HelloCast

I published a lengthy update yesterday about our first 24 hours in promoting HelloCast's private launch. Is it private if I'm sitting here talking about it, and anyone can visit the home page and sign up for it?

Today brought a couple interesting opportunities.

1. I had a live chat on the website with a podcaster who needed more convincing of what HelloCast really looks like and does. So I created a video for him, and anyone else I get that question from in the next few days, here: https://youtu.be/s8GGNGoqD04. I'm glad I was forced to do this.

2. I had two people — on Thanksgiving, a major holiday in the US — notice their podcasts weren't being imported correctly. My co-founder Phil Baylog, the developer, sprang into action, finding the bug, squashing it, and both were exceedingly happy. One even went so far as to tell us he sees HelloCast as a game changer for podcasters.

So rewarding.

We finished the day at 20 paying podcasters after 2 days. With no formal launch plan where we had an existing list of X thousands of podcasters, no paid ads, no partnerships with people who could instantly send us automatic customers, and with it not even officially being Black Friday, we're ecstatic with the initial momentum.

We're currently running v0.0.17, sitting at just shy of 70 beta users of HelloCast.

Is that many? No. I see a post talking about all the steps one app builder took to get 400 right out of the gates. But 70 is gratifying when we consider what it took to pull them in, and when we look at the initial feedback we've gotten from many.

We pulled these 70 in from friends who podcast, cold outreach, and a late-night post in a single Facebook group for podcasters (25 new requests came through this way, within 12 hours).

We added no tutorials, no tooltips, no 'guides to getting started.' We want to see how intuitive HelloCast is all by itself, with no one holding users' hands. Maybe it's risky to do things this way, but:

a) We get an immediate feel for how easy to use our app is.
b) Initial feedback has validated that.
c) We do have resources and guides planned.

It's been really rewarding getting started so far. Podcasters will be better off using HelloCast than hacking together systems to manage their workflows and production process.

We've launched v0.0.8 with numerous tweaks provided directly from our first wave of beta users.

Updates include:

• Better calendar view. A podcaster can now see their upcoming interviews and an overview of their released episodes in one fresh interface.
• Mobile- and tablet-friendly. HelloCast can now be used via mobile browser.
• More episode types. Interviews, panels, solo episodes, and co-hosted episodes are all available.
• Import your podcast simply by adding your RSS feed.

And here's what's coming soon:

• Numerous podcaster-friendly checklists. Interview prep, recording, editing, publishing, promoting, and more. Nine in the works.
• Context-specific help resources and tutorial videos not just on how to use the app, but how to produce a professional podcast, from people responsible for podcasts producing over 1M downloads.

We're about to invite another 300 podcasters into the beta before gearing up for the public launch within 30 days.

We're officially up to 36 people requesting access to HelloCast. Some discovered through cold outreach, others discovered through a post on Reddit. We've given them all access, and about half have actually created their accounts now.

It's an amazing thing — inviting other people to try out an app you've had in mind for a year and have talked with others about, but have only tested yourself. The things you never thought of that it could or should do. It's exciting and eye-opening.

Saying in the last post that we don't allow for people to sign up by themselves just felt annoying. Too manual for us.

So...we fixed that. As long as I give people the link (I still want to throttle things a bit), we can allow podcasters into HelloCast to set their own password and begin testing our app.

Two dozen podcasters who originally raised their hand are now in and testing us out. If you're a podcaster and want in, too, let me know.

We're now live (sort of)! I can invite people in to test out our app. We don't have a feature to allow people to sign up on their own yet. That's a little ways off, after we get some real-world beta users in and kicking the tires.

We officially started building HelloCast in July/August 2018. It's a very clean, minimal, non-distracting user experience. It does what it's supposed to do in a simple manner, and we've decided to invite a few podcasters in with NO tutorials, to truly test how straightforward the user experience actually is.

There's no help guide, no knowledge base, and no in-app chat. With only a few features being what I would call 'clever' or game-changing at this stage, and with so many podcasters having hacked together their own episode-planning process, we didn't want to direct people to use HelloCast in one specific way. Yet.

We want to give podcasters access and let them give us feedback from there. We're excited to start building more podcaster-specific features that you'll never find in Google Sheets, Google Calendar, Airtable, or even the much-beloved Trello.

So, what does it do?

When you open HelloCast, you're able to start adding episodes or guests, whichever you work from first. Those episodes might be ones you'd like to someday produce based on certain topics, or ones you'd like to someday produce involving certain guests. You then add all your episode (and/or guest) details. You can give each episode a status. You can attach those guests to episodes. You can push episodes that have been recorded or released to Google Calendar.

You can add all of your preparation notes — the notes you compile in advance of an interview, for example. You can add attachments so they're in one place — think headshots of your guest, logos from your episode sponsors, anything else. You can separate out all the links you'll want to re-visit as you do final prep. You can add all your guest's contact information so it's easily referenced.

There are a few more interesting bells and whistles.

It doesn't integrate directly with other tools. But...you can type your show notes into HelloCast while recording your episode and include rich-text formatting, then single-click copy all of those notes for quick pasting into WordPress, retaining all formatting and embedded links.

We're excited about the value and happy with the experience we've built so far, but are really eager to get feedback from other podcasters. Want in? Ping me, I'll give you a link to join our first wave of beta users.