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Acquired

Acquired Episode 16: Midroll + Stitcher (acquired by Scripps)

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Ma, Business, Technology, Acquisitions, Startups, Venturecapital, Vc, Investing, Investment

4.7 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2016

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The meta show: Ben and David turn their gaze inward and examine the podcasting industry through E. W. Scripps’ recent acquisitions of the Midroll podcast advertising network and Stitcher podcast client. Featuring discussion of our own product process and metrics at Acquired. 

Sponsors:


More Acquired!


© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC


Announcements: 
  • We’re pivoting! (not really) Our new show description: A Podcast About Technology Acquisitions That Actually Went Well
  • But we are launching a new feature! Since so many of you, our listeners, are also tech and startup folks and/or other builders, we wanted to create a space to feature cool products, companies and side projects you’re working on. Thus we’re adding a "Community Showcase” section to the show. If you’d like to be included just send us a Slack message or email, and we’ll choose one submission to feature on each show. This episode we’re highlighting BESTR, from community member David Resnick (aka @the_rezonator in Slack), which is an online platform to share lists of great things. Check it out and let David know what you think. 

  Topics covered include: 

  • Top Google search results for “acquired podcast"
  • Midroll’s origins in the comedy podcast Comedy Bang Bang (now an tv show on IFC) and exit last year to Scripps 
  • The structural challenges inherent to podcasting as a medium and the gap between audience size/engagement and industry revenues
  • Opportunities for independent podcasters and our own audience and business metrics at Acquired 
  • Stitcher’s long corporate history as a venture backed company, first acquisition by French music company Deezer, and now second acquisition from Deezer by Scripps
  • Problems with Stitcher as a product and industry reaction to the acquisition including John Gruber's response, Ben Thompson’s article on Stratechery, and Ben & James Allworth's discussion on their excellent podcast Exponent
  • Handicapping Stitcher+Midroll’s chances for success within Scripps, and opportunities for new startups & innovation in the podcasting space
  • Pioneer Square Labs’ own past efforts in the podcasting space and their process for evaluating potential new company ideas 
  • Shoutout to Pocket Casts and our listeners down under 

  Followups: 

  The Carve Out: 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

All right listeners, our sponsor is one of our favorite companies, Vanta, and we have something very new from them to share.

0:07.0

Of course, you know Vanta enables companies to generate more revenue by getting their compliance certifications.

0:12.8

That's SAC 2, ISO 2701.

0:15.7

But the thing that we want to share now

0:17.9

is Vanta has grown to become the best security compliance

0:21.4

platform as you hit hyper growth and scale into a larger enterprise.

0:26.9

It's kind of wild.

0:27.9

When we first started working with Vanta and met Christina, my gosh, I've had like a couple

0:31.6

hundred customers, maybe.

0:33.7

Now they've got 5,000, some of the largest companies out there, it's awesome.

0:38.3

Yeah, and they offer a tremendous amount of customization now for more complex security needs. So if you're a larger company and in the

0:45.2

past you showed Vanta to your compliance department you might have heard something like, oh well we've already got a compliance

0:50.4

process in place and we can't integrate this new thing.

0:53.0

But now, even if you already have a sock to,

0:56.0

Vanta makes maintaining your compliance even more efficient and robust.

1:00.0

They launched vendor risk management.

1:02.0

This allows your company to quickly understand the they launched vendor risk management.

1:02.6

This allows your company to quickly understand the security posture of the vendors

1:06.9

that you're choosing in a standardized way that cuts down on security review times.

1:11.3

This is great.

1:12.0

And then on the customization front they now also

1:14.4

enable custom frameworks built around your controls and policies. Of course that's

...

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