and record a little more.

So Danny and Tash and Alex got together to discuss the recent Vroom IPO and Lemonade filing to go public. These are topics that TechCrunch has covered quite a lot lately, so here’s a chronology to help you keep it all straight:

We dug into Vroom’s economics detailed in its IPO filing
TechCrunch covered hoped-for price range
We reported on Vroom’s raised IPO pricing range
Lemonade filed to go public and we dug into its numbers
A bit more on the Lemonade IPO filing and what we can learn from it
And here’s our coverage on Vroom’s final IPO pricing

So you can catch up as you need to. What matters is that public investors have swooned over the Vroom IPO, pushing its pricing and, today, more than doubling its value as a public company. It’s a huge debut, and that bodes well for other gross-margin-light businesses — unicorns, even — that might want to go public.

The IPO window is pretty open, it appears. And best of all, we three disagreed quite a bit this week. It’s a fun show.

OK, that’s enough from us. We are back on Friday. Take care, and keep up the good fight.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Clubhouse proves that time is a flat circle

Published May 22, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

First, a big thanks to everyone who took part in the Equity survey, we really appreciated your notes and thoughts. The crew is chewing over what you said, and we’ll roll up the best feedback into show tweaks in the future.

Today, though, we’ve got Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex back again for our regular news dive. This week we had to leave the Vroom IPO filing, Danny’s group project on The Future of Work and a handwashing startup (?) from Natasha to get to the very biggest stories:

Brex’s $150 million raise: Natasha covered the latest huge round from corporate charge-card behemoth Brex. The party’s over in Silicon Valley for a little while, so Brex is turning down your favorite startup’s credit limit while it stacks cash for the downturn.
Spruce raises a $29 million Series B: Led by Scale Venture Partners, Spruce is taking on the world of real estate transactions with digital tooling and an API. As Danny notes, it’s a huge market and one that could find a boost from the pandemic.
MasterClass raises $100 million: Somewhere between education and entertainment, MasterClass has found its niche. The startup’s $180 yearly subscription product appears to be performing well, given that the company just stacked nine-figures into its checking account. What’s it worth? The company would only tell Natasha that it was more than $800 million.
Clubhouse does, well, you know. Clubhouse happened. So we talked about it.
SoftBank dropped its earnings lately, which gave Danny time to break out his pocket calculator and figure out how much money it spent daily, and Alex time to parse the comedy that its slideshow entailed. Here’s our favorites from the mix. (Source materials are here.)

And at the end, we got Danny to explain what the flying frack is going on over at Luckin. It’s somewhere between tragedy and farce, we reckon. That’s it for today, more Tuesday after the holiday!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

How will digital media survive the ad crash?

Published May 6, 2020

When I first met Bustle Digital Group’s Jason Wagenheim, it was right as New York City was beginning to go into lockdown. The BDG offices were empty thanks to the company’s newly instituted work-from-home policy, but it still seemed reasonable to meet in-person to learn more about BDG’s broader vision.

At the time, Wagenheim — a former Fusion and Condé Nast executive who joined BDG as chief revenue officer before becoming president in February — acknowledged that we were entering a period of uncertainty, but he sounded a note of cautious optimism for the year ahead.

Since then, of course, things have been pretty rough for the digital media industry (along with the rest of the world), with a rapid reduction in ad spending leading to layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts. BDG (which owns properties like Elite Daily, Input, Inverse, Nylon and Bustle itself) had to make its share of cuts, laying off two dozen employees, including the entire staff of The Outline.

And indeed, when I checked back in with Wagenheim, he told me that he’s anticipating a 35% decline in ad revenue for this quarter. And where he’d once hoped BDG would reach $120 or $125 million in ad revenue this year, he’s now trying to figure out “what does our company look like at $75 or $90 million?”

At the same time, he insisted that executives were determined not to completely dismantle the businesses they’d built, and to be prepared whenever advertising does come back.

We also discussed how Wagenheim handled the layoffs, how the company is reinventing its events sponsorship business and the trends he’s seeing in the ad spending that remains. You can read an edited and condensed version of our conversation below.

TechCrunch: We should probably just start with the elephant in the room, which is that you guys had to make some cuts recently. You were hardly the only ones, but do you want to talk about the thought process behind them?

Jason Wagenheim: Yeah, we ended up having to say goodbye to about 7% of our team, and we had salary reductions to the tune of 18% company-wide for those that made over $70,000. And then we had 30% pay cuts for executives.

You’ve read about all this, I’m sure. It was a really, really hard decision. We spent two weeks in planning, dozens of spreadsheets, negotiating with our investors on a plan that would keep the company moving forward, but [had to] be very sober to the reality of what was happening around us. But also most importantly for us, for our executive team, we weren’t about to disassemble the company that we spent the last 12 to 18 months building.

Will podcast ad revenue bounce back after COVID-19?

Published April 13, 2020

There are early signs that media will be one of many industries to take a huge blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, with sharp declines in ad revenue and significant layoffs. Podcasting is unlikely to be an exception; Podtrac recently reported that downloads have fallen 10% since the beginning of March, while unique listeners fell by 20%.

A different picture emerged when I spoke to Ross Adams, CEO of podcast advertising company Acast, which works with both bedroom podcasters and large publishers like the BBC and PBS NewsHour.

Adams said listenership isn’t down — it’s just that audiences have changed when they’re listening and what they’re listening to, with Acast seeing its largest weekends ever in recent weeks. And plenty of people want to start new podcasts; signups for the Acast Open platform increased 49% month-over-month in March.

“What we’re seeing now is an opportunity for people to discover podcasting as a medium,” he said. “And once you discover it, you stick with it.”

Advertising may be a separate issue, with Adams admitting that the downturn is likely to affect “every business that has the majority of their revenue from ads.” But even then, he sees opportunity as marketing dollars move from traditional industries like radio and out-of-home advertising.

We also discussed Acast’s financials, the podcast discovery process and tips for new podcasters. Read a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

TechCrunch: Let’s start with the good news. One of the prompts for this conversation is the fact that you guys announced some financial numbers — you doubled the revenue last year to $38 million. So first of all, congratulations.

Ross Adams: Thank you.

And secondly, there’s a lot of different factors at play and different conversations about podcasting breaking through in 2019. But when you look back, what do you see as the biggest factors that contributed to your growth?

Original Content podcast: We have mixed feelings about Quibi

Published April 8, 2020

Quibi, the short-form, mobile-focused video service that Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg first hinted at in 2017, officially launched on Monday.

After years of star-studded content announcements, not to mention $1.75 billion in funding, it might have been impossible for Quibi to live up to expectations. And indeed, it divided the hosts of the Original Content podcast.

None of us was totally won over, but Anthony and Jordan saw something to admire in Quibi’s ambition, and thought there was promise for the initial lineup of shows — particularly the reality programs like “Chrissy’s Court” and “Punk’d,” which actually seem to benefit from the constraints of the short episode format.

There are some interesting scripted titles too, but even the shows we liked — particularly the Liam Hemsworth thriller “Most Dangerous Game” — felt like they’d be better on a bigger screen, with a more traditional running time.

Darrell, meanwhile, enjoyed some of the content, but he was more convinced that the whole enterprise is a massive folly. In his view, the only way to make Quibi work is to take a looser approach to length and to bring the app to other devices.

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:27 “Star Trek: Picard” listener response
6:04 Quibi first impressions

Monday.com surpassed $130M ARR before the remote-work boom

Published March 25, 2020

As efforts to flatten the spread of COVID-19 pushes employees from their offices, remote work is undergoing a surge in popularity.

Well-known remote-work-friendly companies like Zoom have seen a rise in usage, while Slack has already reported that it is successfully converting new users into paying customers, which is pushing up its growth rate.

The pandemic is creating economic and social upheaval, but for a specific cohort of software companies that help distributed teams work together, it’s proven useful in business terms. But even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, execs from a standout project management company swung by TechCrunch HQ to chat with the Equity crew about their business and growth: Monday.com.

What does an interview with Monday.com’s Eran Zinman (co-founder and CTO) and Roy Mann (CEO) have to do with COVID-19? Well, if remote-productivity-friendly services Slack and Zoom are seeing usage spikes amidst the changes, Monday.com is likely benefiting from similar gains. And during our chat with the company’s brass, the pair told TechCrunch that their company had crossed the $130 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark by mid-February. Add in a COVID-19 usage boost and perhaps Monday.com (which doesn’t have a free tier) is seeing its growth accelerate.

Previously, Monday.com announced that it had reached the $120 million ARR mark, and TechCrunch had inducted it into the $100 million ARR club earlier this year.

Revenue expansion was not our only topic. We also chatted with the pair of execs about customer acquisition costs and how to a run a SaaS business without terrifying burn. The Monday.com crew had more news up their sleeve, like when they expect the unicorn to become cash-flow positive.

We’ve excised a larger-than-usual chunk of the interview for sharing, as there’s a lot to take in:

After the jump, we dig a bit deeper into the obvious IPO candidate

Raising money in a bear market, and what happened with Sequoia and Finix?

Published March 13, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today was something a bit special. We’d originally hoped to have this episode in person, as a group, but the world isn’t flying as much right now so we had to make do. Regardless, please say hello and welcome Natasha Mascarenhas to the Equity crew.

Natasha has worked for the Boston Globe, the SF Chronicle and, most recently, covering venture capital for Crunchbase News. TechCrunch is lucky to have her, and the Equity team is stoked that she’s coming aboard our hosting team. When she’s not podcasting, she will be reporting on early-stage startups and venture capital trends for TechCrunch and Extra Crunch.

Don’t worry, Danny and Alex aren’t going anywhere. Equity is now, happily, back to its original three-part hosting crew. This means we can do a better job week in, and week out.

Alright! Enough of all that, let’s talk news. Here’s what we went over today:

The 11-year bull market is over, and Uber and Lyft suffered from the fallout.
What might be ahead for startups as the public markets fall apart.
New funds from NEA and Felicis.
How to raise money in the current remote-work climate.
The Sequoia-Finix dustup.

Equity has been busy lately. We put together a huge interview with Jason Lemkin, and held a live chat this week. We’re tinkering with new things as we try to do more, and better for you all. Chat you all Monday morning!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 AM PT and Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.