350 Oskar Serrander - Revolutionizing Audio: Oskar Serrander's Wondercraft Vision

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:04

So, Oskar Sarander, co founder at Wondercraft, thank you so much for joining me on podcast junkies.

Oskar Serrander

0:04 - 0:07

It's my pleasure to be here. So nice to meet you. Harry.

Harry Duran

0:08 - 0:23

Oskar, for fans of the show, obviously it's anyone that's been in the podcasting space. We've been doing this show since 2014, and there's a lot of people that are familiar with your journey. I'm curious, where would your life be were it not for podcasting?

Oskar Serrander

0:23 - 1:38

Oh, interesting. What a great question you're opening with. Where would life be without podcasting? I've been on a podcasting journey for a long time. It's hard to imagine it without it. I had a, I got into podcasting when I was at iHeart and working on things that weren't radio. We did all kinds of partnership with Snapchat, and, you know, all these things were in the latest craze back in 2015. And that's really when I discovered podcasting and I met Tim Ferriss, and that's how it all took off. And then I became a very avid podcast listener. Obviously, it was easy for me to latch onto because I had this long love affair with audio in general, music and everything. I started on the agency, signing and Spotify and that whole journey, and then I heart and podcasting was really an eye opener for me. And then I started acast and it became a full time career. So, yeah, I'm stumbled by that question. I don't know where I would be. Audio is a, it's a wonderful medium, and I'm blessed to be working that space every day.

Harry Duran

1:38 - 1:41

What's your earliest memory of audio?

Oskar Serrander

1:41 - 1:50

My earliest. Isn't that all the, you know, the power of audio storytelling that everyone says the heartbeats that you heard when you're in here?

Harry Duran

1:51 - 2:35

No. It's funny because sometimes you ask people, what's your. I had someone ask me, what's my earliest smell that I remembered? And it was like, I think it was like a crayon or play doh. And immediately thinking of the smell transformed me back to, you know, where, however I was. So I'm curious, you know, and for me, music has always been important for me. I grew up djing, so that's how I got into podcasts. I mean, I just set up my vinyl turntables here because it's been a house. Music is a passion for me. So that was my entry because I was learning. I wanted to learn how to podcast so I could interview some dj's for a podcast I was going to start. So literally, that's you know, my entry into podcasting was because of my love of music. And I'm curious, you know, what your earliest recollection was. You know, if it's music or just like, what radio was like back then in Sweden.

Oskar Serrander

2:35 - 3:55

I mean, I think it's similar for me, my earliest memories of kind of consuming audio in that sense was when I grew up in a small town in Sweden. We had this record player in the living room. It was kind of the fancy room, the one you couldn't really use a day to day basis. You know, that kind had the fancy furniture, but that's where the record player was. And I respected that room so much as one did that I was just lying on the floor listening to it. I grew up in a home where there was music on always. My dad was a huge music buff, and he introduced me to jazz and classical, and then my two older brothers introduced me to metal. So I had a wide spectrum of noise growing up, it was all like lying on that floor listening to these records, these lp albums, and eventually cds. But that's kind of my earliest memories also the smell of that, just like the rug I was sitting on listening to everything from fifties classics, all these kind of compilation albums, whatever, you know, there wasn't an abundance of music back then, so it's so special to turn that on, right? And then sitting, I was, you know, using my brother's cassette deck to record my favorite songs on radio. That's also nerdy, right? The process of, you know, you're hitting record and you got a little bit of the dj in the beginning and the end of the song, but, yeah.

Harry Duran

3:55 - 3:58

I have to show you this. This is the COVID for my phone.

Oskar Serrander

3:59 - 4:02

That's sick. I love that. I love that.

Harry Duran

4:02 - 4:39

So, like most people, you said cassette tapes and so like the new generation. And I'm curious how you feel. You know, having worked at iHeart, Spotify, acast, you know, all that is moving towards a digital consumption. And I feel like there's been a move. I think there's a recent set that vinyl sales that actually start to tick back up and there's something that I feel really connected to. And I'm pulling out a vinyl for a twelve inch record here, and I'm playing it and I'm mixing it. And as much as I love the convenience of having it, do you, how do you feel like that's changed for you? Do you feel like there's a. It's a pendulum swing? Just this idea of being able to, like, physically touch the music that we.

Oskar Serrander

4:39 - 6:09

Play you know, I was in a record store on just this past Saturday. I was picking up a gift for a friend who turned 40. And, I mean, there's something to it, right? And it's like, we sound old here and dated, right. My kids have no idea what I'm talking about, but how beautiful it is to just hold ten songs, you know what I mean? And they feel, you know, when you speak to. When you speak to like, record labels and stuff like that and how profoundly concentrated their whole world is around that type of packaging. And it still is in many ways, even though they're TikTok world has taken over. Right. But I'm always kind of goes for a lot of things in life. I think I am nostalgic to that, but also a proponent for what are the opportunities for great creators and artists who thrive in this inevitable progress that has to be so. I always have standing on two legs there. I like, I love that whole part. And nothing makes me happier than seeing vinyl sales or even cd sales increasing. Right. That makes me happy. And what I love about podcasting as well, such a pure form of content creation and, you know, the craft of it. But then there's also another progressive side of it which we're now doing, you know, talking about AI and stuff like that. So I'm always, and I think there's a beauty in that sense of duality sometimes when it comes to innovation and how we. Yeah, how we consume things and how we make things.

Harry Duran

6:09 - 6:35

I'm curious because, you know, we get to the place we are in life because of the experiences we've had when growing up or younger. That's why I always like to talk about some of the experiences you've had. And I noticed you've done some work and done some advising for even way, way back you were in private and public healthcare, and you've also done some volunteer work as well. Why was that important for you at that time to do that sort of.

Oskar Serrander

6:35 - 8:48

Work when you're early in your career? What I really enjoy doing is just throwing myself into things that, that I could explore and see if I was a good fit for and if I had a knack for it. I think that was part of my exploration. I went to business school early to just have a pretty, you know, wide range of tools to do something. I was curious about healthcare, and I had an ambition to get into that early on, realized it wasn't really for me. I was more interested in creating and, you know, businesses and entrepreneurship was, was always kind of the goal. At some point it took me a while to become an entrepreneur, but I'd really like to stay in. I was in my. When I was in my twenties, I didn't think, I didn't have the confidence to go out on my own. I was really in a mindset where I just wanted to get close to people who I can look up to and I can learn from and say yes and raise my hand as much as I can. And that really worked out for me. Like, it's like lacking obvious talent in some areas, but I am a big proponent of just bringing the energy and the willpower to believe you can configure things out. That has been probably the best part of what I brought into a lot of these situations that I end up in. And. Yeah, and I did, you know, that's how I try to tell my kids as well. Like, you got to try. And I think there's so many cliches around everything I just said. Right. But, you know, the idea of getting into situations where you feel a bit uncomfortable, that's a good sign for me that this is little scary. Just had a conversation today with my co founders because he's. He's the one. I'm outing him now a little bit, both of them, but they're like, you got to make these podcasts. And I'm like, this. That gives me incredible imposter syndrome and makes me nervous, but I know I should do it because of that reason, because it's a fun, because, you know, you always. You head into something, the first thing you do, very self critical. But once I get through that, I think that I learned something and I can improve upon it and I can, you know, take it from there. And I think that's just how most things goes and go in life.

Harry Duran

8:50 - 8:54

Do you think that's something that comes from your culture or from your upbringing?

Oskar Serrander

8:55 - 9:59

Definitely my upbringing. I think Sweden is a place where you. Sweden has a thing called the law of Jante. J a n t e, if you want to look it up. It's this old scandinavian kind of mindset that you shouldn't really stand out or you shouldn't really try to be special. You kind of have to fall in line. What I loved about coming and moving to the US, which I was introduced to early as well, through my dad, who traveled a lot and had business in the US. So I felt like coming home in many ways, but there's this mindset of opportunity and cheering people on that doesn't really exist or didn't exist in the small town where I grew up in Sweden, so I think my dad certainly brought that. He was the one who was very adventurous, and he inspires me today. He passed away three years ago, but he still inspires me. He's still like a, you know, choose the adventure. That's it. Like, always choose the adventurous path. That's a mantra.

Harry Duran

10:00 - 10:23

There seems to be something in Scandinavia like the startup culture, this real drive, obviously, Spotify, and you think about Nokia and this energy for momentum, or really innovation. Is that something that's just in terms of your schooling, or is it just something where you're inspired by what we do in America and that really helps drive innovation?

Oskar Serrander

10:23 - 12:45

I think it's all of that. I think Sweden is a fantastic growing ground because of the technological advancements that were led by companies like Ericsson back in the day. I remember when I was 14, we got the home PC, basically a subsidized computer that you can. Multimedia computer that you can pick up and, you know, heavily subsidized broadband penetration was. And that's why Pirate Bay was born in Sweden, right. I mean, everyone got on to that kind of technological advancement quite quickly. So that's certainly a growing ground. And I think we do those things quite well in Sweden. We have great companies coming out of Sweden that can have figured out how to go global. And there is a level of entrepreneurship, I guess. And then I say that there are, you know, the kind of foundations of technology and Internet has been for everyone growing up in the nineties and early two thousands, that really gave Sweden an edge. And you see that with a lot of companies. The other thing we do is music really well. That's also part of the school system, so people learned how to play, and then you have eight months of the year when it's totally dark outside, so you sit inside. So either you code on your computer or you play instruments. And so that's why, you know, lots of songwriters are Sweden, and all the bands, you know, they go to Stockholm to record. And, you know, you have companies like Spotify. Daniel Ek is obviously an anomaly here. He is an incredibly. I kind of realized later in my career how special he was. I took him for granted because I was younger and I was at Spotify early and saw him. But he's an incredibly strong visionary. He's one of those people who can see 30 years ahead of time, you know, and kind of head in that direction, which I think is quite crazy. But, yeah, so Sweden is an interesting place for that. I think Swedes by default are very international, consume a ton of american media primarily, I'd say american. So it doesn't feel that far away. So those ambitions to get over to the US and launch. I mean, I advised and talked to so many companies who are trying to get over here and run into all the kind of classic barriers of entry that you take for granted, like, hey, Sweden, it's the same, but just a lot bigger.

Harry Duran

12:45 - 13:13

So talk a little bit about that energy that you experienced as employee number 64 at Spotify. For those who see Spotify now as this giant company doing everything and got their hands and trying all sorts of things from podcasting to audiobooks now, but it must have been a different culture back then and referenced it a little bit, that you may have been a little bit young and not realized exactly what was going on or where you were headed. But can you talk a little bit about what that felt like?

Oskar Serrander

13:13 - 14:53

It was an incredible time. Spotify is just leveling up. It's a long time ago, obviously. And, you know, any company with 64 people, you don't need researchers. It's super, super fun. Very special, very special company. And I always say that was the most fun I've ever had since earlier in my career as well. The earlier side at least. It's kind of my coming of age career. And it was thrown into the center of this paradigm shift that Spotify really was revolutionizing how we consume music. And it wasn't an overnight success, it was a slog. I mean, Daniel and Martin, they were out knocking on doors and talking to labels for years right before the US was opened. And even when I moved over here in early 2011, we didn't even have all the labels on board in lots of competition. When we moved over here, Europe, there was nothing. But in the US, there were Mog and Rhapsody and RDO and grooveshark and so many music companies around. Right? That was just kind of validating. And I think I learned so much during that experience that it's. I treasure it a lot. Daniel's leadership and how he. How he set that vision for the company. You can pull anyone at that company at that point and everyone was so dead sure that this is going to be the next big thing. Obviously, it's easy to say that in hindsight, and a lot of companies start that way, but it was this very strong culture about what we were doing and this love for music that flowed through every single person there. It was just like a fantastic time. And I moved over to the US on three weeks notice, again saying yes to life, choosing adventure, and. Yeah, and then I never moved back.

Harry Duran

14:54 - 14:58

What was that experience like landing in. So this is New York City.

Oskar Serrander

14:58 - 15:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Duran

15:00 - 15:02

So, I mean, that's got to be a little bit of a culture shock.

Oskar Serrander

15:02 - 15:21

Yeah, it was. Again, I was familiar with the US, and it was. But the US is always bigger and more impressive than you can ever imagine. When you and I still get goosebumps walking down in New York now. I mean. I mean, a stone's throw away here in Hoboken. And I go in and I love New York. I love it so much.

Harry Duran

15:22 - 15:34

Yeah, I grew up. I grew up in Yonkers, and I've lived in the city as well. So I've lived in, like, East Village, lower East side, Upper east side. I mean, Upper east side. So I'm consider myself a New Yorker, as you can probably tell from the background. I'm not in a sauna. I'm actually in Minnesota now, where all.

Oskar Serrander

15:34 - 15:39

The Swedes went, man, that's where all the Scandies are. So you're from with our people?

Harry Duran

15:39 - 16:05

Lots of Scandinavians in Minnesota. Yeah, there's a big scandinavian culture here in Minnesota as well. They're very acclimated to the weather, but I think there's an energy to the city that is hard to replicate unless you're there yourself. Like, you feel it. It's palpable. It's in the air, and you feel the buzz when you're there. And I think it's why there's always a lot happening. And I'm wondering if you just. You felt. You acclimated pretty quickly to it, and obviously you're still nearby, so it must be. You feel like it's home now for you.

Oskar Serrander

16:05 - 18:01

I don't know. Did I. I tried my best. I made all the. All the wrong choices. We worked in a. We were actually in the Google building, so Spotify had. We've had some office spaces next to Palm Picture, which is Chris Blackwell's movie company. And Chris Blackwell started island records, so he was there every now and then telling us war stories from, like, from the past, from the seventies and eighties, signing. Oh, my goodness. Incredible. That office was the most magical place. We had random artists just walking through, because whenever Dan was in town or Shaq or anyone on the Spotify leadership was there, there was always someone popping around so you can just turn your head. And next to the ping pong table, you had, you know, a t pain standing there and talking. I don't know, it was pretty fun, but, you know. But we're really there to prove ourselves. I moved over here on a work visa he said, let's hope this launch goes well. It's going to help build a team, then move on to new markets. But it probably did all the mistakes. Good. Just ran into it and started figuring things out. But we learned so much along the way and that was really testament to Spotify as well. We gathered all the information we needed to course correct. Was figured it was hard to compete with Pandora. I remember at the time, because they were basically a big play button and everyone used Pandora and we were a search bar and it was hard for people. Like, what should I search for? It was the first time in Europe people searched and they were fine with it. In the US, they didn't want to search, they just want to hit play, stuff like that. It was a big learning curve and we worked all day, every day, in went out at night. So it was a pretty intense period in my life. And then I met my now wife a couple of months in and decided to stick around. This is a great place.

Harry Duran

18:02 - 18:09

So then the next media jump was into iHeart. How different was the culture when you moved from Spotify to iHeart?

Oskar Serrander

18:09 - 19:10

Very, very different companies altogether. I'd say night and day in many ways. And I heart is cut from a different cloth. I mean, coming from a more of a broadcast, traditional business, out of home, huge organization, but a lot of drive in a very different way. Not in the same way as Spotify, who were taking over the world in a different manner and being more of a disruptor, but iHeart was giving testament to that. I joined a team to really explore what other channels they could develop, and an incredible machine of creating events with artists and festivals, but also developing technologies on the side with partners and investing in companies on the side. And I thought that was really interesting. I wasn't there for that long as I got into acast and wanted to kind of get back in a tech focused company and kind of culture, but, yeah, very, very different companies. Very different companies.

Harry Duran

19:10 - 19:18

What was that conversation like when you were asked or invited or discovered the opportunity to work with the acast team?

Oskar Serrander

19:18 - 20:23

Oh, yeah, that was, that was fun. I met the founders about a year before I joined. And then it kind of, that's a thing, right? You, you hire slowly. It's kind of the old way to do it. And so it was a conversation to see if it was a good fit. I wanted to make sure what they were doing was something that I was, I wanted to kind of throw my way, throw myself into. And it was, they had a great vision of what then was a market that didn't have a ton of technology. Right. Podcasting has come so far since then, which is incredible. It was in, over that period of time, I was like, podcast is growing in interest and consumption. So. And the tech infrastructure around podcasting was very, was not very sophisticated. And I thought that this is a fantastic opportunity, there needs to be more tech in this industry. So, yeah, and I joined in 2017 to launch the US operation and get that up and running, which was a fantastic journey. And then, yeah, that was the start of it.

Harry Duran

20:23 - 21:00

How do you think about. Because you can see as your career progresses, taking on more and more responsibility. When you look at an opportunity like acast for people that are listening or watching and think about these point inflection points in their life where they can make a jump and maybe they're scared or maybe they're trying to evaluate, is this the right rocket ship? Right? Am I going to get here or am I going to. Is this just a fizzle out? And many people have tried, you know, have done it, they've jumped on something and it just hasn't worked. What's your thought process that you go through when you make a decision like that, which could have potential, you know, life changing results for you?

Oskar Serrander

21:01 - 23:06

Well, again, always choose the adventure, right. That's the first that can also give you some trouble, I guess, bringing in the wrong path. I think there's a equal amount of opportunities. It's going to be something that I enjoy doing. I think the people that you work with is incredibly important and that's something that's grown in significance as older I get, I think you can allow yourself to be way pickier as you progress your career. But really seeking out or kind of doing your due diligence of who you're going to work with is incredibly important. And then having an idea of you're not going to have all the, all the information, all the data, and it's kind of part of the fun here. When I joined acasts, it looked at the data of, okay, podcasting is growing. People seem to really enjoy it. There's not a lot of creators out there yet. Brands are a little lukewarm to it, but there certainly was a following back then, right? These doctor brands that kind of underwrote the whole industry. It certainly has a future. So what's the worst that could happen here? You either build something that can as rarely as a winner takes all in any market, but could you make a dent in this and make it work? And it's a challenge, fun, and I like building. I like building organizations and structures and that kind of the machine of running a company is really fun to me. Javaya became the CEO eventually. That's kind of it. To be honest with you. It's always going to be a leap of faith. Like so many things are in life, you never have the right. And I think hesitating is just gonna. You can spend your whole life hesitating. I think once. What's the worst that can happen? Let's throw into it. Might not be the right company. They might fizzle. Could there still be a good story for you at the end of it? Right? Yeah. And maybe you picked up something, maybe you didn't. It's always like learning and earning, right? If you have both, that's fantastic. But if you have one of them, I think pick learning earlier in your career and figure out what makes you tick and find those opportunities.

Harry Duran

23:06 - 23:19

It seems like you've had a lot of role models and mentors by virtue of the companies that you've worked for. Do any specific ones come to mind as people that were helpful for you as you were building and growing your career?

Oskar Serrander

23:20 - 24:46

A few people I'd say that I always return to not maybe outspoken mentors. I think I've ever asked people if that feels like you're. You're asking for too much when you do that. Maybe I should. But I always seek out people. And I think it's easy to forget how to ask for help or for ask for advice when you really need it. First of all, ask for advice for people who've done what you're what you want to do. I think that's game one. So I think I've always had people that I look up to in a certain way or am inspired by that. I have had been close enough to that I can reach out to and ask those questions. And some are just people you just want to sit and listen to. Daniel Eck is one of them. Gustav Soderstrom, I guess he's a co president now. I remember just when he spoke at Spotify back then, like, you just wanted to listen and learn. And when you come across those people, you just take notes. Let's go. But yeah, I. I'm not gonna out a lot of people here, but I think it's important to have that. I think it's important to realize when you need to ask for advice or seek out advice, and that's not a sign of weakness or. I think a lot of people feel that sometimes I'm also hesitant, shouldn't I do this? Do I look like a fool, look like a fool. It's great. No one knows what they're talking about. That's a good realization. Really.

Harry Duran

24:46 - 24:52

That's a good, that's. It's important to remember, realize at the end of the day, we're all trying to figure it out ourselves.

Oskar Serrander

24:52 - 24:54

Yeah, there's no shame in that.

Harry Duran

24:55 - 25:19

So after your stint at acast, you took some time to do some mentoring yourself with techstars, and did you feel now like you were able to sort of repay all the kind of the people that were led the way for you or that inspired you and I how, what was that experience like to now mentor other people who were in the startup phase and had that same hunger that you had, you know, when you were first getting started?

Oskar Serrander

25:19 - 26:50

I can't say. I mean, I've been involved. I think advisory roles are a little overrated many times. And I say that being an advisor, I'm not super active with that anymore. This takes time. And I always feel like I need to give more. I need to be more involved. It is. What I like about it the most is very egotistical. I give, it gives me more energy than maybe I give back. Surely being able to hear someone's perspective that has done certain journeys before. Always happy to share that, but it is always more of a two way street. And I always love speaking to entrepreneurs or founders who are, who are really passionate about something. Right. That's the most amazing people. They have a conviction about something and most often they have a lot of positive energy behind that. And obviously that, you know, that gives you energy points in a world where you spend a lot of energy points in your day to day. So I try to find that as a way to stock up on some energy and some inspiration for people doing different journeys. Running into problems. Like, everyone has problems, everyone's running into problems. It kind of reminds you that, okay, you're not alone in this. You always think that your company is such duct tape bullshit, but then you speak to a Fortune 500 that has even more amount of duct tape in the background.

Harry Duran

26:51 - 26:52

Just fancier duct tape.

Oskar Serrander

26:52 - 27:44

Yeah, fancy duct. It's more expensive duct tape. And then you realize, like, okay, everyone's figuring this out. There is no perfect company. No company is the same. No leader is the same. You can only do so much parallel work. And I think that's an important part of advisory. If you, you're an advisor, too. So I'd love to hear your point on this. I like to bring the energy and be a good sounding board for what's that worth for? What's that worth? You know, and I can be quite tactical in certain situations, obviously weigh in on that. But I think where I've been, the best advisories I've ever had and some of the investments I've done is really checking up on people and also on a personal level and talk about the stuff that is around all the important tasks and everything that you're doing. How are you keeping sane and how are you keeping a sustainable life to really go after it instead of burn out too fast?

Harry Duran

27:45 - 28:22

Yeah, I think that's sometimes the most important advice. It's sometimes just one nugget of advice. And even just that, you know, are you keeping a work like life balance? And when they hear it from someone like you who's had success before, and it's not just go, go, go, because you will burn out, which I'm sure it's probably the guidance you're giving them, even if the guidance is to slow down a bit, which would seem to be antithetical to startup culture, it's always like, move fast. Right. But I think it's helpful to have that sounding board from someone who's had that experience. So even it may not seem like an important piece of advice, but at the time, it could be just exactly what they need to, you know, to get them through the next, you know, six months or twelve months.

Oskar Serrander

28:22 - 28:38

Yeah, could be. I mean, I'm the same. If I someone advises me on things, that's what I'm looking for most of the time, more than specific business issues or technical issues or whatever it may be. Yeah. How about yourself? I mean, you're devising as well. What's that the same?

Harry Duran

28:38 - 29:41

I think I was just having them think when I was working with the squadcast team, just really having them think outside the box at different ways to, you know, what, you know, different ways to picture what a customer could look like, but also playing in different areas. It's not, you know, obviously it's a podcasting tool, but could it be used by, you know, book narrators or, you know, people who are, you know, needing this high quality audio? So it's just really just, I think you said a sounding board and also connections. You know, having been podcasting since 2014, I was just, I would, you know, new companies, people are wary of taking a chance on a new company. So you have to say, hey, I trust them. And a lot of times it's just by virtue of you saying, I trust them, I believe in them. And so it's a stair step approach because then you have two people that believe in you that becomes ten and 20, and eventually you start to have people that say, okay. And I would always encourage them to show the face people buy from people. So just as much as you want to show the tool, it's a great tool, but if you don't know who's behind it or the founders are like, people love founder stories and they want to connect with humans at the end of the day. So I was just always reminding them of that fact as well.

Oskar Serrander

29:42 - 30:28

I agree with that. It's always more human than people think. Building businesses, especially in tech, when you can kind of, you can almost over index on tech and features, and sometimes it is the human aspect of it or the design of it that really connects with people. I wholeheartedly believe in that. And also advising and challenging, I think is a part of that sounding board, is trying to help people prioritize correctly. There's especially running company, there's so many nice to have some things you want to do that weigh you down, but really be ruthless about prioritizing and killing some darlings here and there, I think are things you need help with.

Harry Duran

30:28 - 30:32

So you exited Spotify and then you had a lot of time on your hands.

Oskar Serrander

30:33 - 30:34

Your acest last year.

Harry Duran

30:35 - 30:40

Sorry. Acoustic. Acoustic. Yeah. Yeah. And then you went to a monastery, if I read that correctly.

Oskar Serrander

30:40 - 33:33

Oh, you saw that? Yeah. Yeah. That was amazing. So I. Yeah, left acast. And again, I love acast. Ross, the CEO, is a close friend, and lots of good friends are still there. It's had a great time. We took the company public in 2021, did a lot of restructuring in 22, part of 23. And then I figured that I kind of ticked all the boxes that I set out to maybe do and beyond, actually, when I joined aircast. Could we exit this? Could we do something more and expand on. I felt like I've done the whole journey and I had this idea that was itching in my pocket that I've always wanted to do is to take audio into, into the future in a way, or rather create something that makes audio more compelling for creatives to work with and also a part of that mission to bring more money into the audio space. And that sat with me for a long time. I started sketching that. I pitched it to a couple of friends of mine, thought it was a great idea. And then six months go by and I'm kind of exiting ecast and bringing the people to replace my role. And it was a great summer. I did take time off. I did go to a Zen monastery in north New York and I, which, how cliche, but I gotta say, I've probably never been calmer in my life. It was an incredible, I recommend it to everyone. Sen monastery in Catskills. And I was there for only, I don't know, three days. But it was a fantastic practice, and I've always dabbled in meditation, etcetera, to just keep myself calm and focused. It really helps. I don't do much, I just sit. That was kind of the school that they practiced there. And after that, it came clear to me that what I needed to do, and funny enough, call it the universe, was telling me something. I get a cold email from Dmitry, who's now my co founder, one of my co founders, and said, hey, we built something in audio and podcasting I would like to show you. And I said yes. And that ended up being a long, I think we sat for a couple of hours discussing it, and it was clear that we had similar ambitions. Dmitry and Youssef came, knew to get, knew each other already, had worked together, went to King's College in London and then to Palantir, which I knew was breeding ground for the most amazing engineers in the world. I met a bunch of them. They're all spinning out, creating companies or becoming VC's, something like, these guys are pretty smart. And when I saw what they've done in quite a short amount of time, I was kind of love at first sight. And then, yeah, that was the start of it.

Harry Duran

33:33 - 34:18

What you mentioned, I think in one of your posts, it was sort of these inflection points, and you're seeing what was happening with like Juul's, like chat GPT, and how quickly they were innovating. You know, I remember when I first saw it, I was like, this is pretty crazy. And even then, from the time it was about a year, year and a half ago, when four came out, it's just moving so fast that I think it's making people's heads spin. And, you know, part of that is obviously what's going into what you're able to do with wondercraft. So can you talk a little bit about what the vision is at Wondercraft? And, you know, we talked, obviously this focused a little bit on podcasting, but that's only a small part of what you do and how you think about, given your rich history in audio, what you see as the potential for what you're building there.

Oskar Serrander

34:18 - 41:22

So again, throughout my career, and even starting at on the agency side, I thought audio was always kind of the last of the line of media that creatives and ad agencies are thinking about, there's always been this. It's radio. Radio is noisy and loud and it's just not front and center. Right. If you look at the advertising industry, traditionally radio has used to have a, used to be the media, right? 75 years ago, whatever television took over, we were more visually led. And already in the beginning of two thousands, when I was, you know, agency side and even before Spotify, audio was not approachable. And it's funny today, it still is quite hard for brands and creators to really step into it. Audio production is just not that accessible. And that's what we wanted to do with Wannacry. What I really wanted to do is create an audio production tool for producing studio quality content in any language. And just by typing. Why we started last year is that's because technology was finally here that you can actually see this through. So what was a pipe dream or crazy idea? Now look at us. You know, AI has had an incredible development in the past couple of years, and everyone who's paid attention can see the fast iterations and how quickly it becomes. It is a very hyped subject, right? And I think you have to kind of discard a lot of the media noise around and really look at what it is and what it can be and try to harness that energy and the possibility within generative AI. But that was really it. The problem that we're looking at, it's just that making audio production more accessible still, brands and agencies are not really thinking audio for when they're creating campaigns or creating brand storytelling. But now with podcasting and with music streaming beyond, you know, where it is, it's a medium that they can't deny or avoid when they want to reach audiences. So already there, there's a big opportunity because today audio is very undervalued. If you look at last year, it's only a couple of the 3% of the entire ad industry, and advertising is a big part. The reason why I talk about that is because it's a money problem there that we really want to fix for the benefit of creators and podcasters and artists who are getting into audio, because there's just not enough money coming into it with, if brands and agencies are not thinking audio and really, you know, creating in that medium, that money is not going to really go into radio podcasting, music streaming, and be it to any benefit. So there's two big problems also looking at podcasting, which I spent a lot of time in, in the past couple of years, is that the big brands, the Fortune 500 brands, they're not stepping into podcasting as they should because it's hard to kind of find the big audiences there and the attribution, the technical side of it. The second problem is ad production. So today you're averaging two, three weeks to turn around an audio ad. Once you want to book a campaign, there's a couple of problems there. Their first brands, they can't really create audio ads and communicate in audio at the speed of culture that they want to. This is something we hear from, especially Fortune 500 brands, maybe portfolio brands that have several consumer brands. They want to be fast to market, like they can be on TikTok and Meta and Google. Right. And that's a problem. So production is a problem. That's really what we want to fix. We want to be that, a creative toolkit, and be part of the creative toolkit to be able to, for brands and agencies to sketch with audio earlier. So basically creating copy, applying different voices, hearing what sounds good, rather than having that be an afterthought in. When you have to book studio time and get actors in, you can already start earlier than thinking audio. So that's one part. And it's really, we work today with a lot of. So agencies are coming on board, which is fantastic brands. We're going starting to like, reach out to and introduce this to. But a lot of podcast networks and music streaming companies are using Wondercraft to be able to service their brands more. Because on the other side of the spectrum, you have a big problem with the ad vendors who are acast and wondering and all these companies that are fantastic businesses. But the inefficiencies of actually creating ads for their brands coming in, especially new brands, have no idea how to really use audio. They might love audio and they listen to audio, but they don't really know how to approach it from a creative standpoint. So it's a great way for these, these companies to service advertisers with Wondercraft, which makes it so much more time and cost effective. That's really it. We use generative AI to help you script, and then we have hundreds of voices you can apply to it and we can mix it together with music so you can create an end to end ad. And next week we're releasing a timeline editor. Might be, I don't know when you're dropping this episode, but July 15, there's gonna be a big surprise. Oops, I revealed it. You heard it here first. No, but really, you can create an end to end production suite that is similar to a canva like it's easy and a very intuitive, we hope so at least intuitive design and user experience to really create something that gives you a lot of variations in ads and gives you a lot of different. You have a creative, creative freedom, any within that. We, what our partners wanted for the past couple of months, we've now released our workspaces. So we can, you can set up your team, you can collaborate on scripts, you can create ads and projects together. It could also be audiobooks or podcast narrations. I don't like the word podcast for that because people think about humans podcasting, but audio narrations, voiceovers, whatever you want, right? We're not here to replace people. We're really giving people the tool to approach audio in a more democratized way. And I think that is the on ramp that the audio industry needs. Podcasting is severely undervalued. And there's only a couple of thousand brands globally that are investing in podcast advertising. And I think that's a damn shame. It should be millions. And I think Wondercraft is going to be a conduit to, to make it so, so many more creators and podcasts and actually start making money, because there's a great movement out there as well, with the self serve marketplaces and automation and programmatic, which sounds bad, but it is actually moving the needle on bringing money to the creators so we get more better, diverse content within podcasting, music and so forth.

Harry Duran

41:23 - 41:57

I think I love the idea of this idea of having, being able to sketch with audio. I think that's really fascinating, this idea of being able to just iterate and try. And we mentioned before we started recording how I've got a second show called the Vertical Farming podcast, and it's expanding into a podcast network. And we're testing out a new show where we drop in some of the news bits that we've used. So it's interesting to see how very quickly we can spin out and iterate and just test proof of concept on a show, see if there's any appetite for it and what the feedback is. What's been the most surprising use of Wondercraft that you've seen?

Oskar Serrander

41:57 - 44:15

I love that question. We have quite, quite a lot of wide use. So the biggest user, again, we don't really focus on podcasters, right? Because they, they have a mic, they are great at it. But we do get is a lot of what we really wanted to do is to get great writers and storytellers or not podcasters. And there are way more non podcasters than there are podcasters, but they might be scared of the mic or they might be, you know, a lot of different barriers that you can just pick and choose, right? And everyone can listening to this can raffle off amazing writers newsletters that you follow or bloggers, whatever it may be, that can now use Wondercraft to really approach audio for the first time without buying a microphone and getting a studio and doing the hard work of becoming that kind of creator. So it's a call it a gateway drug or an on ramp for creators to come into audio that I think is amazing. And to your point, sketching with audio is great. We get a lot of podcasters still that come on board to create maybe outros and you know, this is produced by a lot of big ones too that use it for that. I'm not going to out them because maybe they get in trouble, but it is a wonderful tool that way and we love that. What are the craziest ones? We do have a lot of like meditation apps and actually made that part of our prompt library now. So you can pop into wondercraft and create your own meditations based on, you can probably create, you know, drop your transcription of this episode and make it a meditation or whatever inference you have, pop in your web address and make it a meditation about your company or something like that. And that's a fantastic use case. And you can even use the voice controls on any voice to make it into a calm meditation voice. So that's one of my favorite use cases and then everything in between. We have lots of audio or book writers and authors that can voice their books without using a microphone. They can clone their voice and voice their book in, you know, multiple languages without sitting in a studio and reading the book. And I think that's a cool use case because there self publishing of great books and stories out there that doesn't have a chance to fork out ten grand or whatever it costs to make an audiobook production in a studio. That might be a little hefty if.

Harry Duran

44:15 - 44:24

We'Re having this conversation twelve months from now. Looking back, what would make you happy with the progress that Wondercraft had made?

Oskar Serrander

44:25 - 46:01

I'm going to be very happy when we reach a place in the audio industry where brands can enter the space via creative meaning. You enter, you go into the creative process of talking about your brand and you think audio early on enough to really embrace it. And I think that's the way in I'm to make audio the audio industry a place of abundance of brands who are now underwriting all of podcasting. Right. I don't know if you have a subscription plan a few companies or food podcasters have, but it's not a huge amount of revenue for most of the industry, right? A vast, vast, vast majority in the 90. I'm going to venture guess here, 99% of the podcast industry is advertising based. And what if we can get a million advertisers in who are spending a little and it won't drain your resources on the podcaster side and it just works. We want to be the production leader there and we're on our way in a good way. And the future of that would a result that will create is really an industry with. Yeah, with, with abundance. That isn't what I think podcasting can sometimes be. Now when I'm at conferences and listen to people that it's a place of scarcity, of everyone fighting for the same types of brands and advertisers. Let's get the new advertisers in, let's get new companies in that believe in audio, and then they can produce it fast and get introduced to great podcasters such as yourself to, yeah, go deeper into it. So that's my dream.

Harry Duran

46:01 - 46:08

It's an exciting time. So just a couple of questions as we wrap up. What is something you've changed your mind about recently?

Oskar Serrander

46:09 - 47:27

I think I've changed my mind on the topic of podcasting a little bit. I think podcasting is a media that has a fantastic future, but it might not be called podcasting as we now see it. I think hasn't really changed my mind, but maybe I'm more convinced about it. I think audio has a future where we consume it in more ways. What I have changed my mind about is how we consume audio. I think for many, many years, even since I'd say 20, 1516, the introduction of Alexa speakers and home devices, I think audio is creeping into our lives more than we've realized. And we are embedded with audio in many more ways. And I think for that reason, I think we are finally getting to a point where we're going to evolve audio and how we consume it. I think personalization around audio content, and I wouldn't call that podcasting. Right? Whatever it is, it's just audio. Yeah, it's going to morph. And I think that's great. And I love that about podcasting or not. People call it vodcasting or vidcasting. You're on YouTube, too, and you're on video on Spotify. They're pushing that hard. Those companies are pushing the needles. And I think together we are getting, we're morphing, podcasting into the next era. That's what I think, in a way.

Harry Duran

47:27 - 47:47

The Alexa thing is really interesting. When I visit my folks, my mom is Spanish, I'm Spanish, and she's speaking to Alex. My dad speaks to Alexa in English, and my mom makes a request for a song in Spanish, and Alexa responds in Spanish. It's so interesting to see how, like, you know, you just have this ability now to communicate and get things done with technology, and language is not a barrier. So I find that incredibly fascinating.

Oskar Serrander

47:48 - 48:17

I mean, I absolutely love that big part of our platform is just that breaking down the language barriers, create copy in English, and then you can easily translate it into Spanish or Portuguese or Arabic, Japanese. We have a network of translators actually proof it as well, so you make sure that it's a good translation and not AI hallucinations. Yeah, it's a big part of it. And amazing, again, this abundance. I mean, I want to run my ad in Germany as well, or wherever I want. So, yeah, it's amazing.

Harry Duran

48:18 - 48:21

Last question. What is the most misunderstood thing about you?

Oskar Serrander

48:22 - 49:11

I love your questions. What's the most misunderstood that I. That I know what I'm talking about, probably. Um, I love everyone who is, you know, thought leader or experts. You know, you've met so many of them, I'm sure, and there's only a few that are really, really, really know what they're talking about. Everyone else just trying to figure out. But that's a beautiful thing. I think I. Joking, joke. Jokes aside, though, I am, I have a. I love always having a beginner's mindset of everything that gives me so much energy. It makes me feel like I'm always choosing the adventure path, even though I've been in an industry for a long, long time and do know what I'm talking about, actually. But I really focus on the things that I don't know much about, and I think that is an important, important part of what I'm trying to, trying to do every day, not get stuck.

Harry Duran

49:12 - 50:04

It's clear from your journey and then that sort of tour we took the listener and the viewer through in terms of, like, how you started and how you've consistently come back to this thread of choosing the adventure, choosing the adventure, and I think it's very inspiring to see where that's led you and how you still have that almost youthful enthusiasm for the project you take on. And then you can see it in the energy you have when you speak about wondercraft and how excited you are. So it's very inspiring to hear and I think people that are watching and listening are going to be inspired to take more chances because I think a lot of people are too afraid sometimes about what may happen and instead of thinking about even worst case scenario, if you fall on your face, at least you had fun and at least you learned a lot and you do have something to talk about and tell your grandkids about and you do have an adventure you went on. And I think really we need to do more of that as creators and just push ourselves out of that comfort zone. So I think that's very inspiring and appreciate you, you coming on and sharing your story with.

Oskar Serrander

50:04 - 50:17

It's been so lovely, man. You are a fantastic interviewer and it's been a pleasure. And I didn't know this is going to be video as well. So hello everybody. Hope I dressed up for the. Oh, look at that. I did dress up for the, yeah.

Harry Duran

50:17 - 50:27

You'Ve got the, you're on brand so it's perfect. So yeah, Wondercraft AI, we'll have all the links in the show notes anywhere else you want to send folks to connect with you and the team.

Oskar Serrander

50:27 - 50:39

Check me out on LinkedIn, I think that's the easiest way to connect with me. I always love to connect with people, so check me out there and Wondercraft AI, get started producing some fun audio today if you haven't already.

Harry Duran

50:40 - 50:42

Yes. Thanks again for your time, Oskar, I really appreciate it.