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291 Brenden Mulligan - From Founding Startups to Problem-Solving For Podcasters

Episode Summary

Brenden Mulligan is an entrepreneur who cut his teeth in the music industry before going on to become co-founder of startups such as Onesheet, Cluster Labs, LaunchKit, Elevate, and PodPage, to name a few. Brenden shares these experiences on today’s episode and speaks to his passion for problem-solving and building products that customers love. Brenden and Harry discuss Brenden’s time at Google, what he has learned from multiple startup exits, and the current trajectory and state of the podcast industry.

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Key Takeaways

06:32 – Brenden Mulligan shares his experience in the ‘traditional’ music industry and what inspired him to make a career shift to tech

13:37 – Building the dashboard, Artist Data

20:01 – An entrepreneurial mindset and launching multiple products

24:38 – Life at Google, Frontline Foods and Elevate

29:24 – The origin of PodPage and the most interesting thing Brenden has learned from the podcast industry

38:58 – The importance of SEO (Search Optimization Engine)

46:01 – Value for value

49:10 – Brenden speaks to the results of ramping up his marketing efforts

55:29 – Something Brenden has changed his mind about recently and the most misunderstood thing about him

57:12 – Harry thanks Brenden for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can connect with him and learn more about PodPage

Tweetable Quotes

“What I started hearing and seeing and experiencing was, as the digital music world was growing, how hard it was for musicians to interact with it. And so, I ended up leaving the traditional music industry to build software tools for musicians.” (08:07) (Brenden)

“I would be speaking at these music conferences and the drum that we would beat was, ‘Direct connection with your listeners. Do not go through platforms as your only way of reaching them.’ Okay, what’s the best way to do direct connection? Email us, put it on your website. How do I build a website? And so I ended up building OneSheet, which was a turnkey website builder for musicians.” (21:19) (Brenden)

“I launched, I think, twelve companies, and all of them failed, except PodPage. Most of them didn’t even have a shot to succeed. I just gave myself the total flexibility to just have fun building again and get that muscle back. And I also helped other startups just as a fun way of networking and getting back in the startup world.” (29:03) (Brenden)

“In my opinion, Spotify is the only player in the entire podcasting space that are trying to break what’s special about podcasts. Spotify is actively trying to get you to not allow other people to listen unless you listen on Spotify.” (44:05) (Brenden)

“The way that we typically work is we try as hard as possible to use third-party tools that are solving a problem really well. I really want to focus on just building the best website. That’s it.” (47:31) (Brenden)

“Organic growth and podcasters selling podcasters is by far our best source of new customers.” (53:12) (Brenden)