82: Helping Creators build Media Businesses | Josh Kaplan, CEO of Smooth Media

Billion Moonshots

Josh Kaplan is the Co-founder & CEO of Smooth Media where they help creators build media businesses. After graduation, he joined PwC and then, led Audio Products at Morning Brew.

We talked about getting into Morning Brew, experiences working with founders, lessons learnt from launching Business Casual podcast, origin of Smooth Media, and much more.

SPONSORS

BridgeUp: DM me on Twitter to raise $100,000+ in non-dilutive capital

Listnr: https://listnr.tech/?via=prashant

Dukaan: https://mydukaan.io/

Recast: https://recast.studio/

GUEST LINKS

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-kaplan-35029b73/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JKaplan1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josh_kaplan_/

Website: https://www.smoothmedia.co/

CONNECT

Prashant Bagga: https://linktr.ee/prashantpbagga

Billion Moonshots: https://linktr.ee/billionmoonshots

OUTLINE

(0:00) - Quitting PwC to join Morning Brew

(2:56) - Early days of Morning Brew

(4:46) - Growing Business Casual podcast to millions of downloads

(7:05) - Getting Mark Cuban on the pod

(11:09) - Origin story of Smooth Media

(13:41) - Landing Colin & Samir as first client

(17:44) - Smooth Media vs Jelly Smack

(22:52) - Trends in Creator Economy

(26:52) - Business Model of Smooth

(28:22) - Solving Tax Filing for Creators

(29:54) - Potential of Creator-led brands

(32:58) - Being Founder vs Employee

(36:40) - Creator Anxiety

TOP EPISODES

77: Shashank Kumar, Founder of Razorpay [Hindi]

75: Kyla Scanlon, Founder of Bread

74: Adam Jackson, Co-founder of Braintrust

68: Natalie Brunell, Host of Coin Stories Podcast

62: Suumit Shah, CEO of Dukaan [Hindi]

Past guests of Billion Moonshots include Shashank Kumar, Suumit Shah, Natalie Brunell, Danielle Strachman, Chirag Taneja, Suhas Motwani, Aditya Mohanty, Jan-Philipp Peters, Mo Islam, Peer Richelsen, Justin Nguyen, Paul Griffiths, Gautam Gupta, Sang Le, Rahul Rana, Grace Ling, Joseph Choi and many more.