Binge-worthy or Skip-worthy? Know Before You Commit
The origin story of Pod Rank, the app to get deep insights about a podcast episode before you press play.
During the Christmas holiday season, people of Nigerian descent often flock back to the ‘motherland’. The rationale becomes clear with warm weather and ‘Detty December’ festivities. For me, those reasons only tell part of the story. I like to go back because it gives me the time and the space to ponder the year I had and the one to come.
From December 2021 to January 2022, I spent a few weeks with my family in Nigeria. At the time, I was working as a Software Engineer II at Etsy and contemplating 2 job offers from Amazon and Microsoft. Although I loved working at Etsy for almost 3 years, I was ready for a change. But just a job change wasn’t enough.
At the time, I thought, “I’m almost 3 years removed from college and have nothing to show for it”. Maybe that wasn’t a fair thought. I had some money saved up. I was able to put a down payment on my first property. I even made a name for myself within a company as large as Etsy. But as I contemplated which job offer I should take, I realized that all the software I built at the previous company was not mine to claim.
Whatever I did next, I wanted to ensure I spent time using my skill set on personal projects when I was off working hours. Immediately, I began thinking of different problems to solve for society. Finding a problem interesting enough to my day-to-day life would motivate me even after a long workday.
Started in Nigeria — Spotify Exclusive
So while on vacation in Nigeria, I thought of a few problems that affected me. One that stood out was in the podcast space. At the time, and still to this day, the internet was having a podcast revolution. Everyone wanted to have a podcast and there were many different platforms to stream them.
A little under a year before starting Pod Rank, The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE), one of the most listened-to podcasts on earth, moved to Spotify on an exclusive deal. As an avid listener when it was on Youtube, this was rough. Because the podcasts were 2, sometimes 3 hours long, I relied upon the YouTube comments to decide whether I should listen to the podcast or skip it. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Spotify did not have comments on podcast episodes.
With Spotify’s newfound ascension in the podcast streaming space, I wanted to take some of that first-mover advantage with tools that could help make that platform as good as YouTube. I decided I would build the feedback engine for podcast episodes on Spotify similar to what YouTube has with the comments section. By doing this, people could get feedback on a Spotify-exclusive podcast before watching, they could come to Pod Rank to get it.
Using Spotify’s free API and a bit of code, I was able to build a minimum viable product (MVP). The MVP enabled users to add their thoughts to a Spotify podcast episode and view the ratings of other people. Completing this was a major milestone, but this was just the beginning of a journey.
How We Transformed — Consumer Analytics
Having the MVP was nice, but it was dependent on the “network effect”. This refers to “any situation in which the value of a product, service, or platform depends on the number of buyers, sellers, or users who leverage it” (Stobierski, 2020). Since my platform was new and relied on users adding comments, it didn’t add much value without all the Spotify users using it. Recognizing this spurred me to think of other problems that I could solve that added value instantly without having a plethora of users signed up.
As a podcast listener, even when I was using YouTube, I always found it difficult to start a new podcast because many of them failed to meet expectations. I would find a podcast with a catchy title and an interesting description but would be met with boredom and sometimes slight confusion too often. The podcasts would be totally off the topic that the description or title suggested. After countless experiences like this, I started to read the comments before listening to a podcast. Only if my interest was piqued there would I then start the podcast.
This hack ended up working well because the people who commented gave the real deal and context behind the podcast (as opposed to the creator who may just be interested in clickbait). The only drawback was that it was time-consuming. Just imagine, flicking through pages and pages of comments for every potential podcast. There had to be an easier way.
I decided to build features into the app that would paint the picture of a podcast accurately and quickly to save myself that time. This began with generating word clouds of the most frequently used words in the comments section for a podcast. After building this feature, the ideas started gushing on how I could add even more value. Instead of settling for the Spotify plug-in status, Pod Rank turned into a hub for podcast analytics to help people save time on their podcast-listening journey.
After the word cloud feature, we added several new components to help listeners save time. This includes timestamp generation, positivity scores, AI descriptions, and more.
Where We Will Go
When I started Pod Rank, I thought of it and built it with my technologist hat on instead of with my entrepreneur hat on. This had some benefits in that I quickly put together requirements, designed the system, and then started building quickly. While these are all useful, it got to a point where I was at a loss on how to turn this fun and useful app into a real business.
Now that I’m almost done with business school, I’ve learned several concepts that I would like to apply to Pod Rank. This includes but isn’t limited to marketing strategy, managing employees, and strategic communication. All this to say… stay tuned!
If you enjoyed this article, please make sure to subscribe, and share with a friend. In addition, if you are a podcast listener with limited time, make sure to check out Pod Rank to save time in your podcast-listening journey.
Sources
Stobierski, T. (2020, November 12). What are network effects? Business Insights Blog. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-are-network-effects
