Everything you need to know about starting a podcast
Recently I’ve had a number of startup founders ask about starting (and maintaining) a podcast. So I thought I’d take the time this week to share my thoughts and advice from hosting The Business of Open Source (though this is now it’s third name, it was originally The Business of Cloud Native, then Cloud Native Startup) for over 2.5 years.
Let’s start with the disclaimer
This question generally takes me off guard, because I don’t consider myself a podcasting expert. Nor will you find my podcast on any list of ‘most successful podcasts of 2022.’ I’m not an expert in marketing podcasts, I’m not an expert in hosting podcasts and I am definitely not an expert in anything related to audio engineering.
However… it would also be dishonest to pretend I came to podcasting without any relevant experience. My way-back background is in journalism, and hosting an interview-style podcast like mine is essentially what you would do in many types of radio journalism. I never did radio journalism professionally, but I do have a couple fancy journalism degrees and definitely had specific relevant training. I also recorded and published a series of podcast travel guides way back when I was young, naive and traveling a lot. So basically I was already pretty comfortable running an interview, recording audio and even editing audio. I don’t think any of these things a particularly hard, but it’s worth acknowledging that these are skills you might have to develop. The audio stuff is easy; getting comfortable running an interview can be harder and it might be awkward at first, but you’ll improve as you go.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to my specific advice:
Don’t sweat the audio stuff
It doesn’t really matter what kind of microphone you have, what audio recording software you have or the type of headphones you use. You will have to buy a certain amount of gear, but we’re talking about under $500. My podcast producers have this guide to podcasting gear, and when I started my podcast I just went down their list and clicked ‘buy.’ You could waste tons of time comparing the best value on each item, but it matters so little so don’t do it.
Outsource as much as possible
Even if you’re a pretty good audio engineer, outsource as much of the production as possible. You have limitted time and can’t add much value at this stage.
Don’t outsource the interviews or guest booking
I’ll go into why a little later, but you should not hire someone to host a podcast for you (unless your company is pretty large, in which case it would make sense to have the DevRel team host a podcast. But if your startup is series B or smaller, one of the founders should personally host the podcast). As for guest booking, you can have a team member do booking, but it’s something I’d do in-house or by a contractor who really knows your space. Because you have to pretty choosy about who you have on.
Now the stuff that overlaps with my core expertise, of positioning:
Pick a very specific topic that’s relevant for your company and does not have mass appeal
Your podcast needs to specifically targeted to the interests of the very specific profile of the type of person you want to reach. Obviously, the first step do having a podcast that does that successfully is knowing what the profile is. For a small startup, “Digital Transformation for the Enterprise'“ is probably not a good podcast. You should know:
What your audience wants to learn from your podcast
What beliefs / opinions your audience shares
What characteristics your audience shares (this could be skill sets, type of organization they work at, etc).
Keep in mind individuals listen to podcasts. You need to focus on your audience in terms of charactersitics and opinions they share as individuals, not just the types of companies they work at.
Understand what you want from the podcast
As a founder of an open source startup, you have a very different business model than I do. However, podcasting is likely to have relatively similar benefits for you — and they aren’t that you’ll have a blockbuster podcast with tens of thousands of downloads (though that could happen, it’s just unlikely!). It’s more like:
You get precisely the people who you want to reach to listen to you
You make connections with people you want to know
You learn
Those two last things are why you shouldn’t outsource podcast hosting unless you’re a pretty established company. You’ll miss out on two of the main benefits of having a podcast.
Stick with it
Podcasting is something a lot of people start and very few people stick with. And that’s the magic — you’ll learn and improve. You iterate. I started the podcast when I focused on the cloud native space, but I’ve since shifted the focus of my work to open source startups in general, not just cloud native. You might find the audience you want to reach, or the style of the podcast, has to change. That’s ok.
I hope this was helpful for any of you thinking of starting a podcast! Feel free to reach out with questions.