Means of Creation #4: Leah Culver & Erik Berlin

This is a special one for me!

Four years ago, I wrote a post titled “Who’s building a social podcast app?” Lo and behold, later that day I got a DM from Erik describing his pre-launch company with Leah Culver: Breaker.

I was instantly sold. Soon, I got access to the beta and it was just as cool as I hoped it would be.

Now, four years later, Breaker is still going strong and is the only podcast app on the market built around social discovery. They’ve also expanded to enable podcasters to host and monetize their content.

Li and I are thrilled to have this conversation with Erik and Leah, which will cover topics such as:

What is needed to make podcasting mainstream in the US?
What was the original thesis behind Breaker, and how has it evolved over time? What have been the major learnings/updates on that thesis?
What do you think of Spotify's podcasting strategy?
Paid podcasting / Substack for podcasts - what do you think of these models? (e.g. Supercast, Glow, Supporting Cast)
Luminary - what are the learnings there? What do we make of it?
What innovations in the open podcasting ecosystem are needed?
How has COVID affected podcasting consumption?