Sam Sethi: 0:12

Hello and welcome back to his weekly. Today we're in Sweden where in Stockholm I'm joined by Carl is the CEO and co-founder of a company that has just come on my radar, a call called Space. Carl, hello, How are you?

Carl Fridsjö: 0:29

Hello. I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.

Sam Sethi: 0:31

Good. Now, pod space. I saw an article in Pod News Daily that you were the second highest grossing company in podcasts advertising in the podcast space in Sweden. And it was, like, interesting. And then I saw the story about who you hired recently. And so I sat up and I Look, I really need to find out about who is pod space. So let's start off with who or what is pod space.

Carl Fridsjö: 0:58

Yeah, so pod space, the way we think about it is not really as a classic hosting or distribution platform. We do that. But at the core of what we do, I would say is essentially revenue optimization for large enterprise publishers. And so that can be on the ad side through marketplaces and such, but it can also be through premium content paywall, making the workflow more efficient. What we're trying to do is essentially an all in one podcasting platform that's easily scalable and tailored to professional, large publishers.

Sam Sethi: 1:34

But isn't that market space crowd? And I've got you got Spotify, you've got lots of others. What differentiates pod space from all the other players then?

Carl Fridsjö: 1:45

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a highly competitive space to be in, especially from a global perspective. And all of these companies, they have their take on it, I would say, and their focus. We are trying to be essentially more focused and we don't do everything for everyone. If you have your neighbor starting a podcast next door, like a hobby, that's not what pop space does and we want to be the best fit for that. Maybe Spotify for podcasters, we'll or someone else, but we have a very specific type of customer that we work with and that ties into to how we develop the platform, the technology. What sort of deals we make, the amount of flexibility we offer, all of these different things tie into to that sort of core principle and philosophy. And so that's the simple sort of answer to it.

Sam Sethi: 2:40

So Pod Space's only been going for about a year somewhere in 2023. Did you start now? Yeah, I was reading about you got a round of investment. You raised 10 million Swedish krona last year, which is really cool. How did you go about raising that fund so quickly and growing so fast?

Carl Fridsjö: 3:00

Right. So, so we're working with an investor called CO Made. I have actually been working with them for quite some time also in in previous ventures. So before I joined Pop Space as a co-founder, I founded one of the largest production studios here in the Nordics, so focused on high end narrative journalism, documentaries and that type of storytelling and sort of owning those rights and formats and spreading it across different mediums and different markets as well. But they were an investor in that company as well as we've been working very closely for quite some time. They actually also invested some seed money into pop space, and that was before I joined full time because it's a tricky background story. But to keep it simple, so pop space as a platform has actually been built over quite some time. The technologies we started to develop that almost, I think seven years ago, but as a hobby and as a side project. And then what happened was third year acquired pop space and that's how I got involved. And it eventually became more of a real business. So that's been going on for roughly a year's time.

Sam Sethi: 4:16

Okay. And you were also a successful podcaster before all of that. Wouldn't me.

Carl Fridsjö: 4:21

Right? Right. Yeah. So that's actually how I entered this industry and sort of how the production studio started. So I was working at the time as a TV producer and I found a couple of different stories that I thought was quite interesting to do something with. Obviously, it's more of a hassle to gather a TV production team, a larger budgets, more people involved go out on set and record and whatnot. So I figured why not just try to tell these stories by myself at the computer? And it ended up becoming the first couple of episodes of a story or off a podcast. Roughly translated to a dark story would be the name and in English. I released the first episodes and all of a sudden we had a million monthly downloads. And that's in a small country like Sweden. So we became, yeah, one of the largest documentary shows in the Nordics. And I figured, I think we're onto something here and I definitely want to continue exploring that. But of course this was quite early in terms of podcasting and the space and the market and like a lot of things were missing in terms of monetization technology and that type of thing. So I actually really got to experience firsthand many of the problems and issues that we at Pulp Space are trying to actually solve right now.

Sam Sethi: 5:48

Just to clarify, pot space isn't producing any actual shows. It's a platform on and a network. It's not a production company, is it?

Carl Fridsjö: 5:57

Yeah, correct.

Sam Sethi: 5:58

I just wanted to check that given that the fact that it had such a successful background in producing before that you didn't add that to the mix as well?

Carl Fridsjö: 6:06

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it would be fun, but I try to stay off it because it's not part of our core business. But obviously a lot of our customers do. I'm still involved in Saudi Arabia as a board member and small owner there, a customer to pop space as I sort of, yeah, try to be involved in some capacity, at least.

Sam Sethi: 6:25

Now very excitingly. And this is the thing that really brought pod space to my attention. You've recently had a very interesting group of people join the pod space.

Carl Fridsjö: 6:37

Yes. Our latest recruitments were three people, all with a background from Spotify and all with extensive background from the audio industry. So we have. OVERHOLT He's the former Nordic CEO of Spotify. He's also one of the co-founders of Cost, and he's joining us as the director of Growth. So he would sort of be responsible to help and assist with taking pod space to the next level and out into a new and larger markets as well. Then we have Eva Keinan as she was a Spotify in Finland, Helsinki for I think seven years. Then she joined another startup and then eventually joined the hold space. So she will be our Finnish country manager as we're just about to open our second office, which would be in Helsinki. And then lastly, we also have your one lady on her vid, and he's been a senior account director of Spotify for I think 15 years. So quite the trio of people. I'm super happy and excited to start working with them all.

Sam Sethi: 7:45

Yeah, no, absolutely great quality is how big is pod space now? How many people have you got on board?

Carl Fridsjö: 7:52

We're around 15 people in the team, so we're still super early in our journey. We try to really focus on team is a huge part of what we're doing and I think a huge part of what any company is doing or trying to achieve. We have quite high standards when it comes to that and we try to be very particular about who joins us and and sort of in what role and what capacity. So we actually already had a fantastic team before these three hires, but now we're taking the next step as well in terms of expansion and really trying to get the ball rolling even faster than what we have been doing.

Sam Sethi: 8:31

Now, you've basically started to expand, as you said, with Eva taking on the role in Finland. Yes. Where next after that do you have plans to go into other European countries, the USA? I'm pushing you hard because you're a year old company, but you know, maybe your roadmap shows where you're going to go next.

Carl Fridsjö: 8:52

Yeah. So I think that's the sort of the luxury and the issue with podcasting or the podcast market today is that there's definitely not a lack of opportunities out there. It's more a question of sorting and finding the best one and the right fit for us as well. So we have a couple of different markets we're looking at both in Europe and outside. We haven't really made any final decisions yet. We're in that process of analysing and seeing where we end up, but we're definitely pushing on in the Nordics. I'm travelling to the US in a couple of days. I will stay in New York for almost three weeks to meet the industry. There have as many meetings as I can and then learn as much as I can and research a possible U.S. expansion for pot space. So that's, you know, obviously one market that we're looking at just given, of course, the size and the maturity that exists there. But we'll see where we end up.

Sam Sethi: 9:50

Are you I'm not expecting the answer to be yes, but it would be lovely if it is. But I'm profitable yet.

Carl Fridsjö: 9:56

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 9:57

Wow. Okay.

Carl Fridsjö: 9:58

We actually are. Yeah. So the thing we're actually growing, we're seeing exponential growth while actually remaining profitable. So the capital or the funding you mentioned is still in our bank account. We haven't been able to use it quite yet cos things have been progressing. You know, I think faster and quicker than, than anyone expected. So yeah, it's exciting times.

Sam Sethi: 10:24

In terms of your platform, are you pure audio or are you audio and video as an app network.

Carl Fridsjö: 10:31

Yeah. So right now we're pure audio. We, we're definitely following the developments between video of course being, you know, a podcast company. It comes with different challenges. Obviously, video doesn't use RSS in the same way and all of the technical details regarding that. But I mean, I think video as a medium and as a concept is super interesting. We hear it from a lot of our customers and publishers as well. And the way we think about it is pop space never wants to stand in the way of sort of the wish of a publisher or the direction of the market as a whole. So we would rather sort of be a part of that evolvement and be a front runner in that sense. But today we don't have anything sort of concrete in terms of video.

Sam Sethi: 11:26

And in terms of Sweden itself, why do you think Sweden has been so successful from Spotify, Skype, Acast, Pod X yourself? The list goes on. What makes Sweden so unique in its entrepreneurial environment that generates so many hit startups?

Carl Fridsjö: 11:49

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think Stockholm has really become sort of the tech hub of Europe in a sense, which is amazing part of it. It's sort of when you start seeing that traction and more people get involved in the space, you have all of these role models, you have successful entrepreneurs, you have Daniel EK at Spotify, you have Sebastian's Markowski at Klarna, these big, big companies. I think that sort of spikes an interest and an ambition in people. That's part of the question that we also have sort of a great infrastructure for entrepreneurs. In many senses it's quite easy to actually start ventures. And yeah, we have a good sort of community and infrastructure and role models, but it's a complex question. Of course.

Sam Sethi: 12:41

Though, it's just interesting. I mean, I was involved in the London startup scene for quite a long while and it was very strong for a long time with V C's and with lots of startups. But Sweden, as you say, seems to have taken that mantle of, you know, really rubbing it certainly from the audio and podcasting space. I mean, I think London still is very strong for its financial start ups. I definitely think maybe that's where we're seeing it. Markets focusing on what they're really strong for.

Carl Fridsjö: 13:12

I can just add also as well that that Sweden, you know, for quite a long time has been a test market for many companies because we are in general as a people. We're quite early adopters. We yeah, we use a lot of technology, we do it early. So it's sort of a good market to actually try your concept in. And if it works, that's obviously a good signal to keep moving and expanding into to new territories. So that's of course what we're trying to do with pop space as well.

Sam Sethi: 13:42

Yeah, the former ICOs founders have created a micropayment system on mobiles as well. In Sweden, which is quite interesting.

Carl Fridsjö: 13:50

Yeah, we actually they share the same office space as that. So there are a couple of doors.

Sam Sethi: 13:57

Okay. Now pod spaces have this stellar start. As you said, you're now profitable. Looking out to expand, what else do you have on your roadmap? What would Carl like to see 12 months from now?

Carl Fridsjö: 14:09

Yeah, that's a great question. I think new markets and sort of really, really proving that we can scale outside of the Nordics. It's obviously a big one. But in terms of I think we're looking at a few different areas. Obviously the product, this is, you know, the core of everything in what we do. And I really want to sort of ramp up development of that. We have a great product today. It's sort of we actually we're quite, quite bad at marketing, to be honest, because we have a much better product and tech than what most people understand. And as I said, the tech has been built for essentially a much longer time than pop space has been around as well. And that's sort of given us a head start in that sense as well. But I definitely want to keep on developing the product. And there's I guess I shouldn't give away too much of our sort of secrets coming up, but we do have quite a lot of exciting sort of features coming. We're looking more and more into paywalls and sort of premium content. What can we do with that? We already have today an amazing integration with Spotify and then sort of they're open access tool allowing publishers to feature their paid content directly in the Spotify app and driving traffic directly to their own paywall and sort of increasing those conversion rates and whatnot. And so that's definitely one of the products and one of the areas we like to keep developing as well. So product team and new markets.

Sam Sethi: 15:48

Yeah, you also integrate very well with Apple, I understand.

Carl Fridsjö: 15:52

Yeah. So we're actually one of quite few hosting providers that have an integration with them. So what it means is that you can, if you use Apple subscription, only offer paid content through Apple. Usually you have to log in to your normal hosting provider, upload the free version of your episode or whatnot. Then you log into Apple themes you upload the same thing. There we have the integration that allows you to simply use one system for sort of all of the distribution. And so it saves a lot of time and energy for the publishers.

Sam Sethi: 16:28

Brilliant. Look, Carl, if anyone wants to come and find out more about pod space, where would they go?

Carl Fridsjö: 16:34

Yeah, so they can, of course. Pod space, dot com. They can hit me up on LinkedIn Carl with a C Fred Fred SEO in English. Yeah. And just to send us a message, we're open to, to meeting everyone and talking to as much people in the industry as possible.

Sam Sethi: 16:53

I look forward to meeting you in London. Karl. Then next time you're over.

Carl Fridsjö: 16:57

Likewise. Likewise. Thank you so much.