And, yeah, we all have bad days. You wake up and you go,
a list of things to do is just so long.
And then you get a user,
and I've had I've had feedback. Your app's crap. Your app's crap. Right? And I'm like, well, can you just be a bit more elaborate about why you think it's crap? You know, I don't mind you telling me it's crap, but that that doesn't affect me. But can you just point out which bit or what all of it's crap? Yeah. Last years of my work, you think it's just totally crap. And
then and then I think some days also.
It's really
if you've never built a start up, I think some people expect us to be Apple from day 1.
Welcome to about podcasting,
a show for podcasters.
We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures mixed with interviews and music.
Hosted on Podhome dot f m, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
Welcome to another episode of the About Podcasting
podcast.
This week, I'm talking with Sam Sethi from Truefans
dotfm.
Truefans is a modern podcast app,
and Sam builds this with his CTO, Moe.
We talk about how Sam got into podcasting in the first place, his interest in podcasting and audio,
why he started to build Truefans,
what it is and what sets it apart,
what he thinks its future is going to be like, and things that he runs into.
Now before we start, I wanna thank some people.
We got some boosts.
We got 1611
sets from anonymous podcast guru user who says, I agree with Chris, Chris Fisher, on live broadcasting.
Great episode. Look forward to future episodes.
Thank you, anonymous podcast guru user.
We got several people streaming sets, including Chad F, Cole McCormick, and also Mere Mortals.
And Cole McCormick
sent
22/22
sets through fountain, and he says, hearing Chris's setup is cool. I would love to have an entire townhouse for my podcast,
as do we all.
Thank you very much, Cole, and also Chad F and Mere Mortals for streaming
and Mere Mortals since 1111
through True Fans.
And he says, the network of shows that Chris has is basically my aspiration.
I would love to be able to do what he does and make just enough to live off, but do it all v for v and try and eliminate some of those pesky advertiser meetings.
Plenty of solid advice and harsh truths about how critical you have to be and hardworking.
Thanks so much for this, Barry and Chris.
Well, thank you very much, mere mortals,
and everybody else who sent in some value.
Now, yes, this show is value enabled
where you can send boosts and also stream.
That's not why I do this, however,
but I do send most of the value to my guests if they actually have a lightning address.
So your value is much appreciated,
and I'm sure my guests will also appreciate it. Thank you very
much. Now please enjoy my conversation with Sam Sethi.
Let's get into this, because I'm I'm really
curious about
why you are even in this space. Right? So I didn't catch the whole history.
What brought you into
broadcasting
audio and now into podcasting in the first place?
Okay. So I used to present from Microsoft. So I was on the
I don't know what you call professional presenters. Hello. Good morning, and welcome to Microsoft. Let me tell you about Microsoft Office and blah blah blah blah blah. Right? And,
and then I I went to Netscape and did a very similar job as as product manager. So
I'm I'm very confident in talking about technology and about its application to business. I'm not,
I sort of like to think I I have a good heart holding on both technical side and the business side and comparative too. So
that was the first thing. I then had done a bunch of startups. I was I didn't know what to do next. I sold my last startup. I was a bit sort of twiddling my thumbs, and a friend said, hey. Do you wanna come do some radio work?
I've never done radio. Let's go and do radio. And so I went and did, an eighties
soul show, and it was like Shalimar or whatever. It's like, that's so exciting. And then but by the 50th time of playing Shalimar, it wasn't exciting anymore. And so I started a radio show called Sam's Talks Text not
try that again. Sam Talks Technology.
Mhmm. And where I live in just 40 miles west of London, there's not that many technology people. So I wanted to be international. So I was interviewing people like the head of Oster AI, Sam, and, you know, various other people who were top of their game around the world. And it was great fun doing it,
but it was very limiting because the radio station said my show had to be 3 hours long. Imagine sitting there going, right. I've got an interview for the next 3 hours. It's like, no. This doesn't work. So,
you know, then you had to get 2 guests. So I I said, forget the radio. I'm gonna go and start my own podcast.
And,
massive learning curve in, you know, what mic, what software, blah blah blah, how to edit, all the all the things that everyone else goes through.
And then I did over a 100 episodes, and, you know, it it's some of it was good, and some of it was bad. And, you know,
I then got
a little bit itching. COVID turned up, and then I decided to do somebody called the Podcast Festival.
Never done an online festival podcasting
at all ever in my life.
And then invited people like Cara Swisher, George the poet, Dan Snow, James Cridland, a whole bunch of, you know, leading players who all went yes. I was like, oh my god. They all went yes.
So
the next thing was, okay. Well, if that's the case,
that went well. And then I pinged James. I said, James, hey. Look. You do a 3 minute podcast. Fancy doing a half hour podcast with me. Now it my idea was really to take sound tech talks technology
with what James did for podcasting,
smashed the 2 together.
And
in some ways, that's where we've got to, really, if you look at it. James and I talk about the the news of podcasting, and then I do several interviews with, you know, people.
And that's my sort of Sound Talks Technology
old podcast being brought back into James'
Pod News Daily.
And that's how Pod News Weekly really formed.
And and then
somebody said to me one day, oh, you know a little bit about podcasting. Do you wanna do a, an app with us? And I and I said, go on. Tell me your idea. And they said, oh, it's celebrity based with advertising. I went, no. No. No. No. Not doing that. No. I don't care. Anyway, they they
they didn't convince me to do it, but they convinced me to build a platform for them, which I thought I wanted to do because podcasting 2.0 had just started.
Mhmm. You know, he he'd got this really interesting you know, this whole whole idea of sats that appeared, and then there's a couple of tags and it got you know, I was like, this could be could be interesting. Could be the start of something. I didn't know.
And so I started building this thing, and,
yeah,
the guys I was with,
let me down quite badly, and I was like, okay. I'm gonna leave them. I I don't need to do this. I built a radio station in the background while I was twiddling my thumbs. You know? So,
I thought I'll I'll keep on with my radio station. And then this little itch, this little devil on my shoulder, and that was a lot of fun building, wasn't it? So I went back to building, and I spoke to the guy I was building with, Mo, my my CTO.
Said, do you fancy doing this with me? He went,
really do. So we just started off.
Probably, it's now,
yeah, nearly 2 years now.
It's just come out to 2 years in
May that we started it.
And, yeah, you know, I'm enjoying it.
I think some days,
I go, oh, this is just impossible.
Then other days, we make these amazing breakthroughs, and I'm like, wow.
Maybe that's the thing that's gonna tip us over into
the next stage. And so yeah. So there we are. So true fans was born.
And now I do True Fans. I only do Pod News daily, and I did this chief evangelist role, which I love doing.
Right. And we'll talk about that, the last one as well
in a bit. So,
Pod News, you work together with James.
Right? Do you guys work together? How is that structured? Are you, are you employees of a company? Are you his employee? How does it work? No, no, no. James owns Pod News Daily. That's a 100%
his. Nothing to do with me. He does that on a daily basis.
Pod News Weekly, we own jointly together.
We'll say we own jointly together, really. It's James's, but, you know, he he gives me that gracious thing of saying, it's 50% of yours. Yeah. Really, James? You know, if if any you asked anyone in the world who owns a brand, Pod News, it'll be James Crittendall, not Sam Sesig. Yeah. I I'm very clear,
and I'm very happy, actually, that it's James's baby, and and I cohost it. I gain,
you know, some reputation from James, you know, because he's he owns space, and, you know, I built up a a sort of a reputation with the industry because of James.
I just enjoy it. You know? It's not paying
as in, wow. That's the retirement fund sorted. No. You know? It's some fun money to take the wife out for dinner or take the kids somewhere or do but it
I enjoy it because, you know, I get to meet people like you. I get to meet loads of other people. It's a really good excuse. Hey. Do you wanna come on our show and and let me interview you as opposed to do fancy a quick call and for no reason? So, yeah, I like doing it.
Yeah. Okay. That's well, that's good enough reason,
if any. Right? That that's all for good reason.
And so Truefence,
was born now almost 2 years ago then.
That's great.
What, what were you thinking at the time? As in there are so many podcast player apps already, right? There's big ones. There's lots of small ones, including the newer ones like fountain and stuff.
Why did you think or do you still think
that true fans can fit into this space? Is the pie large enough, you think? No. I've decided to close true fans. You're hearing it. No. We're joking.
Oh, can happen.
No. Well, it better not happen. I I'm I'm
I'm betting my shirt on it.
No.
When I started doing it, it was because I had a technical challenge that I liked, and I was enjoying it. Right? I didn't have a a 100% purpose. And I I I like the whole idea of the SaaS model micropayments
transactions.
Throughout all of my start ups and throughout my
30 odd years in the industry, one of my biggest
statements has always been people's time and attention has value. That's always been my driving.
I've always tried to find a business where you could reward people for their time and attention, whether it was aggregating content, doing something, sharing reviews, whatever it may have been. Right?
And
when the micropayment
system idea appeared,
I oh my god. That's how we do it. That is exactly how we do it.
I can give you some small micropayment
stats for your time and attention. So, you know, I've left a boost. I've left a review. I've done something. I've listened to your show. I'm gonna give the creator a small micropayment.
Bang. Or conversely, the creator can give the listener some money.
So
having got a
peer to peer
seamless model, I thought, yeah, we can build something here. Now
Steve Jobs said, here's the crazies and the and the people who changed the world. Well, I don't know if I'll change the world, but I am one of the crazies who thinks that this is going to take hold. It might take a couple of years.
But I do think this is the the actual future of the web. And I do think
this model of micropayments
is what people will get. Now it hasn't jumped across from
the geeks who get it over to the mainstream yet, but I do believe it will. And when it does,
people are gonna go, oh, that's real money, isn't it? Oh, that's quite nice.
So, yeah, I think I think it's a case of true fans
gives me
a platform to put all my crazy ideas together
and implement them rapidly with with my CTO, and we tend to. I think anyone who's watched the growth of True Fans has seen the crazy
speed at which we deliver stuff,
And and that's because probably like last night, I've got 8 ideas. And after this call, me and Moe will be implementing half a dozen of those. And so by the end of the week, they'll all be in place.
So I love I love that. I love being able to
take what's in my crazy brain and for my CTO to develop it with me,
and we'll see where it goes. Who knows?
Okay. Well, I think that's a very good attitude to to have towards anything, especially to build something.
Okay. So you already mentioned Moe. Is it just 2 of you in in Truefence?
There is. Yeah. Just me and Moe, and,
he's a little baby Rocket genius.
He's sub 30.
This is a guy let me let me give you his background. So this is a guy whose
father and parents' mother,
were in Afghanistan when,
the British were there with the Americans, and his father did something for
the the allied forces. And, unfortunately,
when the the American British pulled out, his father got shot and killed.
And he had to run with his brother and mother, and and they went to to Iran. He's now moving
out of there, and he's going to, I think, Dubai.
Now
go back and think about this. It's a 20 year old
kid probably at the beginning of the Taliban time when the war was on in Afghanistan.
He's gone to university. They probably didn't have the greatest kit. They probably didn't have the best access to the Internet,
if much at all. And yet he knows
every bleeding edge technology there is out there, and he self taught himself. I haven't a clue what laptop or desktop he uses.
And he gets through the Iran firewall every morning
He never complains to me. There's not a word. I've never heard him once say, oh, I can't do that. My laptop's too slow or can't do that because this this wall, I can't access that because of this.
He always finds a way to do it. And what I love about him is I can throw him 10 ideas, and 9 of them will be done, guaranteed. The 10th might not be done, but he'll get them done.
And and and he's
unbelievably
smart. When when I asked him to do value time splits, I thought, that's hard to do.
Bingo. Got it first time. When I asked him to do
micropayments
per second transactions
through the old API, bingo. Got it first time.
And I'm just, like, blown away by him. So, yeah, every time, guy's a little
genius, so I've been really lucky.
Yeah. That sounds awesome. You you struck out with, with a partner like that. Yeah.
I've I've had some bad experiences in the past where I've gone I've I've I've looked for external people, you know, because I couldn't find the right person,
and I've been ripped off. And and
and and, also,
I don't like using UK developers. They always seem to want to charge, you know, 10 x more than they're worth.
And then they work 3 x slower than they should.
You know, so
yeah. I mean, as I said, you know,
we will literally spend
Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Easter Day,
mid flight when I was coming back from LA,
halfway around the world in Australia. We work every day together,
and we always find the way to do it. And he's always there waiting, or I'm always there waiting, whichever way. We just get on with it. So, yeah, very, very lucky.
That's awesome.
So,
he builds the stuff.
Mhmm. So built yourself, or do you just tell him No. No. No. Really wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't put myself up as a coder. I I I I started coding when I was in Microsoft,
and, I was a systems engineer.
And that's why Windows 95 never worked. I'm an engineer. No. No. No.
And
as much as I wanted to code, as much as I wanted to code, I have to say I found it dull and boring because every time
I found I'm missing an ampersand or I was missing a little end of something, and it wouldn't work. And I'll be pulling my hair out going, this is driving me mental.
I think I'm much more of a creative ideas front man,
see the
value of the technology and the application of the technology.
And, and I love reading about technology and coming up with the ways it could be used. And then
I need somebody like Moe who can then take that crazy
concept and then translate that into pure code, which is what he does best.
So we complement each other pretty well.
Okay.
And so True Fans is, not a traditional app. Right? It's not a downloadable app on iOS or Android. It's a PWA.
Yes. Progressive,
progressive web app. Why did you choose to do that instead of an iOS or Android app?
Three reasons. 1,
PWAs are quicker to develop with because you're just building pure web. So if you want to have cross platform,
multi
screen sizes, it's the quickest way of doing it. If you have to develop for desktop,
web, and iOS and Android, you you've got 3, maybe 4 development platforms there that you're building. Every time you make a change in 1, you happen to make a change somewhere else.
The other real reason is I'm really annoyed with people.
I'm really annoyed with people that they've been suckered
by Apple into building flash 2 apps.
So Steve Jobs hated flash. IOS is Flash 2. That is all it is. It's a proprietary language. It's a proprietary platform.
No SEO. It's totally locked in. My statement is every time anyone uses an iOS app, they kill the open web, and that is what they're doing. But Apple have convinced everybody,
no. You've got to go to the Apple Store and pay us 30%.
And I'm like,
come on, people. Wake up.
You know, the podcast industry talks about, oh, yes. RSS is open and the open RSS and all of this, and YouTube's bad because they don't use it, and Spotify is awful. Oh, but let's all build an iOS app.
Great. Well, that's
closed proprietary technology
that Apple have convinced everybody
is the best way forward for building apps because they restricted the open web purposely.
They have limited access to APIs
that they give to the native phone app, and that's all that they've done. And, you know, the fact that they're getting monopolistic,
fines now,
bring it on, please. They need to be broken up. Apple owns everything from the hardware, the operating system, the developer platform, the iOS,
and the 30% on top charge.
No. They need to be split up. That is a pure, pure monopoly.
And I'm pretty pleased to have WPWA
because I can truly say I'm open from RSS to app. I don't have any proprietary tech. It's pure open web.
And I don't think anyone else in the industry can say that. So
but I'm not paying Apple
30% for every time I I have a payment.
And that's the trouble.
I think,
you know,
Oscar and Mitch and and Justin
and and sorry, Jason, all great guys, but they all have the sword of Damocles hanging over them. One day, Apple might just turn around to Fountain saying, hello. We've just found you use sats.
We want 30% of that.
They're not doing it today, but they can do, and they did it to Danos. They kicked him out.
I don't wanna be building something on a on someone else's platform. We've seen that with Twitter when developers got kicked out. We've seen them with Facebook when developers got kicked out.
Don't build on other people's platforms. You are in danger
of then turning it off. And I think all the iOS and Android apps who are building on or relying on Google Play Store or or Apple Store,
I'm sorry.
You can be turned off and may may well be.
Yeah. I do get why they do it, of course, because, there's,
findability. Right? In Mhmm. App stores,
there's user experience. People just see the little icon, right?
And users just use it. Right. So, but I, I absolutely
get the choice because otherwise every new version you do, you need to go through the review. First of all, they might say, no, it might take a long time. I don't know. And at some point they might say, indeed, well, we found that you're doing something that we don't like, like payments.
No, this is not gonna happen anymore. You cannot deploy your new version of the app and or you need to pay us now,
which sucks.
You don't want Jason found Jason at at Podcast Guru, I I interviewed him, and he was talking about how we were all trying to,
get video working in the apps for,
Ainsley Costello's live event.
And he was trying to make changes to Podcast Guru, and he was trying to submit them. And he was waiting, and he didn't know. And would it happen? Would somebody in cubicle x of unknown company called Apple
agree to allow his app to have that change?
And I thought, jeez, Louise. I don't wanna be
building something where,
you know, Apple makes the decision. As I said to you earlier, me and Moe, we
we make changes daily. We make changes on the fly.
Because we're a PWA, it can be pushed
literally there and then. It's updated, and it's out for everybody. So I couldn't have built Truefans if it had to be an iOS app. I don't think Apple would have kept up with me.
Yeah. No.
I I I do,
I respect the efforts that goes into something like fountain and pod first, for instance. Absolutely.
So much work that goes into that, especially with Absolutely. And with, like, an iOS,
and an Android version. But I'm very happy that for instance, with Pod home, I don't have to do that. Like this morning, it's now, 10, 10 AM, Dutch time here.
I already pushed, like, I don't know, 3, 4 changes. Mhmm.
I just change something. It pushes, it goes through the whole thing. It builds and it deploys to all of the servers all around the world. And then I saw, oh shit. I made a little mistake there. Mhmm. Fix it, push it again. Boom. And it's done. Exactly. Everybody's used a new version. Nobody noticed that something happens. They just see new features. That's all.
It works well. And, you know, I reiterate,
every time you build an iOS or Android, you are killing the open web. And and if you truly believe in open RSS, then you shouldn't be building on native apps. That's just my opinion.
Yeah.
Okay. So you started 2 years ago, you and Moe, great team. You're building stuff. You're building fast. You're building lots of stuff, and you're following,
lots of podcasting 2 point o things,
which starts with modern features, chapters, people, transcripts, all that type of stuff.
Can I ask how is it going? As in, are lots of people using it? And and
are you able or do you want to share how many people are using it? Oh, no. I'm I'm very open. I'm I'm totally transparent. I think you got to be. We've just got over about 7,000 people now on the platform. It's not too bad. It's not it's not as big as fountain. Fountain are leading quite significantly over it, and we're not really creating market share.
We went over the 15,000,000
sats recently.
You know, that's that's again another milestone for us. So, yeah, those are the couple of milestones that and I
I'll explain why I think we'll accelerate in a minute, but, yeah, that's where we are. Okay. That's great. Yeah. And and so how do you, you know, get more users? How do you do that? That's a trouble for everybody, including for me. How do you do it? Yeah. So,
you know, we go for an investment round. That's one thing. So we'll have more money for marketing, which I haven't had. We need
to do that. We need to have you know, you look at Fountain, they've they've they've got investment. They've made, you know, quite a few big marketing splashes. You know? With a million flats, you know, sign up here. Sign up here. Sign up here. Right? That that helps.
The other thing is we do gamification.
So we give away 5,000
sats, and, you know, again, we haven't really shouted about that. We haven't talked about it.
So, you know, again, I I I I'm being very cautious because I'm self funding until now. So, you know, I don't wanna enter my personal bank account, you know, with, you know, you know, a 100,000 people hit me. That could be very expensive. So,
not really making the big, big noise about it yet. And then the other thing,
the other day,
we we overcame one of the, I think, the big friction
challenges with micro payments and stats.
So topping up your wallet has been a massive challenge. You know? Open up a MoonPay account, do KYC, know your customer, give them your passport, send them your firstborn child, whatever it may be.
And
it just wasn't you know, we we just didn't see user growth beyond the the 5,000 sats we gave
them or or you're getting early geeks who've got sats from other places and then were trying our our platform then going to another platform. You know, we just weren't seeing growth.
And then suddenly,
the other day, you know, as I said, we're working in LA, me and Moe while I was over there,
and and we've all we cracked it. We've got one click Apple Pay, Google Pay to SaaS,
and it worked. And people have been doing it, and it and it's super simple.
So now
we can feel confident of saying to people, you know, come and use our platform.
If you want to pay v for v, you know, value for value. If you wanna pay, pay. Oh, look. Your wallet's running out. Don't worry. Put $4.99
in, £10.99,
whatever it is, €3.
Yeah. One click, pay, bang. Your wallet fills up instantly.
No. Nothing else needs to be done.
So I think people can feel comfortable into that. We're gonna be building recurring payments. So if you might want, you know, €10 every month, just just have that as your recurring payment. That's my budget for listening to podcasts.
So, again, we've we've simplified that. We're working with Olby to remove
4 or 5 screens for setting up a wallet. So we're gonna get down to literally one screen,
and that again will remove some of the friction.
And then I think,
we've got some education to do still.
I'm building 31 minute videos. Not 31 minute.
30 times 1 minute,
videos.
Seeing is believing. I think people like to see rather than read.
So, again, all of those sorts of things,
we're speeding up, you know, some of our servers and back end process, so it's a bit slicker.
So I think all of that plus the marketing, and and I'll explain the marketing later if you want, but, you know, we've got some really good ideas. One of my backgrounds, I used to be the you know, in the early days of marketing director in the UK. I was the marketing,
at Netscape. I've been the ecommerce director at Gateway Computers. I know how to do marketing.
I just need the money to do what I want. And I like guerilla marketing. I'm not one of these splashy marketers. You know? Billboard over Heathrow Airport, you know,
makes no no no sense.
I'm I love guerrilla marketing, which is just using clever, you know, quick and dirty ways of doing it, cheap and cheerful. You know, spend very little, but get a massive return on the your on your spend.
Okay. Yeah. I'd I'd love to hear what you would do. Let's say you have a sack of money for that right now. Okay.
So
one of our
okay. So one of the things we've built but we haven't released is our new advertising model.
Now our new advertising model is based on the way that
value time splits works. Okay. Let me try and step this back. Okay.
Last summer, some smart I I I think it was Stephen Bell or Alec Gates, one of the clever ones,
came up with this idea called the remote item.
And the remote item to me is basically
podcasting URLs,
hyperlinks. Right? So the idea is that you can
grab,
a music track and add it to your podcast. And then
while you're streaming sats to that podcast, when the music track plays, it switches the wallet from the host to the music player. And then when the music finishes, it comes back. Great. And then that's using something called the remote items. I was
really excited. I'm thinking,
wow. This opens up. You know, I wanna use this, a clip from this interview.
Right? Well, normally, I do what's called fair use. Barry, I'm not making 5 minutes your your podcast. You don't mind, do you? I'm paying you nothing. Yep. Well, now, actually, I could say, Barry, I want 5 minutes of your podcast, and here's a valid time split. So I'll pay you while, you know, I'm using your,
interview.
And so we're just gonna make that easier, but that that that's the way I think it's going. So now,
the next stage was
we created negative sats. We created the ability for creators to pay listeners. Why would we do that? Well, you might have a trailer, and you want to have people listen to it, hence, a 3 minute trailer.
Again, going back to this thing about time and attention and me valuing people's
time, now I can say, hey. I've got a brand new podcast. Have a listen to it. I'll pay you to listen. If you really like it, spread the word and maybe subscribe to my podcast, whatever.
So creating negative sats or negative flows or changing the flow was was critical.
So the last part is we've now worked out that if you listen to a podcast and there's an advert in it, generally, you skip it. Now it stopped. It has no value. It's wasting your time, and you don't wanna give it any attention. You're not getting paid for it. Any person getting paid is probably the podcast. It's like,
screw that. I'm just gonna skip past. That's generally what people do.
Now imagine that instead of skipping past, you get paid.
Now imagine
that
when you get to the advert, the advertiser
changes the flow of money. So I've been paying the podcaster.
The advert kicks in, and now the advertiser with negative sats using value time splits
starts paying me. Now if I listen to 10% of the ad, I get paid for 10% of the ad, and then I skip the rest. You listen to 50% of the ad, you get paid 50%.
So the advertiser has zero wasted marketing budget.
The advert is played,
and and guess what? The advertiser now knows a 100% who listened, how long they listened, and what they actually paid them.
So we've built that.
We've been demoing it to a few advertising agencies who's who fallen off their chair because
suddenly, it's not this, you know, I've got an advert in your podcast. Did anyone listen? Well, yeah. I'm sure. We had 10,000 downloads. Guaranteed somebody listens to your ad. Keep paying. Right? Well, now there's none of that guessing. We give them
complete metrics on the user. The user listened to 10, 20, 50, 80%. And you know what? You can measure that as well because you know how many sats you actually paid them. And so
what we wanna do is put our ad in some of the biggest podcasts
to do that to begin with. So when we have the marketing budget,
we will be the advertiser.
So we will say to a big podcast with a large audience, play our ad, but tell them that if they keep listening to this ad, they will get paid for it. Yeah. Great. So whose ad are they gonna listen to? Hey. You're listening to True Fans. Come and try it. This is a really cool platform, blah blah blah. We're paying you right now to listen to ads. Come and listen to more ads. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Right? And
so we're testing
a model that I think is the next generation of advertising where users actually get
paid for their time and attention.
They split the money with the creator,
but the advertiser doesn't waste a single penny of the marketing budget. So it's a win win win.
But also in terms of guerilla marketing, we'll be the 1st advertiser. I'm gonna find some of the biggest podcasts to go and do that with. So
one example of some of the guerilla marketing that I wanna do is a lot more, but I won't give you all my ideas, Barry.
No, that is very clever. And, I'm also using, HostRed Ads in, popular podcast. That works very well. Yeah. That's where obviously people are listening to, to podcasts. And for you, that will also work well because, you know, people are already in an app. I think, again, to change an app is difficult, but if you have a good,
ask and a good value proposition, that will probably work exactly.
One thing that,
that you just said, I just wanna wanna make sure that it's not too scary because you said, well, we showed this, this data to the advertisers, and they love this data. What type of data is that? And should we be scared if we use true proof that
you're No. No. No. No. So the data is really just what did how long did the user listen to the ad and
how much of the ad did they complete. Right?
You're paying the advertiser is paying
the the user. Mhmm. They already know that number. So if you're listening
at a 100 sats per minute and it's a 3 minute ad and you only listen to 10%, then they know exactly how many stats they paid you. So it's not hidden data.
No. But, I mean,
is it also IP address, location, that type of
No. We don't. That's a secondary purchase.
So if you want to know my name, my email, where I live, yeah, you can give me more money, and I'll give you all of that data. No. It's totally anonymous.
Right. But it's all in the user's hands. Right? They they choose to share that or not share that by alt, I suppose. Exactly. Okay. And we've we've already got that set up.
So in our platform, in the user settings, this is what we call an activity stream. Okay?
And so,
so for example, in the activity stream in Truefans, I might have,
Sam
Wade, which is a verb. So,
podcasting 2.0 on Friday night, listen to 95%
of the program, and pay 10,000 sats. Right? That's my data in my activity stream. And my user settings, I can choose to hide all my activity
or show which verbs I want to show publicly
and which verbs I wanna share. So that's already set up.
If you're a fan of a podcast, you still have to get get permission from the user to get that data,
and then same with an advertiser.
I I'm firmly in the camp of personal ownership of their data.
But equally,
there should be a way that the advertiser can nudge you and say, hey, Barry. Hello. I don't know who you are, but through Truefans, I'm I'm gonna make you an offer to find out who you are. Can you share your other bits of data? And if you agree it, then they'll now know you are Barry from Holland,
and they can marry the 2 bits of data together. But up until then, it's totally anonymous, your location, your IP, and your name.
Yeah. That that's very good. Yeah. Because as soon as an app starts, doing that, without asking the user, then it absolutely,
be Completely. Yeah. Because then we're we're trampling all over your privacy and your data. Exactly.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So there's so many things in Trufans. Like, there's every feature that you can imagine and then, 20 more.
How are you gonna
develop this further as in a feature set? Are you gonna
cut things out,
when they aren't used, for instance? Or are you just gonna
keep building new features and see what what sticks and keep it all in there? What what's your approach to that?
We have built a lot, and I think one of the things I going back to what I said right at the beginning,
you know, the the the mass market doesn't even know podcasting tool
exists.
So, you know, something like a person tag or a transcript. Oh, look. Apple's done transcripts. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Great. We've we've had that for 2 years. You know, it it's it's we are so ahead of where the mass market is. That's one of the challenges.
But what I wanted to do
was get to this advertising model, which I just described, and I couldn't do that unless we built all the other features.
It's building on value time splits, remote items, SATs.
None of that
final advertising model could have been done without all the other building blocks in place. So that's one thing.
And then what we're doing now is adding fun user value features like pod rolls. Right? That that's not a technically challenging thing, but it's a it's a real good way of discovery for,
yeah, users on someone's podcast. If you've got 2 or 3 podcasts like you have and having a pod role, Oh, I like Barry's,
Microsoft Azure course. What else does Barry do? Oh, he's got these podcasts. Oh, great. I'll go and send that as well. Right? Really simple.
Publisher feeds, again, you know, I love this show from Wondering. What are the shows from Wondering? Oh, look. Here you go. The they they are nontechnical
features that actually just add a lot of value back to the user in terms of discovery.
I think some features
probably will be,
you know, very hard for users to get. Right? They but they don't need to. So for example, value time splits from remote items have nothing to do with users understanding it. Because when they listen to something like boost to ground ball, all they hear is Adam Adam talking, a track playing, Adam talking, a track playing. Right? They don't need to know any of the technical
challenges that had to be done underneath the hood to make that work,
same with the advertising. So I think,
we've got some fun features. One of my
features that I'm waiting to put in is something called.
So,
so for example, I'll give you an example.
We might have which is what we're working on this week.
I would share my activity to my Mastodon client, right,
about
what I'm playing.
So we will create an automated way to post to my muscle. Sam is listening to X podcast
and currently, you know, is at minute 28. Right? And that's my choice to publish that. Right? Yep. It's my data.
You see that, and there's a link. When you click on that link, you join me at minute 28,
and now we're co listening.
But what happens is your avatar appears along mine, so I know you've joined.
So now I go, oh, because we've followed each other first. Right? Not some I'm not gonna have 50 round of avatars of people I don't know. It's only people I follow. So
so now it's one of my friends that joined Barry. So now in the comments, me me and you are listening to the same podcast. We know we're at the same time stamp.
So now you are hearing what I'm hearing. So we're sort of co listening live
to a podcast that doesn't have to be live. So when you listen to a live podcast, that's fine. We know we're communicating live to the creator. But now I'm I'm live with other listeners
who are friends of mine. And so co listen's a real fun feature I can't wait to implement.
There's there's many there's many things that I think,
you're right, though. We will learn from users
what works, what doesn't. We've got features that I think people will won't discover for 6 months yet.
Yeah. Just because it's like, oh, I don't quite understand how that works, and we have to be
smarter at making it easier to understand maybe with videos or
or just change the technology. You know? And I think I have a phrase called complexity is failed simplicity.
And and maybe if it's too complex, we have to think, scratch our heads, go back to the board, and come up with a better way of doing it. Right?
Yeah. And it can be very difficult. I find that out,
almost every day when I talk to my users, when I say, well, why don't you use, the dynamic text to just dynamically insert the chapters into your show notes? Mhmm. I know that existed.
Well, right there, I know where the button is, of course, but apparently that's not obvious enough. So that's good feedback because now I know I need I know I need to change that to make it more obvious. But you don't know that when you're building it, because of course, you know where the button is. Right? Have you ever done user watching? Where where you watch a user actually using your product? In the past. Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, left. Go left. Wait. Why aren't you clicking left? Left. Now now that's the place. And then and then they click right, and you go
didn't expect them to do that. That's the thing. Yeah. When you're building it, it's so obvious, of course, how this thing works. You click, click, click, and then it works. Yeah. But Yeah. People people don't do that. They are they're different. They they didn't build a thing. So What? Need to find it work. My wife is technical. She used to run MSN UK, and I I give her the product to and then she breaks it every time. Just guarantees to break it. So,
yeah.
Okay. So you're building lots of stuff. It's going well.
Do you have, specific goals with Truefence? Like, in 2 years, I won,
500,000
users or something like that.
I haven't set any specific goals to that level.
I do know that I wanna have a significant more market share than we have. I've got some ideas on how to do that.
We'll see whether they work.
I do wanna increase the value. I look at something like Pocket FM, right, over in India.
They went over a crazy number on,
Google Store. I think
it was the 1,000,000
downloads from Google Store.
They raised a 103,000,000.
They valued at 750,000,000,
you know, series d. Look. That that's a that's a unicorn in the making right right there, and and they they've hit whatever you wanna call the hockey stick growth because, clearly, they've done something right that's led to mass adoption,
and that's led to a high valuation.
Now I'm not saying I wanna I mean, love to have a 750,000,000
valuation on the company. Right? I'm on my way to a unicorn, but I'm not crazy enough to say that right now from where we are.
But I wanna work out what
what it's gonna do or what it's gonna take
to get
more users, mass adoption, to hit some hockey curve. Because once you get into that sort of a hockey curve growth, it becomes self fulfilling in many ways, and then you just ride the wave to where it's going.
But, you know, we're not there by a 1000000 miles. And and so I'm trying to work out what that is. But, realistically, I'm not in a rush.
The funny the funny thing is I know that the product is good, but it's not good enough. And I know that we've got lots of rough edges. We've got bits that I wanna change.
So what me and Mo are doing is putting in all the things that we think
are gonna make it, you know, really useful. So, you know, we did something recently called dynamic playlists. Right? No one's ever done a dynamic playlists. We've got dynamic and static playlists. So dynamic playlists might be I I I create one called podcasting
tech.
Right? And it's got, you know, future podcasting, podcasting to the ho. And then when it's set to dynamic, the switch, it just pulls the latest episode every time it just tells you. So that playlist, I can just play, and I know it's always got the latest episode.
But I've got a study playlist, which happens to be one of my guest on a podcast like this episode. Right? Yeah. For your next episode, I don't want whoever your next guest is. I want a playlist of all the shows I have. I don't want it to update. So that's a static playlist.
Now that's a silly idea that we came up, And I think that's a really good user idea. And then when people understand
it, they'll use it. And we've got other things like that
that we think, yeah, these are sort of user features that we can do. And something, I don't know what, hopefully, will be the one, that thing
that everyone goes, yep. I'm moving to Truefans because
I get it. Forget what they're doing. Yeah.
Okay.
So last thing about Truefans,
it's almost 2 years that you've been doing this. Yeah. It can be very difficult to do a startup.
You see ups and downs. You get lots of feedback.
Has there been a a time in these 2 years where you thought, you know what? This no. I'm done. Let's just stop this. It's over.
Yeah. I I I I there have been days like that. I I genuinely think. I think
sometimes you you feel like you're working your your backside off, and then all you ever hear is your comp your competition is always mentioned. Right? Oh, have you tried this, and have you tried that? They're amazing. They're and you never get you never even get mentioned in the conversation. You feel,
really? Are we we we don't even deserve a mention in that list? And you feel very,
deflated. Right?
Because you're working really hard.
So, yes, there are days. And then
until we crack this one click,
payment form SATS, I was I was despairing that we would ever get
users to really
understand what a SATS and buy into this model because I thought,
nah. They're not gonna open bank accounts. They're not doing this. This is not working. And
when that,
oh my god, eureka moment when we worked it out and we're not using, by the way, Apple's 30% tax. We don't pay Apple 30%.
Just I'll tell you what we are paying is 2.9%.
So and so I'm not telling you how we're doing that, by the way. So
in case anyone else who wants to copy us.
But we we we've worked it out. Right? We've we've got it. And I think
that
gives you when you get those days,
when you get the good days, you go, wow. And and, yeah, we all have bad days. You wake up and go,
a list of things to do is just so long. And then you get a user,
and I've had I've had feedback. Your app's crap. Your app's crap. Right? And I'm like, well, can you just be a bit more elaborate about why you think it's crap? You know, I don't mind you telling me it's crap, but that that doesn't affect me. But can you just point out which bit or what all of it's crap? Yeah. Last years of my work, you think it's just totally crap. And
then and then I think some days also,
it's really
if you've never built a start up, I think some people expect us to be Apple from day 1.
You know, it's like, that feature didn't work. You're too slow. This doesn't work. Right?
And you guys,
there's 2 of us.
We aren't taking a salary.
We're working our backsides off, and we're trying to build something. Right? We don't have 3
$1,000,000,000 in the bank account.
We don't have a 150,000,000
staff on hand to do this.
You know? And
I think people expect
I've even gone on to Mastodon where, you know, I've got people who are early adopters, and and even they have gone, why isn't that I want this to work, and that should be this, and this should be that. And you go,
there's 2 of us, guys. Give us a break. Right? We are trying our best.
And and I I think I put it up one day when I was feeling down. You know, building a podcast app is not easy, I put. Right? And we sometimes get it wrong, guys. Just give us some space.
You know, poor Mitch recently got
literally pounded on. I and and and I'm like,
give him a break. The guy is working full time, building this part time. It's all open source.
Don't don't go down on him heavy like that. I mean,
he's probably gone. You know, why don't we bother him with this? Why do I bother?
You know?
So there are bad days. Yeah. There are bad days.
And and there are days when I go, cool. I'll go back to corporate life. I'd, you know, lie until 10 o'clock,
send him one email, pretend I'm working, take it easy, you know, have my weekends back,
don't work late nights. Yeah. I mean, there's lots of that those days.
And then there's days when you go, like, oh, boy, just don't seem that no one's ever done before, and then you feel great.
Okay. Yeah. You know, creating something is, is difficult enough.
You create something, you hope that it's,
good enough for people. People are using it.
It's your baby kind of. Right? And then, you know, it it hurts when people say nasty things about your baby.
And especially when they say unhelpful things like, Hey, this thing is just crap. Okay. Well, did something not work or what's, is your life just crap and this thing have to be in it,
which often happens.
And it's difficult to not take it personally.
I totally understand that. Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, you know, we built, you know, I I talk about valuing people's time and attention. So we built a feedback system where we pay you in sats for every time you report something. And then I pay you when I comment on
bug report you'd give me on the new feature. So I pay you when I comment back to you, and I pay you when you were report it. Right? I'm valuing your time. So even if you think my app's crap, tell me it, and you'll get paid for it at least. You know?
Yeah. Otherwise, it does worry me some days.
That's difficult.
Okay.
So there is so much more that we could talk about, but we've been going for an hour.
Perhaps,
in a
a next
talk, we can talk more about, podcasting 2.0 and the standards project as well. Perhaps when that is, a bit further along, then there's also more to talk about there.
For now,
where
can you point listeners to to go to True Fans and to sign up?
Where did they go?
Yeah. If if you wanna try us,
we go to your website.
Don't go to an app store.
Remember, you're killing the web if you do that.
And go to true files.fm.
And then it pops up with a how to add,
or install the app fundamentally.
And, again, as I said, Apple could have made add to home screen, could have said install app,
could have said install app, but they knew that by saying that, no one would go to their App Store.
So so what you do is you literally go to true fans dotfm,
and then you'll get prompted to install the app, and then that's it. You get a little icon on your home screen, and you can use it from there. And then
sign up. We give you 5,000 sats to start playing with. So if you don't even know what a sat is, don't worry. It's a funny token that if you can use the pay creators if you want if if you want. Or not pay creators if you want, but, you know and then after that, we've made it one click top up now if you want it. So I think,
yeah, go to true fans dot f.
There you go. Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Barry.
Thanks for tuning into the show. For more episodes, go to about podcasting dot show, and remember to host your podcast on podhome.fm,
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