Founder's Story
How Kit Gray Built a $50M Podcast Empire—and Took It Public | Ep 217 with Kit Gray co-founder of PodcastOne
Fri, 9 May 2025
Kit Gray, President and Co-Founder of PodcastOne (NASDAQ: PODC), reveals how he parlayed childhood radio fandom into a thriving public podcast network. From early iPod hacks with Adam Carolla to structuring live reads, community-first ad packages, and an IPO, Kit shares the timing, tactics, and tenacity behind PodcastOne’s $51M revenue and its 200-show roster.Key Discussion PointsRadio Roots & Howard Stern: How listening to sports talk and Stern’s brand-building ignited Kit’s love for audio.Selling the Download: Early deals with Adam Carolla (ProFlowers, LegalZoom) that proved CPMs & CPA tracking worked.Building a Network: Moving from one-off ad reads to 360° packages—audio, video, social—for A&E, Lady Gang, Jordan Harbinger, and more.Timing the Tides: Why the iPhone, COVID lockdowns, and YouTube’s podcast push turbocharged growth.Going Public: Lessons (and flip-flops) on spinning out, partnering with bankers, and using equity to align talent.Community over Impressions: Why buying engaged audiences beats mass buy, and how brands scale with niche pods.Key TakeawaysBe first, but stay fast: Early movers in on-demand audio captured both talent and advertisers.Proof precedes scale: Start with one host, one campaign; use hard ROI data to win bigger deals.Sell the community, not just ad slots: True influence lies in loyalty, not lowest CPM.Equity aligns interests: Offering stock to creators fosters retention and shared upside.Adapt or fade away: From iPods to social streams to IPO filings, continual reinvention is non-negotiable.Closing Thoughts Dive into how Kit Gray built a soup-to-nuts podcast empire—signing singers turned podcasters, structuring ad-stacked communities, and trading on NASDAQ—and walk away with a playbook for finding, owning, and monetizing the next great audio audience.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com
Chapter 1: Who is Kit Gray and what is PodcastOne?
Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. Today we have Kit Gray, the president, co-founder of Podcast One, which I've been following for many years. But Podcast One is a leading podcast network. Even Nasdaq under PODC, which is amazing. I cannot wait, Kit, to talk all the things through. How is it to... take a company public.
But I know that podcast one has worked with the likes of A&E, Adam Carolla, Lady Gang, Justin Harbinger, and 200 Shows, which is incredible. So Kit, what was the spark for you that made you say, I want to be an entrepreneur and why this industry?
Chapter 2: What inspired Kit Gray to pursue podcasting?
Yeah. Hey, nice to meet you. And thanks for having me today. Yeah. You know, really, I became a fan of really audio medium back when I was a kid living in Boston and going to sporting events with my dad, you know, dragging me around tennis matches or soccer matches or whatever.
uh, baseball games that I was playing and that, you know, we'd listen to sports talk radio to kind of like break up the, the awkward silence. And, uh, during commercial breaks, we would actually talk about it and have something fun to talk about. And, um, you know, so audio has always had a special place in my heart. And, um,
That kind of grew as Howard Stern came into my life and listening to him and then watching him on his TV show and then realizing how he built brands into both his show and his radio network. He really was a thought leader in that space. We talk about 360 video podcasts now. Well, Howard did it years and years and years ago and really did an amazing job.
And when you look at endorsement radio or endorsement anything, I knew that was an extremely powerful thing early in my career. I wound up going to school not for... you know, anything in the radio or audio space.
Chapter 3: How did Kit Gray transition from radio to podcasting?
But I was an analyst, went to business school, got my MBA in finance, and worked in a, you know, in a national security firm in Orlando, funny enough, with, you know, missiles and defense contracts and everything that I'm not about. And, but I did learn a lot from that experience. And
went to Chicago, worked in a bar with some friends after grad school, and then decided to take a job in New York City working for Katz Media Group, which was part of iHeart, Clear Channel. And what we did was we represented radio stations across the country and then started to pitch why certain radio stations should be on a media spend out of advertising agencies in New York. And
From there, I really learned the business where the funnel of money from clients to ad agencies, to planners, to buyers, how it all kind of went out. And that was kind of how I learned the business. But yeah. I was actually opening an office for them in Los Angeles in 2004, 2005.
And I started to listen to podcasts, which back in the day, you had to actually like download a file on your computer, hook up your iPod or whatever device you had for MP3s at the time. And then, you know, you download and drag it over and then maybe add like a tape player in your car where the wires out and all that kind of stuff. And And you could listen to on-demand content.
And the reason I loved that so much was I lived in Los Angeles. I hate the Lakers. I hate Dodgers. I'm a Boston guy at heart. And so basically, I had to listen to Boston radio stations on demand that were doing this. And that's what we did. So I would drive and sit on the 405 in traffic going to meetings. And listening to my podcast.
And I started to think about the medium that I was in and if there was scale that I could start to bring those to advertisers. So what I did on my own was there's a guy named Adam Carolla from the man show he wrote for Jimmy Kimmel. He was, um, on, uh, Dr. Uh, love line, which was with Dr. Drew, um, which was national syndicated radio show at night. Um, but also on MTV, um, which is funny.
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Chapter 4: What were the key factors in PodcastOne's growth?
Dan was talking about MTV and spring breaks and stuff like that where I live. But, um, yeah, so we just started to talk about, uh, Adam did a podcast after he, um, he actually took over for Howard Stern on the West coast for syndication, um, It didn't last too long, unfortunately. It was a really good show. So he decided doing a podcast and I was listening to that and I reached out to him.
We started making some ad deals, right? Where ProFlowers and LegalZoom and Stamps.com and Citrix, we would do reads and we had great return on investment. based on these tracking codes, and I started to build a business.
So I started my own company there, started representing Marc Maron, Bill Burr, the Nerdist, CBS News, and creating a network of shows to offer advertisers in 2012 or something like that. And it was really exciting. The medium changed dramatically.
you know tremendously with the iphone um and being able to download shows and then figuring out what a download is and what's an impression and um you know targetability and connecting to programmatic desks and we've created uh you know i sold my company two times now and um
you know, I still run it podcast one, um, because I love it and it's a great sell and I love my team and I love the shows that we work for and work with. And, um, you know, it's been amazing. We, uh, we, we now do about $51 million in revenue. We're publicly traded, which we'll talk a little bit more about hopefully. And then, um, you know, we've got about 200 shows, um,
And mostly they are really created so they can work for advertisers, right? But we do IP where we have shows that we've sold to different networks to become TV programs or movies or books. We do merch. We do live shows. We really do everything kind of soup to nuts to help podcasters monetize their content. We market them. We do talent booking.
Sales, collections, all that fun stuff to really make sure talented people like the people that you mentioned earlier, the Jordan Harbingers, the Lady Gangs, the Caitlin Bristows, the A&Es, that they can give us more content or create more content that we can tie to advertisers and models. that's our business.
Uh, you know, we've been on the NASDAQ now under PODC, uh, for about, uh, two years and that's a whole different animal. Um, but, uh, you know, I would say not as much fun talking to analysts and, uh, and, and finance guys, sorry guys. Uh, but, uh, you know, I really enjoy talking to your, you know, the talent and, uh,
in creating relationships with them and certainly a very lucky guy in the sense that I get to deal with some of the funniest, smartest people in the world. So it's been fun.
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Chapter 5: How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect podcasting?
And not just the specifics, but as a founder, as a president, how do you navigate the changing landscape? As we know, business can change every five minutes. And if you're not keeping up, your company can be in trouble.
Yeah, you know, to me, and I've had this debate with a lot of companies, salespeople, clients, agencies, you name it. But to me, the smartest companies out there and the ones that are going to win the advertising world and become...
you know, the Squarespace's, the Ntuckets of the world that started in podcasting and now are in Super Bowl commercials and, you know, publicly traded and worth billions of dollars. These are, you know, companies that understood buying communities. And when I say we're a podcasting company, it's Yes, we are.
And that's our focus of doing live reads and endorsements and all the stuff I've already talked about. But really, when you're a brand and you're buying into a community, that's where I see the most impact. And, you know, there's a lot of brands that work with a lot of big ad agencies and big companies that
you know I'll leave them out of this but you know when you just start putting money into it and you know selling mass impressions even at a small discounted rate you're not getting what really is going to move the needle in my opinion and
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Chapter 6: What strategies does PodcastOne use to monetize content?
My opinion is if you can look at 20 podcasts that have solid numbers in audio, video, social media, and you put them all together and say to a brand, hey, I can do this, this, and this, and you can actually do what I tell you you're going to do, whether it's put the State Farm pillow in the right spot or the mug in the right spot, whatever.
get the social media when they need it with the backdrops. If you can do that, those are the companies that are going to really win and see great success. So that's what we do. That's why we're different. We go into these big brands and bring 10, 15, 20 like-minded podcasts and bring video, audio, social, mass scale.
And then we come through and they keep coming back because they're seeing great results. there's always a battle on, you know, how much money is going to go to these big agencies and they're going to throw it out on radio and TV and overnights to get low CPMs. And I'm like, well, that's not us. You know, we, we value our inventory. We value our community. We value the endorsements.
You know, I have a lot of, a lot of clients that, you know, say no to certain brands for whatever reason. And,
you know that's okay right like we we we will find other ones that will fit better and and we do the the work that that way so yeah it's um it's fun man i mean who knows what the next thing is going to be in this space um but i'm excited about it and it keeps growing and um you know clients are happy and when you're a sales guy like me that's uh that's a dream come true
OK, Kit, I need you to sell me this pen. I remember like that was like the funniest question. I was in so many interviews where they said that it was like it was like the how did this become even a thing? But I am curious, what's the first thing that you sold in your life? What was the first thing that you sold?
Well, I mean, first thing, like, geez, it goes back to being like 12, 13 years old and like figuring out girls for the first time. Right. And selling yourself. Right. Like who you are and like that kind of stuff. Right. So there's that. But like, you know, for podcasting, it was awesome. And it's a cool story, I think, at least. Yeah.
When I went to Adam Carolla and said, um, pro flowers, cherries, berries, you know, is, is on the hook. This was like 2012 and they want to do, um, you know, a campaign with you. And, and I told him it's going to be like a thousand bucks to do a read. And, you know, leading up to the, to the Valentine's day, the media buyers, like you're crazy. That's more money than K rock morning drive in LA.
So I'm like, well, what about like doing like a CPA, which is cost per thousand thing. And they're like, all right, we'll pay you 12 bucks for every person that uses Adam's code. I'm like, okay, let me see if I can sell Adam on doing it. Talk to Adam. And I said, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. We do it. You, you,
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Chapter 7: How does PodcastOne differentiate itself in the market?
So that's not the first time I've heard this about not being stressed, which is so crazy because if you knew me in my head, like I'm, there's a lot going on up here and there's a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights and I've got 40 employees and they have families. There's a lot there, but I try to live it differently. I'm wearing flip flops and wearing shorts right now.
So I don't think I'm your typical CEO of a publicly traded company. I go into New York and I was at a conference up there and I was speaking at it and one of the guys came up after doing it because that was the most fun presentation. I'm like, yeah, because I don't do like slides or any of that kind of stuff. I just kind of talk and it's a...
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for the podcasting industry?
So that's pretty cool, you know, and we're continuing to grow. We have a lot of M&A conversations going on right now with companies. a lot of different podcasting companies and non-podcasting companies where we feel we're profitable, which is great. And we feel like we have all the systems in place where we don't need any more backend stuff or really more salespeople, maybe some more producers.
But if we take on more scale, that'll help. And if a company comes into us and we can take some of their things like finance and HR and payroll and all that stuff, off their plates and help them monetize and market their shows that, you know, one plus one will equal three or four, right? And everybody will roll. So- it's been interesting.
I, I mentioned it earlier, you know, I got a chance to talk to people like Whitney Cummings, who I'm going to talk to later today and just brilliant, you know, funny, amazing people that are so talented and had so much success in their career. And they're so fun to talk to. And then, you know, then I got a call with an analyst, right. Which is, you know, fun, but different, you know?
So it's, it's no offense to those analysts. I love them too. So, you know,
I'm an analyst, and I think I'm funded to... No, I'm not really an analyst. But an unofficial analyst. So, no, this has been great, Kit. I could... I'm really fascinated and I'm excited by the fact that talent can now...
take over and really win versus before they had to work through management and they had to work through there's so many layers like you said in the end they don't even really make much of the money it was very little if any at all there's always there's too many people involved but now they can create their own show they can have their own asset they can build a company i was just uh reading about how a diary of a ceo was offered a hundred million dollars um to do a deal with
whatever company it was, like a Spotify or whatever. And he turned it down and said, they can create a company around what they're doing and make more money than $100 million and how they wouldn't even receive a lot of the $100 million in the end. And I was like, wow, this is very interesting that it seems like the talent now has almost more of the upside than
or has more of the control than before where it really was like these record labels or these Hollywood studios, like they really had the control and the talent had to bend to them. But this has been amazing, Kit. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information, how can they do so?
Yeah, happy to take any emails at kit, K-I-T, at podcast1, that's O-N-E dot com. I try to respond to almost everybody, but we're on every social media platform, and you can go to podcast1.com, check out our shows, listen to those super talented people that have some amazing stories to tell, and You'll find something you like and, you know, really enjoy it.
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