Editor’s note: Hot Pod is a weekly newsletter on the podcasting industry written by Nick Quah; we happily share it with Nieman Lab readers each Tuesday.
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 131, published August 8, 2017.
Fundraising and futures. The past seven days saw two significant stories about money being raised here in Podcast-land. Taken together, the stories contain a fair bit of meat, because they offer two very different approaches to the industry — and two different visions of what it could be.
We’ll start with the flashier one. Last Wednesday, Gimlet Media announced that it had successfully executed a $15 million Series B fundraising round led by Stripes Group, whose portfolio also includes Refinery29 and notable podcast advertiser Blue Apron. The round includes Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective and re-ups from Cross Culture Ventures, Betaworks, and Graham Holdings (also known around these parts as Panoply’s parent company)….