The best podcasts are based on personal, highly vulnerable stories, and Gimlet Media, a bellwether podcasting company, has taken that insight to an extreme. As its grown to 45 employees in less than two years, the company has been basically naked from the start. After all, the company’s first hit was the ongoing StartUp podcast, a self-referential show about Gimlet itself.
Gimlet wants listeners of their podcasts to feel like they stopped by a friend’s house, said co-founder Matt Lieber, so its tendency to overshare is not an accident. “We’re definitely an unreasonably transparent company,” Lieber told NewCo. “It’s how we got our start, and we found that being transparent and including the ugly parts helped us build our audience. It’s created a community of people who really care about what we’re doing and want to see the company succeed.”
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