Insights & ideas from the best business podcasts - issue #1

Hi 👋 I’m Alex, co-founder of language tutoring platform, LanguaTalk ($95k MRR).

Since I quit my job and began my entrepreneurship journey 5 years ago, podcasts have been my main source of learning. Listening to experienced entrepreneurs can be extraordinarily educational, but it’s not an efficient way to learn. You often listen for hours and only get a few ideas or pieces of actionable knowledge.

To give you insights and highlights from the best podcast episodes I listen to each month, I’m launching a free email newsletter. Below is the first edition. If you like it, please subscribe and upvote this post - I need to know whether people find this valuable. The episodes links are at the bottom.

Podcast insights for entrepreneurs - issue #1

Let’s begin with Business Brainstorms. Host Jakob Greenfeld chatted with David Kofoed Wind, founder of Eduflow. Running a successful business, David has some great ideas that he doesn’t have time to work on.

One problem he has is that Capterra, the software comparison platform, doesn’t offer an easy way to manage advertising on the site. He has to set thousands of different bids manually. He suggested building a Chrome extension to help manage and optimise bids.

If you want to build it, you’ll find potential customers easily - simply look at the companies on Capterra. The downside is Capterra could conceivably block it.

Another idea discussed towards the end of the episode was an alternative to Trip Advisor & Lonely Planet - an app with adventures for each city. Each adventure would be a randomised series of tasks curated by locals. Users would be encouraged to upload photos/videos on social media. I think to make this really stand out, the app should be as interactive as possible, and include short videos from the locals.

Moving onto My First Million, Sam Parr chatted with guest, Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo.

Noah revealed that one of Appsumo’s early growth drivers was buying WordPress plugins. He spent 6 figures on them and thinks this strategy can be replicated in other domains. The key is to identify things people aren’t paying attention to that you can buy at a below market rate. (This can also apply to ad channels - Appsumo made a ton of money through FB ads before they became so competitive.)

Noah tried to repeat his success by buying a Chrome extension, paying $25k for 40k active installs. But he found that in that case, he couldn’t monetise it at all.

Noah also tried to acquire Spotify apps. But he found that app owners were more demanding, asking for 10x revenue. So he declined.

Browsing Appsumo is one way to assess SaaS business opportunities. Look at the most successful companies on there, then think about similar products you could build. Can you build something simpler, with better UX, or for a slightly different audience?

On Startups For The Rest Of Us, host Rob Walling, chatted with Courtland, founder of Indie Hackers. They both spoke candidly about their mental health challenges during the pandemic. Courtland lost his drive and his sense of purpose. After 6 months, he worked it out, realising that there was plenty of meaning in making Indie Hackers better.

Meanwhile, Rob barely got out of bed for a few days. He didn’t want to do anything. Fortunately, they both came back strong. If you’ve had a tough time at some point during the pandemic, know that you’re not the only one.

Cal, from the Shit You Don't Learn in School podcast, described how he tested different habits to improve his physical and mental health. He found that the game changer was simply going outside within an hour of waking. This is a recommendation from Dr. Andrew Huberman, a professor whose content is taking the internet by storm. By getting natural light early in the day, you ensure that cortisol and melatonin are released at the right times of the day. This gives you energy and helps you fall asleep at night time.

Cal might have been sleeping badly due to some risky trading - he and his co-host, Steph Smith, revealed that they both lost money shorting the stock market. They also regretted it because they were constantly checking the market, costing them time and energy that they should have spent on their businesses. I actually had the same experience...“Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” - John Maynard Keynes

Steph also mentioned how Clubhouse is struggling. I checked its ranking in app stores, as well as its website visitors. Both are falling.

Steph thinks Clubhouse is in trouble because people found it novel but then realised that having to showing up in real time isn't ideal compared to asynchronous communication. I’m inclined to agree.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Pieter Levels talking about crypto on the IndieHackers podcast:

“I know people in the crypto world and they go to the big crypto exchanges, they pay money to get listed. And then once the coin gets listed, everyone who knows it’s going to get listed has already bought in. Which is insider trading, but it’s legal because it’s crypto. And then it bumps, it 10x’s...it has all the red flags of every internet bubble.”

If you’d like me to continue writing these summaries, and get them in your inbox once or twice a month, I'd appreciate you subscribing and upvoting this post so it gets seen by more than 5 people. Thanks for reading!

Podcast episodes mentioned:

Business Brainstorms with David Kofoed Wind

My First Million with Noah Kagan

Startups For the Rest Of Us with Courtland

Shit You Don't Learn in School- The Best Sh*t We Learned in 2021

IndieHackers podcast with Pieter Levels