The History of RSS Podcasting with Ben and Alberto - Part 1

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. This is the first episode of the official RSS.com podcast aptly titled, Podcasting 101 with RSS.com. I'm Ashley, and I could not be more thrilled to be in your ears right now. I'm the gal that has voiced many of the tutorials you may have seen on our YouTube channel, and now with this new podcast, I'm excited to take on the role of host for what will hopefully be many episodes to come. Now you might be wondering, what can you expect from this show?

For starters, we plan to interview experts and share the latest in the world of podcasting. We will also teach master classes on everything from how to pick your microphone to how to grow your audience. With every episode and with everything we do, RSS.com empowers podcasters worldwide. In this first official episode, I thought we'd kick things off with who RSS is and what we're all about.

Because if you're like most people, when you hear RSS, you probably think of an RSS feed for a website or a blog. And in a way, RSS feeds are actually how RSS.com podcasting got started. But I don't tell this story nearly as well as our founders do. So I brought them in to chat with me about the founding of the company and how RSS.com went from being a Google feed reader to a podcast hosting company.

I'll be chatting with Alberto Batella and Benjamin Richardson, who believe it or not, built and launched this company from two different continents without meeting in person for the first three full years. There's a lot to unpack, so we're dividing this episode into two parts. I hope you enjoy it.

So how did you two begin working together? I know the story, of course. But for everyone else listening, how did you guys begin working together? It all started with a fateful email to Alberto. Well, no, it started before that. So I own RSS.com, owned it since 2013. I had purchased it from somebody that was looking to sell it. And it was happening at the same time that Google was, quote, killing the reader.

They had just terminated the Google reader, and there was a lot of worry that RSS would be dead. So I bought it at that time to put a Google or Google-like type RSS feed reader on it. But after a couple of years, I was noticing that in the customer support emails, I was getting a lot of questions about podcasting, and they just were continuing to grow over time. So I realized I needed to offer a podcasting solution as well as a feed reader solution.

And that caused me to go out and look for somebody to partner with, because none of the people in-house had what I thought was the expertise to really bring together a world-class podcasting platform. So I happened upon Podcast Generator because it had a huge amount of downloads on SourceForge, which is an open source service. And I saw that the guy's name was Alberto Battella. I'm like, I'm going to find out who this guy is. I Googled his name.

I found out he had a PhD. I found out that he had been doing this for a very long time as Podcast Generator's person, creator. And I also saw that Alberto spoke English and Spanish and Italian and was the CTO of a... Anyway, I thought, this guy sounds really awesome. I'm going to reach out to him. And I wrote him a very quick email just telling him that I spoke the same language as he did, and could we talk, basically.

And Alberto, thankfully, what caught his attention was that it was a three-letter domain. I wrote him from the rss.com email address, and he thankfully has an affinity for short domains. And so, yeah, that's how we got introduced, is I saw a need in our platform for supporting podcasting. And Alberto definitely had what I thought was the world-class platform for doing that on the open source world. And so that's why I reached out. Alberto, anything to add there?

No, I think it's great as an overview. It is true that when you wrote me, the first thing I thought and then I wrote to you is, do you own rss.com? Before even replying, you know. But after that, the match was very clear because I had this technology, this content management system, and there was an appetite to build it in a way that could scale up. It has been there for a while, but I never found the right opportunity. And in the meanwhile, I was doing other things.

You know, I was in startups and that's why I never did it. And I think you were the, let's say, the spark that started the engine. Yeah, the spark that started the engine. Yeah. I mean, certainly it was very serendipitous that we found each other. We matched very well in our interests. And he definitely had the experience that made me believe that, yeah, this really could be something to spend time on. Podcasting was definitely not new by 2015, 2016 when we started talking. Or was it 2017?

I don't even remember, Alberto. 2017? It was July 2017. I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the beginning. That's how it all started. It's so wild to me though, because it sounds like when you started RSS, podcasting wasn't even on your... Well, I mean, it was on your radar in the sense that, like you said, it wasn't new, but it wasn't that you purchased RSS in the hopes of starting a podcasting company.

No, not at all. I mean, it was to save feed reading and feed readers. I'm a news obsessed person and that's where my mind was, is news consumption. And if everybody stops using RSS, it stops supporting it on their websites and blogs, like, I was definitely gonna lose out. I love staying current on news and I just couldn't imagine a world where that wasn't happening or where it was happening inside a Facebook feed. It just didn't work for me. But yeah, podcasting wasn't on my radar at that point.

And on my end, basically I was building and maintaining this project, it's Podcast Generator Content Management System for free as a hobby. I didn't really monetize it and you know how many times during the years, during the 13 years I've been working on it for free, basically on the spare time, how many times I thought, man, I don't know if I should continue. But then people would drive me like, oh, it's not working, it's not compatible with this browser.

So I kept feeling that people were using it and it had a certain impact. So it's kind of serendipitous really how we got there because I could have stopped before. I had the drive of continuing working to my project just because people were using it. So I knew there was a market fit. Well, I mean, thank goodness that you did though, because if you had stopped, we wouldn't have what we have now, which is this amazing platform for podcasting.

Yeah. Interestingly enough, the code base of Podcast Generator after the first year was completely replaced with a new code base. Meaning now there's no one line of code from Podcast Generator, but the first year, this is what allowed our company to start with. We literally used the Podcast Generator. That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. So now you kind of gave a little bit about what you were doing Alberto, but Ben, what were you doing at the time whenever you decided to purchase RSS?

Do you want to talk about that at all?

Yeah. I mean, it's not secret. So I'm an entrepreneur and have a degree from Brigham Young University in entrepreneurship. I started my first business to put myself through school and moved to the Arizona, the Phoenix, Arizona area. And like most, if you know an entrepreneur, you know that their interests are varied and the common denominator is a problem to solve and a passion for that problem. Being in Arizona, I had a tremendous amount of opportunities to do.

I feel like looking back, I'm kind of shocked at how much I did and how varied the things were. But so I got my start in real estate in Arizona and worked during the buildup of the bubble, so to speak, the real estate bubble that people are familiar with.

I was kind of at ground zero for the perfect storm for being involved in real estate development from 2005, 6, 7. I got my master's degree in real estate development 2008 and had a front row seat to the implosion and to what the effects were of a market downturn in real estate as well. It was really interesting. Right out of college, I had done some banking and so very familiar with some of the regulations, rules, and practices, procedures of how people interact on a commercial basis with banks.

And so I did some commercial real estate consulting. And then I had an opportunity to partner up with some folks who were developing technology out of the Army Corps of Engineers laboratory and taking patents that they were developing and commercializing those patents. And that was fascinating work. It was right in the middle of the war in Afghanistan. One of the partners was a two-star general at the time.

And we were working on stuff that felt very mission-driven and exciting and environmentally useful. So this was like we had a trifecta of things we were working on that were environmentally sustainable, beneficial to the environment and how those could be utilized in the Department of Defense as well as supporting some other missions critical at the time.

And anyway, that also put me kind of squarely into a political consulting role, one that I did for a while, that kind of helped merge passions, so to speak, as things were coming to bear in Arizona. And eventually, I was married in Arizona. We had our first child in Arizona. And my wife and my mother-in-law were very keen to get us back to Texas where I grew up and where my wife grew up. So we moved to Texas.

I basically sold out of my partnerships and passed up on a couple others that were just forming that eventually, like I think they accounted for like $13 billion in real estate. It was pretty significant thing to walk away from. But family first is my motto. So we came to Texas, my wife is an OBGYN and supporting her career, her desire for career, as well as her desire and our desire to have a family kind of led us to where we are now.

So a lot happened in those intervening years from starting my first business, but it was always kind of a function of opportunity and passion and mixing those two. And so now we've got that in RSS and the podcasting platform. I mean, it's very mission driven. We're giving people a voice, which is extremely important for me personally, I know for Alberto as well, diversity and inclusion.

In particular, our current focus is on cultural and language diversity with our initiatives in Mexico and the nascent podcasting scene there and how we can help support the voices that are south of us, should we say, at least here in the United States. And so, yeah, it's a great mix of passions and business problem solving, which has always been kind of my main focus. That's a lot. But yeah, so that's my background. That's amazing.

Well, Alberto, do you want to add any more to your background as to what led you to ultimately ending up with RSS?

Yeah, just if we start from the podcast generator, I was back in my homeland in Italy where I lived until I was 28, right, from zero to 28. And then I moved to Spain because I wanted to do a PhD. And so podcast generator has been always on the side, you know, and in the meanwhile, I did a PhD in affective computing, which today is called the motion AI.

I was working with wearable to measure psychophysiological signals from humans, which means heart rate, electrodermal activities, so skin conductance, pupil size to infer emotions. That was very interesting, kind of pioneering the field of wearable before Fitbit, before Apple Watch were commercially launched. Very exciting. Gave me a lot of insights on how to be data driven, right? This is something I still use today. I still am a very data driven person.

And after that, I wanted more commercial impact. So I switched, I left academia after my PhD and I joined a startup where I was CTO for three years. We raised 45 million dollars, especially in the United States. Then I switched to corporate in a business unit, which was a moonshot factory. It was the equivalent of Google X, but in Europe. And it's a big corp, a big, big telecommunication company, a 56 billion dollar revenue as a CTO there.

I also, for three years, I spun out a moonshot into a company, into a real company, which raised 30 million euros, 36 million dollars. And after the spin out, I finally decided to leave everything, leave corporate and just join RSS, which was already alive and going for a couple of years. For myself, it was a side project, right? Some weekends may be dedicated, some emails, but really I was not in the day to day ops. And that's when I decided to join, which is actually this year.

So 2021 is a big year for me. Finally being able to work and have an impact in the podcasting industry.

What I love so much about how diverse your backgrounds are is that you both had so many, like Marie Forleo says, you know, you're multi-passionate entrepreneurs and you took all of these amazing skills and all these amazing like knowledge bases and you created something that is giving a voice to the previously voiceless. And that's honestly why I love RSS so much. Just the fact that you can come on, you can speak into a microphone and you're telling the world your story.

And sure, you may not have like a bunch of followers all at once. You may not have a bunch of fans, but the point is you're taking something as simple as a microphone and a broadcasting platform online and you're giving your voice to the world. You're telling the world something. And what amazes me the most about y'all's story is that you didn't even meet in person until just, wasn't it just this year that you guys just met for the first time in person? Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous.

But between COVID and between, you know, other intervening obligations and things, it just, it worked out that we met for the first time at podcast movement in Nashville of this, you know, August of this year. So Alberto was, he frequently would say, you know, I don't even know how tall you are. You know, we're always sitting down. We do our voice chats. You know, frankly, to me, that was not a hindrance in the least.

You know, I've, you know, in my work, there were occasions when, you know, it was all video conferencing and it felt very comfortable to go into this role. Alberto's work ethic and, you know, manner is just so easy to trust and to understand in the sense that I understand culturally, you know, just as well as probably any, you know, American from Texas could. And I think, and you know, United States born and raised. And so I think he understands me very well too.

So it just, it was a very comfortable fit from very early on. And so I didn't ever feel like not meeting was a super big hindrance, but it was nice to finally meet. Well, I have to say whenever I met you guys, cause I actually had the honor of getting to meet you guys at podcast movement this year and watching you guys interact, you would think you guys were old friends. You've known each other for decades.

And so it was really cool to see that even though you guys built a company and completely different continents, you had your kindred spirits in some respects. Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Yeah. Then, then there is also, there is something to add there. We didn't meet each other, not because we were on two different continents. For example, I go often to the States, but I would say that after the first few months, we were well oiled as I could say the same thing that Ben said. I could say the same thing for Ben. You know, it was very easy to work with. There is affinity, definitely empathy. It's very clear. It's very clear that we have objectives. We have, we are aligned.

So there were a couple of occasions before COVID where we should have, we wanted to fly to see each other, but it was very tight, tight schedule. So we didn't end up doing that. And then COVID hit. So that's why it took really three years, but actually we're very comfortable because we set up a company, which is remote first. So we have all the tools to really be in touch and literally in real time. And we actually cover almost 24 hours on the globe, right?

Between people who go to sleep and people who wake up. So it's very interesting. Yeah. It's still just so perfect though, because the world of podcasting, it's all online anyway. And you know, I know a couple of people who they're in different States and they still have a podcast together. They get on clean feed just like we're doing right now, or they get on, you know, ZenCaster or SquadCaster or things like that.

And it's so cool that even if you aren't engaging with someone in person, you can still create something magical. And I just geek out on this kind of thing. So I'm very excited about it. Well, so, so we've been kind of alluding to the, to the fact that you guys run RSS together, but let's kind of talk about RSS itself. What are some of the features that, that our platform offers that you think are perfect for the beginning or even the pro podcaster?

RSS as a podcasting platform is extremely easy. Now simplicity, it's complex. I know it seems like, you know, something straightforward, but making something extremely simple and so making it accessible for people who want to start is very complex.

And we were lucky because having been in the space with Podcast Generator for 13 years exposed us to all these requests from real podcasters and hosts and all these doubts, which allowed us to start this company in a way where we really, our motto was in two click you need to have your first episodes. Actually, probably it's three clicks now, but still three clicks, right? So that's, that's a whole, I think the main, the key differentiator with other companies is that we are extremely simple.

It's not us saying that it's our users. They write us their live reviews, genuine reviews and the most frequent word. It's easy. I would echo that. I mean, Alberto and I both read every customer support email that comes, but we read these because it keeps us in tune with where we're lacking. I have yet to see in a given month more than maybe two customer support emails that makes it apparent that they don't know what to do or how to do it, at least on our platform.

Those troubles do we do run into those troubles with other platforms as they as they interface with those. But this really has been, you know, like a like a river, a stone in a river, the rough edges of the UI have been knocked off over time. And it's a beautiful piece of machinery that is easily accessible no matter where in the world you are to get your podcast up and running. And that's not that's not a knock on any other platform. We know how difficult it is.

You know, there's so many features that we have that that we're holding back right now as we wait for the proper UI to be formulated as we roll those features out. And it's not a matter of technical ability. It's a matter of really fine tuning how our customer interacts with the machine in a way that does not add extra burden, extra frustration or any sort of any sort of lag time in their desire to be a podcaster. So it's very difficult. But that is I would echo what Alberto said.

And it's it's all thanks to his work, probably starting as a PhD in how machines and humans interact. I mean, it's really a, you know, a valuable sort of resource. Well guys, I think that's actually a good breaking point. Thanks everyone for hanging out with us today for part one of this two part episode. Stay tuned for the next one where we'll share why now is the best time to start a podcast.

Until next time, you can learn more about how to launch and grow your own show at rss.com backslash blog. Thanks for tuning in.