Why Is ‘Content-Only’ a Dirty Phrase in Podcasting?

A $100m bet on a European super-producer doesn’t seem so crazy to me

A few years ago, I saw a small VC firm advertising for some sort of Digital Marketing Specialist on LinkedIn. At the time, I was still in the mood for the occasional cold pitch, so I emailed the guy who ran the firm (someone from a very prominent and controversial family) explaining why, instead of hiring a new staff member, he should consider investing in a podcast series, specifically one made for him by my company.

He obviously — and quite thrillingly — misread my email, and thought that I was cold pitching my company for VC investment. To his credit though, he responded to tell me that he, and his firm, were “not interested in content only businesses”. Which is to say that, if you’re coming with a media proposition, it better be ‘media tech’ rather than mere ‘media’.

I thought about this brief, confused encounter when I saw reports this week that Copenhagen-based podcast company Podimo has raised $78m in Series B funding, bringing their total funding way over $100m (putting them in an elite group with folk like Luminary and Himalaya (real luminaries…)). Anyhow, $100m (aka 1/10th of a billion dollars) is a lot of money and begs the question: what is Podimo? What makes it so damn sexy?