Adam Sachs is the COO of Team Coco and a veteran podcast and digital media executive. Adam works with some of the biggest names in Hollywood like Conan O'Brien, and even Barack and Michelle Obama. We discuss his time as CEO of Midroll Media and its sale to E.W. Scripps, founding a group dating website that he sold to IAC, and the power of being foolishly confident. Full episode transcript is below.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Chris Erwin:

Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up. A podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.

Adam Sachs:

I think we were foolishly so confident. We just thought, "Oh, we have a great idea, so it's going to be successful. Let's just quit our jobs and start this business." And didn't really understand that so much has to go right in order for it to be successful. And not only does so much have to go right, but it takes so long.

Chris Erwin:

This week's episode features Adam Sachs. Adam is a true digital media OG. And today he works with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, like Conan O'Brien and even the Obamas. So we got a lot to talk about. We'll get into how he started a group dating website and then moved his family to India for it and sold that to Barry Diller. Then we'll talk about how Adam joined as the CEO of Midroll Media, and then orchestrated its sale to E.W. Scripps, one of the biggest deals in podcasting at the time.

Chris Erwin:

There's many other stories in between. Adam's a fantastic guy. This interview is a lot of fun. Let's get into it. Quick heads up that my interview with Adam was recorded back in January and prior to COVID.

Where do you think your entertainment and comedy origins really starts?

Adam Sachs:

I don't know. I've always been obsessed with comedy from a very young age. I was obsessed with Adam Sandler and then Jerry Seinfeld, and Seinfeld the show was a really important part of my life. At one point, I think I could recite every word of every episode of Seinfeld. I would just watch the tapes over and over and over again. And the same for Adam Sandler movies before that. Yeah. I don't know.

Adam Sachs:

I just always loved it. And the idea of having a career in comedy, I didn't really know what that would be, but I always wanted to have a career in comedy. And at points I thought, "Well, maybe I'll be a comedian." I never really was I think, talented enough to do that.

Chris Erwin:

I always remember you as being kind of like a class clown and very funny and very witty and always, like you said, sightings really funny, like Seinfeld references and jokes for everything that we did. But it seemed like you started to take it more seriously when you're like, "Okay, I'm going to join the improv jam in Red Bank." When you started doing that, did that further solidify your like, "Yeah, there's going to be a future for me here." Or you're like, "Oh actually, maybe this is not for me. This is harder than I thought."

Adam Sachs:

I really enjoyed it. But I was also never one of those people who was super comfortable on stage. I think what I realized after I started doing these improv classes at the local internet cafe, but I did love it. And I thought that the people around me were really talented and I really enjoyed that. And so yeah, even going into college, I thought, "Oh, maybe being on stage isn't really for me, but maybe I'll be a comedy writer. Maybe I'll write TV shows like funny TV shows."

Adam Sachs:

And I did pursue that. I had a regular college education, and at one point thought maybe I'll end up going to law school and even studied for the LSAT. That was sort of like a hedge, I think, because in parallel I had like a writing partner who I went to college with, Ally Hord who still a good friend of mine and we would write comedy scripts together. And she was the more talented one. She went on to be successful.

Chris Erwin:

I think you guys are both incredibly talented with great success.

Adam Sachs:

No. She is really, really funny. And now she's a writer at Seth Meyers.

Chris Erwin:

I remember Ally Hord. I think I was working because Adam and I both share a Northwestern Wildcat blood. And I was working on a startup idea when I was in grad school there. And I think I had asked Ally who was at Funny Or Die at the time. I was like, "Oh, can you be a beta tester of my product?" And she was always very supportive, and she was like, "Oh yeah, we're using it. We're using it on set. It's super helpful."

Chris Erwin:

And I don't think they actually really did anything with it, but she was a great sport. All right. So you're at Northwestern, you decide that you're not going to go to law school. And so instead of doing that, you decide to teach English abroad as your first move right out of undergrad. And what was the reason for that?

Adam Sachs:

I had a friend Howie who's a year above me who he is now a lawyer, but he was also like not sure if he wanted to be a lawyer or what do you want it to do. And he went to Madrid and he and I were really close. We stayed in touch and it sounded really cool. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had taken the LSAT. I didn't know if I wanted to go to law school. In my gut felt like I didn't really want to go to law school, but I wasn't sure. And so I was just decided I'll just take a year and like go abroad and maybe I'll figure it out.

Chris Erwin:

It's almost like in a way a lot of kids now are taking a gap year before they go to school. But getting some free mental space to be like, what do I really want to do to reflect, be exposed to new experiences? And I think a lot of people should do that more often in their careers and more often in their life. And don't. And I remember that you were telling our group about that. I'm like, "Well, Adam has always such an ambitious focus person. Is he already falling off the wagon?"

Adam Sachs:

I felt like that, to be honest. First of all, going abroad is like, it was a huge privilege. I made a little money teaching English, but not everyone can do it. I don't think, but it was like, I look back on it and yeah, halfway through it, I was like, "My friends are already ... they already have jobs. I'm really falling behind. What's happening here? My college friends are like getting jobs at like JP Morgan or they're in law school or whatever it is."

Adam Sachs:

And I'm like, "What am I doing? I'm going to be so far behind all of my peers when I get back after this year." And that now looking back, like in retrospect, that was dumb. I shouldn't have been worrying about that because it was an enormously formative experience in my life because it was like I was able to see a lot of the world and meet a lot of people and just gain perspective that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And I still have really close friends from that period that live in Madrid or live in Prague.

Chris Erwin:

No. And that's interesting to hear that you had doubts during that period. But at the end of your year of teaching English as a second language, were you starting to feel comfortable like, "No, this was actually the right decision. I've learned a lot."

Adam Sachs:

Maybe. Now I feel like it was a right decision. At the end of that year, I don't know. I still felt like I got to get back. I have to get home and like start doing something so that I'm not the bum.

Chris Erwin:

Yeah. And that's a theme throughout your career narrative is that you've made decisions where I've looked at them early on, was like, "Oh, Adam's going and teaching abroad. That's kind of a weird move right out of undergrad." And then, "Adams he's starting a tech company and is applying to Techstars. What is that? Startups aren't cool yet." And it was always kind of like this contrarian approach where there was probably like doubt within you, but doubt within the peer group. But it's clear that all of these buts have really paid off. Kudos to that.

Adam Sachs:

Maybe. You're giving me a lot of credit. We'll see where all this goes.

Chris Erwin:

Okay. So after abroad, you decided to go to Sony. How did that come to be?

Adam Sachs:

I knew people at Sony from my internship, so I reached out to them and I got a very kind of entry level job in Sony Pictures Television in New York.

Chris Erwin:

And did you feel that when you were doing that because your career took a big turn when you started your first company soon after, or maybe concurrently while you were at Sony. Did you look at Sony as, "Hey, this is something I want to invest material time into," or is this, "This is just a stepping stone. And I want to get maybe that traditional validation of working at a big company."

Adam Sachs:

To be honest, I think at first I thought I'll get my foot in the door of this like really great company. Everyone that was a radio TV, film major at Northwestern, if they didn't go into being a writer or director or pursuing that path, if they went into TV, the hot thing was like to go into development. And I was like, "I think I want to go into development." I didn't even know what it meant really.

Adam Sachs:

I was just like, "But it sounds cool to be a development executive." And I think I applied for those jobs and I didn't get them or whatever. So I got like a different job in the ad sales department at Sony. But I think my thinking was, I'll get in the door there and then I'll figure out how to have a development career. And hopefully along the way, I'll figure out what development means. So, that was my thinking.

Chris Erwin:

I think I want a development career. I don't know what it is, but it's sound has cache.

Adam Sachs:

But it sounds cool. And people who do it think it's cool. So I honestly think that was my thinking at the time. And there was also always a New York, LA kind of conflict in my mind. This was in New York, but I did feel like LA was an inevitability at some point if I wanted to pursue that sort of career. But at the same time, my good college friend and I, Dan Osit, we started to talk about this startup idea that we got, that we've got really obsessed with.

Adam Sachs:

And it was the idea of, we were in our early mid 20s living in New York City and going out with our group of friends and going out and meeting other friends. And we started to think, "Man, isn't it crazy that there's no dating site that were like, you go out with your friends and meet other people. And wouldn't it more fun and less awkward and even safer to have an experience where you went out with your friends and met another group of friends."

Adam Sachs:

And the more we talked about that idea, he was also in his first or second year of working in a finance job out of college. The more we talked about that idea, the more we thought like, this is a really good idea. And we talked to friends who thought it was a good idea. And I think I was planning to move to LA and move in with Matt and Rob and some of our buddies and just figure out like how to get a development job basically.

Adam Sachs:

But then I became obsessed with this business idea and this idea of starting a startup. And the more we talked to our friends, the more we got excited about it. And then we quit our jobs and we started pursuing it.

Chris Erwin:

So how'd you guys think about how to start actually building the company? Today feels like there's millions of guides for like how to build a business. But 15 years ago, there was a lot less resources out there. So what did you guys turn to?

Adam Sachs:

Here's how different the landscape was then. We sent an email, Dan and I sent an email to like all of our friends, like a blast email being like, "Does anyone know anyone who has ever started a company because we don't know where to start?"

Chris Erwin:

I may have been on that email.

Adam Sachs:

I'm sure you were. And we got like one response or two responses, and we ended up meeting the guys who started meetup.com, which was a really good connection for us. But today, if you ask that question, everyone knows someone who has started a startup.

Chris Erwin:

The Lean Startup, Four Steps to the Epiphany, like all of these books.

Adam Sachs:

Exactly. And that stuff didn't really exist. Or if it did, we were unaware of it. It was like, there was a less of established path at that point because we didn't know what to do. We said, "Okay, we want to start this thing." But what if we had literally just had to try to start taking people out to coffee to understand how do you do this?

Chris Erwin:

Yeah. So what was the point where you guys made that decision, we're leaving our jobs, we're getting off this path to become development execs, whatever that is, or financiers? That is a big decision to make at an early age. Also considering like what your peers are doing, your parents probably not understanding the opportunities within the startup space. What was that catalyst point?

Adam Sachs:

I think we were, and to be honest, like foolishly so confident that we had a great idea. And I think because we knew so little about starting a business, didn't realize how important execution is. And we just thought, "Oh, we have a great idea. So it's going to be successful of course, because our idea is great. And we've asked our friends and they think it's great too. So let's just quit our jobs and start this business."

Adam Sachs:

And didn't really understand that so much has to go right in order for it to be successful. And not only do so much have to go right, but it takes so long and it's going to take a lot of endurance. But it was not easy. Like my friends all continued on in their jobs in New York City. I had to move home. I didn't really have a paying job for a long time. So I had to move in back in with my parents in New Jersey.

Chris Erwin:

Yeah. I really like how you described that you had to be foolishly confident. I think when you do the math, the odds are totally stacked against you in starting a company. So you have to be delusional in a way and saying like, "I can do this." And so whether that's just like in your blood or in your nature, or at your point, you just didn't even know any better.

Adam Sachs:

No, I just didn't know any better.

Chris Erwin:

That's an asset.

Adam Sachs:

Exactly. I think it was truly in my ignorance helped in that way, because I just didn't know any better.

Chris Erwin:

I think I remember. So you used to host at your father's house in Little Silver, used to host a lot of basketball games. You play a lot of like three on three or five on five, what have you. I think we were over there one day and I think I had heard rumors that you're like, "Adam's starting this company and now he's applied to Techstars and he's getting into this program."

Chris Erwin:

And I was like, "Adam, I don't understand what you're doing. I'm confused. What is this?" Startups we're in cool yet. But you had a mission, you had a plan. And so then you applied to Techstars. What was that application process like?

Adam Sachs:

We realized that we had to raise money in order to build this thing. And so we ended up meeting through friends of friends some early stage VCs. They were rightfully for the most part, like, "You guys are not really investible at this point. You don't really know what you're doing." And we hadn't really built much at that point. But one of the VCs who really, I think believed in us was this guy, Jason Mendelson, and his partner, Seth Levine at the Foundry Group in Boulder.

Adam Sachs:

And we got connected with them and they were also like, "You guys are onto something here, but you're in New York, we're in Boulder." But I think they really liked us and believed in us. And so they encouraged us to apply to Techstars. And we had never heard of Techstars before, but they're intimately involved in starting Techstars and supporting Techstars.

Adam Sachs:

It was not an obvious thing for us to do because I had never heard of it. I didn't know what a incubator or accelerator was at that point. Again, this is a different time where now there's a million accelerators.

Chris Erwin:

That's great. And this was literally 12 years ago. So it's not we're talking about 35 years ago. This was like within generally past decade.

Adam Sachs:

Not that long ago, but it was a different world. And so yeah, we applied and I think through the help of those guys, we ended up getting in. But even then I think, again, points to our kind of foolish ignorance, we were like, maybe we're a little too far along for this Techstars thing is what we thought. We were like, we have some users on in our Facebook app. That's how we started.

Chris Erwin:

Okay. It's just also funny to hear, like this speaks to the delusional part of actually we're pretty advanced, like we have users, so we actually really needed to be a part of this program. Maybe we should just skip this. That's what you guys wanted.

Adam Sachs:

Again, pretty dumb, but it was really, really valuable experience. It's a mentorship driven experience. We needed mentorship. I studied history and film in college. Dan, I think studied communication or something. We didn't really know what we know. And also there's really not a great curriculum probably even to this day for starting a company. In my opinion, you have to talk to people who have done it. Learn from people who have done it.

Adam Sachs:

I think it's not something that you graduate, even if you, I know very few schools have an entrepreneurship program, but I think even if you graduated with a degree in entrepreneurship, you still don't really know what you're doing until you get in there and start doing it.

Chris Erwin:

Yeah. So you're at Techstars, clearly it was a positive experience. You graduate.

Adam Sachs:

Yes.

Chris Erwin:

And then did you raise money immediately upon graduation at demo day?

Adam Sachs:

Yeah, immediately. We had a really good presentation actually. We were working with our mentors and again, these guys, Jason and Seth at Foundry Group became our mentors. And the second half really of Techstars is like for preparing, at least at this point. It might've changed. Again, this is 2008, so this is a long time ago. But at that point, the first half is a lot of mentorship. The second half is really like preparing for demo day.

Adam Sachs:

And I remember we put together a presentation, a draft representation. We brought it over to Jason in his office and sat down with him and walked him through it. And he was just like, "Yeah, it's pretty good. I don't know. It's fine. But it's missing you guys," is what he said. And I think he'd gotten to know us and know our personalities or whatever. And we went back and I remember we locked ourselves in a room with our small team of four of us for like a weekend and came back to him on Monday. And it was a funny presentation. It was like a comedy driven presentation and he was just like, "This is it, this is it."

Chris Erwin:

Actually I never thought about that. But thinking about your roots in comedy, entertainment, improv, and then writing with Ally at Northwestern, pitching to investor is about telling an incredible story of excitement, why we are the best team to do this, really peaking their interests. And I was like, you have like the formula for that. And I guess that's what this guy wanted. And then he didn't know what you had in you. And you're like, "No, let us show you."

Adam Sachs:

Yeah. So the presentation went great. And I think for a lot of people, did a lot of the VC side of it. There's 300 VCs in the audience or something like that. I think for a lot of them, it was the first time they saw like an actual funny VC pitch or whatever, like startup pitch. And I don't think it was necessarily like the humor that attracted ... Any smart VC is not going to be like, "I'm going to invest in the funniest entrepreneur."

Adam Sachs:

On the surface, it was funny. But when you got beneath it, it was like, "These guys actually know, they have a good handle on what their vision for the business is." So yeah, we did raise money immediately.

Chris Erwin:

An interesting highlight from that point though, is I think when investors see for an early stage company is okay, do they have a product? Have they built something? Are they solving a real problem? But it's so early. Even if they have a little bit of users is likely pre-revenue. So there's just an incredible amount of risk. So they're really betting on the founders, on the ability of the founders to attract future capital, tell a good story, recruit a team, and build a team and motivate people.

Chris Erwin:

And so what they could have seen in you is like, "Okay, there's this magnetism of this team that's going to be able to attract people to their team and get them excited about this ridiculous mission that they're on." So it seems like you have this asset of your storytelling, was actually like checking a major box for these investors. If you think about it that way.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah. Maybe. We also rushed the fundraising because this was like August, September of 2008, and the financial world was starting to just collapse around us. And so, once we saw that happening, we were pushing our investors to like, get your checks and get your checks. Because that we knew that very shortly after that, we could feel like the economy was collapsing.

Chris Erwin:

Got it. So money comes in the bank. And how much did you raised initially?

Adam Sachs:

So funny. Again, only 12 years ago, but we raised a series A and it was like a $1.2 million, which today is like a pre seed amount of money. But at that point, that was our series A.

Chris Erwin:

Okay. And that was on top of a little bit of family and friends money that you raised.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah.

Chris Erwin:

Got it. So you have the money, your team is feeling excited. You move to New York City. I remember that you had offices in Union Square. I don't know if you moved immediately there.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah, we did.

Chris Erwin:

I was part of a beta test for a group date in the lower Eastside.

Adam Sachs:

I think like a Max Fish or something.

Chris Erwin:

Yeah. There's like six or seven guys. Six or seven girls. We're all competing and say who's getting them like the most amount of face time with the other side. It was a really funny experience. There was also a launch party that was associated with it.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah. At Barna, which no longer is on Park Avenue South.

Chris Erwin:

So I remember I was like, okay, I don't know what Adam's doing, but if I get invited to cool parties and get to go on like group dates and maybe meet women, I'll be supportive. All right. So tangent. You're in New York City, you have the company, and now you're there for the next six years. What do you remember as a major inflection point after raising that money and saying, "Okay, now we're scaling this company." What were some of those key milestones?

Adam Sachs:

One of them, the biggest one for sure is we were out there hustling having parties. We would literally like throw a party at a bar in the East Village, bring our digital cameras because that's how you took pictures then and computers and buy people drinks to like sign them up in exchange for having them have a profile on our site. So we'd be like, "Hey, do you want to try our site? We'll buy you a drink."

Adam Sachs:

And so, we would then take their picture at the bar and make a profile for them. Because it was a grind to get people to sign up.

Chris Erwin:

Were most people amenable to that? Or were some people turned off?

Adam Sachs:

Half and half I think. We had like maybe dozens of people signing up every day in New York, but we'd go home at night and look at our Google analytics and be like, "Hundreds of people signed up today in India." Or like thousands of people signed up today in India at one point. And so that was sort of the inflection point, which is like, we're pushing too hard for something that maybe there's not as much of a demand for here as there is for other places.

Adam Sachs:

And so at that point it was like, let's understand this, what is going on here? We didn't understand India or some of the other markets where we were seeing this natural, organic demand, and India was one of them, for sure. Also like Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesia and other Asian countries. And at that point, it was like, that was a huge inflection point. And it was let's understand what's going on here so that we can decide, is this worth pursuing.

Chris Erwin:

We're back from a quick break and maybe unbeknownst to Adam, but I just actually we have a bunch of our high school friends on group text, and I just sent a crowdsource message of any questions that we should ask Adam on the podcast. So I might check this at the end when we get to the rapid fire, that has been seated within the group.

Adam Sachs:

Awesome.

Chris Erwin:

So we'll see what happens.

Adam Sachs:

Our friends are deviance. I don't want to see what their questions are.

Chris Erwin:

So we were just talking about you're now in New York City with funding, you're scaling Ignighter. You're hustling, you're grinding, you're going out to the bars, you're signing up people like on location. So then what you're just touching on, which is interesting is this theme of the unexpected. So you're building this business, you're looking at your metrics, and all of a sudden you're seeing user growth in India and in Singapore and these Asian countries, that's not what you're necessarily intending for, but it's happening.

Chris Erwin:

So as you start seeing this information, there's certain types of leaders and people that would say, "That's that's interesting, but we're not going to do something about it." What was the point where you're like, "This is meaningful. And now we're actually going to pursue this. This is opportunity." What was that decision making process?

Adam Sachs:

At first, it was like, this is interesting, but it's not our mission. So we ignored it. For I don't know how long, for maybe a few months. And then eventually it was like the discrepancy between how hard we were hustling and grinding to sign up users one at a time in New York versus literally I think at our peak, there were like 5,000 people a day signing up in India. And it was like, "What are we doing here? Let's figure this out. What is it that's making it click there?"

Adam Sachs:

And that's when we started to talk to people who knew the market way better than we did, talk to people who knew the culture better than we did.

Chris Erwin:

How do you do that? Who do you talk to? The same thing, like figuring out who do you talk to about Techstars? Did you call up your investors, did call friends?

Adam Sachs:

It was a little bit of both. Yeah. And we were able I think through our investors and through the Techstars network to meet people who are either entrepreneurs who were maybe of Indian descent and had family in India or who had family that were building companies in India. We actually shared an office with a company, coincidentally enough called exclusively.in. I don't know if they exist anymore, but they were a company that was building like fashion products in India.

Adam Sachs:

And they were really closely connected to the market. And so they started to like help us and connect us to angel investors in India and VCs in India. And those people help. Once we started to understand this, we went out and we raised more money from investors who were interested in that path in pursuing that in India story.

Chris Erwin:

Growth in Indian market.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah.

Chris Erwin:

Okay. And how much money did you raise at that point?

Adam Sachs:

I think maybe three or three and a half million, something like that.

Chris Erwin:

Okay. And at this point, are you feeling excited?

Adam Sachs:

Excited but scared too. We'd never even been there at that point. We still hadn't even been to India. It was hard enough I think building a company like in a market that we knew inside and out. And so the idea of building a company somewhere else felt like how's that going to work?

Chris Erwin:

I can understand the mix of emotions because maybe there was some frustration with the challenge in getting traction in the United States where you were focused. So this is in a way maybe a bit of a lifeline.

Adam Sachs:

It felt like a lifeline, but it also felt like we were riding blind a little bit too. Our first move was like, now that we know we have all the traction in India, let's put up a landing page so that only people in India see that shows people that look like they're in India and not people that look like they're in New York so that and you can kind of geo target in that way. But we didn't know the market well.

Adam Sachs:

So I remember our first landing page in India we're like, here, these are two beautiful looking Indian people. Let's put them on the landing page. And it turned out, we put a picture of like a bride, like a woman wearing a bride's outfit. And we were trying to be like the antithesis of like one of those like serious like marriage dating sites. And it was like literally a woman in bride garb.

Adam Sachs:

And then one of our investors who I guess knew the market was like, "What are you doing? That's not what you guys are."

Chris Erwin:

Not your brand.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah. That's so off brand. So it took us a while to figure it out.

Chris Erwin:

This all leads to a point where you end up moving to India.

Adam Sachs:

Yeah.

Chris Erwin:

And you moved there with your wife, Molly.

Adam Sachs:

Sort of. We had an apartment in New York where we lived and then I got a place in India and mostly it was me going over there. Molly did go. But it was mostly me going by myself.

Chris Erwin:

Is there one memorable moment of like you're in India and you're just in shock being like, "Wow, this is just feels so different."

Adam Sachs:

I think just in general, just the business norms were really hard. Like when we wanted to start processing payments, for example, I remember we had to get some kind of certification from like the Royal Bank of India or something like that. And then that took forever and we had to be compliant in a certain way that I didn't really understand. And at one point I was really an expert in all this stuff.

Adam Sachs:

And I've fortunately since forgotten, I think most of it. But it was like very hard. And then also people didn't really have credit cards or a lot of people didn't have credit cards. And so you have to figure out other ways to pay. And there were people that were paying with their mobile phone credits and it was very, very different and in that way, challenging.

Chris Erwin:

Got it. So then you eventually sale to Barry Diller's IAC. How did that come to be?

Adam Sachs:

Well, to be honest, and this is something that they don't really tell you when you start a dating site is that there's not that many buyers out there for dating sites. There's one universal behemoth in the dating world that wants to be the globally dominant business and that's IAC. So a typical sales process would have competitive nature attached to it where there's like a bunch of different companies bidding for your business.

Adam Sachs:

It was hard for us to drum up a competitive process when there's like really just one buyer out there.

Chris Erwin:

So you sell to IAC. And then at that point, I think that was a big milestone because you started a company, you ran it, build and scale the team, transitioned to an international market, and then you exited it. And I don't believe this was like a major liquidity event for you, but it was a sale. And that is a big stamp of approval. And so now it's kind of like you have this big entrepreneur stamp on your back.

Chris Erwin:

And so next, I think that you ended up going to Midroll Media, and this is another major inflection point in your career where you kind of lay the foundation for becoming this early and seasoned audio executive. And this now like fast growing industry. And what sold you on going into podcasts and audio and then moving to LA?

Adam Sachs:

First of all, all my time spent on planes going back and forth from New York to Mumbai and then being in Mumbai by myself, I had become obsessed with podcasts. I was listening to them all the time. They were my companion in India, basically. And as we have already established, always wanted a career in media. I've joked, like I've studied radio, TV, film. I never thought I would be doing something in the radio piece of it, or the RTVS, because that wasn't even really part of the curriculum.

Adam Sachs:

But I became obsessed with podcasts. I met a guy named Jeff Alrich who started Earwolf. And in fact, Ally Hord introduced us. And I met him when I was still at Ignighter or step out. And we just met us to like CEOs kind of commiserating as startup CEOs often do about like the various challenges. But I really loved his business. Even though it was still small at that point, it was bootstrapped.

Adam Sachs:

So he didn't have investors and it was profitable and it was growing and it was in an area of media that I loved and that I felt like was just kind of getting started. So yeah, we got to know each other. And then the timing worked out that after we sold to IAC, he reached out saying like, "I'm looking for someone to help me build this business, like a COO type. Do you have anyone in mind?"

Adam Sachs:

And I throw my hat in the ring. And then also the other piece of it was that we, at this point, had like a baby in New York City and we were feeling kind of done with New York. It was hard to have a kid in New York. I think the suburbs didn't really appeal to us. As I mentioned, LA always had some certain draw. We didn't necessarily know that we wanted to leave New York and go to LA, but this just felt like the right opportunity to try it.

Chris Erwin:

It's interesting. It feels like it's checking a few boxes for you. Because I know in talking to you at that time, I think you had a really great experience at Ignighter. You learned a lot, you've built a great investor network, but it was challenging. You had with investors, a lot of different stakeholders in your business, different points of view, weren't profitable and sustainable and a lot of the stage of the company.

Chris Erwin:

So Adam, you have a really exciting run at Midroll before you exit a couple of years later. You joined as COO and then in just nine months, you're promoted to CEO. So tell us about that journey. And what did you first focus on when you joined the team?

Adam Sachs:

It was a lot, we were building this new network called Midroll. The business started as Earwolf and that was continuing to grow, but the new-

Chris Erwin:

Earwolf was a network of comedy