Metacast: Behind the scenes

In this holiday episode, we celebrate reaching over 300 paying subscribers and 1,500 monthly active users. We also discuss recent backend infrastructure optimizations, critical bug fixes, and future plans, including a new pro plan with expanded features like higher private podcast limits and custom audio uploads. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 00:47 - Business updates 04:55 - Recent projects: cost...

New app features: listening history, continue listening, and transcript exports + navigating LLM-induced team drama. Chapters 00:00 - Welcome and business update 02:13 - Metacast v1.25 Overview 02:50 - New Feature: Listening History 08:08 - New Feature: Continue Listening 12:41 - New Feature: Exporting Transcripts 20:24 - Website outage 22:21 - The Pro Tier in v1.26 23:06 - Team conflict: LLM misc...

We celebrate Metacast's one-year "survivalversary" with a special $10/year sale and share what we're working on. Chapters 00:28 - - State of the business 05:20 - - The Survaviversary 09:16 - - New creator transcript feature 16:04 - - Upcoming playlist and history features 21:25 - - Podcast recommendations Links Survaviversary blog post Creator transcripts blog post Tip Jar for su...

What we've been up to in the second half of the summer + update on the just released Metacast v1.24. Chapters 00:00 - Summer hiatus and personal reflections 02:16 - User growth and trials 03:44 - Website traffic and SEO success 08:14 - Managing website costs and bots 12:38 - Metacast v1.24: New features 16:14 - Web app development & podcaster tools 22:50 - Data analytics and privacy 25:16...

We've GA-ed private podcasts! In this episode, we talk about the feature, the extra perks for Premium users and celebrate completion of the table stakes features. We end the episode with a banter about Claude Code and a few German phrases. Chapters 00:00 - Private Podcasts Are Now Live 02:03 - Explaining Private Podcast Limits 06:26 - Next Steps and Metacast's Vision 10:54 - Personal Recom...

We're on the finishing line to launch private podcasts in GA, but it takes a while because we've wasted a lot of time dealing with ops post-Google billing incident. Chapters 00:00 - Ops Challenges and Private Podcast Quotas 02:37 - Web App Enhancements and Scalability 04:49 - Growth Milestones and Upcoming Features Show notes Back To The Future... And Back - 40 Years of Marty, Doc, & M...

Preparing to launch private podcasts, marketing projects, ops stuff, and a huge (with a capital "H") bill from Google Chapters 00:00 - Weekly-ish Update and Big Incident 00:50 - Addressing Major Google Cloud Bill 03:00 - App and Web Development Progress 05:11 - Marketing, Communication, and Roadmap 10:52 - Weekly Podcast Recommendations Show notes The Side Hustle King: “I’m making $8K/DA...

Every week, we meet for a standup. We summarize our progress in short weekly updates that we record right after our meetings. In this update, we discuss launching private feeds, the new podcast search feature on the web app, and making money. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and Funding Metacast 03:31 - Launching Private Feeds Beta 06:19 - Web App Search and Website Updates 08:13 - Upcoming Work and...

Every week, we meet for a standup. We summarize our progress in short weekly updates that we record right after our meetings. In this update, we discuss episode summaries, chapters, and performance improvements. We also cover ongoing backend work, in-person meeting experience (!), planning for upcoming features like private feeds, and share podcast recommendations. Chapters 00:00 - Welcome and In-...

In this episode we discuss why and how we built the new sharing experience (see blog post for v1.19 ). Chapters 00:20 - Opening 00:57 - New weekly update episodes 05:22 - New podcast sharing experience in Metacast 06:52 - Why we are working on sharing? 09:32 - The new sharing experience 14:35 - QR codes 16:51 - Optimized image loading 17:53 - Problems with the old URL sharing 23:04 - The technical...

Every Tuesday, we meet for a weekly standup. We summarize our progress in short weekly updates that we record right after our meetings. Chapters 00:30 - Mobile App Update and New URLs 02:26 - Logo Update and Rebranding Details 06:39 - Mobile App Future Development Plans 09:41 - Podcast Recommendations and Show Conclusion Show notes 311: The Long Term on Under the Radar When Exactly Did the Roman E...

Every Tuesday, we meet for a weekly standup. We summarize our progress in short weekly updates that we record right after our meetings. Chapters 00:48 - App Upgrade Issues and Fixes 03:15 - Upcoming App Release and Features 06:14 - Podcast Recommendations and Timer Challenge Show notes Calendar Reform on Everything Everywhere Daily 10 growth tactics that never work | Elena Verna on Lenny's Pod...

Every Tuesday, we meet for a weekly standup. We'll summarize our progress in short weekly updates that we record right after our meetings. Chapters 01:15 - Public Roadmap and User Feedback 02:06 - Mobile App Updates and Challenges 04:21 - Web App Bot Invasion and Solutions 07:40 - Next Week's Focus and Recommendations Show notes Attack of the LLM bots (blog post) Big Takeaways From Podcast...

In this episode we recap our Q1: what we shipped, distribution challenges, siloing engineering workstreams + a bunch of tangential topics. Chapters 00:00 - Opening 02:09 - New feature: Chapters 05:27 - New feature: Following a.k.a. Podcast Inbox 06:17 - Feedback from Grumpy Old Geeks 08:10 - Ilya turning into full-time engineer 12:02 - We don't vibe code! 14:49 - AI summaries in the web app 16...

Our website got slammed by LLM bots from Amazon and Anthropic, which could've cost us $7k in Vercel image optimization costs! Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 00:20 - Introduction and episode overview 01:31 - New features and updates 03:02 - Why do we keep applying to YC? 08:53 - The LLM bot invasion i...

In the first episode of 2025, we discuss the lowlights of last year and sharing our high-level plans for 2025. Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 02:23 - User feedback 06:48 - Fixing the leaky bucket of the intro screen 11:00 - New feature: Episode inbox 15:11 - Investing in the web app 18:24 - The hard part...

In this holiday edition episode, we discuss the past year's highlights, a recent outage, and the rapid emergence of Bluesky as a social media platform. Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 00:20 - Welcome to the holiday edition 01:24 - Year in review: launches and growth 04:06 - Challenges and user feedbac...

We've chatted with a VC-backed founder who is on the brink of closing shop. Listen to our reflections on this. Plus, a breakdown of latest Metacast features! Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 01:26 - New features in Metacast 01:42 - Sleep timer 06:21 - Speed control 12:32 - Grid view in playlists 15:37...

We've launched with a price of $49.99/year, but we realized it's too high. We're lowering it to $19.99/year or $1.99/month. Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 01:14 - How we decided to lower the price for Metacast 03:03 - Initially we had three plans 04:48 - Pulling the andon cord 06:40 - One pas...

We've launched Metacast in Apple App Store. In this episode, we talk about the process and Apple's feedback. Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 00:51 - Big milestone! 02:38 - Apple requires screenshots for older phones 05:23 - iPad screenshots 07:17 - Apple's responses 12:11 - The rejection we co...

In this episode we discuss a couple of weeks when our Slack went silent, a slow grind to launch on iOS, and talk about the word we want Metacast to be known for. Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠ . Join the ⁠⁠ r/metacastapp ⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 02:12 - Confessions of a lonely founder 07:12 - iOS and Flutter woes 18:33 - The Wizard of Oz feature for OPML i...

We've launched Metacast on Android. In this episode, we talk about the feedback we received, first haters, Google Play store violations, and our launch process. We cover topics of feature toggling, version Get Metacast podcast app for Android and iOS at https://⁠⁠⁠metacast.app⁠⁠⁠. Join the ⁠⁠r/metacastapp⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 02:16 - Quick update on Android launch 07:57 - Marketing and retent...

Big announcement - we've launched Metacast on Android in Google Play Store! In this episode, we talk about deciding the scope for v1, punting on features, and pricing. Get Metacast at ⁠⁠⁠ metacast.app⁠⁠⁠. New users get 51% off Metacast Premium until end of August 2024. Join the ⁠⁠r/metacastapp⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 00:22 - We've launched in Google Play Store! 02:58 - Preparation for launch...

It’s been a year since we started working on Metacast. In this episode Arnab and Ilya reflect on the journey and compare working on a startup with the old corporate days. Get Metacast at ⁠⁠⁠ metacast.app⁠⁠⁠. Join the ⁠⁠r/metacastapp⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 05:35 - No going back to corporate 06:21 - Annual reviews 13:43 - Best year of Ilya's career 15:49 - Frustrations with corporate 20:32 - Anxi...

We're discussing the dilemma of positioning Metacast as both powerful and simple, break down the recent power struggle about 5% transparency of a UI element, and share our experience with the DUNS number that developers have to get to be in Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Get Metacast at ⁠⁠⁠ metacast.app⁠⁠⁠. Join the ⁠⁠r/metacastapp⁠⁠ subreddit. Chapters 02:00 - The positioning dilemma...