What was that light bulb moment that told you, I can actually make a business out of Match Casts?

Jaime: The timing was really important. It was January, 2019. I was starting to look into this market and I had to find a new idea in which I wanted to do a startup around.

And then by March, I was already kind of hooked onto Himalaya. So Himalaya is kind of considered the super app of China. In the Western world they don't have something similar to the Himalaya. Himalaya is kind of like your, it's a combination of Audible, a combination of Spotify, a combination of Good Reads if you have, and then the combination of Patrol One in there.

I've never heard of anyone in my sort of surrounding going say, Hey, I want to become a full-time podcaster, there's a lot of people saying, Hey, maybe I'll start out with social media and be a social media influence, but I'm going to be a podcaster.

So I didn't quite understand it. I was very lucky. So a good friend of mine was actually doing a program for Himalaya and he was actually doing it really, really well. He had already a hundred thousand subscribers into his earlier show and Himalayan was following him for subsequent shows, which he will launch onto Himalaya.

And I actually got firsthand experience of how that growth was and it lit a bulb in me was that, you know, in all my career, as a marketer, I've actually never really considered audio advertising. To be something that would threaten, I would say maybe programmatic or traditional media. I never quite thought of podcasting being sort of something like that or, you know, audio advertising becoming sort of a stronger growth.

But as I looked into the market, I did a lot of research. I saw that, you know, markets in the US, for example, started growing, you know, audio listenership as there are more and more smart speakers at home. People’s lifestyle and habits change like you were telling me earlier, you feel like it's a waste of time just listening to music.

You're not learning anything but predominantly what a lot of people in the US are doing now is they're also learning something by listening to podcasts.

So I saw that that was something that was changing. And as I look into the research, it kind of cements what I was thinking. And guess what, you know, in 2020, I think we've had the most exciting growth of podcasting. Literally 1 billion was spent by Spotify to buy up a ton of different companies. You know, recently we just got into this sort of landscaping podcast.

We called it Podscape. That was done by the US and Match Casts made it to one, but there are at least these, like, I would say good, 250 companies on that whole landscape. So it's grown. It's really, really grown. So, you know, whether, you know, what I did at that time was just right. Led me down this direction. It did let me down with direction.

I saw that there was an opportunity, but others saw it as well. So I wasn't the only person. And what was unique was then, you know, our competition started coming. So this is where we're faced with looking at how to differentiate ourselves from the landscape of people who also saw the opportunity and started going in there.

And I mean, to your audience, you know, if you find an opportunity, just act on it very quickly, I guess that's the best thing. If you can. And then as competition rises, differentiate yourself from them. I think those are most important and that's something that we're still learning and still doing at Match Casts.

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