Social Podcasting 🎙
Introducing Callin 🎙
On Sept 2, 2021 - David Sacks (Head of Craft Ventures) officially unveiled Callin, the world’s first social podcasting platform (with $12M in Series A funding).
Sacks has gone as far to state that “this is the best product that I’ve ever worked on, better even than PayPal”… a powerful statement, give that he was the founding COO of PayPal and during his tenure annual revenue grew from $0 to $240M.
So, this week we’ll unpack Callin, the competitive landscape, & what the future holds.
Social Audio 📢
When I think about Social Audio, Clubhouse is top of mind:
Launched during the pandemic, the audio only app surged to a $4B Valuation.
It let users drop into chat rooms to partake in conversations, and for a while it worked - it had 10M downloads in Feb, but app downloads fell 72% in March.
Clubhouse got some things right, but Social Audio has limits:
✅ Live Audio = Low Barrier to Create
✅ Chat Rooms = Community Building
❌ Impermanence of Content = Zero Replay Value
❌ Live Shows = Volatile App Usage (which then leads to higher churn of users)
Social Audio is a feature, not a standalone product. Which is why Facebook and Twitter replicated Clubhouse fairly easily, and baked it into their platforms:
Podcasting 🎧
Podcasting is massive (and growing):
The global podcast market size was $11.5B in 2020, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 31.1% from 2021 to 2028 📈
In 2021, podcast ad spend in the US is expected to grow 38.7% YoY (to $1.33B).
I get that market sizes / revenue are tough to relate to, so let’s take a consumer lens. By 2023, podcasts will represent 25% of all digital audio consumed in the US.
Podcasting is great for consumers:
✅ Long Form Content = Immersive Experience
✅ Permanence of Content = Listen on your own schedule
But recording podcasts is not as simple as it seems:
❌ Post-Production = High Barrier to Create
❌ Podcasters trade ownership for support (i.e. Call Her Daddy was off air for months due to a contract dispute. The host was an employee at Barstool earning $500K. Only when they parted ways did she realize what it was worth, a $60M deal with Spotify)
As Sacks learnt firsthand by co-hosting the All In Pod: “it’s too complicated... we have a guy in the studio who spends 6 hours doing post-production every episode”
Social Podcasting 🤝
Callin brings the barriers down to zero, and has the potential to be a vertical stack for anyone who wants to create an audio show.
Social Podcasting = The Best of Social Audio & Podcasting:
✅ Low Barrier to Create (you’re basically recording in front of a live studio audience)
✅ Interactive (audience can participate in conversations)
✅ Ownership (creators retain their own content)
✅ Share + Curate (fans can create highlights / snippets of shows)
✅ No Studio, No Equipment, No Complicated Editing (your audio is turned into a text transcript, where you can easily edit out pauses, sections, filler words, etc.)
Content Creation & Community Building 🔁
Red Pills 💊
Sacks hosts a few shows on Callin, and I tuned in to one called “Red Pills” where he was interviewing Balaji Srinivasan (Coinbase’s first CTO). But about an hour in something interesting happened… listeners started partaking in the podcast.
Here’s why it’s a big deal.
Creating content takes time, but it’s doable.
The real obstacle faced by most content creators (myself included) is how do you build a community and avoid getting lost in an ocean of content.
What’s thrilling about social podcasting is that this is the first time I’ve seen simultaneous content creation (podcast) and community building (Q&A), it feels like a magician calling someone up on stage 🪄
Founder Approved ✅
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