SoundCloud Startups

Fizzle is a membership-based training platform for independent entrepreneurs launched by Corbett Barr in late 2012. With 2,000 active members paying $35/month, the company generates approximately $70,000 in monthly recurring revenue through content marketing (blog, free guides, and a weekly podcast that reaches 10,000 listeners) which accounts for over 60% of signups. The team of four maintains a 60-65% free trial to paid conversion rate and achieves steady growth by focusing on simplicity, transparency, and delivering genuine value to aspiring business builders.

Gimlet Media is a premium podcast network founded by Alex Bloomberg, a veteran of This American Life and Planet Money. The company produces high-quality narrative audio shows including Startup, Reply All, Mystery Show, Science Versus, and Surprisingly Awesome, generating over $1 million in annual ad revenue per show through CPM-based sponsorships well above industry standards ($50+ CPM vs. industry average of $20-30).

Chat with Traders is a weekly podcast launched by 25-year-old Aaron Feifield in January 2015 that interviews successful traders to help others learn trading. Starting from zero monetization but focused on audience growth, the podcast reached over 620,000 cumulative downloads in its first year with nearly 5,800 email subscribers, primarily driven by consistent weekly episodes and active Twitter engagement.

John Lee Dumas built Entrepreneur on Fire, a daily podcast interviewing successful entrepreneurs, which grew to over 1 million unique monthly listeners. Leveraging this audience, he launched Podcasters Paradise in October 2013, a membership community teaching podcast creation, growth, and monetization. The community has generated over $3 million in revenue with 2,500 members through strategic pricing increases (starting at $197, now $1,297) and scarcity-driven cart opens, with June 2014 bringing in over $360,000 in monthly revenue.

Kat Lotozo built a seven-figure online business empire starting from a fitness blog in 2007, scaling to $80,000/month before pivoting to business coaching in 2012. She launched The Tribe membership in July 2015 with 24,000 email subscribers, and by March 2016 had 150+ paying members generating over $500,000 in revenue in just 8 months. Her growth is driven by prolific content creation (3-6 daily emails with 2,500+ word posts, 47+ self-published books, and 4-5 weekly podcast episodes) and word-of-mouth referrals, with total 2015 revenue exceeding $1 million.

Nathan Latka runs a daily podcast interviewing SaaS founders about their metrics and growth tactics, having produced nearly 1,000 episodes. Facing frequent legal threats from boards demanding episode removal due to transparency concerns, he shut down the show but then pivoted to a Patreon-based monetization model. In a test of customer commitment, he raised $527 from 9 patrons willing to pay for exclusive content, validating audience demand and launching a tiered subscription offering exclusive episodes, metrics calls, and monthly data exports at $5-$500/month.