September 5, 2014

Gimlet 2: Is Podcasting the Future or the Past?

by StartUp

Background show artwork for StartUp


The Story Alex prepares to go back out to California for a redo. He practices his pitch with his wife and his friend Josh. He adds impressive sounding audience numbers, because, as a friend tells him, no one wants to hear a story about Odysseus going to the corner store. He meets Chris Sacca's partner, 

Matt Mazzeo, in the lobby of the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills. Matt used to work at CAA, where he helped launch FunnyorDie.com. He tells Alex that one of the site's first videos, was the legendary Will Ferrell viral video The Landlord. Alex's pitch goes better this time around. And Matt likes it. But he wants Alex to change it. Alex should be going for bigger audiences. He should choose a new name. And he should come up with a whole new way of distributing the content, a way to replace the podcast entirely. Matt says, "there are a whole bunch of things that are broken" about podcasting, and that Alex "has an opportunity to fix them." To Alex, it seems like Matt's saying, he shouldn't just be building a content company, he should be building a technology company as well. Correction: in an earlier version of this story, the 2 year old star of The Landlord was mistakenly identified as Will Ferrell's daughter Pearl. In fact, she is Adam McKay's daughter. 


The Facts We played two songs in this episode, Rush, You're on Fire and Elephant, both by 

Tyler Strickland. Our theme song was written and performed by Mark Phillips. He also mixed the episode. The special ad music was written and performed by Build Buildings

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