Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to How I Built This Early and Add Free Right Now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. AI isn't coming, it's here now, and it's radically transforming the way we work. How can leaders stay ahead of the curve and make sure their employees and organizations are using AI to its fullest potential?
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I recently interviewed Carrie Brownstein, who worked with Fred Armason to create Portlandia, which is one of the funniest TV shows of the 2010s, and Carrie talked about feeling nervous and unprepared in the writer's room, and eventually, how she found her place there.
If you want to hear more about it, check out my conversation with Carrie over on my other podcast. It's called The Great Creators. Just search for the great creators with GuyRaz, wherever you listen to podcasts or go to thegreatcreators.com. And now, onto today's show. I remember looking at the PNL statement by the end of our month, and we had maybe $10,000 in revenue. And you had a staff of six? We had a staff of six. And $10,000 in a cover of those costs?
Nope, no, they wasn't. Even if we get to 10 times this, a hundred times this is not going to be a big business of the scale that I thought that he would. And I remember thinking, oh my god, what do I do? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm GuyRaz, and on the show today, how Erin on Lopez saw the early promise of podcasts and left a corporate job to start wondering, a podcast platform that eventually sold to Amazon for hundreds of millions of dollars. Back in 2012, I left the world of broadcast radio and went into the world of podcasting. And at the time, it was like going into exile. Up to that point, I'd only ever been a print, radio, and TV reporter.
So when I started in podcasting, many of the people I knew in traditional media took pity on me. Who listens to podcasts, say very famous colleague asked me at the time, and why would you listen to one subject for a whole hour? And to be honest, I asked myself the same questions. I had no idea if anyone would ever listen. But just two years into my own journey, another podcast managed to turn the whole industry mainstream.
That show was season one of serial, and it would help usher in a podcast boom that inspired thousands of people to get into the space. One of them was a TV executive named Erinon Lopez. At the time, he was the CEO of Fox International channels. And when Erinon heard serial, he realized the audio industry might be at an inflection point similar to what he'd seen happen to television in the early 2000s.
Back then, a new technology called Tivo allowed viewers to record their favorite shows and watch them anytime. And this allowed TV writers and producers to create an entirely different kind of program. TV shows that told long, complicated stories over the course of a season. It was the dawn of the prestigious era and television. And Erinon believed that audio was primed to go through the same revolution. So in 2016, he left his job at Fox to launch a podcast network called Wondry.
After struggling to pitch the idea to early investors and coming close to running out of cash, Erinon and a small team managed to score a hit with a true crime podcast called Dirty John. And soon enough, Wondry became the target of acquisition offers from bigger players, including Amazon, which did acquire Wondry in 2021, reportedly for around $300 million. Erinon left the company shortly thereafter in part to fight an indictment he faced related to his time at Fox.
He was found not guilty, but the ordeal lasted nearly three years, which we'll hear about. Also, to address the elephant in the room, yes, how I built this is distributed by Wondry. And no, they didn't ask us to make this episode. In fact, they didn't even know about it until just a few days ago. The thing is, I wanted to interview Erinon because he's one of the most successful podcast entrepreneurs in the business.
And his story is somewhat unlikely. In fact, he barely spoke English until his early 20s when he emigrated to the US from Argentina. He grew up in Buenos Aires. His dad ran an auto part store, and his mom was an accountant. And Erinon came of age in the 1970s and 80s, a time of massive social change in South America.
We grew up for as long as I remember in this military dictatorship. And when I was 13, I remember with transition to democracy and the whole country celebrated as if it was 10 times Christmas. It was joy in the air. And it was this enthusiasm with a newfound freedom of press. And I remember at the time going to the city to celebrate the new Democratic government. And also at the same time, this is 1983 was 13 something else was happening in my life.
I was coming to the realization that I was gay and of course, in Catholic country, not something that was easy to accept. And this also happened to be at the same time of the AIDS crisis. I got to see the awful headlines that were being written. I gave people in this context and reading headlines that were just not true. And I'm feeling if people knew what the truth is, they just would not be printing, whether printing.
And I think that's probably when I got the bug that I wanted to work in media. And I went to write for the school newspaper and then become the editor of the newspaper. And so when you were a teenager and your parents or you know, because Argentina is a sort of uncertainly then very machismo culture, right? And so that's right.
That's right. As a teenager growing up, were there other young men that I don't know that you could that I mean was there a community that you found was there like an underground. Now, no, no, not when I was a teenage well, I guess when I went to college to study advertising and communications. That was the first time that I talked to somebody and I told them what I was feeling and they were open and welcome. It was a stray guy. He was a musician.
And then after that, as would happen, I met a guy in a fellow love and any plan of being in the closet just went out of the window. How did your parents react when you told them? Not not great. I think they were from coming from the point of love, right? They were concerned about me and they were having the same concerns that any parent would have at that time or any time at that age. So they wanted me to get therapy and really believe whether it was a temporary phase or not.
But they came around and they you know, they they became loving and accepting and so they my siblings. I have an amazing relationship with them. I talk to them every weekend. They're still in Argentina. And so growing up, do you remember feeling like having big aspirations to do big things? Were you do remember feeling ambitious as even as a teenager? I had a little bit of an entrepreneurial streak. I remember when I was 18 with four friends of mine.
We bought airtime on a neighborhood radio station. This was late and I know Thursday at 11 p.m. And we had a radio show and we financed it by selling advertising. And that show was the equivalent of what a podcast today would be. And one with 10 listeners and that's assuming that everyone of us got both of our pants to listen. But you watch your live because then I got a real full-time job at a radio and cable company.
He did so well selling ads that eventually and I got an offer to move to the US to work for Fox International channels. And we're fast forwarding a bit here, but while he was in the US and I got an MBA at the University of Miami. And then rose through the ranks at Fox with almost unbelievable speed. By age 30, he became the senior vice president for Fox Latin America, a job that partly involved adapting US shows for a Spanish speaking audience.
I was in charge of programming and marketing and I with my team was in charge of deciding the programming schedule and how we would market them and how we would launch them. So what kind of shows 2000 I'm thinking like what would a Fox have Simpson's ex files I think right? Simpson's ex files, Ali my bill of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel. Oh, wow. It was really a beginning of a Renaissance for the 20th century Fox studio.
And I didn't know this at the time, but that was the dawn of what's today considered the golden age of television. If you think about it, that was the time when the sopranos and six feet under were launching in our sister channel effects in the US. What was about to start that revolution with the shield, which was their way of going after the character driven very greedy, incredibly well produced drama. And I was just very fortunate to be there to witness it all.
All right. So while you were sort of rising up the ranks at Fox, Latin America, I read about this really something you wrote about a couple of years ago. And it was about your accent because you know, having learned English only a few years earlier, you had a pretty heavy accent when you spoke English. And I guess you got advice from like a mentor. And tell me tell me about what what happened. What happened was that in 2001, I started to report to a new boss, David Hasling then.
And I learned so much from him. He was an amazing mentor and coach, the person that took time to develop the skills from each of the executives that he took the interesting. My career was what was making progress. But I have this hunch that there was something that was keeping me from going further. And his boss had said word on the had said that suggestion that I should take accent reduction classes accent reduction classes.
I don't even know the exist. Of course, they exist. But got of course, but who knew? Was your accent hard to understand? Was it hard for people to understand you when you spoke English? In hindsight, yes. And I remember being at meetings and seeing faces of people frowning. And I remember that being the cue that, oh, I said something that people are not understanding. And that got in the way of my ability to communicate and to inspire people and to get my points across.
And I remember hearing that advice and saying, oh, my God, what a gift. How did I not see this before? How do I not know that their accent reduction coaches? So I remember finding one in LA as far as time spend versus impact on my career. One of the best decisions I've ever made and I recommended this to so many people over the years. It's so interesting because I've lived all over the world as a reporter in my past life.
And in countries like Germany and France, accent is really appreciated and valued. And I think in the United States today, no boss would ever give somebody this advice. They would not give this advice because it would be considered to be toxic. To say, hey, you might want to take a class to work on your accents. But you know, I mean like nobody would have told you that in 2023 at all.
1,000%. And I remember this same executive gave that advice to somebody else who did get offended and didn't work on it. And you still probably can see that I still have an accent. It's not that completely whatever way. Think about it. If you are at a come at a meeting with your peers and you come up with a great idea, but you're not communicating it well in a way that comes across.
And then another colleague who has a perfect accent and is a great communicator picks up on your idea, but then communicates it in a way that inspires people, that gets people to say, oh, wow, that's a great idea. Who do you think get trade for the idea? Yeah. I read an interview you gave a few years ago. You said, I don't think I would have made it to the C-suite level at Fox if I hadn't taken those accent classes. 1,000%. I don't think I would have.
It's just so interesting how little tweaks. And it's not like you did this for years and years. It was a couple of months of taking classes and then practicing on your physical therapy. You get the physical therapy, but they get to work on your own. That's right. And now there are apps that allow you to do it. And it gives you instant feedback. So it's a lot easier now than it was before. All right. So you are now, this is early 2000s.
In 2003, you became president of Latin America and the GM for the UK for Fox International Channel. So you were really clearly you had people there who were really liked you were impressed at the work you were doing. Did you were you were you good at finding mentors? I think most importantly, David, my track boss was the best mentor and he gave me chances and opportunities to learn. But I was always somebody who was reaching out to other people and trying to learn.
I heard this amazing expression that if you work in international, you have the ability to quote unquote read tomorrow's newspaper. Because you're in a country and you're seen at trend and that trend probably happened at some other country five years before two years before three years before. And so you're much more able to predict trends that are going to happen from one place to the next. So for example, my boss David gave me the chance to launch a television channel in the UK.
And that that would become the effects channel that you can remember flying in. We only had six months to get from zero to launch. And noticing that the television market was hyper fragmented because every household had digital penetration. So and they helped multiple channels. There are a number of things that weren't even available in the US. And I remember thinking this is the way that multi channel television will go everywhere, not just the UK.
So in the future, we're going to go through a world of hyper fragmentation of audiences. So that's when I started to realize that we need a new set of skills to create shows and market them in a way that would break through. Alright, and meanwhile, you're you're continuing to move up the ladder at Fox and we're fast forwarding again here a little bit. But but I guess around 2011, you're promoted to president and CEO of all of Fox International channels, which again is a pretty incredible rise.
I mean, you reach sort of the top of the food chain. Yeah. And you're using TV channels, production houses, digital assets out of the world. And you probably were thinking, I imagine, that you know, maybe one day you'll be the head of Fox. I don't know, or maybe the head of another studio. Is that was that the trajectory you felt you were on? One of me felt that I wanted to see whether I could go and lead another company. And at the time, I also was curious about entrepreneurship.
And I remember part of my job was in business development, talking to founders, talking to entrepreneurs and seeing how they went from zero to 100. Actually, there's some moment I remember in 2015. There's this bank that generated or published valuation of the whole company of Fox.
It's called that some of the parts valuation where they go and value each part of the business. And there's FIC, which at the time had grown into one of the biggest parts of the Fox organizations was valued at 10 billion dollars. Well, I'm throwing me wondered if I could create even a small version of that starting from scratch without the benefit of a large organization with amazing brands of amazing colleagues.
And so I had that nagging sense. And at the time, I, I felt that at Fox, I probably had reason as far as I would. And we're going to talk a little more about where your head was at in a second, but I also want to pause and ask about your personal life because by this point, you'd also gotten married and had kids, right? Yeah, so sorry. I got married to my now ex-husband in 2008. We had met while on vacation and very quickly, the very first day that we talked about having kids.
And we were trying through IVF initially that just didn't work out. And then we got on the adoption list. And in 2010, we were blessed with our son. And then within nine months, we were blessed with our daughter. So that was a busy, busy time at our household. And in the meantime, in the background, you like many people started to listen to podcast. I got into podcasting in 2012. So I'm like a dinosaur in this industry.
And I remember very distinctly, because I had started, you know, with this show, the Teterati hour, that it really, everything changed for everybody with cereal. It really kind of floated all boats. You know, it was such a phenomenon that people are like, wait, what's this podcasting thing? And then they discovered other shows. You also had that experience as a consumer, a listener of podcasts, I think, right?
That's right. I had a number of friends not alone, but they came to me and they all used the same language. You have to listen to cereal. And I remember listening to it and say, whoa, now I understand this is just something that I had never experienced before in audio. So good. That first season was unbelievable.
I believe I remember, I listened to maybe the first four episodes over a month. And then the final four and binge listened to them on a flight back from Europe and I remember crying and feeling that just it was an incredible story. It was so emotional and so well told. And so I said, okay, zero is great. What's next? And then somebody recommended startup the show that Alex Bloomberg started this company around then, the game lit around 2014, I think.
That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I remember listening to it and liking it every bit as much because not only was an amazing narrative, cereal, I story, but it also happened to be about the creation of a company. And again, loved it. And I look for other shows like those and zilt. But when you were listening to a radio hour, my show at the time. I was listening to Terry. Yes, sir, but I was looking for the CLI story.
Because remember, one of the things that I learned at Fox was and this was true of any entertainment company. There was a lot of value to be created out of having a library of evergreen IP. So I thought that's your one of the reasons why you could spend the time in making a show like that was that people could listen to two years, three years, four years later, was still be current.
And that's something I aspire to. And you knew that there was something about this evergreen idea, right, which is you make content that has a lifespan beyond it's that week or beyond that month that it could live. I mean, this is how I think about this show. Like if you go back seven years on this show, the stories, they don't change. I mean, they elements change, but they stand there evergreen. You can hear them in 10 or 20 years, it's still valuable.
And when you talk to anybody who has run a movie studio or a television studio, they will tell you that library funds new production, right, the profits and the cash for the comes from library, typically is what funds new production because new production is expensive and risky and more new production doesn't work, whereas library, you only monetize what actually has worked.
And eventually when people watch, you know, Halloween horror movies around Halloween or or Christmas movies, home alone around Christmas, that actually what's you're talking about that those libraries are just little live forever and they can generate the journey enough money to fund new projects.
That's right. And that happens in music as well. So it's a dynamic that has been well known and that one of the reasons why libraries are valued as much as they are and that that again, true of many, many years of IP. So all right, you're listening to these podcasts, but you're listener to them. I mean, you've got this job at Fox, very successful executive.
But I have to imagine it wasn't right away where you're thinking, that's it. That's what I can do. It was, it didn't take a long time to be honest, because I always felt that timing is important and it's you can be right on time too late or too early too late. You can not go back from too early is also bad. But if you have to choose you better be too early than today, it's always better to be just a tad little early before everybody else goes into one trend. Yeah.
And I went and studied the history of what happened in public radio in other countries. And notice that there were audio dramas being produced in the UK and Canada. Yeah, I mean, the BBC had it still does the archers are and you know, but that's right. That was what the BBC who called and I just BBC was radio dramas, even in the US they existed.
That's right. That's right. Back in the post-war right when they were replaced by television. And if you remember in the 90s, the most popular television shows were episodic. Yeah. Procedureals and sitcoms you can watch what episode skip the next and in the turn of the century, TV gets invented and with it on demand television.
Some people are able to watch television on their own time. Surprisingly or not the sopranos six feet under and that new golden age of television of character driven drama starts at that time. That's when showrunners know that they're going to be able to tell stories over at arc of a season. So character development becomes more or as important as plot.
So the minute TVo happens that enables what we now call sort of the golden age of television because you could record them and watch them on your own time. That's exactly right. So my analogy was that if episodic was a past and TVo happened and that led to the golden age of television which led to the new age of normally HBO but effects and AMC and eventually Netflix.
Then podcasts were the TVo moment. Maybe serial was HBO but there was an opportunity to create effects showtime AMC all of that amazing IP that follow and I just happened to be witnessing a potential inflection point in what then became the golden age of audio.
And everybody had a smartphone which was like a TVo in their pocket for audio. That's right. And the shows were funded by advertising so there was very little friction and you can promote shows through the Apple Podcasts chart and the app. And there were so many things like an app that I felt that this was an amazing opportunity. I'll be crazy not to take it.
When we come back in just a moment, it not takes the leap to start his own podcast company and learns that despite his skills and connections, a leap can feel more like a plunge. Stay with us. I'm Guy Ross and you're listening to how I built this. This episode is brought to you by 8Sleep. Sleep science shows that in order to sleep our best, our body temperature needs to drop in the early and middle part of sleep and rise in the morning.
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Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Ross. So it's around 2016 and Arnon Lopez has a top job in television. But after becoming a fan of podcasts like cereal, he starts to think about launching his own podcast company. When I talk to my boss at the time, Peter Rice and I told him, well, I want to start this podcast company. And this is why I like to do. And he said, oh my God, that sounds like such a fun idea.
I don't know that will be commercially successful, but I believe in you and will make the first investment as Fox. And so they put up $250,000 check. So my question, I mean, here, here you are now. You are, you know, at this point, you know, you're going to start a business. And you have a lot of connections, obviously, and a lot of experience, but still risky because 2016 podcasting is, you know, it's, it's blowing up, but it's still, you know, not clear.
I'm sure I can go back and work as an executive and media company. Part of me thought that that was a fallback and I talked to a lot of people in my internal circle. And to be frank, a lot of people thought I was crazy about going into this new space because the whole industry was thought to be worth $125 million. Which is nothing. I mean, you know, a bunch of people are competing for market share, they're competing for $3, $5 million, $10 million.
That's right. And I'm saying thought to be because the industry itself didn't have an official estimate. So at the time, this 2016 you, you leave Fox and you, you decide you're going to start your own podcast network. And let's talk a little bit about what that was going to be because obviously you were inspired by Gimlett.
And what Alex Bloomberg and Matt Lieber were doing there. We did an episode on them a couple years ago on this show, which is really interesting. Sorry and worth listening to. But let's start with the reaction. I mean, I'm sure most people around you are like, you know, this is great. Here, go for it. Did you feel any sort of, I don't know, underneath the surface that there was people are like, this is, this is a weird idea. Like what is he doing?
Oh, no, they did. He wasn't, wasn't very much under the surface. I remember talking to colleagues that were wondering like what the heck is her name doing. And it was just very 2016 was tough guy. It was a number of ways. So because we have that $250,000 check from Fox and then a few friends and, and former colleagues also offer to invest.
And we raised another 200 grand. And I thought, OK, this is easy. Yeah. But then this is where he gets interesting. I try to go and raise money from venture capital the way that Gimlett had raised money. And the phones stop ringing. You couldn't even with all of your industry experience in your background.
You couldn't raise any venture capital money in 2016. I could not, I, I, I talked to, I stopped counting the nose after hit 50 and venture capital. And they all had different versions of different reasons and they were legitimate. So the industry was super small. I was a solo founder in my 40s with no experiencing starting a business from the point of view of the, they were looking at it and had spent too much time. What if that was a cushy corporate job. And so yeah, we just hit a wall.
Oh, I'll tell me a little more about this. I mean, you, you're going from a guy who flies to Buenos Aires or Berlin or, you know, Singapore, wherever. And like, you're being chauffeured into these boardrooms and you're the boss from Fox and you're meeting those people. All of a sudden now, you're like, for being brought in for meetings and, you know, sitting in conference room where everyone's like, OK, why are you wasting our time? What is this about?
Pretty much. And sitting at my own printer and, and then trying to find out how to do payroll and get worse actually. So on top of that, that my husband at the time was in the hospital for a couple of months and then was unable to work for the rest of the day. And so I was taking care of him, deepening to my own savings every month because we're unable to fund the company. And there were many points in 2016 that I said, what am I doing? And I was ready to give up.
How many people were you able to hire from from that initial seat funding? We had six people very early on. We had somebody in sales and I'm ahead of the offering office, a chief content office, about being with Fox for 20 years. And this is a major sort of figure. So he probably got some equity because you couldn't possibly pay him what he was getting paid to Fox.
That's right. That's right. And it's all yes, he did. And, and we had somebody in charge of recruiting shows that this one of the things that learned at Fox was that it's almost impossible to create a media brand with just your own content. You have to combine content that you produce with content that you licensed from others. And that was the model for one reason as well. So, when you started this out, right, I mean, you've got to raise the money and start a business.
But at the same time, you had to make great shows, right? And you wanted to do something different than what was being done in public radio at the time or in a company like Gimlett. So what was it that you wanted to do? So I wanted to bring everything that had learned in 25 years in television to the area of podcasting from storytelling style to marketing to business model.
But the first product that we wanted to launch were audio dramas. It hadn't been done much. It was only maybe one or two audio dramas. And I actually wanted to create those Hollywood soundscapes with characters and sound design and essentially turn it into scripted audio. And we did, we launched this great show. I thought we all thought at the time called secrets, crimes, and audio tape.
We was an ongoing audio drama and it hit only number two on Apple Podcasts. And we couldn't get to number one because there was this one other show that launched at the same time called How a Build This. Have you heard of it? Wow. Didn't I know that? Yeah, sorry about that. That's when I became a listener of how a build this. And again, I think what we learn in secret crimes was that there were so many people that the audience for an audio drama was limited.
But podcast listeners loved true stories. That's how I fell in love with podcasts. So the inside was that we could actually tell true stories but following the Hollywood playbook of character development, cliffhangers, high stakes, and sound design. And I also should say that a fox, we paid a lot of attention to sound. We were often financing that sound is where the motion comes from. I'm sure you heard the story that you watch a horror movie with the center of it. It's not scary at all.
And then the marketing playbook of trailers and super trailers and podcasts about the podcast and how to just build momentum. One of the most difficult things is how to create urgency for something that is evergreen that something that my colleagues in the movie studio used to talk about a lot.
It's interesting because you were doing with reviving old style radio drama but updating it and modernizing it. And I guess the difference, the big difference was that what you public radio, right, or even gimlet, which is rooted in public radio, was still about journalism. And that's not what you wanted to do. You could actually tell stories in a different way that were more focused on entertainment.
That's right. And by the way, the reason why I didn't follow Alex and Matt and other people in the space were doing it was that they were so good at it that I did not think that I could do a better job doing what they were doing. So there was a space to do something completely different. I mean, when you listen to a show like Radio Lab or the American life that are so beautifully produced, they're very, very hard to make. I mean, most, most people... Oh my god.
I mean, I understand the amount of work. And so that was not what you did not... I mean, you were not trying to recreate that. You couldn't compete with that. I could not compete with that. And quite honestly, Felda, there was a bigger opportunity in the one space that Wanderley was creating in which we were alone. And by the way, that first year did you even attract any advertising?
But just didn't make enough money to pay for the cost. So the first year we lost a ton of money. And I remember looking at the PNL statement by the end of that month, and we had maybe $10,000 in revenue. And you had a staff of six? We had a staff of six. And $10,000 ain't going to cover those costs. Nope, no, they wasn't. And I remember thinking, oh my god, what do I do? Like, even if we get to 10 times this, this is still not going to cover the cost.
Even if we get to 100 times this, it's not going to be a big business of the scale that I thought that he would. But look, I mean, there are times on which you have to overcome every know that you get. And you have to be able to distinguish between the helpful notes and the unhelpful notes. And I got some of both. Every time that I went to a venture capital, meaning and they told me, no, we cannot fund you because the time is just not there.
That was one thing. And it was hard to respond to that. But there were times where they were saying, look, we cannot find you now because we don't want to fund a business that relies primarily on third party content, because we think that at the end of your agreement that those margins can be computed away. We can fund you if you bring a significant amount of your revenue coming from your own content that is.
If you own a property. Right. And I said, but that's precisely what I'm doing. That's our plan. Believe me. Yeah. And this, yeah, come when you've done it. So you get through 2016 and you get to 2017 to launch Hollywood crimes. Yeah, Hollywood and crime Hollywood crime. And that that show did was a hit. But what, but what was it about that show that like, because I think that show really changed how you thought about what Wondry should be doing?
That was the first show in which we realized that if we tell a true story with the Hollywood playbook with character development and with stakes and with sound design, then people were going to listen. And it was also the show which we tried the marketing playbook of having a launch campaign that allowed people to get excited about the show. It wasn't an accident that we launched in the first week of January. We knew that nobody else was going to launch a show at the same time.
So our chance of getting to the top of the Apple podcast chart, which at the time was really important. Yeah. It was a way of really getting more people to see you and see, see, see your show and see your brand and see what the Wondry logo was. Just we put a lot of attention into all those details and that that sometimes are overlooked.
Let me ask you about how you sourced producers at the time, even, you know, 2016, 2017. I mean, now there's lots of people who know how to make audio because podcasting is exploded. But then it was pretty much the only people who knew how to make really high quality audio programs were in public radio. That is true. And we really were paying attention to who was out of the market. We're going to podcast meetups.
And I think it helped that we were the only ones in LA. Everybody else in the East Coast was competing with the same pool of talent and we're the only ones in LA. And people who were in our world sometimes were really working for Hollywood projects that essentially allow them to pay the bills and they were doing audio as a passion project on the side. How did you, you'd gone from, yeah, let's be honest, having people, you know, kiss your butt when you're running Fox. Okay.
Being this guy like, oh, you know, and Hannah's coming with a building guys, you know, or I've seen this, I've seen this play. I've been in places where people talk about the boss like they're God, you know, which I think is unhealthy, but it happens, especially in Hollywood. To going to the guy who's like going to podcast meetups at like dive bars and, you know, in Los Angeles with like 12 people showing up and you're telling me about this new thing you're starting.
But I think that that has always been one of my skills that have been always adaptable. I remember growing up in Argentina and just seeing how realities can change from one moment to the next. I think that gives anybody who comes from a similar environment or background the ability to just adapt. At the same time, there was a sense of community in the podcast industry that everybody was excited every time they met somebody who understood what they understood.
And we all felt that over time, everybody else will get it too, but we just are excited to be at the early stage of what we now realize was a new golden age of audio. So by 2017, you've made your first few shows, right, and you're starting to bring in some advertising revenue. But you're still struggling to attract investors, right, because you haven't really had a hit show yet.
But then, of course, something happens. I guess the story I understand is that the LA Times basically approaches Wondery because they want to launch their own podcast. I mean, at this point, other media outlets like the New York Times were jumping into podcasting, right? So the understandably, the LA Times wants to get in on the action. And so what, do they just call a meeting to bat around ideas with you?
That's right. And they went around the room and they pitched different stories that they have been working on. And at the third one, I said, that's the one. What was the story they told you? It was dirty, John. And what was the actual story? It was a story about a woman in Orange County who had been tricked by this grifter who obviously presented to me who he was not. And she fell in love with him. His name was John Mean.
And exactly, her daughters really did not like him. And there was a really high stakes family drama of two generations of people who are not seen out to I. And he was this incredibly rich psychological thriller and with a completely unexpected ending. And then finally, we went to the Apple Podcast team and actually show them the first episode of the show.
They loved it so much that they agreed to give us what at the time was called the Beyoncé treatment, you know, the takeover of the top car sale of the Apple Podcast app. And this put us on them up. To prove the concept of is even if you didn't own this IP, you could show that what you were able to do with it. And that presumably would convince people that there was a huge potential here. That's right. And we could go to any meeting and say, we are the company that made dirty John.
Yeah. In the middle of that happening, we got approached finally looked like we were going to raise money and we won a major company agreed to essentially fund our CSA at $5 million dollars at a $25 million valuation. They give you $25 million at a $25 million dollar valuation. This is a major. I know who it is, but you can't you don't want to talk about specifically who was is a major LA player. That's right. I will give you a global player and they will play. And they made an offer. Right.
It's an investment firm. This is a player in the corporate. And they made an offer to make a 20% investment in in wondering. So that was exciting. That was that was good news. That was very exciting. I felt okay. I'm yeah. Now we are finally going to be able to take this to the next level. We shook hands.
And then don't hear anything for a couple of weeks and the corporate team conspia can says, actually we've been looking at the deal and we decided that instead of investing, we want to buy your company outright for the same valuation for $25 million. That's right. And and I've tempting. Yes. I probably could have walked away with 15 million bucks.
Maybe more than that at the time. But but I said now what I really wanted to do is what you guys promise and we shook hands on which is do an investment around it so that we can make this company a lot bigger and have big plans. And there's this dirty John thing that you guys don't know how big is going to be and believe me. It's going to be great. And they said, well, either we buy the company or nothing. There's no investment.
And our stuff. But I ultimately decided to just not take the offer and because I just was confident that we were about to hit something big. When we come back in just a moment, why are none says no to a new offer to buy wonder before saying yes to Amazon. And how is life turns upside down when he's embroiled in a federal bribery case stay with us. You're listening to how I built this.
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Hey welcome back to how I built this I'm Guy Roz. So it's 2017 and Ernan has just turned down a $25 million offer to buy Wundery the company he started less than two years earlier. And instead he's betting on the success of the new podcast that he's about to launch with the LA Times.
So you were taking a risk I mean even if 30 John was a success it wasn't necessarily going to make tons of money not only that but also I'm sure you heard this before that is very often that happens that a company that makes you an offer you turn it down that's your done with a company there is not that they're going to come next year and sometimes they do some I mean their cases work a company keeps chasing the valuation up but more often than not you're done with a company because they're going to feel bad that you turn it down.
And it kind of poisons a relationship in some respects and this was a company that you need a relationship with I did and that we're all good we still remain in our relationship but yes I was very mindful of that's that's not going to be ultimately the buyer of my company but I so we went and launched dirty John in October of 2017 and it really is a lot of money.
And it really hit the side guys it was number one on Apple podcast for 30 days straight it made some like two million listeners within the first month. Prev is so more way more than we have predicted and so add song but you know guy the one thing that made me proud of was that we kept hearing all these stories about mothers talking to daughters and vice versa about listening to the region and saying you should listen to the region.
To find out about toxic relationships and red flags and that's where we finally hit what wonder was meant to be we came up with with a name for it what we called emotionally immersive storytelling true stories with a perspective that allowed listeners to immerse themselves in the shoes of all the people in the story and to understand what was happening to them and I think that was for the first time. That was from that moment on the defining trade of every one ratio.
So once that show really kind of hit. I have to imagine coming back now when now when you're going to investors because you get me you're still at this point working on the initial seed money and the money you're putting in. And you just ballpark you know how much you were in like from your own cash seven figures I can tell you exactly how much money was seven figures and that was I mean you clearly were you know I made good money as an executive at Fox.
Was that scary to you or were you like you know what I can put in seven figures I've got in the bank. But it was scary yes because you know I was you know I had two kids and my husband X at the time had gone back to work but he was still building his medical practice so this is your retirement money. That's right yes and again it was a non zero chance that this could go nowhere that there will be no buyer or there will be no no no wondering the future that nobody would see the value in it.
You in 2018 with the momentum of dirty John go back to the investor. Did you go back to any of the investors that you talked to previously. Well actually one of them called me back in October of 17. I got a call from Alan Patrick of of great craft of great growth and many people consider him the father of modern venture capital.
He called me up for a meeting in New York and he eventually became the lead investor alongside with Larry Hippo and advancing share rates on company but that took several months. Was it it was easier to attract the money at that point. It was easy because at the same time he had listened to the very John every episode so he understood emotionally and also we felt that we couldn't rely on only mini serious.
At the time we came up with this concept of the always on shows that also came from the emotionally immersive storytelling. The first one was American history tellers. It was a show that allowed people to put themselves in historical moments and so that was the first show and then we had also lined up business wars. That allowed us to essentially have wholly on one of the shows that in the future would allow us to have a library that made one replace possible.
And one replace is your paid subscription service. So in that year 2018 really it's this is the because you started in January 2016 tough year 2017 start to get some momentum and then dirty John and then 2018 now you're working on you know other programs you know doctor death which is going to be another huge success and gladiator. But I guess in that year 2018 you actually started to talk to a serious acquire just you know two years in about buying you out.
This they called us and again this was a call that I wasn't expecting was maybe nine months after maybe eight months after we had we close our CSA run which had valid the company at 22 million dollars or less. Is the great craft investment that's right value that they led that value the company at 22 million dollars or less than that what I expect you're before and this company says her and we've been following and they hadn't bought any companies in the podcast space.
Can you tell us which company was I rather not but can you give us a hint like was it what kind of company is a tech company that a lot of people use every day and it's a what kind of tech. Content tech is a situation or maybe it's yeah yeah it's what's the end and at that point they had not purchased any podcast company so they contact you.
They can't do me and said her and we actually were fans of what you've been doing and we've been following and we we would like to make an offer for the company. And so first I told them look thank you I'm very flattered but quite honestly we we just literally raise money as you know from VCs and VCs are not in the business of investing so that somebody will buy the company in nine months.
It's just so in order to make this work for their perspective you would have to value the company at something that just wouldn't make sense for you. Yeah and they said well can we try so we exchange and India some basic information we they came with an offer that was four times when we had raised that to over 80 million bucks.
Again hard to say no from the perspective of okay if this was my business maybe would have been tempting but it wasn't my business anymore I had great investors and a great team and it would just scratching the surface of what we would do. We knew that again Dr. Death had come out gladiator had come out and we knew that the following year would do that times two or maybe more but we yeah we we turn them down.
I mean this was a I mean 80 million you would have probably walked away with maybe half of that maybe a little bit more your investors would have been happy they would have gotten a pretty decent return.
That would have been an amazing outcome but at this point you felt like the momentum was on your side that you could confidently say no. I had so before that for all those reasons it was a scary thing to do but I was having a lot of fun and I always thought that there was a chance that we could even take the company public one day so there were a number of options but regardless I felt that I had taken investment from some of the best and bright.
Investors in the venture capital world and it would have been disappointing to them to just as she sell that quickly and even even if it was for times what they invested on. How were you what about your pipeline of of like content creators how did you develop a pipeline especially as there was more money coming into the industry with other content companies who were now starting to write checks significant checks.
How were you able to compete when you know you didn't have an endless pool of money to do that. I think it really helped us that we were in LA and we're kind of alone in LA and a lot of people had listened to Dirty John and the other thing that helped us was the fact that Dirty John even though it was owned by the LA Times very quickly got option to television.
I was turning to a very successful television show for Bravo and it's really put us in a position where because we were in Hollywood we could give creators the potential of having their show be turned into a television show because we were starting to show that there was a track record.
Every time that a pitch came to us we thought could this be turned into a high stakes character driven interesting human story that will resonate with showrunners because it would resonate with viewers for example.
If somebody came to us and said I have this open case and nobody has been in to solve it and I want to create a show on me trying to solve it we would always say no thank you because one of the most tried and true things in Hollywood is that you need to have a satisfying ending to a story. And when you don't have a clear ending people will not recommend the show to other people it's just as simple as that.
In 2019, Gamla gets acquired by Spotify. It was really one of the first major acquisitions of a podcast company as big as over $2 million. That must have thought that was a good sign for wondering. I thought so yes. I mean you knew that this thing that you were starting I mean I think you were clear about it. Your goal was to eventually get it to be acquired by a larger player in the industry or in media.
When you take investment from venture capital that's something that you have to accept that venture capital will want an exit and the only two ways of exiting a company are either selling to another company or going public and I thought the more likely outcome was to be acquired but it was a chance if the company had a lot bigger to go public as well.
And were you ever concerned already in 2019 you know Gamla gets acquired and now the advertising is starting to really grow and it was clear that podcast advertising was going to grow at the same time more podcasts are coming online so the competition was going to also grow but in the back of your mind did you ever think you know we cannot depend on advertising revenue alone because look what happened to newspapers and you know
ads not just print ads but online ads were declining and you know and you could see that that could happen in podcasting there's going to be a race to the bottom to charge the least amount of money. Were you thinking about that were you like we got to figure something out here to develop new new revenue streams.
Yes and remember that's what attracted me to cable television at the very beginning the fact that they had dual revenue streams and so when we raise our seers a I presented to our investors a five year plan not year by year but essentially told them look in 2022 I want to be here and I want
to have those so many listeners and so much revenue and of that revenue so much needs to come from our own original content and so much needs to come from international so much needs to come from sources other than advertising I was we were putting all in a bucket and yes revenue diversification was a key goal of hours from an earlier. Alright 2020 Gimlet had sold the year before it's looking very good for the future of wondering and you find out that you have been.
And I did by the federal government alleging that you were when you were at Fox your previous career that you are involved in a bribery scheme to acquire the rights to soccer TV soccer games for Fox networks first of all were you aware that you were being investigated.
I was shocked a thousand percent shocked as was my lawyer this actually happened in April of 2020 so we had just going to work from home everybody in the team I had two third graders doing school from home and we were being hit with advertising cancellations and listen dropping and we felt all this great thing that we had built.
Now troubling was under question but I first let me take you back to what happened yeah remember when I was at Fox this is ten years before we our business had hundreds of entities all over the world some of them were holy own some were joint ventures one of them a joint venture in South America was being run by a partner who unbeknownst to us had been bribing soccer officials in South America
and taking tens of millions of dollars for himself for years before we we bought into the joint venture and when he got caught in 2015 he decided to become a witness for the government and he falsely implicated a number of people including my colleague and myself as being aware of what he was doing and not stop in him which for US lawyers.
The same as as as doing something but your point was that yes I hear you like there was clearly the evidence shows that bribery happened but but me as a Fox executive it was not aware of it that's right so this this guy said that I knew what he was doing and I did not stop in and that's a lie. You pleaded not guilty and you you had to post bail because you faced prison time which I'm sure was very stressful.
The thing is you decided that you would not leave step down from one way that you would continue to run it in in light of this indictment. Did you have investors who were like hey maybe you should step aside for a while and just deal with this.
Not a single one said that we had if anything that the one thing that got me through guy was an amazing group of friends and my family my my now has been at the time time we were just starting dating my employees every single person supported me because they knew my character they knew that what this guy was saying was a lie and they were more that they were just determined to help me get through.
So how are you I mean obviously the case was not going to go to trial for a while but you are now in the process of dealing with just a psychological effects of having to prepare for trial and and lawyers and from what I gather I think Fox now at this point owned by Disney coverage or legal costs but you still had to sit for you're going to have to sit for deposition you are going to have to talk to lawyers you're going to have to it considerable amount of your day to day time which already was probably full spend.
It was probably full spending it on trying to make one degree bigger you have to carve out maybe up to a quarter of your time maybe a third of your time and devoted to this trial and this lawsuit. It wasn't as much ever because the process works in slow ways and there are times obviously preparing for trial but that was not for two years later that yes I was spending a lot more time I eventually had to wait three years to get my case heard before a jury.
Meantime you were also you know you were the face of wondering but everybody around you say said don't you know stay do this you were committed to doing this you were committed to to to to grow in the company but I wonder at that time whether you start to think that maybe this would be the year to to sell one.
So around that time in the summer we were approached by investment bank that had been working with the saying that was renewed interest in one degree teacher had just been bought by Sirus XM and serial productions by the New York Times the ringer was bought by by Spotify.
There are number of acquisitions and you know the bad that were multiple people that were still interesting in the space and we had hundreds of shareholders including every single employee in one degree was a stakeholder yeah and we have you know I at the time was the minority owner with my family of one degree I had a significant stake but more people than me on the majority of the company and.
With the word lots of conversations in the board and some people wanted us to continue to build but ultimately we came to the conclusion that taking the deal with Amazon was in the best interest of the company so you got offered snow snow it remember poorly exact amount anywhere from between two to four hundred million dollars by Amazon to acquire one degree and.
Pretty great pretty great result for you and for the shareholders and stakeholders yes yes and most importantly for me as a founder would allow me to see one degree become the best possible version of what it could become I knew that Amazon had the resources and the where will the motivation to to turn into something a lot bigger than I could probably do on my own.
And so I'm very happy that we ended up doing that deal so okay so you're and you leave wondering in 2021 after the acquisition goes through but it was bittersweet because you now had to deal with. This lawsuit this this this indictment and in March of 2023 you were found guilty of of these allegations by by the federal government that you were involved in this scandal the case relied very heavily on testimony from this one man who had already pleaded guilty in 2015 Alejandro Burzaco.
You knew that you were going to appeal you peeled immediately but still it's like okay here we go again and in that time between the appeal and then what eventually happened which we'll talk about a moment. How did you just get through the day I mean you faced twenty years in prison at that point I mean how did you react to that possibility.
I it's it's really something that you just need to find in yourself and I talked to a lot of people who went through adversity that they did not expect I read this book called Ike Guy. It's it's a she a Japanese philosophy about how to live a longer a more fruitful life and that's the other thing that that helped me get through reading.
Lots of meditation trying to stay with my routine as much as I could trying to spend a lot of time with the kids spend more time virtually with my parents who came to visit me. Yeah. So September of 2023 a federal judge throughout the conviction basically determining there was not enough evidence to convict you of wire fraud and bribery that must have been an unbelievable relief.
I can't describe it I mean getting that call on that Friday night on Friday the before going into a long weekend from my lawyers at the day themselves you know, it's because we were always confident that this was going to be the outcome ultimately which just didn't think that it was going to happen at this particular stage necessarily but we were all confident that this was going to ultimately be the outcome but yes I was I was obviously very happy.
I mean there could still be the possibility of an appeal from from federal prosecutors right I mean it that the still a possibility. There is a possibility yes but I am living my life as if this chapter is over because I know that the truth is in my side and I'm having seen the strength and the weaknesses of our little system and actually there's research even despite the presumption of innocence that we all taught in school.
So I think that the people that go to serve on a jury believe that indicted equals guilty and deep down I was one of them and I'm you know embarrassed to admit it but I was one of them and it took me to go through this grueling experience to realize that not only indicted doesn't equal guilty but sometimes guilty doesn't equal guilty. I can podcast I work in podcast I'm sure you listen to many stories of wrong convictions and you just you don't think that it could happen to you until it does.
And I'm curious to get your take on podcasting the industry in general because you know there's still money that's being made in podcasting no question about it but it's changed a lot since 2016 since 2012 when I started there are millions and millions podcasts now in English alone.
And it's harder for new shows to scale advertising is more competitive there have been all kinds of articles about and there have been you know budgets cut and layoffs that you know places like Spotify I mean they basically shut down gimlet there been layoffs at NPR and and box media and Sony I mean it's it's I wonder if you think this is just part of the cycle of any business or do you think this bodes.
Badly for the future podcasting I think I look I don't know much about specifics because I don't get the data that I used to get when I was in the industry but yes they might be pockets that are less financially viable than the word before but as a whole the industry continues to grow in fact there are lots of.
Companies that are pushing to add more video to podcasts and there's I think we're still in the early innings of podcasts in different languages so I think the industry has lots of room for growth absolutely do you feel like your timing was for two of this.
I definitely remember the beginning I talked about being too early or too late and maybe I was a year too early but yes my timing was really really for to this in that if I try to launch one really exact same version of one in 2018 I don't know that it would have gotten to worry that because by that point it was already too competitive it was already a lot more competitive.
So I mean here you are this guy who came from Argentina with broken English to the US when he was 27 to try and make a life you know and rose up the ranks of Fox and here you are you know 25 years later wealthy and having created a pretty significant business that has had a cultural impact on American media.
And so when you kind of reflect on on your story and on and where you got to where you are now how much of of where you are do you think has to do with your skill and your work ethic and how much do you think has to do with getting lucky.
I think that over my my life I've probably been at the point 1% of lucky and at the point 1% of unlucky at different points in my life and sometimes you don't know when but luck can become good luck later on but you can't control that no matter how much luck you have or don't have your life.
Hard work is essential. Yes there's always some degree of luck in every success story but people often don't tell you about the degrees of but luck that happen in success story and again you can only control what you do and how you respond to events around you. That's Ernan Lopez founder of Wondery since leaving the company in 2021 he's co-founded another business called Danbus which makes digital displays for showcasing NFTs and other kinds of digital art.
And on is also launched a nonprofit that helps young professionals from marginalized communities get ahead in their careers which by the way often includes accent coaching. Hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show and as always it's free.
This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Rumpine Arableui. It was edited by Niva Grant with research help from Alex Chung. Our audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Maggie Luthar our production staff also includes Casey Herman Carla Estevez JC Howard John Isabella Catherine Cipher Kerry Thompson Malia Aguadello and Sam Holson. I'm Guy Raaz and you've been listening to how I built this.
If you like how I built this you can listen early and add free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon music before you go tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery dot com slash survey.
Hi I'm Lindsey Graham the host of Wondery's podcast American scandal we bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history presidential lies corruption and sports corporate fraud our newest season looks at Aaron Hernandez a rising pro football star who shocked the sports world when he was arrested for a brutal murder in 2013.
Fans media and Hernandez's own family couldn't understand how a beloved and respected player for the New England Patriots with a $40 million contract could commit such a heinous crime but there had been warning signs all along the way and they pointed to a much larger health crisis among current and former NFL players follow American scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Benj American scandal Aaron Hernandez early and ad free right now on Wondery plus.