And they're like, wow, you're asking some good questions and you're a great listener. And it's like, I'm genuinely interested, but I also do think that this...
experience in podcasting has just improved my ability to do both of those things in a way where i don't even realize i'm necessarily doing it but if it makes people feel special i'm all about that so that's good
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Metacast. Today we have special guests. So Arnab, don't you think that every time I introduce guests, we actually say it's special guests? Yeah, pretty much every other time, yeah.
Well, they are special. But yeah, this time it's a bit more because this is something that we've been using like pretty much since we started podcasting. Yeah. So today on the show, we have Zach and Rock.
the founders of Squadcast, which is the tool that I think we mentioned in
every single episode that we recorded because that's the tool that we use for recording and we love the tool and they graciously agreed to spend an hour with us to chat about their experience and share their journey and give us some tips about podcasting.
hey guys welcome to the show what's up thanks for having us on appreciate it so to get us started uh can you describe what the squad cast is sure yeah squad cast is a cloud recording studio
Meaning we help creators connect all around the world with their collaborators to record studio quality content anywhere geographically that they can access the internet to record.
production level audio and video for those creators to engage with their audience, reach them in more places. So it's on the surface a lot like Google Meets or Zoom or something like that.
but with high quality production content for getting those episodes out quickly and preserving the quality when we don't have the luxury or ability to get into a physical recording studio together.
Increasingly, production is globally distributed, geographically distributed, even pre-pandemic. I think that was the trend.
That was exciting. One of the trends that was exciting to Rock and I when we first founded Squadcast back in 2016. It's only continued to develop from there.
You also run your podcast right between two mics. And I think in the very first episode, you talked about the origin story. And I really found it interesting because you were working on a sci-fi podcast at that time.
And from there, like this idea emerged. Do you want to talk a little bit about? Before we go there, do you mind unpacking a little bit what you just said about Squadcast and just describe what is the user experience of Squadcast so that people can really connect the dots?
Happy to. So let's say I'm a creator. I have a podcast and YouTube channel or maybe record some voiceover or audiobook content, something like that. And I want it to be really high quality.
And record with other people. It's not just me monologuing into my show. It's me interviewing other people, connecting with maybe co-hosts or collaborators that maybe are or aren't in my same.
location in my same city where we could get together in person.
And that's really where Squadcast gives creators superpowers to be able to send their guest or collaborator just a link. They don't even need a Squadcast account or know who we are or anything like that.
They click that link on the time that they scheduled and...
We connect them with real time, low latency, like audio and video. So they have a high fidelity conversation. And first and foremost, we are under the hood, a recording studio or recording platform. So that's where we have two patents.
around our recording engine and how we capture that really high quality audio and video for everybody in that conversation and reliably deliver it to the creators once the recording is complete.
There's a lot of really nice quality of life features along the way built in for creators.
where you can have like transparency into the equipment your guest is using you can help them dial in their settings of those equipment you have transparency into the recording while it's happening you can even watch the recording and listen to the recording while it's still
happening with our with our new previews and um those files are going to be yeah uncompressed wave audio
iso for everybody in that conversation up to 10 people you can connect and record with at the same time and then the video is going to be again iso but mp4 with that muxed audio and then the second piece of our patent is the
time synchronization making sure there's not any drift between those recordings that are captured on on everybody's different device To you and me, it feels like we just connected and hit record, but there's a lot of really advanced audio and video technology going on below the surface.
we show a lot of that to the creator so there's really high degree of like presence and transparency and so that the health of the recording that we're still doing and making sure all of those uh all of those details are um we're feeling confident as we create that content not just like a black
box where we're wondering if that file is going to come out the other side as you can imagine with like you know espn and google and bigger brands like those episodes need to ship they need to they have like
brand deals, like there's timelines, all that stuff, right? So I think it really helps with the creative process, especially if you're part of a team of creators. So this is where our mission is to amplify collaboration. And it's not just in the recording.
session proper. It's also pre-production and post-production of like scheduling and file management. So I think that's a pretty good lap around the UX. There's more we can get into. Happy to go into any detail there. Yeah. And that's Zach, the CEO of the company.
pitching his product. But from my perspective as a user, I would say what I like about this podcast experience is that we just send the link. We just add the link to the calendar and people join. We have like a Zoom call in the browser.
And all of the audio is recorded locally, I believe, so that actually no glitches are here over the network.
are on the recording it's all local so it's all high quality and then after the recording is done i just go to squadcast dashboard and download all of the files in lossless wave format
plug them into my Reaper Digital Audio Workstation, and it just works. So previously, when I was recording with people, they would record directly into their computers or into their phones. I would have to like...
Oh, now you publish this file in Google Drive, saving the link, make sure that you have the permissions. So all of that basically low value add activity is gone this quadcast. That works really well, especially for guests who are busy, who want to just
close the browser window and forget about you. Then Squadcast just makes it happen. So yeah, thanks for building the tool. And yeah, Arnab, back to your question about the journey. Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned, I have a quick question here too. You said it's recorded locally, right?
Is it continuously synced into the cloud or only at the end of the session? So what happens if I lose network connectivity in between?
Yeah. Any of those worst case scenarios like the network going down or the power going out or, you know, kind of anything that you could imagine going wrong while you're recording.
is is okay you're not going to lose that recording within a few second margin of error so what we're doing is is we are we call it progressive upload that's a key feature of our recording engine and we are yes while you're recording every few
seconds pushing up the most recent chunk of audio and or video and or screen that you're capturing at that time. And we're pushing that up to the cloud in the background. And key distinction.
is that we're not streaming it. So your point earlier, Ilya, about you're not hearing the network compression in the recording like you would hear with something like Zoom or a phone call.
And that's why we record it at the source, is that if we didn't record it at the source, we would be recording it in the cloud over the network, and therefore it would suffer from that compression if somebody's network had latency or jank.
That's how we balance out the quality and reliability and kind of deliver on both of those promises. Cool. That allows us to, let's say the power went out right now.
We've been recording for a few minutes. That content would be safe and sound in the Squadcast cloud, even if your computer completely died. We don't depend on your computer or you needing to come back or anything like that after. We do depend and rely on everybody.
internet connection we're not an internet service provider uh at squad cast and um
That has its limits, like physics and, you know, ISPs are notorious for throttling people's connections. But what we do is we're resilient in those situations and provide that transparency so that...
Let's say that happened and we all disconnect. All four of our computers just died at the same time right now. What would happen is we would eventually be able to come back. You would see those files. They're kind of there, but in a lingering state. And what you would do is just click render.
our cloud will render the content that it has that was uploaded up to that point for everybody.
That is not what most people on Squadcast experience, but, you know, we didn't get to the moon by engineering for the happy path, right? We got to the moon by building redundant systems. So even if what I just said, you don't believe me, Zach's a charlatan, that sounds fake.
whatever we also have backups in recorded in the cloud at the same time so it's not really local versus cloud squad cast does local and cloud
Right. So if you say, OK, what's different about Squadcast from Zoom? Well, Zoom's only cloud recordings. Squadcast, you get local too, which is going to be that higher quality ISO, all those good things. And I also might add that you get them very quickly.
after you're done with every other platform i've ever used to record it takes a significant amount of time to get those files after and meanwhile the anxiety starts to kind of dial up like am i going to get this file when can i start working on my episode to publish it
With Squadcast, you click stop and your file's there in a few seconds, even for like a two hour long video. It's nuts how quickly.
We render and we were just able to increase our video rendering speed by fifteen thousand percent in November So we're still finding ways to make it even faster
Yeah, we did experience things like people dropping off the call accidentally because their internet connection went out. We always freaked out because like, what's happening with the files? And then we would actually stop the recording, go into the dashboard, see.
that the files are there and then we'll continue the recording after that. So every time files were there. So that's really cool. Yeah.
Yeah, and the super fast part too. Yeah, like we're done and within a few seconds, like by the time we look at it, it's already there usually. Yeah, an important part also about the comparison with Zoom, if you use Zoom's cloud recording, I think it's all single track.
yeah it's all mixed yeah it's all mixed and then with squad cast you get separate tracks for everybody so you can do really good editing on it that's right so let's say my dog walks by while you're talking
that you could easily like mute that out in post-production without interfering with your vocals.
right um and then we also have uh tools in squad cast to to mix those files down if you want to it's just really hard to go in the opposite direction you end up starting to get into like ai speaker diarization and stuff like that so what we do is we just
everybody iso from the start and then it's easy to mix them from there where it's it's hard to go in the opposite direction yeah we know this part very well because my dog frequently hangs out here and like wines or something yeah me too yeah
Did they say ISO? What was that? Yeah, ISO or isolated tracks. So every speaker who's connected to the conversation is going to be, their files are just going to be them. And that could seem...
like a turn off if you're like new to being a content creator, because now I have extra work to put the pieces back together.
But there are, we believe, more benefits than there are drawbacks to that, especially with giving people an easy way to just say, OK, I have these four files, mix those down. And now I have basically the combined single file with all the speakers.
features in it. That's something we provide in app that's like an everyone feature. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I think we keep saying in our podcast.
as advice for podcasters is that you should always separate your tracks, especially the more people you have, the more important it becomes. Like we had this episode with Jake and Jonathan, just four of us, and we were laughing for two hours straight.
And those laughs, they are very disruptive when they're mixed together. So you have to, like, you know, compress them a little bit so that, you know, one person laughing doesn't disrupt the other person actually saying something important.
And Jonathan was on AirPods, which the sound quality was completely bad. So it was really important to have independent tracks so that we could tweak that. So Arnab, shall we go into the journey?
Yeah. So let's go back to our origin story. So you were doing some sort of a sci-fi podcast. When did you two meet? What happened? How did it all start? How about I take this one, Zach? Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.
Four is tricky, fellas. So Zach and I have known each other since high school. We share a mutual love for...
technology, startups, podcasting. I've been a huge fan and believer in podcasting since I first got an iPod. I don't remember exactly when, but
Back when iPods were the shiznit is when I first stumbled upon this thing called podcasting. And I was like, wow, it's like radio, but it's on my schedule. I love that. I loved all of the vast amount of categories.
different types of conversations and topics that you just couldn't find anywhere else. I mean, it just, the range was all over the place and I love that.
And Zach and I both shared that mutual interest, but did go different career paths. And so fast forward to 2016, when Zach approached me about the idea that became Squadcast, and this is where the science fiction
podcast part comes into play. So he stumbled upon these problems with remote content creation, remote recording quality, trying to create a science fiction podcast of his own and doing that remotely.
pitched me this idea and told me about how he had stumbled upon this problem and why he thought that he that this solution that he was proposing to me would be valuable and important it honestly just seemed very
like easy to get excited about. Because like I said before, we were already big fans and believers of podcasting, but it was this intersection of podcasting and remote content creation, remote collaboration that just seemed
Like something that was worth putting all of our effort and focus and hopes and dreams into, to be quite frankly. And just...
you know just saw us riding that wave and and then here we are you know it's it's it's been pretty amazing podcasting i still think is like got a lot of growth to do but it's grown tremendously since the time that we first started so
Yeah, that's really the origin story there. So what happened to that sci-fi podcast? Did you ever release it? No, we actually pivoted from the sci-fi audio drama to...
building out squad cast pretty quickly we we got like discouraged and then thought the production wouldn't happen because we were we were all split up geographically and it's just going to take us forever to get a single episode out anybody who listens to sci-fi audio dramas they are
I know of individual creators working on them, but even they...
have people who help them with them. It is a team sport. I was tempted to say it's always a team effort. And I think it probably should be for the sanity of the creators.
um working on on fiction podcasts any show alone is going to be right a heavy left right and and that's where we're bullish on collaboration right needing to to happen here and we've seen remote collaboration
really get into its stride with work from home and shelter in place and all of those things. But Rock and I were fortunate that we both had jobs previous to Squadcast where we were working remote some percentage of the time. So we got to...
experience that and we're going to say, okay, well, why would creators, why would professional creators be any different from any other sort of professional who needs their tools, but now remote, collaborative, real time, all that stuff. And, uh, and I did my internship.
before that on the Chrome team at Google and I saw how they built software, scaled software, but also, you know, collaboration, right? Google Docs really.
really push that forward on the web platform and um and that's what we wanted to set out to create was was collaboration
real-time collaboration like Google docs, but for long form audio recording was, was our hypothesis. Like if you're going to record for two hours with somebody, you know, that's, that's not a, that's not a, an Instagram short, right? Like that's, um,
That's a heavy lift, especially if we start talking about source quality.
Content. These are these are an individual file could be multiple gigs. Quite quite a set of engineering challenges there that we that we set out to tackle. And that's really what led to some of the unique abilities that we provide creators in Squadcast.
So you pitched Rock, and how long did it take you guys before that initial discussion and writing the first line of code? So you know what you're doing, so you're starting to actually implement something.
probably 2017 oh you did you did before i could check the commits uh i could check the commits but
It was it was after it was after because I remember being weary that this was not just another project that you scaffold up. Right. This is a whole.
whole cloud machine right uh several apps in one right so we did it we did it right right we did it um api first microservice architecture on google cloud platform with like you know real-time infrastructure and
Really took all the lessons I had learned in my career previously to that. I taught at Cal Berkeley. I'd written a book on building apps in Angular and deploying those in different places. So really, you know, took the opportunity to build something from the ground up that would.
Felt like over-engineering at first, right? It felt like, you know, are we ever going to need to scale kind of thing?
I'm grateful we did because just a few years later with COVID, right, we had painful growth. I don't know how else to describe it. Really, really crazy growth.
uh from from people just not being able to get in the studio anymore um that they used to be kind of debated about the merits of remote recording at all in podcasting before that that conversation the last time i saw anything about that was
was before COVID. I haven't heard anybody say anything like that since. I think we're here to stay. Yeah, actually, I did an in-person recording once. I would say remote recording is easier. We think so too.
I agree. We've done both. And I say that to people. I've said that on stages.
And I don't know that people get it until they've experienced both. But yeah, you start to have to deal with like, how do I get my microphone not to pick up that other person's voice? You have to deal with this like.
Set up right that is multiple microphones and does your audio interface have multiple channels in and out all that stuff on squad cast? It's really just like as long as each person has their audio and video
settings together and we even help with that with like what i said before about the equipment transparency and settings like that that is really um there's a whole
set of things you'd no longer have to worry about. And then some things that you might need to consider like your internet connection and things like that. Like we tend to think of our recording setup as like, okay, my camera, my microphone, maybe this wire, my audio interface.
like the software I'm using, but I'm not thinking about like the dusty router in the corner now as an integral piece of my recording stack, right? Like, so I think it's just that kind of new, new awareness that comes with.
Yeah, recording in these different ways. So we honestly suck at recording in person. We've done it. We can do it. We've seen people do it. We've gotten better at it. But yeah, it's a whole different set of considerations. Right.
so i'm also curious about your backgrounds as like you mentioned your developer rock what about you my background is in accounting and finance so i was working at a accounting firm for most of my
professional life that really got me exposed to a bunch of executives, board members, founders, and really got me excited about doing something.
more entrepreneurial and independent so when zach proposed this idea i had already been kind of looking and preparing for something like that so the fact that it was a journey that him and i would be co-piloting together
That sounded awesome and fun because I knew anything that he'd put in his mind to was going to happen. I like to think of myself in a very similar way. And just this opportunity to do it was, it just felt like there was more risk and not.
giving it a try, not giving it a shot. But it was a big jump jumping away from some pretty secure jobs. But I'm sure glad we did it because we love what we do and still finding ways to keep ambitious. And it's amazing that
six years later, we still feel like we're just getting started. Did you take any external investment when you got started?
No, no, we didn't. So very aware that the startup game, especially technology startups, typically are funded from outside investors, angel investors, venture capitalists.
It's not that we didn't try that or don't see that as a potential option for Squadcast, but in the early days, we were just really focused on building the product, building relationships with the community and nurturing a customer base.
and you know just figured if we built those things up that that position as well for for anything fortunately we've just been able to grow
Only off of customer revenue and the initial investment that Zach and I did to get the company up and running up until it could fund itself. And then that's when we.
took the jump to working on the project full time and left our, our, our more corporate jobs behind. And yeah, it's, it's, it's a remarkable what things will do once you give yourself an opportunity and really.
bet on yourself and just show up, continue to show up every day, working hard at something. Don't give up. It's not a straight path as much as I'd love for things to be linear. It's been anything but that. So it's not without its challenges and ups and downs, but you know, to have a
partner like Zach, who we continue to grow and help you grow each other just as we're growing the business. It's been a tremendous experience from my perspective. So how big is Quadcast now? How many employees? Where are they?
uh yeah yeah the team is up to 13 and we've been remote from day one uh so our team is all over the place we are on both coasts in california and new york florida
Canada, Mexico, several states within the U.S. Yeah, yeah, all over. So you said you funded your company from your paychecks. Is that how it works?
upfront basically yeah yeah yeah that's right we so we self-funded we bootstrapped uh until the product got to kind of covering its own cost and that's when we
had the discussion to make the jump to go full time. Not that we were able to pay ourselves salary at that point. So we kind of set the clock running at that point and kind of gave ourselves a year to get to a point where we could cover salary.
And then, you know, of course, bringing on our team and being able to grow from customer revenue has been really, really awesome. Because, yeah, for one, there wasn't.
a ton of venture for podcasting companies back in 2016 if you go back to videos from them there's like podcasting is the butt of investor jokes i've heard from that time i don't think it's like that anymore
But as you can imagine, you know, the economics change as our company grows and the venture market evolves. It's really great to kind of reach a point of scalability without needing that outside capital.
Yeah, it must give you a lot of freedom to make decisions. That's right. It comes with a degree of independence, but also venture capital isn't just...
capital it's also smart money right so it comes with the uh standing on the shoulders of giants and those who have come before you so that's where we were very cognizant of that from the beginning that we we didn't want to forego those types of relationships
relationships or opportunities. And we have a lot of advisors and mentors who help us in that effort. So right now with Squadcast, how is the company structured? You are the CTO, CEO. Rock, you're the CFO.
And what about the other 13 people? Do you have managerial people or is everybody an independent? That's right. We have a few management positions like the head of our support team. We have a marketing manager. We have a community and content manager.
We have a lead designer, a lead software engineer, a team of software engineers that Gene, our lead engineer, is at the helm of.
Yeah, I hope I'm not forgetting anybody, but I we also work with a lot of work with a lot of teams who are, you know, on a project basis external to our company and things like that. But the things that are core to our company like.
engineering and our intellectual property and all of those things that i mentioned those are all you know those are all valued team members that are along for the ride right here to contribute stakeholders quite frankly at what point did you decide to start a podcast
I can't remember exactly when, but it just felt like something we had to do. Not just because we wanted to use the product and...
dog fooded ourselves but also we just wanted to walk the talk and live life through our customers and community members shoes and really learn what it's like to be a creator ourselves i mean we got into this game because we love content creators and so
Now the opportunity to be one using software that we created, it's an incredible experience and just feels like something we...
Didn't have a choice in because quite frankly, I didn't necessarily want to have a podcast at first. I love that we do it now. I love being a podcaster. I love all the benefits that it's.
provided me not just like in business but like in life in general talking listening all that kind of stuff so
I don't remember exactly when, but it just all of the companies that we look up to in podcasting, they're very involved creators themselves. And so it felt... like a good fit for us and and just natural this is zach and i really do love this stuff live eat breathe sleep
all of it so uh for us to do it again using our own software it just seems like a no-brainer i mean we use the software in all sorts of ways to have meetings to to host like webinars or now like
Private webinars we're going to be starting to open up. I mean, there's just so many ways that we are using something that we created to connect with people. So I love that. And podcasting is absolutely one of the core ones.
Yeah, we were going to ask, are you seeing other customers starting to use Quadcast for doing things other than recording sessions? Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of interesting use cases because we very much started with the problem that I had mentioned, right? Being remote with recording a podcast. I mean, the first one that kind of...
punched us in the face was video recording. That was not part of our initial plan or hypothesis. It seemed like too big of a lift, too big of a problem. We were...
hypothesizing that audio alone might be too much for most people's network to handle while holding a real-time conversation, while having all these presence.
connections going on. So that's where we kind of needed to observe audio and kind of the size there and then
video, you know, you also run the risk of people just plugging in a 4K camera and just like letting it, letting it ride, you know, people are going to try stuff on the internet. So.
It was our most requested feature. And we listen. We're big on listening. It's one of our core values at Squadcast. And that's another reason being a creator, right, is really helpful to have that empathy and understand why people.
want things in the product and
There's only so far you can take that with dogfooding. So jumping on in sessions like this with with y'all valued customers, creators that we're proud to serve is is also always a learning experience. We always walk away with things that we can improve.
in our product and video because we had it for the real-time conversation i think it was rock who we were initially going to have audio only where this web page would be kind of like a a phone call where you're just kind of talking to some pixels um but rock
called that out as weird in the beginning and we wanted to see eye contact and body language and turns out right there's a reason why it's a huge percentage of how people communicate it's like 70 80 something like that of communication is is non-verbal
so even while we were still only recording audio we had video in the ux so that you had that that level of communication and i think that inspired a lot of our creators to be like well can i just get that video obviously you already have access to my camera i look good on on the page like
Like, I want that, right? So that was one of the first ones where it became increasingly obvious why that was the case. And I also...
i i get it right you don't have to do any extra work if you're a creator on squadcast who wants to add video recordings to your production to maybe grow your audience on youtube or with video in general performs better on social you click your experience is the same you don't have
to like do anything more to get video other than just have a subscription that has that feature on it and you get those video files by just clicking the same start and stop button you just get more files and more formats at the end so it's kind of
Really, really nice that we didn't need to change our UX there. But along the way, we've, you know, listening to our customers, right? One of our customers who records the most volume in recording time through the platform is actually an audiobook producer from Albuquerque.
And he was able to kind of shut down his physical studio that only people could get to in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His business was kind of geographically constrained. As you can imagine, if you just kind of take that into the cloud, you can run multiple sessions in parallel.
You can work with authors and voice actors in different geographies that maybe have a different pay rate, right? And you can scale up your business in ways that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do with just, you know, your physical studio in your city.
So that's another one that's really interesting as well as just like voiceover work in general. I think that's similar to, to audio books, but.
But, you know, that's a growing category amongst YouTube creators is just kind of these voiceover videos where they have B-roll or they have their own stuff.
that they're talking over. Maybe it's a screen recording. We do that too on Squadcast. So you can imagine how we don't have a ton of opinions about where the content is published or ends up that we help creators.
make, um, and collaborate on. But, uh, but you can see how they kind of lend themselves to these different, uh, different platforms where creators publish their, their stuff and engage with their audience. Private podcasting is another one that's huge, right? Enterprises.
doing doing podcasting inside their organization so never meant really to see the light of day not meant to grow their business or customers or anything but like if you're google you were remote before the pandemic right because
They have offices all over the world or ESPN, right? It maybe is a better example where ESPN Deportes has always been in Mexico City. Headquarters is up in Seattle, right? So while those people were in offices, they're still geographically.
distributed. So I think that those types of productions, they need a platform like Squadcast, quite frankly. So do you see a shift towards video in terms of the volume of?
content recorded or is it still predominantly audio? What is the trend that you're seeing?
so this is a huge topic in podcasting right now that we're seeing play out it's something that we are participating and contributing in by helping folks record content video content on squadcast like zach mentioned from our
perspective, we are seeing more of our creator base embracing and adopting video. However, I think also what folks are learning is the production
time and just what it takes to produce video content is so much more than audio i mean the equipment cost is different you got to now think about lighting in addition to having a camera and all that stuff and then just the actual editing and production of it is
not like double the time of an audio show. It's probably like quadruple maybe. So I just think it's one of those things where it's easy to say, yes, I want to add video, but it is a heavier lift overall to to create and create it at the quality that you would want.
to be similar to what I would hope you're creating as your audio show. So one of the things that I think works well is video is absolutely something that I think should be embraced, but only if you're ready. If you're still having trouble staying consistent with your audio,
show you might not want to start adding on video but hey if you're if you're
crushing it with the audio show you're already doing something once a month or i mean once a week maybe twice a week and you're looking to take it up to the next level i think adding video is something to consider there's so many different ways to use it whether it's having that content
published to YouTube or chopping them up into shorter clips to promote on social media. All that stuff is
beneficial and helps you expand your reach, helps you reach an audience that might not be looking for you on the podcast apps, that may not even be audio listeners themselves, but still want to consume and benefit from your content.
And so it definitely makes sense that adding video is going to be a trend that continues to rise. But I just think in podcasting, everybody's still figuring out how that fits into their schedule, into their workflow.
examples that we touched on briefly was like the the audio podcast or excuse me the audio drama podcast what's their play in video here i mean it's a
tough thing to create that content in audio only format so is there a video play and if so what because i think it's gonna that's even more production from an already expensive and
time intensive type of production. But I think it could be awesome if you get it right. So and we're thinking, how can we contribute and help out with that? So it's really exciting and fun, but also something I still think is being figured out. But the data is
pretty undeniable that it's at least worth considering and attempting. But I think when folks try to...
tackle too much at first, it could be pretty overwhelming and not set them up for success. And that's what we're all about here at Squadcast, just trying to set them up for success, get them to show up every day, do the work, have a long-term mindset and just...
continue to grow everything from there. So... yeah i mean what what's your take on on video for for you guys so we are publishing on youtube because i did see that trend for my other podcasts for the russian-speaking podcast is i got a lot of
views on YouTube, even though it was just audio only with the cover. Basically, I had to pull it in iMovie, just generate the video file, publish it on YouTube, because lots of people listen to music on YouTube now.
keeping in your pocket with YouTube premium and people listen to podcasts the same way. So actually generate a YouTube
videos for this podcast as well. And we do get some listens, but we are very new. We don't get many listens at this point yet. So I was just about to suggest to Arnab, maybe we should record our next episode in video in Squadcast.
publish it on YouTube and just see what happens. But then I realized there will be things that we will say that, you know, maybe we want to cut out. I don't want to deal with processing video.
That's the quadruple effort that Rock is talking about, yeah. Yeah, because what I was thinking about, maybe we take the audio file.
and then do the regular production and like our high quality stuff is in audio but video we just publish whatever we record but then there is stuff that shouldn't be said even if you just like take that recording and publish it there will be stuff that you know shouldn't be there
Like you're going to close your door when your daughter was like doing stuff and interrupting our podcast recording. Like you don't want that stuff in the video. But then like I'm not up for like extra two or three hours of time.
The video production and also the rendering time is probably another like 40 minutes for one hour show. Yeah, you're dealing with, you know, bigger files, more files, multiple apps.
Not to discourage, right? We do video production. We are also a content company in Squadcast. We have... uh ariel our head of content and vince is our is our producer and we work with maribel as our video producer so yeah i mean it is um
It is more, but I think it really comes down to finding the workflow that works for you. And that's where I encourage people to just try it. You don't need to publish it, right? But just kind of try and see where you run into roadblocks.
or what's what's kind of a deal breaker for you you know are you somebody who really cares about like lighting and color correction and all of those kinds of things
Or is it okay to have a door closed, right? Like some people kind of accept some degree of realness there. And I think that's okay too. And I was just looking up our stats to your question about trends with video. It's almost 50-50.
It's a little bit in favor of audio right now, but looking at sessions where people record with, you know, video recording or audio only, it's almost a 50-50. How about like, say a year or a couple of years back, was it...
very different? So we also made video more accessible when we updated our pricing last summer. So I think that was also a contributing factor to more people recording video. We honestly...
priced video too high in initially when we first rolled it out but as you can imagine right we it was in beta we wanted to kind of limit right the the inbound jump on people doing that to on day one so that's that's another aspect to it that i think has encouraged people to create more but um
Just trying to be real about it, right? Like there are things that this is now we're talking about much more than a podcast. And if you're just coming into it with like, oh, this will be just my podcast plus a little bit more. That is not a real expectation. I want to.
be really really clear about that and and just try it for yourself we just think it's kind of
lowering the barrier to entry makes it more accessible to try things right where we're discouraged to try things if it's really far out of reach but it may seem like oh that's that's where all the growth is so i would try it out because i think you made some really good points
cilia about the the growth like test right where we draw parallels all the time between running a startup and having uh being an independent content creator and what would start what would be the startup answer right
do a test, do an A-B test. So, you know, I would encourage people to try that out and see if it's worth the ROI of before you invest in a camera and a lens and multiple lights and your environment and all that stuff.
And some of those things can even be rented. So I think there's even more of an on-ramp here than just dropping a bunch of Gs on day one. I also like Rock's suggestion that...
At the end of the day, you are producing content and you have to figure out whether you like doing that and can you do that for a long term consistently.
And the easier way to do that seems to be like produce the audio once it's way lower post-production effort for you to do it.
If you're paying somebody, it's way lower cost that way too. And get consistent, figure out that you really like it, and then take on the jump. Meanwhile, start experimenting with video. Yeah.
that's right yeah what i think we could try on is for our next recording we could actually record the video just so we have the files and maybe just cut a couple of clips, like one minute long clips that we can publish on social media without actually publishing the whole thing.
Yeah, that's a great way to get started. And then when when we do the production of the audio, we will know the timestamp of where that is. So we can easily locate that part.
in the video yeah we can we can just try it out i mean i've i've done video production before actually it's it's a huge pain but like for like a couple of minutes that it's not gonna be a problem
Are you doing post-production in what software are you using for post-production? So I'm using Reaper. I'm using a bunch of VST plugins like iZotope, RX Suite, and the compressor, the equalizer.
stuff. As of episode number four, which is going to be released next week, we've outsourced our sound engineering to somebody who I know based out of Germany. He does it for us. I mean, we pay him. But what I do...
So I do cut the content before it goes to him. So I've started using the app called Ferrite for the iPad.
so it's on my ipad i use my apple pencil i have an ipad pro so an apple pencil too and i just do very quick basically i cut out
stuff that shouldn't be there. And then he cuts out the pauses. He also uses isotopes, so he applies all of the same filters that I would apply. But it saves me probably, I don't know, three or four hours.
by not having to cut out the extra silence, the breaths that iZotope wouldn't catch, all this kind of technical stuff. If I can plug one of our collaborators here, Descript might be a nice way.
to also facilitate that paper edit step and the handoff with collaboration and working with audio and video.
You know, so you can just kind of go into audio and just work there. And then all those same cuts, rather than having to like note those time codes or whatever, those can also be applied to your video. So and they support VST plugins. So as far as I know, we don't.
use it to that extent with the plugins. I think we do that step in like Adobe Audition.
Yeah, but we kind of moved between those two. Just like Squadcast, Descript is the other thing that has come up in every single of our episodes so far. And we have an integration with them. So moving those huge video and audio files between them.
we'll just move it from our cloud to their cloud and you don't have to like download, re-upload, import. That takes seriously like half an hour sometimes, like a long time. So that is something that's also really, really efficient between our products.
Yeah, so we tried using Descript for quite a bit.
Another time. That's fine. He's using Reaper. That's enough said. No, no. Descript is really awesome. Actually, I produced, I think, the first couple of episodes. I edited them with Descript. And then I did the additional sound engineering.
in Reaper after exporting files from Descript. So what I realized is that we actually don't cut out that much content. So we basically just cut out like
I'll have to say this. A few minutes ago, we were talking about Arnab's microphone not picking up sound, right? Yeah, which, you know, you didn't hear because I cut it out from the recording. And...
You're welcome. Yeah, this stuff is pretty minor. This stuff is pretty minor. And I can easily do this in 4.8 with Apple Pencil. Actually, I can do it faster in 4.8 than I can do it in Descript. But then what I use Descript for is I actually transcribe.
the end result in this script so that I can easily just skim through the text and see what was mentioned, all of the gear, all of the links, books, podcasts, whatever. So I can create show notes from that.
So basically, the Descript, you use it not for audio editing, but for more like...
post-production transcript show notes scenario. So the app that you forrite? Forrite, it's F-E-R-R-I-T-E. We will add it to show notes.
We have, there's a few people in our, in our squad pod community who are huge fans of ferrite on the iPad. So I know that can be a really nice UX. I'm not trying to.
pull you away from it, especially with the pencil. I mean, that's kind of a unique thing, right? Yeah, that's the thing, because like in audio editing, you have to drag a lot. And then when I drag, I always get repeated stress injury on my right fist.
of what I use, if I use the mouse, if I use the trackpad, I think it's like historical, I had these issues with my guitar playing like long 20 years ago. So I think it stems from like my teenage years. And so Apple Pencil gives me that, you know, ability to do it.
in a different kind of posture and also what i like about the kind of the ipad editing is like i could just pull it out for five minutes
like listen to five minutes of audio and like do it incrementally, like when I have like a free minute. Whereas with the computer, like you have to have all of that set up.
Does it also do the transcribe and you can basically edit audio with text? No, no, for it is super simple. I basically just listen to the audio and then cut it out as a listen. What I was able to achieve, so for one audio...
one hour of audio content at the source, I spent probably one and a half hours cutting it. Whereas if I do it in Reaper, it's probably 3x the time.
And in Descript, obviously it's shorter, but what I found not really working well in Descript for me is when I was trying to cut out things like
pauses and breaths, they are not in the text. So I still have to drag the audio around and then Descript is much slower than a proper DAW when it comes to like manipulating audio segments. I've heard that.
Yeah, and also I have a lot of keyboard shortcuts. So one more thing we want to talk about about Squadcast is, you talk about this in your podcast, is early on the community engagement and the feedback that you got from it.
was really instrumental in building and shaping the product. You went to some, I think, podcast-related conferences and stuff, sponsored some of that. We wanted to hear more about this, what kind of engagement you got.
yeah yeah i think it really comes from the fact that we were although big fans of podcasters and podcasting we weren't podcasters ourselves so our thoughts were we need to immerse ourselves with that community, with podcasters and people that are in that industry.
and so doing that is where where do they hang out well they hang out on facebook in a lot of facebook groups so we were we were hanging out there but then they also meet up at conferences or we found local meetups here in the bay area but there's other ones and all
over the U S and so just trying to attend as many things as we could build reputations with folks in the space, build up the brand of squad cast, and then just.
talk to people, listen, get them using the product, learn from them. We met our founding advisor, Harry Duran, at the first podcast movement that we attended, and he was instrumental in those early days, providing us feedback.
quick feedback to iterate the product every day or every week based on that feedback to really get inside the mind of a podcaster and what they would want.
You know, we couldn't have done it without the community and folks like Harry. But it does take a lot of effort of putting yourself out there and immersing yourselves in something that maybe you feel like an outsider or a little bit imposter syndrome with. But fortunately for us.
our experience of what the podcast industry was extremely welcoming and very collaborative and and so we just saw the companies and folks that we looked up to in the space being heavily engaged in the community and we just did our version of that and so
Thankfully, it's blossomed into its own unique type of community. I think that's largely driven by the work of our head of content and community, Ariel Nissenblatt, who has an amazing reputation in the space of her own, but has built up.
a community that was early days of thriving before she came on board, and then she's just taken it to the next level. So yeah, it's something that we can't say.
uh support enough and and encourage people to to do in their own way whether it's immersing themselves with wherever their audience is to help grow their podcast or if they have products and services like doing
doing the same thing cool so you mentioned podcast movement is it the name of the event that's correct yeah so podcast movement would be i would say probably the biggest conference at least in the u.s as far as like has has the biggest buzz around it uh,
products and companies tend to make big announcements at these events there's two a year uh for podcast movement but then there's other ones like we love podfest there's um and then there's a few other events that we like to go to that are a huge part of the squad cast story and how we've
again built up our reputation and relationships with with other figures in the space yeah it's interesting what you said about the podcast uh people being very friendly and it's a good community i think in the podcasting space every podcaster
basically is their own brand the their podcast is uniquely them so there is less kind of competition uh i mean folks like espn might compete with
whoever else does sports stuff. But like, you know, we don't compete with Harry Durant necessarily, who is a host of podcast junkies, because our podcasts, you know, they have their own uniqueness in kind of the personalities and the value that they provide. So they kind of remove some of that.
adversity, I think. But also everybody struggles with the same technical problems. Like we are in the podcasting space to do the content. We want to talk and not necessarily deal with it like file uploads and all that crap, right? So I...
could totally see how people were really wanting to collaborate with you on that. Yeah. If you look at the categories in podcasting, it's it's likely that you're going to find
If you look at the top 10 in every category and then look at the content of all those 10, they're likely to have interviewed each other. They're likely to have recommended guests to each other. They're likely to have guests in common. And I think that that's something that's pretty...
unique to podcasting because of what you say there's there's a real human
aspect to podcasting and just audio in general. And much has been said about like the intimacy factor in podcasting. And I think that's a big driver.
for why it's collaboration over competition. Can we switch back to your podcast a little bit between two mics? So you have two types of episodes. You have the two of you talking and you have like you bring episodes from other shows.
recording squad cast and sort of promote them that way right and showcase them that way in your on your show so when i was listening to a few of your episodes as i was doing research
I personally found, you know, really enjoyable to be listening to you guys. But then when unexpectedly, like somebody else's episode would come up.
in the feed, it felt a bit jarring for maybe a couple of minutes until I started to get used to like, OK, so this is actually not Zack and Rock, it's somebody else. But then that experience is really unexpected, I guess. So I'm curious, do you hear any feedback from your listeners about
I think you call them the mic drop episodes. And also if you see any difference in engagement levels for those. I think they're pretty similar in terms of engagement.
people at a minimum right it serves as a demo of what squad cast can do right at its like fundamental reason for for existing but also right because we're we're big on community and specifically lift
up the creators that we're proud to serve, it seemed like a no-brainer and a win-win to bring them into as even more valid examples of what can be created on Squadcast. And sometimes we bring on their shows and we'll interview.
them. I think that's kind of the best case scenario. Like, I think we did that with American Vigilante was was, you know, award winning true crime audio drama show where we both interviewed.
the the host as well as uh featured featured an episode so i think that's kind of the the best case scenario and we've played with it a bit where i think now we do because of the constraint that that you mentioned we don't want it to be
jarring to your point so we started uh recording like the intro and and having kind of um
some of our some of our voice on there and we're debating whether that should be like its own feed where we can do things we could drop one of those like daily you know um kind of thing and uh and have that as a dedicated feed for our audience
And yeah, we're experimenting with it. So I'm not surprised that you've seen a bit of change over time and also the different types of episodes in our feed.
and uh and even the episodes with with rock and i the interview um episodes are going to be evolving to be more of a narrative style here in the in the near future so we're learning we're content creators uh ourselves as as we've mentioned i think
The last couple weeks, I've been creating content like pretty much every day, maybe every other day, something like that. But I've noticed it increased for me personally, and I was already pretty prolific in the content that I was creating before that.
felt like so i think yeah it's it's something where we're learning from from our audience and then when we learn those uh or sorry our our customers and then when we we learn something from them we're eager to to show those lessons on the podcast how have you grown as hosts
Yeah, after doing so many episodes. I think I heard Duran ask this question to you guys, actually, maybe a couple of years ago. So I just wanted to ask it again.
Well, there's a couple things that we've learned about each other. And of course, you know, we always learn something about our product, using it to record.
Occasionally somebody will invite us to their show and interview us on like Riverside or Zencaster or Zoom or something like that. And we learn from those sessions too. It's interesting what you see when people do things.
differently and and that's cool so i think that uh it really comes down to like solving solving problems right uh is how i think of it and what problems are we solving what other people aren't but what we've learned about rock and i
is pretty interesting. We've picked up on a few things where when you're interviewing and you have a co-host, video helps avoid collisions. So this was something we learned early on.
Everybody listening has probably been on a conference call where there's like,
one or two seconds of silence and then five people start speaking why is that you go first now you go first yeah because they can't you don't have body language to go off of so over time uh one of the first lessons i remember us kind of learning
was some cues for each other with who's going to kind of speak next. We've gotten better at like being natural between scripting versus going off script. We're not huge fans of scripts, but they...
they end up being part of most productions in some way or another. So how do you deliver that? How do you sound natural? I think that's something that, quite frankly, we were recording yesterday and we're struggling with that.
And then as we added video right now, you got to deal with like eye contact with the camera and reading through a teleprompter and camera A, camera B. Right. So we've we've learned a lot as creators and that's just in the production.
of the episode itself, not even pre-production or post-production. So I think there's a lot of nuance in how you approach a guest, what's the angle for the story, being on other people's shows and learning from them.
been very fortunate to be invited, um, on, on, on a lot of shows, uh, then like, we're very grateful for you inviting us on, on this show.
And I always am paying attention. I like to note people's level of preparation because that's something that we are big on and recommend to our customers and community. And some people do it. Some people don't. I will say that in your preparation.
Thank you, by the way, for your level of preparation for this episode. One thing that I noted was that you gave the option to have a pre-interview conversation or not. You kind of left it up to the guest. I've never seen it.
given as an option i've always been told you have to come to this thing uh before or we don't do that at all uh so i really like that you you kind of give the choice and that was something i noticed that was uh
new in y'all's preparation. To be honest, I think we don't have the option of not giving the option right now because we're not that big yet. But I think it makes sense, right?
you are always interviewing busy people. They don't always have the time to meet you twice. And this is already like an hour and a half long session on a busy day. So it makes sense, yeah.
But it is a good move to build up that rapport and not have, you know, so that you can just, once the recording does happen, especially if they're a busy person, you don't have to spend the first five, 10, 15, trying to build up some rapport or some chemistry. And I think that's for me, what I've learned.
as a host is like how to do that quickly, how to make someone feel comfortable.
I think for me also as a host that I've grown is like, I mean, the typical stuff, getting more comfortable. I used to get like very nervous, still sometimes do, but not nearly as much as I used to. Don't nearly as much get grossed out by the sound of my own voice. I'm pretty used to that as well.
But where I see the benefits of podcasting show up is actually when I'm talking to non-podcasting people. So like typically comes up with family or friends and I'm like.
asking them these questions and they're like wow you're asking some good questions and you're a great listener and it's like i'm genuinely interested but i also do think that this experience in podcasting has just kind of improved my ability to
do both of those things in a way where I don't even realize I'm necessarily doing it. But if it makes people feel special, I'm all about that. So that's good. If I can add to that.
the the job interviews at squad cast if you're applying for to work on our team it's not like any other interview you've ever been part of because of this like we we uh our interviews uh are are different it's more like this than it is
than it is like a traditional kind of job interview. Yeah. So our first guest, who was on our second episode, Brian McCullough, he made a really good point about... preparation and uh just being conversational he says he always over prepares so that whichever way the conversation goes he always
can take it that way, right? So he doesn't have to go like off the script, off a rigid agenda. So he just knows enough to go wherever. And generally...
independently from Brian, we follow the same approach. We have our notes. I actually have my Google Docs file next to next to the squad cast window, and we didn't cover half of the topics that we had on our list. So
Yeah, conversation went the way it went, and I think it's been a great discussion. I think that's often the case, right? It gives you that confidence to go off script and sound more natural. We've all heard episodes where it's like, hmm, interesting.
Interesting. Next question.
Hmm. Interesting. Next question. You know, I think I like the challenge of coming up with stuff on the fly. And yeah, you can't really fake that if you're not prepared. And one of our other advisors, Jordan Harbinger, I know.
like i i think his level of preparation is probably more than i've seen uh he's a little obsessive about it and it's kind of become one of his things and it shows in the in the interviews that he has if if you're gonna go talk to uh kobe you know uh like
Probably prepare for a couple weeks or months for that one. To close, what are your favorite podcasts right now? What are you listening to? Other than Metacast, of course. Yeah, of course. Episode 8, baby. My favorite one.
So one that I'm always listening to every week is the All In podcast. It's hosted by four folks in the startup entrepreneurial game. So they're always a fun time. The one that I've really...
come to love in the last year is this one called raised by wolves were you raised by wolves and it's a play on that term like were you raised by wolves and it's a show
all about manners and so they go through all these like normal life topics and it's like what's the polite way to do this what's the thoughtful way to do this because i don't know about you guys but like living in an apartment there's these encounters all the time like laundry
trash. There's all these different things where it's like, I want to be a good neighbor and the right person, but why are you leaving your laundry in the dryer and make me got to touch your stuff, man? Like, and so what's the polite way to do that? And this show does it, they do it in such a funny, creative way. So highly encouraged.
you checking that out it's it's like all podcasting it's such that's it's a beautiful example of what podcasting is it's so weird quirky something you're not going to hear anybody anywhere else independently produced i love it
I, too, am a fan of All In. And I've listened at Rock's recommendation to a few episodes of Raised by Wolves. And the one I've been listening to recently is called Something Was Wrong.
and it's about abusive relationships and kind of a true crime approach leading up to so it's it's true crime but it's not like a murder you know solving a murder kind of thing it's more like how do these relationships
evolve into abuse. How do people manipulate each other and then
Of course, the whole family aspects of it and things like that. Honestly, my wife played an episode just randomly while we were driving. And I think it was recommended from the You're Wrong About show. Are You Wrong About podcast? Which is something that we like. And we just...
totally got sucked into like binge the first, uh, first full season on a long drive. So yeah, something was wrong is, uh, my current favorite show. Cool. Well, this has been an awesome, awesome episode. Um,
Thanks for sharing all the details. We continue to use and love Squadcast, so keep doing great.
job with that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the tips. Hey, thank you. Thanks for walking us through and giving us the meta version of your production strategy and stuff. Hopefully this leads to some video content, but we got a firsthand view of watching the sausage potentially get made. Yes.
Yeah, we're happy to help. I think so far we've implemented tips from every single guest that we had on the show. So your contribution will probably be the video. Well, we've done our work. Yeah. Zach rocks. Thank you very much.
Appreciate it very much. Thank you very much, guys.