Great Business Idea #1
A kllr podcast app
ToC // 1-README / 2-Pitch / 3-Problem / 4-Market & Opportuniy / 5-Solution
README
I am theval. I work for a major U.S. media company. I'm the founder of a pre-rev startup.
How to avoid the Facebook saga:
Ideas are worthless. Execution is priceless.
If you are inspired  | If you are greedy | If you are soulless |
|---|---|---|
| by this post and want to help build Killer App with me, drop a note! This will be an open source, collaborative effort where contributors will earn for any money the website makes us. | and want to take the idea and run, don't. Obviously no one can stop you, but you are hurting the entire community of developers, ideators, and hustlers by doing so. | and don't care, you can at least give attribution! To do so, just write #theval on the website, app, etc. that you make, right next the logo 😏. This will allow more great business ideas to be shared with the rest of the world. |
Now, let's begin.
Kllr App
Kllr App enhances the podcast listening experience by serving listeners what they want, when they want it.
Machine learning and rich data have disrupted the way we listen to music, watch videos, and share content. Audio publishing has not seen the same transformation. Kllr App is the Spotify, meets Netflix, meets Soundcloud for podcasts.
Problem
If we look at the podcast app market today we see that the entire space is seriously lagging behind. Most podcast apps are simply low-fi audio players that make money from ugly ads. The native apps that come on your iPhone or Android are just better looking audio players.
Where is the data?
Where are the relationships between podcasts, episodes, creators, and individual listeners? The lack of a data filled network is what causes the listening experience to suffer.
Today, the onus is on the podcast listener to discover this new content themselves.
- Podcast creators are within a community, so they reference each other and recommend the podcasts of other creators commonly, but the listener has no direct route to this recommendation. Not only is this an inconvenience, but it is also a detriment to all podcast creators.
- Many podcasts cover different topics for each episode. If a listener wants to learn more about a given topic, they have no way of knowing where to go next unless the creator tells them. Even then they are responsible for finding the resources.
Ads in the podcast space are less effective than billboards at a train stop.
Though dynamic advertising has been on the rise, most podcasts still use pre-recorded ads that are not targeted and have no interaction capabilities. This means there is no way to track ad effectiveness.
Where is the feedback?
On YouTube, video creators have tons of data to determine how viewers are engaging with each video. The creator knows when they started, stopped, skipped, took a break, shared with a friend, decided to like the video, etc. Podcast listening is a much more passive experience and there are little to no action items for listeners to take advantage of. Therefore, the most feedback that the creator has is from comments.
Market & Opportunity
Right now 67M people are suffering from this deficit of innovation in the podcast space. That number of monthly active podcast listeners is growing 14% each year. Even with the lack of data within podcast advertising, ad revenue has doubled each year from 2015 to 2017 and has now reached $220M.
This growth is made possible by ever increasing commute times and data plans that make streaming services and quick downloads seamless. The early adopters of this phenomenon are coastal elites who spend much of their time traveling for work and use unlimited data plans. They also are the Netflix and Spotify subscribers--so instant gratification and a never ending stream of quality content is their expectation.
Solution
Kllr App analyzes each podcast episode to feed additional content to the user based on what the host says. This means as the listener hears the podcast they will add related podcasts to their playlist, they will save related articles to read before bed, they will surf ads to purchase a birthday gift for their sister. They will always get recommendations for what to listen to next. A premium service allows users to pay a small monthly fee to get an ad free experience.
On the backend, podcast creators get insight into what their listeners like and dislike without having to read through comments. Advertisers can use dynamic ads and see their effectiveness in terms of content, placement, and targeting.
Footnote
This is the first post in my Great Business Idea series. See, I have a problem. My brain is full, FULL, of ideas. Some of them I actually begin to execute on. Most of them are jotted down in a little yellow notebook and will never see the light of day.. until now! This series is dedicated to sharing my brain with the world so that hopefully you become inspired to help me make one of these a reality.