Benjamin Zimmer and Mateusz Sojka are web developers and have a passion for “delightful-to-use web-applications” that simplify complicated processes. To achieve this, they “combine modern cloud technology with almost 20 years of experience in web and application development.”
Being avid podcast listeners for years, Ben and Mati had heard a lot of complaints about podcast publishing being too complicated. “We took a close look at the current state of podcast publishing software or services and saw an opportunity for improvements all along the process of bringing a podcast to the audience.” they tell us. “That was the moment the idea of Podigee was born.”
Podigee is all about getting podcasts out for listeners quickly and easily. You could be a hobbyist with expert knowledge in a certain field, a freelancer who wants to grow his customer base, a radio station that wants to give their already produced shows a new life, or a company that seeks new ways to promote their product or educate their employees. Podigee has the right tools for you to make yourself heard.
“Being a bootstrapped startup, Podigee was mainly built on nights and weekends while pursuing full-time jobs by day.” the founders tell us. They add, “The hardest challenge was to stay motivated until the first customers used Podigee and gave us feedback. From then it’s much easier to motivate yourself for another hour, because you know you create value for real people.”
Apart from making podcasting easier by creating a ready-to-use software solution, the goal is also to provide educational material for different use cases of podcasts and to work on how to produce great content for them. The founders say, “Our solution is beautiful because, unlike many other solutions out there, it was made especially for publishing audio content.” Also, the user needs no prior technical knowledge of podcasting to use Podigee. You just sign up and start publishing.
There are some US companies that have been actively providing podcast hosting facility for several years, the biggest of them being Libsyn with over 10.000 podcasts hosted by them. The founders consider Libsyn has an important competitor.
On expansion plans, the founders tell us that they are looking at radio networks, larger podcast networks and companies that want to profit from a lot of use-cases and the benefits podcasting has to offer. They also want to simplify the process of making money with podcasts.
Podigee’s target customers currently are hobbyist podcasters and small businesses. The current customers are mainly based in the US and around Germany, where Podigee’s headquarters is located.
“The primary source of revenue will be subscription charges.” the founders say. In the long-term, they aim to connect advertisers and companies with producers and charge “mediation fees” for bringing them together. Additionally, they plan to make it easy for producers to ask their audiences for financial support by allowing them to start crowd-funding campaigns and accept micro-payments. Podigee will take care of transactions for them and keep a percentage of it for the provided service.
Podigee offers a free plan that allows everyone to publish 60 minutes of audio per month at no cost.
Visit https://www.podigee.com/en/home for more information.
