Julia Lam & Varga Moshtagh: Facebooker & Podmosphere!

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Julia Lam:
Tony:
Welcome, I’m your host Tony DUrso. I interview some of the top entrepreneurs in the world and I thank you for joining us. I broadcast every Friday at 2PM Pacific on Voice America’s influencer’s channel and you can listen to all of our shows on your android or apple device. Go to tonyd.u.r.s.o.com/mobile and get the APP, tonydurso.com/mobile before we get going here’s a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show. Please stay tuned for an important message from Wix to see how easy you can build a website, whether a novice or a pro. Get a free design to more informed them just the head so, please stay tuned. Today shows with Julia Lam and Varga Moshtagh Facebooker and Podmosphere.
All right. Here’s some info on Julia. Julia Lam is an early Facebooker, a serial entrepreneur and now founder and CEO of Tara&Co. There re-imagining products for women on the go. They launched officially in November 2017 with greater than a 110,000 in presales and featured in Briti+Co, Buzzfeed TechCrunch and La Fashion magazine and more, here we go. Welcome to the show, Juliet. It’s so great to have you on with us.
Julia:
It’s so great to be here. Tony.
Tony:
Julia, it’s been a while and I’m very excited and I understand people are going to go. We’re going to be talking about women’s handbags but just hang on everyone. This is a great story. There’s a lot of good information for men and women here, but also Julia. First things first, I’d like to know; how did it all start for you? What’s your backstory?
Julia:
Yeah, well I guess I would say I was, it was from Facebook, so I started at Facebook when he was 200 people and I was on the platform team. Doing marketing and product marketing. And so I primarily worked with developers and entrepreneurs and so at the time, it was working with companies like Lyft when they were two people Task Rabbit and when it was one and a lot of these companies in the sharing economy that is huge today. And I think when you work with developers and entrepreneurs really long time, you sort of wonder if he should be on the other side. And so I have now been in entrepreneurship for about six or seven years. This is my third company and I’ve done everything from technology focus products, my last company with we’re using NLP and machine learning to solve trip planning. And now I’m doing physical products and we’re building as stylish and convertible bags for women on the go.
Tony:
I’m very impressed because I know that inside there you’ve learned some of the great tips and tricks of how to market and how to get things done by being at Facebook. That is like such a leap ahead of us now is that your claim to fame and how you made your company so successful?
Julia:
I mean, I think the most important thing is to always listen to your users and try to build something that is useful for them. And so I actually got started because I was fundraising for my last company and I was running around from meeting to meeting to social event, back to meeting. And I had at my laptop in this cute little shoulder bag. And as I was writing to these meetings and my shoulder hurt and I was tipping over and I thought, gosh, there’s just gotta be a better way. And so I looked around for other products in the market that looked, you know, sleek and elegant, beautiful, but also provide a distributed weight and I just couldn’t find anything. And that’s really how I got started with this company. So it’s really about listening to your user and trying to create something that’s better than what currently exists.
Tony:
Now I’m going to take that little step further listening to the user, but it was your shoulder that was hurting. So you were listening to your shoulder, but actually the, how did you just realize like, Hey, I’ve got to develop something better. This is this too clumsy, too clunky, and actually get it into production, into sales and just take off as, as crazy as it did.
Julia:
Yeah. So for me it was about, and looking around again, I didn’t see anything in the market that really helps support the women of today. And those are women that have to go day to night. Women that need a bag for multiple occasions, they go to work, they go to networking, they, you know, go to the gym, they do all these things and, really feeling like there weren’t products that support it. And that’s, that’s how I got started. And I mean, we did everything from, initially launching, a ton of surveys for other women on the go. Just really hoping to understand where their bags were, letting them down, what they carry and just really understanding the market and where we could potentially build something that was better. And we built our first prototype in six weeks, so I picked a designer who had been in the industry for about 10 years and we built something together that we thought was potentially interesting and we brought in these user testers and they were just blown away even by our first prototype, which was only you know, a small fraction of what our final product to look like for first product, which is called the Tracy two in one bag. And then we just really sent it home with these customers. We took the bag and we said, you know, let us watch you pack it and then bring it home and do whatever you would do with your day to day bag and let us know how this one holds up and you know what things we can do better. I’m really taking that feedback to create the best possible product that we could.
Tony:
Julia, I’m very impressed that you went from learning so much of let’s call it digital marketing, social media, and you took a physical product. I’m still very, very impressed on that because I would have thought, well, I know that if I went and worked for Facebook, I’d be all over digital marketing today, but I guess it’s all a matter of our strengths and what we like. And you felt that calling there. So I’m very, very impressed at what you’ve done with it. And you also label yourself as a Serial Entrepreneur. Tell us a little bit more about that and is that how you help take this product to market and, and really bring it to consumers?
Julia:
So as I mentioned, this is my third company. So my first one we were doing social good in mobile and really trying to connect consumers with the idea of macro giving. And my second company and which I mentioned, we are a venture-backed and we were working on a trip technology, in using NLP machine learning to solve trip planning. So, very different. Those were in the tech world. And then now for me, I always thought it would be interesting to figure out how to build a physical product. And that’s what we’re doing right now with convertible in Stylish bags, really for women on it goes solving their problems. I think it just is about problem-solving. I mean, all pro-entrepreneurship is, clearly there’s a lot of go to the market and that’s different in technology and that’s different in physical products. There is a lot of marketing and in my experience, there has been really useful in building physical products. Like how do you think about your brand? How do you think about your customer? What is the right way, the right channels to reach people? And really looking at where’s the best place to serve and find my users.
Tony:
I got you. And how did you come up with the name Tara And? And by the way, for the audience, the website is Tara and.co I’ll spell it. T.A. R. A.A.N D. C. O.. how’d you come up with that name?
Julia:
So the company’s called Tara and Co. And Tara is named after the Buddhist mother Goddess. And she’s actually a rainbow Goddess. And so it seemed after Green Tara and she’s a Goddess of strength and great action and working achievements. And we felt that that really represented the women that we are designing for and so unlike a lot of other companies where maybe they name it after their founder or something else. We felt like this was something that encompassed and the women that we were designing for
Tony:
Now, none of the bags as I joked about earlier, can you tell us why are your woman bags so hot, so cool. And everyone just burning to go get them.
Julia:
So what we’re doing is we’re trying to solve problems for women on the go. So our first product was the Tracy Two In One Bag, which we launched last year with over $110,000 of presales. It’s a three-way wear bag so you can wear it as a shoulder bag backpack or cross body. It fits up to a 13-inch laptop inside and then it actually turns into two bags. So it has a flap that you can zip off and actually becomes a second bag, which is your clutch. And when we got started, we saw that there were two specific problems that women would constantly tell us about. One was this idea of looking, sleek and elegant and beautiful, but wanting that distributed weight, needing it to be functional and useful. And then the second idea was this idea of bags within bags. And so, so frequently what we saw was that women would go to work with a bigger bag that could fit their laptop, their gym clothes, whatever they need for the day.
And then they take out something small and go to lunch or drinks or something and put that back in their bag and leave. And we thought, is there a way that we can just build one bag? And so that’s what we did with the Tracy Two In One Bag. And so as I mentioned, it’s a three-way wear bag and fit that laptop and has a removable clutch, which is pretty great. And so it really suits all your needs for your day. And what we tried to do is build the products that are as versatile as your lifestyle is.
Tony:
Very cool Julia, and you started with 110,000 in presales. You had a very good crowdfunding campaign going or was there any other way that you were able to bring in that kind of presales?
Julia:
Yeah, we primarily did it through crowdfunding and, and, and word of mouth really like, you know, because we did so much testing with our users, like a lot of our testers actually ended up buying bags, which was really great. But it was just as doing crowdfunding, kind of talking about what the problem was, why the solution was better and then people spreading the word for us, which was really great. And so I think it’s pretty incredible that you can see so many presales without even the products being in the market yet. And so we’re very lucky.
Tony:
That’s quite a testament to the product and quality of the bag where the testers actually like it so much that they actually buy the product. That’s very cool on that.
Julia:
Yeah, it’s really cool.
Tony:
And what kind of names do you have for bags, you mentioned one is called Tracy?
Julia:
Yeah, so we named all of our products after women who inspire us. So our first bag is named Tracy, The Tracy after Tracy Chou and she’s a former Pinterest engineer, entrepreneur and diversity advocate. And so what she did a few years ago was she challenged the tech industry. She wrote this blog post, it was called where are the numbers? And she said, hey, we’re this metrics-driven industry but we are not willing to release our numbers about diversity inclusion. How do we actually know that we’re getting better at it if we’re not willing to look at the data? And so she was able to get over 250 companies including Google, Facebook, as well as a number of other guys to actually release their information about diversity inclusion. So we could really have a conversation and see if we were really making progress. And so that’s why we wanted to name that first product after her.
We’ve since continued that we actually are releasing three more products. Work gym bag our two in one work gym bag after Heather McPhie Watanabe. And so she’s a two time Olympian in mogul skiing and she’s an accomplished woman in finance. We have a two in one Minimalistic, Portfolio Backpack and we’re naming that after Sharon Talley Gabo who’s the head of genre original series at Amazon studios and she’s done a lot and to innovate and media and writing leadership at a fortune 500 company. And our three in one Danielle Weekender. We’re naming after Danielle Kayembe and she’s the founder and CEO of GreyFire Impact. And she has done a lot of work in social impact supporting female entrepreneurs and really bringing attention to the female-driven economy. And so we really use our bags as places where we can honor the people that have done amazing things and really elevate them and talk about their stories as well.
Tony:
That is so cool, Julia. I love the idea of how you’ve taken someone who is made a statement in the world and who is inspirational and made a bag after them. That is very cool. I liked that.
Julia:
Yeah, thanks. I think it’s definitely nice to be able to honor more women.
Tony:
And, what’s up ahead? More bags, more clutch, more purses or branching off into another line or something.
Julia:
You know, I think for us it’s all about solving problems. So we know right now we’re shipping our second line, we’re working on shipping night, in January 2019 and then just looking again at the market and seeing where are places where we can add value.
Tony:
Very cool. Julia is there a purpose behind this? What are you trying to accomplish that is personally fulfilling and satisfying, which led to this?
Julia:
I mean, I feel very lucky that I get to design things for my peers, which is pretty incredible. And it’s really about providing women choice and providing them a place where they feel like they can have products that are both beautiful and functional. I mean, really what we’re trying to build, is Coach meets REI. It is something with the aesthetic of Roach with the functionality of REI. And right now women have to choose. And I don’t think that’s fair and I don’t think that that’s really what they need to be doing in their day to day lives. And so why are we not making products that are basically a partner to their lives and again, provide them the kind of flexibility that they need and with all the things that they do.
Tony:
I liked that, very good.
This is the Tony DUrso show just the head. The chat continues with Julia Lam and Varga Moshtagh Facebooker and Podmosphere. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.
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Tony:
All right, we’re back on the Tony DUrso showed. Today shows with Julia Lam and Varga Moshtagh Facebooker and Podmosphere. All right, and now back to the chat with our guest.
Tony:
And when you do have more bags and more products come out, do you do any particular shows or do we go to taraand.co.com, to see what’s next and what’s coming up?
Julia:
Yeah, I mean we saw all direct to consumer and that’s really because we want to know who our customer is. We want to know what’s working, what’s not working. And so all of our products right now are accessible through our website, which is at taraand.co.com as you said, and, that’s the best way to stay connected is on social media and through our mailing list. And you know, that’s where we talk about all of the new things that we’re working on.
Tony:
Very cool on. And as you are very big on social media, is there an easy way for people to reach you? For example, can they go to your site, taraand.co.com and actually reach out to you or find out what social media, what’s your handles are?
Julia:
Yeah, all of our handles are at /love Tara and Co, so- L.O.V.E- T A.R A.- A. N. D.- C.O. So that’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all those, are great ways to reach us and um, and see what we’re up to next.
Tony:
I’ve got a few more minutes. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that you would like?
Julia:
Yeah, I think that direct to consumer is really in the future. And I feel really lucky to have one of the early companies and brands that’s in there. I mean it’s really about working with your customer and figuring out what makes sense for them. And because of that, you have so much more ability to not only build the best products but also to do things that are in line with kind of your ethos. So for us, we do campaigns kind of on an ongoing basis and we donate revenue or support other nonprofits that we think are interesting. So, we’re running something for Toys for Tots over the holiday. We’ve worked with RAINN, which is, about helping people that I’ve been sexually harassed kind of overcome and get to the next level. We’ve done staffer with dress for success. We feel really lucky to be able to donate and support so many great nonprofit partners that are also doing great things in the world.
Tony:
That is great. Not only do you have a great company but you have a great purpose. You have a big heart and you help where you can. Very cool. Julia Lam, Early Facebooker Serial Entrepreneur. And do I have it right You’re the founder and creator of Tara and Co?
Julia:
Founder and CEO
Tony:
Founder and CEO. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Really enjoy this and I look forward to seeing what else you have coming down the line.
Julia:
Great as we do too.
Varga Moshtagh:
Tony:
Thank you, once again Julia thank you.
And now we have Varga Moshtagh join us. Varga is a Swedish entrepreneur trying to revolutionize the podcast industry, a former journalist and editor. He runs the Podcast Advertising Company Podmosphere as its CEO here we go. Welcome to the show Varga, so great to have you with us.
Varga: Thank you very much, Tony, I am Super hype to be on with you.
Tony:
Well it is an honor and a pleasure and we have some really good things to talk about, especially for any entrepreneurs out there, small business owners, corporate level executives, heck. If you have a career and you’re looking at podcasting, if you’re looking at hacking your day job or your career job and you want to check this out, we’ve got some very interesting items here for you on podcasting and stuff and we’re going to talk about that. But before we do Varga, I’d love to know first things first. How did it all start for you? What’s your backstory?
Varga: So yeah, it actually started when I was students. It was a couple of years ago now, I started to become a journalist, so I was pretty much working on a couple of editorials during the weekends. And then finally when it was time to write my bachelor thesis, I decided to write it on podcast because I really loved the medium and it was so new and fresh and everything was so undiscovered pretty much. So I decided to explore more about it and I wrote my thesis about how has the economics of audio medium move from radio to podcast and how will it continue to develop in the coming 10 and 20 years. And I actually named the thesis Podmosphere. Podcast save the radio, and that’s pretty much where the name came from the start of everything.
And from there I decided to pretty much start to websites after, I put it on the shelf first, to be honest, that was just a thesis, right. Something that we wrote in school. Then I went working, I was a TV reporter on the international and news station here in Sweden and I just could not stop thinking about podcasting and I just wanted to become a podcast journalist, but there wasn’t really a podcast journalist job to search, right. There wasn’t no opening. So have to create them yourselves just like you did. You create it from start, but I didn’t know what I will do. So I was thinking about how do I find podcasts to listen to that I can get inspired by.
And so I started looking at, I just found, large ones, which famous, famous people. I was like, well, I want to listen to the medium size podcast. So, how do I find these podcasts? And it was hard. It was really hard because everything wasn’t tub sharks. So I decided to pretty much solve the problem that I had instead of creating content because that was what I pretty much felt like I had a calling for. So, I went to my neighbors, I lived in a very small apartment in Stockholm and I went to my neighbors and I was like, do you guys want to start a website? And they’re like what do you mean? I’m like a website where you can find all types of podcasts. You can interact with them, pretty much an IMD for podcasts, they were like, yeah, sure but you who was running it? And I was like, I’ll do it. I’ll quit my job and do it. And then they were like, yeah if you’re for real, we’re on.
That’s where It’s all started. I started creating IMDB for podcast, that’s pretty much But very fast, realized that, well that’s not a real business model because IMDB has additional functions and so on, but for podcast is a very hard and you can’t just take that on cause age and so on that world does not really exist in podcasting. So I started interviewing a lot of, users have we had an IMBD site, with almost 50 Podcasters that I spoke to. And they were like, yeah, no, the biggest problem is we don’t get paid for what we do. And I was amazed. I was like, but I’ve just written the thesis.
Every sponsored I have talked to said podcast is a new thing. They like, no, well they don’t sponsor smaller podcasts and medium-size podcast. I was like, that sounds insane. So I spoke to the sponsors that I already have contact with it. I was like, why don’t you sponsor smaller and medium size podcast? They were like well because it takes too much time to find them, negotiate prices and send out requests and so on write contracts. I like, that’s not an excuse. Why not just mass sponsor like 10 or 20 podcasts at once? And they were like, well, we can’t do that anywhere. We can only do that if we buy a dynamic class and we’re not interested. I was like, well, that does not sound like a good excuse. So that’s when we decided to create Podmosphere.
Tony:
Wow history was born. Very intuitive on you on writing that thesis on podcasting when you were going into journalism and TV and reporting and so forth.
Varga: Yeah, I went to TV because that was not really what I wanted to do, to be honest, I wanted to do podcasting, but it was what everyone else wanted, everyone wants to be on the largest TV channel there and I was like, yeah, well if they want me, I can’t say no to that because it, there’s very few young people that get to good slots and I was like, well, if they give it to me, I have to take it. I would insane to decline them. So yeah, I’ll take it and I kept doing it. And was like this is not what I want to do. I do this because other journalists think that this is what we’re supposed to target as a goal. But for me that wasn’t really what I want to, I wanted to be in the podcast space from the start, from when I wrote the thesis, I knew that this is the future and I still believe that we haven’t even scratched the surface of where podcasting will be in a couple of years. It will grow past the radio. I truly believe it’s going to grow past visual content, free visual content because of consummation is perfect for workers when you were during work hours and listen to podcasters. I’m sure there’s a lot of listeners right now on your podcast are on the commute and so on and they can’t pull up their phone and look at a video and so on but they can listen. That’s why I truly believe podcasting will revolutionize pretty much media consumption in the world.
Tony:
This is the Tony DUrso show just the head. The chat continues with Julia Lam and Vargo Moshtagh Facebooker and Podmosphere. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.
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Tony:
All right, we’re back on the Tony DUrso show. Today’s show is with Julia Lam and Varga Moshtagh Facebooker and Podmosphere. All right, and now back to the chat with our guest.
I like to talk about your thesis and has it turn true. Were you looking into the future and predicting what was going to happen and has that occurred so far or do we still have more to go?
Varga: Yeah, the first couple of years has gone, that was predicted. As my hypothesis was that dynamic will come and traped new types of sponsors and all type sponsors will get mad and they’ll move from it and we’ll see.
If I sum it up pretty much for people that are not in podcast industry, there are different types of ads. You can dynamical ads that are exchangeable pretty much, or you should have baked in where you have the host read an ad and that’s pretty much in the audio file. That’s pretty much different. But my thesis was that it won’t continue like that it’ll be brand. Whereas clients will ultimately buy dynamical, ads Coca Cola, Mcdonald’s, those type of brands. We’ll buy ads where it’s exchangeable because they don’t have the demand for results. They can’t say we sold x amount more cola because of this podcast ads, right. So that’s why to move forward, dynamical ads. But as we see, all types of companies that have promo codes, they would keep doing a baked in ads and then we’ll move from, even though many of them try to dynamical during 2015, 16 some of them then move it back.
Right now since 17 and 18. We saw a lot of them go back and that’s because that was the hot thing right then, but that’s not where they see the results. So yeah, so far the dynamical aspect has gone as expected. But the big thing with that I predicted has still not come to fruition. It’s a subscription. I do believe that sooner rather than later, someone will, it’s probably from the US will raise and super big amount of money and will be in all the news channels. Oh my God. These people have raised half a billion dollars and then they will have…pretty much not create a Netflix for podcasts because that’s not what I believe. But a youtube for podcasts where you have the youtube, the premium and you get some almost like stitcher, but on a much larger scale.
Tony:
I like it. And just for a little general information, when I started podcasting and radio three plus three, almost three and a half years or so ago, at that time, while I had smartphones, my friends had smartphones. I was very heavily immersed in computer and desktop only just because that’s just where the transition went from corporate America to entrepreneurship working on the computer. Well, what’s really interesting is I check my statistics and more and more people only listen to my podcast on mobile to the extent of nearly all of my audience is listening on mobile and that’s really interesting for the sponsors, and I tell this to sponsors and others too, and it’s sort of like as you mentioned, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, Ford, Chevrolet, Mcdonalds, AT&T, they’re big because they keep promoting and keep promoting and they’re there. A person has or wants that need well on the sponsorship, which we’re talking about on the commercial side, even though the person’s on the phone, they’re not going to stop their phone or pull over while they’re driving or stop walking the dog to click or punch in actually on the phone, punching some URL or some product. But when it comes time to buying that product or getting software or an accounting service or vitamin or eyeglasses, I mean, I have commercials on everything. When it comes time to look into and buy that product, then the commercials that they hear on the podcast come right to mind surface. You don’t even know that you’ve got all these little relationships building in people’s heads and when it’s ready for them to buy, boom! There you are.
Varga: Yeah. No, I totally agree. Definitely that aspect. But what type of ad is it when you listen through a podcast, as you said, most people do it through their phones and they do it in the ear. And, some people do it over ear, but when people do it in ear and there’s an extensive and research that shows that if you listen to something in ear. It is extremely efficient, for the advertisers, it’s extremely efficient because as you said, most people won’t just pull up their phone like Lucky Luke and just skip ad’s they, leave it. It’s one minute let’s hear that. It’s two minutes. I’ll hear that. That’s fine, this how my content provider makes living. I want to hear that.
Tony:
Well, plus you’re driving, you’re jogging, you’re hiking up in the woods. You’re, doing gardening. You’ve just got the phone in your pocket to head the earbuds on or something. You’re not going to stop and even tried to fast forward. It’s a hassle.
Varga: Yeah. Yeah no no
Tony:
You just let it play. I think it’s very smart to have the podcasters do the commercials in their own voice. It’s just like another continuation of the show almost. But it’s the commercial. It’s very clever. And I believe it’s highly effective. And as I understand, there are billions now going into podcast advertising.
Varga: Oh yes, oh yeah. We’re over 300 billion. The ads industry is over $300 million here. Also a billion dollar industry when it comes to the account, that advertising in the US but that’s, to be honest, not even close to the full amount because as you know as well, and many other people know, acting companies are large sponsors and they don’t really count for all types of advertising and so on. So I would say that it’s over a billion now; probably if you counted the whole world. And yeah, it’s a huge market and it’s growing very rapidly and by 2020, the expectations are that it’s more than doubled. And so far every expectation and prior prognostics that there been in podcasts market, the podcast market has blown the airway. I don’t how to say it in English, sorry, but it’s shattered what the expectation is every year. So yeah, it’s very interesting.
Tony:
I believe you alluded to youtube and I agree if that is what you said, it’s a no brainer to me that podcasting and the universe of podcasting, even though it’s to the spirit and on many platforms, it’s not just one platform. Youtube, there’s no podcast platform, the number of listeners and the number of hours and the number of people checking out I am certain will surpass youtube if it hasn’t already.
Varga: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no doubt about it. So I call it citizen journalism. I don’t what if there has come a better name or someone that’s to name it better than me. But when you provide an option for everyone to create content equally from whoever you are, you can create content that’s not expensive with, for example, your phone and so on, that will revolutionize the market. And that’s what, podcasting has begun. When you look at podcasting three years ago, how many podcasts where there, when you started? There were probably not even a hundred thousand podcasts, I would guess right three years ago?
Tony:
But I want to say that especially for anyone looking to start a podcast, when I went into podcasting, to take myself as an example, three plus years ago, even though you say you say like it’s nothing, oh yeah, there was just 100,000. But from the person’s starting, it’s formidable. It’s like, oh my goodness, there’s so much competition, and, and it was like that for me for a while. It’s like there’s so many people podcasting, but as I marketed and rose up with an audience, I realized not all podcasters are the same. If you know, there are certain shows that catch, there are certain shows that have to retool and I got lucky. I was at the right place, right time, whatever. But if you keep on it, I guess is really the moral of that particular story. If you keep on it, it doesn’t matter if there are a billion podcasts if you’ve got something good that’s delivery in a growing audience, that’s what sponsors want. They’re very smart, they’ll rather put their money in. You could tell us in 20,40, 50 podcasts instead of just one TV commercial or something,
Varga: Oh man! They would much rather put it in podcast. That’s a clear way to market and I’ll put this out there as well. If someone is thinking about starting a podcast, I’m, I get a lot of people asking me, well, I’m thinking about starting a podcast and I helped them with tips on how to start to, I’m sure you get a lot of people who ask.
Tony:
This is the Tony DUrso Show just the head the chat continues with Julia Lam and Fargo Moshtagh Facebooker and Podmosphere, but first it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.
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Tony:
All right, we’re back on the Tony. DUrso show. Today’s show with Julia Lam and Varga, Moshtagh; Facebooker and Podmosphere all right and now back to the chat with our guest.
Varga: First of all, I would like to ask you what would your tips and tricks be? Your recommendations for someone that’s listening that’s thinking about, well I want to start a podcast. I love Tony’s, podcast I might want to start another type of podcast. Wouldnt you just say just start it you, you’ll learn as you go on. You probably change the podcast itself, but just start you will love it.
Tony:
Absolutely agree! In fact, I mentor and coach and help probably well over a half dozen podcasters individually, one on one. And I’m training them on how to get to a world-class podcast. And I understand a lot of the basics only because I’ve been in it and I’ve done it and I’m helping quite a few. And I’m going to actually roll out on a training cause there’s just so much information.
Varga: Yeah, training videos, something like that, Then you should let people, people love these types of things they would love to pay you a little bit of money and they can learn from an expert. I think that’s pretty cool.
Tony:
Thank you. Let’s talk a little bit about podmosphere and how your company works and what makes you different from some of these other podcasts advertising companies?
Varga: Yeah, podmosphere in short terms, but pretty much an automated platform for advertisers and podcasters. Our goal is to make it, we target medium-size podcasters and our goal is to have advertisers that’s never sponsored before. That’s our primary priority audience. We want to pretty much teach them about podcasting. And then we take good podcasting and then we mass sponsor podcasts. So we send out request instead of sponsoring one big podcast are two big podcast. With us, they sponsor 10 or 20 podcasts at most times. Some do sponsor one or two and so on. But that’s not the business model there. So, they buy baked in ads and it’s a free market. Advertiser sends out the request and podcasters set their prices. We don’t tell podcasters what price they have to set.
If it’s way, way, way off. Yeah, we could do, we can help. We can say well this is what we’ve seen work but ultimately it is a free market and we will help those want help. Who has what price is good for what type of purchase? Yeah, we can help with that. But ultimately it’s a free market for the podcasters and advertisers. Our goal is to become the Google ads for podcasting with baked in ads. So high-quality ads pretty much automated. And we’ve been up and running for almost a year now and it’s been amazing. It’s been such a thrill launched February 2018 and man do I love it. It’s been such a thrill.
Tony:
So Varga, you’ve exceeded your expectations so far in just under a year on this?
Varga: Oh by far our investor we planning to not launch site before the end of the summer. We launched before the summer. We weren’t supposed to gather, build a reach of 1 million listeners by the end of the year. We have 4.4 million and we weren’t supposed to be a profitable company and before the end of 2019, we were profitable already in October 2018. And so all the goals had we surpassed every single. There is not one goal that we set at wasn’t surpass. Besides, the technical aspect that’s always Joelle and Mathias are developers. They were pretty much day and night and we’re working on some really cool features that we believe will revolutionize the podcast industry. I’m sure you have a lot of marketers listening to this and this is for them. We’re going to release a reporting system that will be automated in baked in ads and a lot of things. It is really, really cool yeah.
So, yeah, so we have surpassed every single goal that I had that I even, because the first time you started a company, I was a little bit like, well, I do believe in this. I do believe that I have the knowledge and work ethic, but it’s still the first time we started the company, it’s still not to certainty, right? So I’m not, I don’t know how my life will look in a year. I don’t know if the company will be successful. So it’s a little bit of feeling of pride. A very proud feeling. So yesterday I sent them a thank you email and update for all the investors and all that people worked, in Podmosphere and the board members and so on then I was like, it’s very easy to forget how good it’s gone for this last. Everyone is happy, right? But we look at it from week to week to week to week to week and sometimes look back a month. No, we don’t do very good this month. But when we look one full year. It’s insane. It’s truly very, very fun to see what we’ve succeeded with.
Tony:
Varga. Congratulations on your success in under a year. I want to do another update when it’s closer to the second year to see your progress because this is near and dear to my heart as well as a lot of us, a lot of us entrepreneurs and for the audience, I want to be very clear on the site. It’s podmosphere.com I’ll spell it p o d, You know pod like podcasting, p o d m o s p h e r e.com podmosphere.com. You’ll see it in the show notes and this is a Varga Moshtagh the CEO of Podmosphere. You’re just crushing it in under a year. This is amazing.
Varga: Thank you. Thank you. Well, it’s thanks to podcasters like you right. We don’t really deserve all the credits. It’s thanks to the talents that are there that deliver top quality ads. That pretty much creates unique content. Like Tony, you create unique content weekly, like to be able to say that. That is amazing. You’re an artist, but we don’t deserve anything at podmosphere. It’s the talent that makes it possible for us,
Tony:
You’re very humble and very kind yon that. Yes, all us podcasters, we do create the talent and we guess I’ve, I’ve heard so many and I hear so many just great content, very successful entrepreneurs and big celebrities and people that have really made a good name for themselves in the field that they’re in or the niche that they’re in or niche depending on how you pronounce it. Really great stuff. So if you like a podcast, just stay with it and, and just grow with them because I’ve seen them all grow.
Varga: Yeah, no, I totally agree so I see the number solve for hundreds of podcasts rights. I know that it’s a very clear growth for podcasters. During 2018 at least almost all the podcasts were growing and that we were looking at. We didn’t see a lot of podcasts that have any other way.They all grew, it’s insane and it’s so lovely because the listeners, they are understanding. It’s not like in TV if something outrageous happens there’s a bad episode, something people get mad and they’re like, oh, this looks bad on the show, but that’s not podcasting. Podcasting people know what they’re listening to. They know it’s a person who creates, this does put their time and efforts into creating unique content. And they feel a part of it. Like your listeners listening right now, they know that they are part of your content plan, that you are creating. They give feedback, they interact it, feel apart of it and they are a part of it.
Tony:
Thank you so much. Once again, this is Varga Moshtagh CEO of Podmosphere. His website is podmosphere.com we definitely want to do an update next year, for your anniversary, thank you so much for joining us.
Varga: Thanks, it was truly, it was a pleasure, Tony. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I love talking to you.
Tony:
Great and we will talk again, my friend. And for my amazing audience thank so much for listening. Remember, success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Be righteous join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show,
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