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Founder's Story
He Built a Startup That Books 5% of All Podcast Interviews—With No Code. | Ep. 275 with Parker Olson Co-Founder of Podpitch
00:28:17
From hacking together no-code tools to accidentally discovering a billion-dollar problem, Parker Olson shares the raw, chaotic, and deeply human journey behind building PodPitch. From living in a tent, to a hacked Twitter with 750K followers, to being wrongfully arrested while pushing his last company forward—this episode dives into the brutal truth of entrepreneurship, the future of solopreneurs, and the exact process behind validating, pricing, and scaling a software product in 2025.
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Transcript33 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. It's good to have you today because you and I had a really fun conversation last time. This time we started off with dreams and how you're taking magnesium now and. And your dreams have just been crazy off the wall. You gave me one. It sounded like a movie. But I think something that I'm really interested to talk with you is I've always dreamt about creating an app, creating software, but it always failed. And at the same time, I use your app and software pod pitch on a daily basis. So I wanted to see from you the whole entire process as if somebody like myself, I want to solve a problem, I know a software I want to build, but I don't know the, you know, the zero to a hundred. I'm confused. I don't know what to do. So I'd love go through with you this whole process. So can you go back to the beginning stage of how did you come up with the problem to solve?
- [01:00]
B
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So the first place I think is worthwhile starting is like a lot of people want to start with the end in mind, right? How can I get to $100 million? The reality is, I think upfront, like being, being curious is sort of stage number one. So rewind. Right. Two, three years ago, was working with a VA at the time and she was doing influencer outreach for us. And all of a sudden she was, she was able to reach like custom messaging to influencers on TikTok at like 3 or 400, like an hour. And I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, oh, I found this cool new tool. It's called Bardeen. It's a web scraping tool, allows me to like, basically like code it without actually coding. Right. It's a code free tool where it scrapes all the data off of TikTok, off of search results, and it pulls it into the spreadsheet. And I can super quickly automate the outreach. And I'm like, damn, that's super cool. And around that same time, I had been invited on some podcasts and had sort of, it had sort of brought some interesting traction to my old company that I used to run. It's called Forage. And you know, some people had listened to it and reached out and wanted to carry it. It was a food product in their grocery stores. And so in my mind, right. My problem statement was like, okay, cool, I want to go on more podcasts and how can I do that? And, you know, I was sort of going the traditional route that a lot of people still do today. Which is I was sort of like manually looking up podcasts. I was trying to find them, trying to find their contact information, listen to a bit of an episode and like send an email and you know, I'm like, damn, this sucks. I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna do this for a long time. I, I can guarantee that. And then I was just kind of hanging out and this other tool that I was loving, I was just like, I want to spend, I want to like dig into this other tool. It feels, feels like there's something really powerful here. Like, how could I use it to sort of perform like a fun project that would be meaningful for our business? And what I thought about was, you know, why can't I use this to help pull in a bunch of information about relevant podcasts and then sort of help me scale out like the research, identification and outreach process to these podcasts. So I think like early on it was just like this sort of natural, curious intuition that like, whoa, this tool could be really powerful. Like, what's the current problem I have today that like this could help solve? And part of it was just playing around. I would just get on there and play around and like mess around in this tool. It's called, it was called Bardeen. Still, still around, still, still works really well. And so I always think like step number one is like, figure out and like go out and play with some of these code free tools. Right. Another great tool that I think is a lovely example is clay. Clay is just like, there's so much power there. You can pull in data sources, you can transform data sources with LLMs really easily, you know, and you can create output and it's all code free. So does that, does that sort of help sort of like set the scene in terms of like, like I'm thinking day one, if you want to build a software, like get onto some of these tools that are code free and can help sort of transform data and create an output that can potentially solve a problem.
- [03:59]
A
Yeah. You know, when I built some softwares before, I think the problem looking back was I was trying to solve a problem that I didn't really have. So I didn't necessarily. I wasn't so bought into it because I wouldn't use it myself. And I was more replicating what I knew was on the market. Like I, I worked with something and I knew, okay, I'm going to replicate this because it came out first, I'm going to be second to market, but I never would even use it. And then a lot of issues came about because it was first I didn't anticipate. And so I love your idea of you build something that you use and then if you use it then you know other people will definitely have the same problem and use it too. So now, okay, so you've built it. I love what you're saying around you can create an MVP now without any knowledge, which is insane. Like it's insanity. How, how the times we're living in. So you build this app, you get this data, you put it together and then how do you actually get traction? Because I think that's the other piece that people are like, okay, I build something but it's not easy to get significant traction.
- [05:09]
B
Totally. Yeah, yeah, Just one last point on that and then we'll go to traction. I also think a lot of people who are non technical get caught up and like to spend time on like the visual component or like the user interface or the like front end component. And it's like, oh, I'm going to like build wireframes in Claude and like that's all great. Like, like that can be helpful. But like I would say really focus on getting like, like a concrete like something that's actually being created or happening. Right. My general mental framework is like transforming data to create an output that has value to some audience. Now to your point, you know, actually gaining traction way harder than everybody thinks. Everybody thinks, oh, I'm gonna build a great product and then I'm just gonna sell it and then I'm gonna be a millionaire. And like the reality is great companies die every single day because they can't find customers and, or communicate to potential customers in a really effective way and put together a good offer or a good price that makes it easy for a customer to say yes and growth and demand generation is really challenging. This took us about man 6 months to like even crack. And what I'll say is, and I, and I come back to this, like if I was going to start another company tomorrow, like I would start here, honestly is like find the person who's willing to actually give you money for whatever you're building. And of course that sounds somewhat intuitive, but the important part here is give you money, like actually exchange dollars. Right. It's very easy for somebody to say, oh, this tool's really cool. Great job. Wow. Yeah, yeah, this would solve a lot of our problems. Wow. Yes, this is so great. But if they're not giving you money, then it's really not great. And so what I used to do and I think this is a super easy playbook. I actually, I met a woman who's working on of software here locally in Brooklyn at a party, and she's running this playbook right now, which I'm pretending is awesome. Is okay, you, let's say you think you've built something that creates value or solves a problem, but you don't know how to find people. You don't know how to sell it. If I were to go back again, I would kind of run the same playbook. I would first theorize, okay, who has this problem? Where does this problem exist? And then I would go onto LinkedIn and I would spend 50 to 80 bucks a month to create like a LinkedIn outreach automation to this audience and say, hey, you know, I like think I solved this problem. You know, I have no experience. Like, do you have 10 minutes for feedback? Like, and I like to play the card of being like, I'm helpless. I don't know. But I think I can solve your problem. Like, people like to help other people. And we ran that and I was, you know, I was getting on the phone with people in public relations who we thought was maybe our primary use case of our tool. I'd maybe get on the phone with like five to 10 people in PR a week. And I, and I was really kind of not there to sell. But of course you're there to sell, right? It's, it's a fine line. And what I would show them is, is I would show them the product and what we're building and how it looks and what it does, and they're like, yeah, wow, that solves a lot of. That solves a big problem for us, right? Like, doing media outreach is really time consuming and challenging, and finding podcasts is hard. And I'm like, okay, cool, awesome. And what we realized is over time, for like three months, everybody was giving great feedback, but nobody was like, I want to pay for this right now. And so we sort of changed our strategy where what we would do is I would tell people, I'd be like, look, at the end of this call, I'm going to ask you an uncomfortable conversation. And I would lead with that. And they're kind of like, oh, haha. Like, okay. And we'd go through it and they'd be like, wow, this is so cool. And I'd be like, okay, so I have to ask for the sake of, of our company, like, why will you not pay for this right now? Like $10? Like, like, you know, like, why wouldn't you give me $10? For this right now. Like, I. I could accept your money over this phone and tell me why. And that's where people, they're like, oh. And that's where they give you, like, the real feedback. You know, they're like, oh, well, like, I. I can't spend money on anything. That's my boss decision. Or they're like, oh, well, like, we actually have this other tool. It kind of already does the same thing, but your tool could be better. But, like, you know, teaching my team the tool would be really painful. And like, you know, like, there's. We're really busy, and you're like, okay, so it's not that relevant, right? Or in our case, which. Which I think is a natural progression. It finally got to the point where the woman was like, I would give you money right now if it could do this one additional other thing. And in my mind, we had already built that. We just weren't showing it because all the positive feedback we were getting wasn't about that little, small other thing. And when we finally added that small little thing in and literally what happened, I said, okay, I'm going to come back on the phone with you in three hours. Give me three hours. Went back, put it together, came back on the phone, showed her that it worked, and she got.
- [09:46]
A
She.
- [09:46]
B
She goes here, pulls out her credit card, and she paid us on the spot. And that was the product that ended up scaling. And that's where that was like the first unlock where we're like, this is actually something. Is like something that, like, this type of customer is willing to give us money for. But I think that, like, subtlety of like, oh, like, let me get feedback. Everybody says it's great, which means it's going to sell. Is. Is not the fuck. Excuse me, Is not the reality. Everybody's nice. Everybody gives good feedback. Once you can find people who are really actually willing to give you a dollar or $2 or real money, that's how you know, you're. You're. You're sort of onto something.
- [10:22]
A
That's kind of how we got started. If you think you and I, because I was like, hey, I got this email and it says this one thing. And you're like, oh, wow, okay, let me fix that. And you're like, da, da, da. Okay, fixed. But you bring up something really interesting. A couple many things. Something I'm going to go back to because this happened to me too, is originally I thought I was going to be serving more of a certain B2C customer, but when I found out that I can actually help businesses who are serving those people. It actually allowed me to lead gen at basically almost a free rate because they were referring me to other people referring to me, other people. Also I barely had to do any sales because I knew they needed it. Where if I had to sell direct to like B2C I have to do a lot of the selling and the process is longer even though our margin would be higher. But still in the end they knock and they're going to churn faster. So I'm like, so I, when I found, okay, I can actually help agencies, that was an unlock for us in terms of a significant growth trajectory. While at the same time, you know, the slower, the B2C style. So I can totally see that. And the other part of like you're saying is somebody willing to give you money because people are very positive on their phone like you said, people never want to tell you the truth. I don't know if they want to hurt your feelings or what. But I, I, I like the digging man. That's like an old, that reminds me like old school sales training tactics right there where it's like the, the overcoming objections. If they say this, what is it? Zig Ziglar. It was like everyone says no, it was like this no means this, this no means that. I forget the, the quote. I, I butchered it. But, but that's, I think that I can totally relate to those things. And I would imagine most apps or software, they die because of that because they're not really focused on getting the money, which if you don't have any money or you just do it for free, how long? Unless you're raising hundreds of millions and eventually you'll run out of money. So it sounds like you unlocked it, you started getting revenue, you figured out what the people really want and then what?
- [12:41]
B
Yes. So then it's sort of like, it's like pricing and like scale. You know, how do you attract this audience at scale? And like, you know, pricing's really challenging. Pricing is still something we, we mess around with and think about all the time because it's one of those things where it's a lot of trial and error. You know, you could think about cost plus pricing, you could think about competitor like based pricing, you could think about value creation based pricing. There's pros and cons to all them. Like we've sort of gone down a bit of like a value based pricing ethos and the reality is, is like you kind of just have to try things. It's going to be super messy early, but like the important thing is getting money in the door. And so what we used to do is like, we'd be like, okay, cool, like we're going to sell it. Well, initially off the bat, we knew that, okay, we want to build a business model that, that is, that is reoccurring by design. Reoccurring business models are more valuable than transactional business models. And so that was like a non negotiable. The other non negotiable is like we wanted it to be a really fast sales cycle because again, it's like, look, if this is a 10, 10 week sales cycle, we're not getting feedback until 10 weeks from now. And so how do we sell something where somebody could make a decision really quickly? Again, part of it was like we need to eat and like live. But the other part of it is like you get a lot of feedback data really fast. So we are like, okay, we need to craft an offer that is reoccurring. And so, you know, we, we did subscription based pricing and we, we started with like, okay, we'll do like maybe an intro price. And then we tested different price points. And on calls we would literally like somebody be sold, they'd be like, cool, like, how much is this?
- [14:18]
A
Right?
- [14:18]
B
And that's after you've sold it, like, like you kind of know this, this type of person's willing to buy. This is a real problem they have. And it's just like, cool. It's 2.99amonth, it's 3.99amonth, it's 5.99amonth. 699amonth, right? And you start to get a sense of like where you start to get a gauge, right, of sort of like where most people are landing. And that I think is a really good initial step. I think the step two of that, which like I'm not, I don't think we've done an excellent job at, and it's something we're working on right now is thinking about tiered pricing for like the different type of customer. You know, our kind of pricing sort of opts out certain smaller types of customers because it's too expensive for them. And then really big customers, like they're like, oh, this is nothing. Right? And so like in reality, like paying attention to that over time and setting up tiers where it's like, okay, you can kind of get more coverage on your, on your customer base while providing specifically to their needs, I think is sort of that next step. But it's super trial and error off the bat and understanding, okay, what's scalable, what actually builds a good business model. So that's pricing. It's a, it's a huge challenge for everyone. There is no magic bullet. The second component is how do you actually grow? How do you actually reach the audience? And for us, you know, it's just like, okay, where does our audience hang out? Like, and a lot of it again is trial and error. But what we found early on is like we tried kind of advertising, we tried doing different outreach methods. And then we partnered with a substack newsletter that was to PR agencies. It was pretty small. They have like 900 followers, maybe not even like 500 followers. And we placed one advertisement in there and we booked like 75 demos in three days. And we were like, holy shit. Like, okay, like, clearly the messaging is hitting on like a real pain point, right? And like the audience is clearly right here. And like that was sort of the start for us. But we had to do a lot of discovery and trying different things to find that type of like intro or like that type of sort of spark.
- [16:12]
A
And so how many people, people do you have using it now?
- [16:15]
B
I think we have over like 5,000 active users. We like over 5,000 active users. We're responsible for about anywhere from like 4 to 5% of all English speaking podcast interviews that get booked every week. Those, those are, those are some of the high level stats.
- [16:29]
A
Where do you want to be and where do you want to take this? Like you said in the beginning, many people like, I want to build this app because I want to be a billionaire. And we already know probably not going to happen. But where do you, where do you see the future of this and how do you want to be 35% of all podcasts?
- [16:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, I don't know. I think, yeah, it's like podcasts, we love to continue to be focused. Like, you know, at this point it's like cool. We know who our customers. We'd love to continue solving problems for them. Right. And building solutions. And like, that also looks outside of the podcast realm, right? It looks sort of at like the media realm as a whole. So I think really building more into this, like alternative media worlds, but broad media worlds as a whole. Because our problem that we're solving for podcasts, right. This sort of media outreach process exists in other channels as well. And we've built a lot of infrastructure to support that. So, you know, why not solve that problem in adjacent categories as well where our exact same customer has that exact Same problem.
- [17:25]
A
I like it like this. You solve one problem, and you be damn good at solving that one problem. And then once you get those people, you realize the other problems that they have that are kind of aligned with what you're doing. And then you bring one in. You bring one in. I think sometimes I've seen people do like 10 things at one time, and it's like, how do you sell all that? And it's complicated. And, you know, nobody, you know, confused minds don't buy. The other thing that my wife always told me, my wife always told me was be the medicine, not the supplement. And I always thought, oh, yeah, I love that.
- [17:59]
B
Yeah. Vitamin, pain pill, not vitamin. There's. There's. There's a few frameworks that I like, hold very dearly.
- [18:05]
A
That.
- [18:05]
B
That was one. Early on, I was like, look, like we cannot build a vitamin because. And, and. And maybe to break it down for people, like, another framework I really like, and this is from an entrepreneurship class at an undergrad, is like, most businesses operate in. Successful businesses operate in three realms. They either solve jobs, right? Solve or, like, remedy pain or, or create a gain, right? And when we think across all three of those, solving a job that somebody has to complete is inherently valuable for them because they have to do it no matter what, right? Like, at the end of the day, like, that has to get ticked. And if you can solve that job really well for them, it's really valuable. Remedying a pain, right? Somebody is. Is in a lot of pain. Like, you know, they have a horrible backache. Well, if you give them a pill and you say, wow, you take this pill, you're gonna have no pain. Super valuable. People hate pain. They'll do anything to get rid of pain. And then you have gains, right? Creating a gain can be valuable, right? Oh, I want to be hydrated right now, right? Okay, I could go buy some electrolyte salts. But that is inherently a supplement, and that is not something where if I have a pain or a job to do is going to be a priority. It sort of is like the, like, deprioritized quadrant. Now, if you can do all three of those things, it's like fucking magic, right? But when thinking about the framing of, like, what type of solution does our product provide? Is it a supplement which is sort of the gain?
- [19:29]
A
Or.
- [19:30]
B
Or is. Is it a. Is it a pain pill, right? Which is sort of this job and pain concept. It's. It's definitely. You definitely do not want to build a company around a vitamin. You do not want to do that.
- [19:40]
A
It reminds me of those old school copy people. Like, move people away from pain, don't move people to pleasure, because if you really want to close, you got to focus on moving people away from pain, because that's really what everybody wants. What is one of the craziest or standout stories during your whole life of entrepreneurship? Was there a moment where it was like, I'm losing everything and you know, like, the highs, like, I just closed a million dollar deal and then the next five minutes I just lost a $2 million deal? You know, like, what are those moments? Like this standout moment in your life?
- [20:17]
B
Yeah, I mean, man, I feel like I've blacked them out. Um, but so probably, probably at a company. Yeah, yeah, probably at a company. Or. Okay, I have a few ones. So early on, I built a Twitter account to like 750,000 followers, and one day it got hacked and I lost access to it for like two months and then was able to regain access through this, like, complicated Twitter process. But I remember waking up that morning and being like, oh my God, like somebody hacked. And I thought, like, that was going to like, make my life, you know, I thought my life was like, made. So that was maybe one. And then the other one is for, for my last business, Forage, which was like a health food startup, you know, Again, it was, it was a vitamin concept. Big learnings. CPG is really hard. I, I, I moved into, so I lived out of a tent for two years in, in my backyard in Seattle. And I threw up my bed and we used the bedroom as like our office, which was, I think, just awesome. But probably more notably after that stint, I moved into a pop up camper van and I drove around the country for about a year and I would stop at grocery headquarters and try and sell our product in. And I remember one day, like I was carrying a lot of product in the van, but it was really hot, like in the South. And like one day I like, dropped off a ton of samples to like 60 locations of stores, and they were all spoiled. Like, like had gone like, literally bad and were like, like, like smelt like throw up. And I remember like my heart sinking. And then a week later I, I, I was, I, like, I was at a thrift store and I bought something and I got bedbugs in the van from this thing. I thrifted. And then I got wrongfully arrested for a felony like three weeks later. And, and I was, I was really low. You could say I was, I was really a dark place.
- [22:03]
A
That's Why I say, like, entrepreneurship is, is for the 1% and it's not because like everyone can do it and I hope everyone can do it or does do it because I want them to have the freedom. I want them to be able to do something meaningful without just being fired from your corporate job. But at the same time, the mind, the, it's a mental game that is like, like every time I hear a story of like this person was successful, I want to ask them, like, what, what percentage of time were you just like scared, depressed, like versus, you know, you got the exit or you got the whatever success, but you know, what cost? How many relationships did you give up? I've, we've had so many billionaires on this show and they're like all divorced and they always tell us the same thing. Like it always was at the cost of every relationship they ever had, whether it was their kids, their, their wife or husband, their spouse. So it's great that you shared. I think it's always good for people to hear this. At the same time, we're going through an interesting, interesting era where AI is, I for sure AI is going to replace so many jobs. Like Amazon just laid 14,000 people up and even said it was partially, probably 90% due to AI. I'm just guessing. And so these people, what are they going to do? You know, these aren't, these are people most likely making decent salaries that probably can't find, you know, the same thing very quickly at another job that's going to replace them. So I think people are going to listen to this. Parker. Parker Olson from POD Pitch co founder People are going to listen to this and they're going to be like, holy crap, I'm going to solve that problem because it's never been a better time to do it. And then I'm going to tell Parker about the problem I'm solving and then I'm going to go and get Pod Pitch because I need to, I need to get on podcasts and talk about it.
- [23:59]
B
Well, just, just actually circling it back to the beginning, right? I, I, there, there I kind of heard this take that I really liked, which is like, yeah, like there's sort of this like degrading of jobs and, and, and people who are, who are smart and there, there's a hypothesis that like they're like the explosion in solopreneurs is like happening right now and like people are going to be building these like hyper niche like super specific softwares or companies that solve a very specific problem and like live an excellent lifestyle. You know like you don't have to build a hundred million dollar company to like win and like, and like be flexible and like have a good income. Like you could build a $500,000 a year company and be the only employee and you know, take home a salary of 300k and, and, and make your own hours and not work a ton. Like that I think is like going to be a really interesting reality for a lot of people and you know, people who are willing and open minded to kind of like continue to work with these tools and, and really see the value of them.
- [24:56]
A
I think times have changed. Like you said it's, it used to be the only success was to do the big exit. And in the US other countries is not always the same. I, I know, you know, in Asia it's really about legacy. Like I know people that have been a part of their family business for a hundred years. Like I don't even know anyone in the US that's been a part of a company for, I don't even know anyone's kids that want to take over a business. Right. But yeah, it's like you got to sell the business which means you got to raise a bunch of money and you got to do this and you got like. And then I know people that raise a bunch of money, it looks great but they own like 01% and they exit and they make like $10,000 and they sold for like a hundred million. And you're like what the heck happened? So I, I'm with you. Somebody told me a few years ago, a good friend of mine, after he exited he was like look, I think what's going to happen is like everyone's going to be like on a freelance basis, like you said, kind of the solopreneur style. Like they're not going to want a job, they're not going to want to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week for one person. They're going to take on multiple people, they're going to do different things and I think we're seeing that with younger people, they don't want to work. I don't know many people under the age of 30 that want to work 50 hours a week for one company. Like they know, they know it's, it's not stable. They're seeing their parents, their people, their, their older siblings getting fired, things changing. And also I think we realize like you said, happiness, like what's the cost of the hustle at, you know, if, if you can be happy, you make good, decent money, take home. But Parker, this has been great, by the way. I started with cpg, so I know I, I, when you started talking about. I used to go to grocery stores and selling. It is, it is a. People do not understand how hard.
- [26:42]
B
Don't start a CBG company.
- [26:45]
A
Inventory. Oh my Amazon. Oh my. I have a story about Amazon that like, I can't even talk about. It was so bad. But if people want to get in touch with you, Parker, they want to find out more about Pod Pitch. How can they do.
- [26:56]
B
So, you know, podpitch.com or you know, find me on LinkedIn. I'm, I'm probably decently active on, on LinkedIn or you drop me an email, right, Parker? Podpitch.com.
- [27:04]
A
So I gotta say, I've used pretty much every single pitching. This is not just to plug or sell your, your, your software, but I've used pretty much every pitching software. And I have to say, Pod Pitch is by far the best I've seen and it's, it's pretty far ahead of any competitor that I've used. I've used pretty much all of them. We actually are, I think. How long have I been using now? Like a week. I think. We've booked, I think we booked five shows, I think.
- [27:33]
B
Awesome.
- [27:33]
A
We booked five shows. I think it's been a week and we haven't even really figured out like, yeah, like dialed it in, get it dialed in and all that. But man, thank you for today. I hope that we inspire other people to go out there, start something and build something and change the future, man.
- [27:52]
B
Yeah, let's do it, brother. It's good, good to chat and thanks for, thanks for the sleep supplement recommendation as always and good, good to see you.
- [27:59]
A
I know, right? I don't want to say their name because they don't sponsor us anymore, but, but try, try some magnesium if you, if you're having hard time sleeping. There's some good magnesium out there, but barcode is great. Thanks for joining.