The Early Days: Building Podup with Adam Thornhill
How many times a week do you ask for Business Podcast recommendations to only heart them in your Spotify app and never go back to listening? If you're like me, it's a lot.
Welcome to The Early Days: A series that checks in with kickass Founders who share honest lessons, tips & tricks and a sneak peek into building their startup in public, from the ground up.
🔥 Turning notes into a newsletter, the inspiration
How many times a week do you ask for Business Podcast recommendations to only heart them in your Spotify app and never go back to listening? If you're like me, it's a lot. Now imagine a weekly roundup of the top business podcasts to help you get smarter and save 10 hours of listening time. My busy parent heart just grew 10 sizes, did you say get smarter and save time?
Meet Adam who's doing just that with Podup: The #1 way to discover the best business podcasts and episodes.
What inspired you to listen to 10 hours of podcasts a week? 🎧
We all have friends who send unsolicited opinions, ideas, and trends. I'm one of those people. I'm a long-time podcast listener and always shared the best bits with colleagues and friends.
Since having two young kids, I've relied on podcasts to survive the non-stop list of mundane tasks. From driving to the nursery to cleaning up their mess, podcasts made my time feel a bit more productive.
6 months ago, I decided to turn my notes into a newsletter. I've reworked the format a bit and the result is 'Best 3 Podcasts of the Week'. Readers seem to love it and I hit my goal of achieving 500 subscribers by the end of the year.
How do you discover new podcasts and choose what to listen to? What not to listen to? 🔍
The best way I discover new podcasts is through readers and new subscribers. In my welcome email, I ask people to share their favorite podcasts. I've stumbled across so many underrated gems from a diverse group of people.
I'm brutal in that every new podcast I listen to has one chance to shine. If I listen to an episode and it's all fluff, they've lost me for good. If it's a 7/10 or above, I'll follow the podcast and try out future episodes.
You've built this super neat community around business podcasts? What are people craving? 👥
People are drawn to people. The most popular podcasts on Podup are those where the host has a personality.
You've got super likable and personable characters like Lenny Rachitsky and Phill Agnew, then more polarising and opinionated ones like Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
The common thread between all of them is that they release high-quality episodes, week in and week out.
What are your favorite spots on the internet to learn and hang out? 🐦
Twitter. After almost 10 years on the platform, I've refined who I follow to get a broad range of insights and ideas.
What was your inspiration behind the idea Moonpig and posting this on Kernal? Do you post ideas elsewhere?💡
Episode 344 of My First Million. Shaan and Sam shared 4 interesting AI ideas. As always, they got my gears turning. I started thinking about how AI can be used to reinvent pretty much every business we surround ourselves with today.
I usually share ideas with friends or in my newsletter but I tried out Kernal and enjoyed how easy it is to share ideas and get feedback from like-minded peers.
How do you know if an idea is worth pursuing vs keeping it in the notebook? 📓
Motivation. I've had a few great ideas in the past but if I'm not motivated to do it that second, I won't have the motivation to build a long-term, sustainable business over 5-10 years.
My newsletter is a great example. It's definitely not my best idea. But I love it. I love writing and engaging with readers. If you're willing to work on an idea while on holiday at the beach, you know you have a product-founder fit.
Closing Notes ☁️
We always hear about Product-Market Fit but I love how Adam talks about Product-Founder Fit and your willingness to work on your idea on a beach, simply because you enjoy it. Taking notes and turning them into an NL is pretty inspiring to us and we can't wait to see Adam reach 1000 readers 🚀
At Kernal, we believe that bringing ideas to life is good for the world, the best ideas can come from anywhere, entrepreneurial longevity beats short-term gains, and shipping ideas is more important than perfecting them.
Do you have an idea that you're itching to share? Post here and watch your seeds grow into a forest. 🌲🌳🌲🌳
With nearly 10,000 members, 2,000 startup ideas and 200 MVPs, Kernal is an expanding community of founders, operators, and investors focused on validating and building pre-seed startup ideas. Post new ideas, browse startups with momentum, and get expert feedback to take the next steps of scaling your startup idea. This exclusive community is the most supportive place to be for builders at this stage in their journey. We welcome you to join the community.