#299: Naomi Shah, Founder and CEO at Meet Cute, a New Entertainment Brand Changing Listening Behavior with Scripted Audio Content

Naomi Shah is the Founder and CEO of Meet Cute, a venture-backed media company that has produced over 300 original light-hearted romantic comedies in podcast form. The company celebrates human connection and the full spectrum of love with a core mission -- having every person feel like they are reflected in Meet Cute stories. Since inception (Feb 2020), the podcast already has over 2 million listens across over 150 countries and has been featured in the top 10 of Fiction on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Before starting Meet Cute, Naomi was a member of the investment team at Union Square Ventures, a technology venture capital firm in New York, where she spent most of her time talking to companies in the consumer and well-being space. Prior to that, she was a macro equities trader at Goldman Sachs and studied Mechanical Engineering (with a minor in Human Biology) at Stanford University.

Some of the Topics Covered by Naomi Shah in this Episode

• What Meet Cute is

• Deciding to start a VC backed startup after working at Union Square Ventures

• The early Meet Cute team

• Why their concept is unique and pushing past early noes

• Getting traction to validate their format

• Changing listening behavior with scripted content in audio

• Meet Cute's business model

• The creation process at Meet Cute

• Distribution and discoverability

• Strategy around changing formats

• Naomi's experience fundraising for Meet Cute and what was helpful during the process

• The importance of developing a relationship with your investors

• How Naomi built out the team for Meet Cute and COVID's impact

• Their unique approach to sourcing talent and maintaining a large pool of creative contributors

• Navigating building a startup as a first-time, solo founder during a global pandemic

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