A podcast startup with an impending footprint in Cincinnati has landed millions in funding from one of the region’s top venture capital firms as it looks to capitalize on a burgeoning digital industry expected to hit $2 billion by 2023.
RedCircle, a podcast platform for independent creators, raised a $6 million Series A, the company announced Thursday. The round was co-led by Salt Lake City’s Epic Ventures and Over-the-Rhine-based Refinery. The raise also included participation from SignalFire, Bloomberg Beta, MathCapitalband angel investors Justin Wohlstadter, George Strampolos and Eckart Walther, among others.
The company has one key Cincinnati tie, but its team in the city is expected to grow. Its co-founder and CEO, Mike Kadin, relocated to the region in October.
The company will maintain its mailing address as San Francisco, but like most startups, its true home base is becoming increasingly fuzzy.
RedCircle has added five employees since the fundraise to grow to 15. Half the team is now situated outside California. Kadin wants to grow to 35 over the next 12 months, with a “handful or more” from the Queen City alone.
“There’s some really interesting talent here, with P&G and Kroger and such, and we work a lot with CPG (consumer packaged goods) and DTC (direct-to-consumer) brands looking to do podcast advertising,” Kadin said. “From a business perspective, we’re also interested in exploring, can we hire software engineers here? Can we hire project managers and designers in Cincinnati?"
Kadin spent five years at Uber, most recently as a software engineering manager, before launching RedCircle in 2018 with Jeremy Lermitte. The company’s goal is to help independent podcasters grow their network and monetize their work.
RedCircle has been growing at an exponential rate since its inception. The podcast industry itself, meanwhile, is booming.
According to eMarketer, a market research company, podcasting will be a $2 billion industry by 2023. By 2025, there will be over 144 million monthly podcast listeners in the U. S.
However, as the industry rapidly expands, most of the revenue lands in the hands of large publishers. Independent creators, RedCircle said, or those who have fueled the podcasting medium since its inception, are usually locked out.
RedCircle’s technology gives independent creators the same tools as major publishers, allowing podcasters to compete on a level playing field — offering distribution, cross-promotion, dynamic audio insertion, listener payments and automated advertising.
RedCircle’s advertising platform also helps independent podcasts monetize their product. Its exclusive content product, called a cross-platform paywall, lets creators restrict bonus episodes to paying subscribers only.
Kadin said the connection to Refinery Ventures, which specializes in post-seed or Series A stage startups, happened almost by chance. Since Kadin had moved to Cincinnati amid the Covid-19 pandemic, he hadn’t yet made any business connections locally.
The team at Epic Ventures ultimately linked him with Refinery Ventures managing partner Tim Schigel. Refinery Ventures’ portfolio also includes local startups Astronomer and Halo Health.
"Podcasting has become a major force in the media landscape," Schigel told me. "I find myself consuming more and better content via podcasts. It’s also an ideal channel for advertisers to reach engaged audiences. RedCircle is enabling a major advancement in the quality and strength of the industry."
Kadin said the funds will be used to expand its product and engineering, sales and marketing efforts.
“We're in the phase now where, we’ve proven there’s a product that can work and the market seems to want, can we put more people on the team?” he said. “Can we put more marketing dollars toward it? Can we scale this business to the next level? There’s significant traction in terms of users and revenue moving through our business back into podcaster’s pockets, but let’s see if we can really grow this thing in an unbounded way.”
