Podcasts Are Broken

SPEAKER_01
What frustrates me most about the current state of podcasts is just that it's one-sided. It all ends as soon as you finish the conversation during the interview. It's an interview.

You talk to someone, you ask them questions, and then it ends, and that's it. That's all you get from them. And so when I think about the opportunity that exists, it's changing that, fundamentally flipping it on its head, making it a conversation, following up, digging deeper, going further with all the insights.

That's how we take this entire thing to a whole new level. I'm Sahil Bloom. I'm an investor, creator, entrepreneur, writer.

I also gave up a grand slam on ESPN in 2012, and I am still waiting for it to land.

SPEAKER_00
I'm Greg Eisenberg, and I build community. I'm the CEO of Le Check Out, an agency, a studio, a fund, where we build some of the most popular internet communities. I believe the current state of podcasting sucks.

A few people have microphones, and it's just not fair. What if you allowed a bunch of people that have microphones so they could connect, so they can collaborate, so that they can build community? And that's what we're trying to do with the room where it happens. It's a place where we could have honest conversations about how hard startups are, what's interesting to us, how we can collaborate, how we can build businesses together, and what the next big

SPEAKER_01
thing is. This is the place where the conversations happen, where ideas are batted around, debated, fought over. This is where things actually get created, where you start to have those seeds that are planted, and where things are really built.

That is the room. We've traditionally been closed. We're opening the door to it.

We want you to be here with us as that happens. Greg and I met in the room where it happens. We met through the confluence of a bunch of chance events.

We were in a group text thread together with a handful of friends and became as close as we are today because of that.

SPEAKER_00
The gap between what people think business is and what actually happens is what Scott Belsky calls the messy middle. Think of the social network, the movie. Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook and then all of a sudden it's massive.

It's this romantic idea that people have about startups and entrepreneurship. In reality, the messy middle, the time in between starting and the outcome is 99% of business and startups and entrepreneurship. I actually find that messy middle to be the most amount of fun.

It's when you rise up. It's when you fall down. It's when you zig and it's when you zag.

SPEAKER_01
This podcast were available five years ago for me. I think I would have meaningfully accelerated the trajectory of my own life and my career. Part of that would have been the insights generated, the things I learned from actually listening to people.

But the biggest part of it would have been the people I met, the relationships I built with other community members, with the hosts, with the guests. That is what is the force multiplier for your career, those networks, how that compounds over time just as well as any financial investment.

SPEAKER_00
Watching where you are today and where you're going to be tomorrow and where you're going to be a week from now, a month, a year, 10 years. We're in this for the long game. And what excites me about, I mean, the reason why I got into community was because I love seeing people progress, advance, do big things.

And I know that being a part of the room where it happens, good things will happen to you.