DEV Community

Build Your SaaS

What's it like getting acquired by Spotify? (Dave Zohrob from Chartable)

Dave Zohrob is the co-founder of Chartable (a podcast analytics startup), talks about selling his company to Spotify in February 2022.

Highlights (go straight to 🔥 for the best stuff):

  • 1:00 – What's the Spotify office in New York like?
  • 5:24 – Dave's first startup: he started an indie record label (Tellall Records)
  • 7:12 – Founding in Chartable in 2017
  • 8:00 – Behind the scenes: talking to Chris Enns (our editor at Lemon Productions)
  • 9:50 – Dave's first business as a kid: publishing programming tutorials on the internet (Qbasic.com)
  • 12:25 – What made you want to make money on the internet?
  • 14:25 – Do all geeks have the intuition to start a business? (Justin's tweet) 🔥
  • 19:23 – What's your real motivation for building a startup? 🔥
  • 24:28 – Side-projects vs Bootstrapping vs Venture Funding (VC) 🔥
  • 30:12 – Once you choose the VC-funded path, what's it like? 🔥
  • 32:00 – The huge risk/cost for founders with families 🔥
  • 34:30 – Public health insurance is the best way to boost entrepreneurship
  • 36:30 – Bootstrappers and VC-funded founders have this same anxiety 🔥
  • 40:00 – What it's like joining a massive company as a small 11-person company? 🔥
  • 48:10 – What's next in podcast ad tech, analytics, and attribution 🔥

What should we talk about next?

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

  1. Jason Charnes
  2. Mitchell Davis from RecruitKit.com.au
  3. Marcel Fahle, ​​wearebold.af
  4. Alex Payne
  5. Bill Condo
  6. Anton Zorin from ProdCamp.com
  7. Harris Kenny, Intro CRM podcast
  8. Oleg Kulyk
  9. Ethan Gunderson
  10. Ward Sandler, Memberspace
  11. Russell Brown, Photivo.com
  12. Noah Prail
  13. Colin Gray
  14. Austin Loveless
  15. Michael Sitver
  16. Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, Fathom
  17. Dan Buda
  18. Darby Frey
  19. Adam DuVander
  20. Dave Giunta (JOOnta)
  21. Kyle Fox GetRewardful.com

Want to start a podcast on Transistor? Justin has a special coupon for you: get 15% off your first year of hosting: transistor.fm/justin

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Episode source