Breaker
A podcast company.
Breaker is a podcast listening and discovery application. Most podcasts are free, but serious publishers are spending big budgets to make high quality audio content like Serial, which hit 100 million downloads and made podcasts mainstream. 67 million Americans are already listening to podcasts a month. Breaker wants to sign exclusive deals to distribute the best premium podcasts and charge users $6 per month. First, its goal is to build a huge listener audience by making the best podcast consumption app. It launched today, and will offer podcasters ways to connect and get feedback from their community, and analytics about what content performs best. It has a stunning 67% retention rate after a month for beta users. If it can convince people to pay for what’s often free, it could become the preferred place for podcasters to talk.
Active Founders
Erik Berlin, CEO
Erik Berlin is a serial entrepreneur, with deep technical and leadership skills. He was founder and CEO of Breaker, a social podcast company, which was acquired by Twitter in 2021. In 2008, he founded his first company, 140 Proof, where he was CTO. He scaled the ad network up to 66 million monthly impressions. With $5.5 million raised from BlueRun Ventures, Founders Fund, and SV Angel, the company turned profitable and grew to more than 50 employees before it was acquired by AcuityAds in 2016.
Leah Culver, CTO
iOS and Python developer. Co-author of OAuth and oEmbed. Angel investor. Formerly: Twitter, Breaker (YC W17), Dropbox, Pownce, Convore (YC W11), Grove.io.
