Jacob Bozarth went full time with Resonate Recordings LLC back in 2017.
Since then, the Louisville-based podcast production company has scaled alongside the podcast industry, and now it has more than 3,000 clients, such as Twitter, Amazon and Salesforce, while processing 8,000 podcasts annually.
But that kind of growth doesn't happen without challenges.
"At Resonate, our audio engineers were spending three or four hours editing one hour of audio, and a majority of that was spent getting rid of those 'ums' and 'ahs,'" Bozarth said. "Whenever I first started, I remember thinking, 'Man this is taking a lot of time — there has to be a better way than this.'"
That thought was what led to the idea for Resound, a new software startup that's been developing artificial intelligence (AI) to do the editing work for podcasters.
At first, the idea was developed as an internal software solution, Bozarth said, but as the technology advanced, Resonate recognized a larger opportunity.
Podcasting is expected to generate more than $2 billion in revenue this year, according to a recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. And that's projected to double by 2024 as advertisers lean into the medium.
However, Bozarth said the industry is facing a spiraling retention rate — meaning people stop recording after two or three episodes — due to the lengthy and difficult production process.
"We have that experience. We've worked with clients. We know the problems and the pain points," he said. "For Resound, we want this to be something that you can give to anyone that's never opened GarageBand or any other audio editing platform and it pretty much automates the entire podcast production process for you."
Resound was co-founded by Bozarth, CEO, and COO Mark Minnery, a two-time-exited telecommunications veteran who was also an early investor in Resonate. The startup has 12 employees, seven of which are full time.
If Resound does its job right, it will cannibalize some of Resonate's business, Bozarth said — but that's OK.
"We're transitioning to be a high-end studio at Resonate, producing high-end podcasts for businesses that have bigger budgets as well as our own original content," Minnery said. "We believe our original content will surpass our normal content in the next two years just in ad sales."
Resonate did its first original show, "Culpable," in 2019, which hit No. 1 and now has nearly 28 million downloads. Dennis Cooper was the host of that series, and now he's leading the company's original content team.
Unlike Resonate, which has been bootstrapped with its own revenue, Resound is backed by venture capital. It recently closed on its first capital raise — a $1.35 million pre-seed round — with participation from Render Capital, Keyhorse Capital, Lunsford Capital, Bluegrass Angels, Hidden Ventures, Rounsavall Investments, Garrett French and Commonwealth Seed Capital.
Now, Resound's team is leaning into the AI component of its platform and improving its machine learning infrastructure ahead of its August launch. One of the most valuable pieces of AI and machine learning is high-quality data, Bozarth explained, so the emerging startup will be adding a data collection agreement with Resonate to essentially make its software smarter.
Bozarth said that will ultimately expand the possibilities for Resound's technology. In the future, the startup hopes to be able to do creative editing and offer recommendations to add music.
"We can analyze the podcasts edited by audio engineers that we have at Resonate to better improve the product," Bozarth said.
