All right. How's it going? Everybody? Thank you for tuning in to another edition of the forward thinking podcast. If you don't know a forward thinking is a podcast about people building great companies and their visions of the future and how the two collided. And today we have an awesome guest with us. We have a leader called Leah Culver of Breaker Leah. How's

it going? Hi, Matt. It's going great.

Awesome. How's your day going? It's north near the end of the week. Anything exciting going on for the weekend?

Uh, no, I you know, it's it's been raining for the past week or so in San Francisco. It's probably gonna keep raining. I don't have any big plans. Um, play poker game tonight. But no, no big weekend plans.

All right, Cool. I used to play a lot of poker, but I was never very good sevens. I stopped because I didn't like losing money.

That's a good reason to stop. I'm not very good. I think I'm pretty insensitive to losing money, though, so or at least it doesn't bother me too much. I I consider it a money well spent on a game, so

yeah, absolutely well. Cool. Let's go into it. So first, you're the CEO and co founder of Breaker. Tell us. Tell us a little bit about Brayker. What is it?

Sure Breaker is an app for listening to podcasts specifically in Iowa Sap. Though we're thinking about Android in the future and working towards that in the idea and what makes it different from other podcasts? Listening APS. Obviously, if you're listening this podcast, you're listening on a podcast listening up. Um, what makes it really different is tthe e. It's more contemporary. So I think of traditional podcast stops being like productivity. Epps, Right. Like you have this gold toe like listen to a podcast. You listen. That podcast in your don with breaker were much more something like instagram like more social. So you could listen to your podcasts and breaker that you wanted to hear. But you can also like that episode.

You can comment on it. You can share it with friends both in the app or on Twitter and Facebook. Sort of really have more interactivity around, um, podcast and episodes on. One of the things that this helps with is we use all of that data specifically like liking of episodes to recommend great episodes to you as well. So if you like a certain type of episode, will recommend other episodes for you, a few friends on the APP will tell you, Here's what your friends are listening. Thio.

Yeah, it's I I can attest to anyone listening. It's a great app because it's the It's my podcast player of choice. And I like when you think about Breaker, it's cool because it's kind of focused on on podcast discovery. So I discover new Pollack use podcasts all the time. Which is it, which is pretty great. I'm curious going back just a little bit. How did you you How did you come up with breaker and like, What was the motivation behind getting started on a company like that?

Yeah, that's a great question. That and thanks for for being such a you know, a fan of Breaker and a user of the app really appreciate it. Theo idea came from, so I started listening to podcasts. Kind of. I'm really a mainstream user. I started listening in 2016 with cereal, so I think that's pretty typical. It was the most popular podcast of all time. I had heard about it from friends. And so I started listening. Using that the apple podcast up on when I got to the end of listing of cereal, I thought, Well, this is great.

I like listening to a podcast. This really You know, I was running a lot of the time and I would listen while I would go for a run and says like, Well, what? I'm gonna listen to you now when I'm running, I want to keep listening to podcasts. So I checked out Apples directory and we tried to find some things there, but I wasn't really finding anything. Um, that I really enjoyed signed up asking a lot of friends that they were listening to in getting recommendations that way. And that's sort of where the initial idea for Breaker came from is I wanted to see, instead of just having to ask my friends with their listening to you, I wanted to actually sort of see what they were listening to in the same way that you know, in Spotify I can see what music they listen. Tiu or on Twitter. I can read what articles they're reading I wanted to get that same sort of feeling for podcasts on, and I think I think we've done a pretty great job of accomplishing that. So it's really fun to see what my friends are all listening to a breaker.

All right? Absolutely. And remind me, you know, you started it somewhat recently, but can get around what year and what what month did you did you start breaker?

Yeah, that's that's a great question. So, um, it's hard for me to exactly say, because I said we started in a weird way. So my co founder is Eric Berlin, and we started breaker almost three years ago now, but it started as a side project. We started working on it just as, like, nights and weekends is like an idea. Hey, we want build something. We're working on that way for about nine months. So we have day jobs. I was working at Dropbox and Eric work that into the cart,

and we were just doing this very much on the side. And then at some point when we had enough users and had enough traction and sort of had an at felt, we said, Okay, let's do this full time. And so we quit our day jobs and we were accepted in new y Combinator did y Combinator. We raised a Seaver on defunding on and that was all happened in Mark. So we launched in March of 2017 publicly. But we've been around for about a year before then working on into this I project. So that's almost three years now, total. But two years of being like a riel company.

All right, Absolutely. If you think back to when you first started working on it three years ago, how has your house? The vision for it changed from three years ago to now. Do you see different potential in what you're working on? Like, how has it changed since you've been working on it?

Yeah, we've had a lot of different ideas. I think the core idea we still really strongly believe in. I mean, Eric and I basically tested it with our friends say we got our friends all sign up and then said, Is this fun and a lot of them, you know, most of our friends are still using out today, so people really love it, wants to get into it becomes their progress player of choice. In the end, they stick with it done and love using the AB. But then, beyond that, we have started sort of experimenting in other areas. So we just this summer launched a product called Breaker Upstream on. And it's a way for podcasters to sort of charge money for their podcasts instead of selling ads and having listeners have to listen to ads.

Yeah, as a podcast, you can actually sell either an episode like a single episode, which would be like a bonus episode and extended interview, Um, some behind the scenes tape, that sort of thing. Or it could be a new entire paid subscription. So we have one of the examples is like an ad free version of your existing podcast, and you could charge, you know, 2 99 a month or something like that. You can sort of choose your prices within breaker upstream to sort of cell cell podcasts, so that's really something that's quite different. There's not really anybody else doing that right now on. We're also working on a partnership with Patri on to be able to you let patrons listen to exclusive content within breaker as well.

So those two, those two things are pretty pretty different, Theun sort of what we start off with, which is a listening out but because, um are listening. But because we have this listening up, weaken sort of offer a way to sort of have exclusive content, our exclusive podcasts in a way that it's difficult otherwise to d'oh.

Yeah, absolutely. I can't imagine how invaluable something like upstream is gonna be for future problem. Castor's, especially, is podcasting is on the rise, which is definitely, definitely good for breaker. So one last question in firms in terms of breaker itself and transitioning a little bit into the future. If you look out 5 10 15 years, what would you say is your vision for a breaker? What do you want to tell? It looks like in 10 years or even longer past that.

We're still really early in podcasting. In my opinion, I think we're just starting to see podcasting become popular. Um, and it keeps growing every year, but we haven't had this huge. It's not like everyone is listening to podcasts. Eso I think over the next 10 years we're going to see that happen, right? Everyone sort of discovering podcasting as this medium and something that they could listen in the car and listen, you know, when they're working out, listen on airplanes. All these times when you not you can't necessarily be looking at a screen. Who knows with self driving cars, maybe people will watch movies in their car, but I doubt it.

I think you'll still want to sort of have some sort of attention on the road. Or, you know, if I'm going for a run, there's not much else I can do other than listen to you to something. So there's always times in people's lives when they could be enjoying a pod cost. For example, I just did my laundry today and whenever I'm folding laundry, I listen to podcasts now because I'm like, Oh, this used to be such a boring tour and now I can at least have somethingto keep me entertained. Why, why? I'm doing chores and I think we're going to see more and more of that. And one of the reasons, I think so is because we're seeing the hardware side of things advance so quickly.

So, for example, air pods are sort of the hot Christmas gift this year but are very popular. And the reason is there so easy, right? You could just sort of push put the man and they they work. They connect your audio and you could just start listening. Where is before? You don't feel like untangle your headphone cords and get everything set up work. You have Bluetooth. He had to wait for it to pair. I'm so not having this, like instantly. Pairing Bluetooth headphones makes looks seemed to audio, super accessible and easy on. We're also seeing that in other places in the car,

for example, more cars have Android auto, or carplay or other systems that easily connect via Bluetooth and make it much easier to listen toe on demand content instead of listening to terrestrial radio on. But the same is true for the home. So things like the Amazon echo on and, uh, you know, Google home and they sort of the speakers that play in your house that are smart speakers. But having those in all the rooms of your house, I only have one speaker right now. I don't even have my whole house wired, but you know they're affordable. Speakers that worked really well on better ways to playback audio have really helped sort of increase the desire to have sort of more on demand audio. So I think broadcasts are growing as a result of the hardware, but also as a result of the content. So at post Cereal,

so cereal was this great? Um, this great audio drama True story True Crime on. And I think it inspired a lot of content Producers Thio create their own podcasts or to be more serious about Hey, there's like a real business here, those real content that could be made and and that's not saying that everything that comes out now is true crime. There are a lot of really great to crime shows, but you know, people are doing interview shoot shows such as yourself or they're doing news like the New York Times daily has just become super popular. And that's that's a very new show, the daily having like a daily the idea of having a daily news show that you can flip on any time you want. You don't have to tune in at a certain hour. It's sort of on demand audio uh, and so sort of. The way I see it is the way that things have gone with the court cutter generation and sort of not like I don't even own. I don't I don't have cable.

I don't pay a dime toe Comcast or Time Warner or anybody like that. I basically just have an Internet connection. Um, and Netflix and HBO And who? Lulu. Right? So, having all these, like on demand, streaming service is just feels natural. So why would I listen to trust your radio when I could have sort of the same experience in in audio?

Yeah, I can 100% get behind Netflix. Just owning everything. I just started very late in the game very late, but I just started to watch house of cards and Oh, my gosh, What a greats. What a great show. I thoroughly enjoy it.

Yeah, Yes, I doesn't really long winded answer. But, you know, I find a lot of time thinking about audio and media how media will be consumed in the next decade.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm speaking about the next decade, so as you know, and as the listeners of this show know that this thing. Podcast is largely about the future. And what could it be? And what are people doing today? It's you two will the future to be like what they wanted to be. So I'm curious. Outside of just audio or podcasts, what are some areas of technology or innovation or sectors that you're looking Thio? Uh, you're that you think is going to be innovated on the next 10 15 20 years. And what are those innovations looked like? It could be a meeting. An education,

health care, government, technology, future work like is there anything that's being done today they're using is gonna change everything in 10 20 years. And if so, can you? Can you give us some examples? Get inside your brain a little bit?

Sure. Well, I can tell you my secret passion, which is for City Tech. So I live in San Francisco, which is a pretty dense urban area, and I think in the next 10 years we're gonna basically see our city's transformed. Um, what makes me think about this? It is actually so lifted. You ever have been absolutely transformative in the way that people get around in cities? Um, the fact that you don't need to own a car. You don't need to rely on public transit, but you can have an UN demand. I'm sort of. Car service is quite amusing on and then also recently,

having scooters for the very short distance on Bren rentable bicycles for the shorter distance commutes has just been a game changer. And I'm actually very disappointed in San Francisco for putting such strict regulations on scooters and bikes because I think they're absolutely gonna be the future of cities. I think that expecting everyone toe own and drive a car within city limits is absurd. It's just crazy. So I think we're gonna see a lot of transformation both in, sort of like the transit that people are using to move throughout cities, but then the infrastructure to accommodate that as well. So you know, as more people are walking and biking and, um, sort of taking advantage of these other options, we'll be seeing more space made for those modes of transit.

I'm curious driving, diving, and a little more into that this morning and I was watching. I was listening to an interview with Cara Swisher and Key three Boy, I believe is how you pronounce his last name. And they we're talking about a similar thing in that Mikey thinks that within I think it was like within 20 years of within 30 years, Earless of the timeframe, there will be a time where in cities there will. There will be a time that no one drives cars. They will either be these different forms of transportation, or we'll all be autonomous. How do you think that is? Is in our future. And if so, how do you think that's gonna be a reality for

I think it's already happening. I haven't owned the car for seven years, so and I'm pretty. I would say I'm on early adopter. I did not throw everything. So it's something If I do something in its six on I am, I'm what I call the most mainstream early adopter. I'm someone who gets into things early, but I'm very representative. I think of the typical person, right, like my interests are too outside the norm for sort of my demographic. So when I you know, I abandoned my car seven years ago, I haven't owned a car sense. Um and I have no regrets. It's one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

It's so much more affordable. And this was pre lifted uber. I gave a voting a car. So now it's just there. So many options. It's so easy and cars just don't make sense. It's like why I drive a car when you don't need Thio. It's just crazy.

Yeah, I hear that. Absolutely. So So you're very passionate about city tap. I definitely understand. That is, there may be one other sector. That is something that you're passionate about, something that interests you on how it will change in the future. You pretty focused on those two sectors and audio and cities

Audio City Tuck is just an interest of mine. I I'm not actually doing a ton of work in that area other than you know, being an advocate and for, you know, safer streets for pedestrians and bicyclists and folks on scooters. I

never know this protests ever gets big. Someone listening, Could could say, You know what? I wanna I'm gonna get rid of my car and you could influence tons of people to get her out of their cars. So as a byproduct of this podcast. You could be open city.

If you live in a city, get rid of your car like there's you'd lift an ember. Take it everywhere, you know. It's so much cheaper too. You know, you think it's really I don't have any car insurance and car maintenance. It's It's great. Yeah, I don't know. It's just one less thing to worry about. The problem is, we as humans spend a lot of time worrying about things, something management. I don't remember who said that. That's a quote from someone. Spend it.

We spent a lot of time on things and think management, which gives us no joy in our life, right? No one gets joy from getting an oil change for their car. So it in a way I try and optimize my life for things that I take enjoyment out of, and only your curse. Not one of them. Um, yeah. You were asking what other sort of? Because I'm interested in I'm trying to think of another category that I'm caution about. I'm passionate about fitness as well, though I'm definitely not an expert in the space. I've been running on a regular basis for whom tryingto think how many years now, Maybe five or six years Now I've done, you know,

a handful of marathons and half marathons and things like that. And, um so I am. Ah, I'm passionate about. Sort of like health and fitness as well. Yeah, absolutely. No ties in to you. Maybe we should be walking, biking, taking scooters a little bit more often. It's also much better for our health and the environment.

Yeah, definitely. Especially the ladder there. There's a lot of benefit just going outside and walk in our skittering or whatever, thinking a former transportation,

just getting fresh air in general is great. Well, I'm saying this because I've seen cooped up in my house for, like, four days because you've been pouring rain here, so yeah, I'm a little jealous. I would rather be Oh, I have some nice weather and be outside.

Yeah, well, hopefully it'll pass oot of little passin. Well, a quick on one other question about the future and more so, actually company is that you think are pretty unknown now into the general public that you think you're gonna be the nests Apples? Google's Facebook's like Tesla's like What What are companies that are doing? There are that air so forth thinking today that you think that they're going to be the next Big Five in a decade or two. You like, What are some of those companies?

Oh, gosh, I wish I could predict that. Um, I mean, their startups at every sort of phase. It's much, much easier to see the closer, they sort of get to you different scales, right? So is there anything that people don't know about? That I think is just gonna be you conceal, trying to think if there's like an app on my phone or anything that I just I'm really, really passionate about? There's nothing at the moment. So it's I'm always on the lookout for things that I'm like, Oh,

this is really different and transform it and open. The past few years have been a few things. I think maybe the only thing right now that's kind of interesting is like pick talk. If you're thinking about things that sort of have the potential to sort of reach me in ST in scale that our new ish, but I don't even know how I knew that is tracking of things that are newer than that. This is a hard question for me because I feel like when there is an obvious thing interrogate really excited about. I'm like, Oh, there's this really hot new thing you have to try it. But at the moment, I'm kind of at a loss. I mean, of course you have to try Breaker. I think gas are are a big deal, but I can't be not self promoting.

I'll be all be that promoting for you. I'll be the promoter for Yeah, you know where he is. I just I feel like there is always like no one expects them it Like I was listening. I think it was the same public assets today and they were talking about Yahoo, and when you know he wasn't it was their dominant self, like no one expected to kids to come and just just just totally uproot the system. And that's exactly what happened, and that's on. That's just happens over and over in Silicon Valley and now and now. Another geography is as well, so it's just a thought

of one where we're talking so interested in Pell Aton. They're not a small company by any means, and right now they're kind of confined to sort of like they have, like their bicycle, and they just had, like, just launched a treadmill. And I haven't been following the company that closely cause I'm not their target audience. Their target audience is folks who do live in a geographical area where it's more difficult to get out to sort of fitness classes here in San Francisco, ever like goes to fitness classes are doing stuff. And also, you know, people San Francisco are generally fairly fit in aren't necessarily embarrassed to go out to a fitness class. But I think there's a huge audience of folks who love the option of having like a more convenient way to work out, but also have that social element and things to keep them motivated and are motivated by being social and tow. Have had that group in class environment s o. I'm fascinated by that actually should get a politician second so I can test it out.

But it's so hard because I live like three blocks from a soulcycle. I be returned by like Oh, I have this really world option that a lot of folks. You know, a lot of people don't have that option, but I think the potential tohave sort of like real time fitness, um self is really, really interesting. Years out of Africa tried recently called Get So G I X o. I think that's how it's Valya and they do a similar thing, which is sort of you putting your hand phone until you have this live class. That happens at a certain time. And there's like an instructor and they can hear you and you can, like, interact with it and super fascinating. And I don't think we've seen, like the final version of this type of fitness yet because I don't know if it's just an exercise bike, Um, or if it's more freeform or sort of what what shape that's gonna take. But I think sort of like virtual fitness to be a super fascinating.

Yeah, is tying into that

invented reality fitness. I don't know what you could even call it like it's like it's I mean, it's not like you're seeing things that are there, but it's like this really time. It reminds me of like H Q trivia, having sort of like real time video and interaction. I think that is one of the most compelling use cases for that. It's business.

Yeah, yeah, can I definitely can imagine that. I remember speaking of H Q. When it wouldn't remember when the launch farm product on and I was like this huge deal and none of my family ever heard of it or was using it. And then just this past Thanksgiving, I was kind of I wasn't playing much anymore, and all of my family was just all,

uh, my family's into it last year, so I don't know. Maybe they're in, like, a different wave of adoption.

Yeah, they were more on the late adopter. I don't know how I know it's only been a year, so maybe it's a little bit after, I don't know, but I thought it was kind of funny, but because they were all extremely engaged. And that model, like I fully agree with you in the model of kind of real time interaction like real time validation. If there is something there 100% it's just well, see what companies take that runs for us.

Yeah, I'm just so impressed that the technology is there and we have sort of the band with to sort of run run those kind of applications, its funding. My whole family is really into airpods this Christmas Sounds

gonna ask about them. Yeah. Tell me what your what your thoughts on Do you know much about the airport? Like the future heir pod AP eyes order some of the use cases that you think can come from the air pots. I was gonna be my next question because there's like, it's just a little speaker and a microphone in your ear. Like, what are some things you can like do with that in the future? I can only can't imagine. Right. So I can

tell you sort of what you can do now, because I work pretty closely with the FBI. So airplay to is the latest likes back in standard on dhe, then for Apple specific building abs. You have some control over if the user taps the headphones sports, what sort of action to take there and you can respond to those events differently. So, technically, I could probably like, override these and do things you don't expect. That breaker does the typical stuff like skipper. Heads get back, Play pause. But there is some sort of like you can play with that interactivity. What other kind of actions do you think there might be in the future? To be honest, I don't know.

I think it be cool if they added other types of input. Um, or different ways that you could interact with. Um um yeah, I know that people don't like actually touching the airport was a place like, necessarily using Siri, but yeah, yeah, I'm I'm curious to see where they go is Well, I'm excited for next generation. Can't believe there's only been one generation of airpods so far. I want my colored airpods.

What color would you choose?

Oh, God, I

always try and

pick against the grain. So lately I've been getting, like, just plain silver I found which everyone's like. Why would you get that? I'm like, I don't know because no one else has. If it absolutely so whatever color is the least popular able to stick with white, everyone I'll get color is a big That's what the white ones.

Yeah, it's like one step ahead of the grain. Yeah, that's that's funny. Yeah, I kind of. I think it'd be interesting if one day I don't know if Apple, whatever, Do anything like this. But I could just picture a future where, like, I don't know, the airport's integrate was happier or something. And you want to send a postcard to your grandma? You're just like tap it. You say what you want to say that you tap it three times and boom, send stuff,

said Instagram Ali. I don't know. I think just the power of having that flexibility of of multi touch in your ear. You have a speaker and a microphone. I'm fascinated to see what will happen in the next decade of the next 100 years. How far those will go. I think it's a great product.

Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited.

All right, well, cool. So I have two more questions. The second last question is, how do you think that in this in this future, when you were talking about when more people listening to podcasts and you said you were listening to podcasts? When you're doing your laundry and you think they're just it's only the beginning. Let's assume that people continue to listen to your podcasts and that number goes up every single year. How do you think lately if in 2025 like, ah, 100 million people in in the country, in America, we're listening to podcasts. 150 million, whatever a giant number would be. What did Lee How How do you think Breaker could could capitalize on that?

Really? Ride that wave or what Could you imagine? If that was the case in five years? 10 years from Alec. What is breaker? Looked like that?

Yeah, you are big gold for breakers, for breaking to be everywhere, right? So everywhere that you're listening to podcasts, you're listening. Be a breaker. We are working pretty hard towards cycle. We're not quite there yet, but I think we want to help grow podcasting and make it become this big thing. I think it's a little bit chicken and egg, right? Like some of the work you were doing a little bit of the heavy lifting to sort of bring it, bring podcasting to the mainstream and vice first. We're hoping a little bit that sort of some of the help from both the content side and the hardware side will also hope. Bring it mainstream, But we're very aware and very careful.

Thio. Think about, um, how people will interact with audio in the future. And we're hoping you know everything. Everything podcast breaker in that future.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Love that. So then what? Then, As we're talking today, you have these thoughts on on what the future of audio and podcasting will be. And you want that to all be on breaker. You're pretty much building the future that you see is going thio going to happen to all of us. So for anyone listening, who's 14 23 84 whenever the ages, If they're eager issue to build the future and take an idea out of there, Adam And that's gonna impact hundreds, thousands or millions of people. What advice would you give to them? Help Help them get started on their path to building the future?

The only vice I can really have is to get out there on do it. Don't let anyone discourage you. Just keep in mind that you can build anything. So I've always been super thankful that, you know, I learned how to write code. I learned how to program. I learned how to build APS on. And I feel like you know, I have this superpower like I consort of someone can tell me and I d oh, I know how to do that like, Oh, I could build that. It takes time and work and effort But on the same, you know, I'm a very optimistic person. I'm I was saying,

Oh yeah, that's possible. We could do that And I think keeping an open mind and thinking about what's possible instead of what's not instead of thinking like What is it happening now? Thinking about what could be possible in the future. So I love questions about where do you see things going in the future? And I'm happy to admit I have no idea. But I'm excited, excited to get there, and I'm excited to see what you know, the next generation of people, the next generation of makers, the next projects that become popular, the next big companies. I love seeing what those are, and I'm always very optimistic and hopeful and ever nothing is ever done right. People always say,

Oh, socialist down. There'll never be another social because there's Facebook and that's just not true, like I would bet in 10 years they'll be a bigger social apt in Facebook. I don't know if I would have said that 10 years ago, but today Facebook's not doing great, right? Like there is opportunity on. And there's opportunity in different areas to become quite popular and become the next big thing I think is always think is a good thing, that there's this turnover, um of different sort of generations, the applications and every generation, I think is better than the next. So I'm really excited.

All right, everyone. You heard it from Leah first. So if you want to build the future, that's exactly what you d'oh. You just don't start anything that you get after it and you don't let people sweeter Bid and I love it. It is a great view. And I hope that one of you at least one of you listening, goes out, gets after it. So, Leo, thanks for being on the podcast. I really appreciate forward thinkers like you coming on and telling us about your visions of the future and how your ability, breaker and everything of that sort. And if you're listening to this podcast Thank you for tuning in. I look forward to present giving you episodes for as long as I can and bringing you great guests on it, just like Lia. So what? That said,