Founder's Story
He Built a Startup That Books 5% of All Podcast Interviews—With No Code. | Ep. 275 with Parker Olson Co-Founder of Podpitch
10 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What inspired Parker Olson to create PodPitch?
Parker, man, it's good to have you today because you and I had a really fun conversation last time. This time we started off with dreams and how you're taking magnesium now and your dreams have just been crazy off the wall. You gave me one. It sounded like a movie. But I think something that I'm really interested to talk with you is I've always dreamt about creating an app
creating software, but it always failed. And at the same time, I use your app and software pod pitch on a daily basis. So I wanted to see from you the whole entire process as if somebody like myself, I want to solve a problem. I know a software I want to build, but I don't know the zero to 100. I'm confused. I don't know what to do. So I'd love... go through with you this whole process.
So can you go back to the beginning stage of how did you come up with the problem to solve?
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So the first place I think is worthwhile starting is like, a lot of people want to start with the end in mind, right? How can I get to a hundred million dollars? The reality is I think upfront, like being, being curious is sort of stage number one. So rewind right. Two, three years ago was working with a VA at the time and she was doing influencer outreach for us.
And all of a sudden she was, she was able to reach like custom messaging to influencers on Tik TOK. at like three or 400, like an hour. And I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, oh, I found this cool new tool. It's called Bardeen. It's a web scraping tool. It allows me to like, basically like code it without actually coding, right?
So it's a code free tool where it scrapes all the data off of TikTok, off of search results. And it pulls it into the spreadsheet and I can super quickly automate the outreach. And I'm like, damn, that's super cool. And around that same time, I had been invited on some podcasts and had sort of it had sort of brought some interesting traction to my old company that I used to run is called Forage.
And, you know, some people had listened to it and reached out and wanted to carry it was a food product in their grocery stores. And so in my mind, right, my problem statement was like, OK, cool. I want to go on more podcasts. And how can I do that?
And, you know, I was sort of going the traditional route that a lot of people still do today, which is I was sort of like manually looking up podcasts. I was trying to find them, trying to find their contact information, listen to a bit of an episode and like send an email. And, you know, I'm like, damn, this sucks. I'm not going to be I'm not going to do this for a long time.
I can guarantee that. And then I was just kind of hanging out and this other tool that I was loving. I was just like, I want to I want to like dig into this other tool. It feels feels like there's something really powerful here. Like, how could I use it to sort of perform like a fun project that would be meaningful for our business?
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Chapter 2: How did Parker validate his product idea before launch?
And so I always think like step number one is like, figure out and like go out and play with some of these code-free tools, right? Another great tool that I think is a lovely example is Clay. Clay is just like, there's so much power there. You can pull in data sources, you can transform data sources with LLMs really easily, and you can create output and it's all code-free.
So does that sort of help sort of like set the scene in terms of like Like I'm thinking day one, if you want to build a software, like get onto some of these tools that are code free and can help sort of transform data and create an output that can potentially solve a problem.
Yeah. You know, when I built some softwares before, I think the problem looking back was I was trying to solve a problem that I didn't really have. So I didn't necessarily I wasn't so bought into it because I wouldn't use it myself. And I was more replicating what I knew was on the market. Like I worked with something and I knew, OK, I'm going to replicate this because it came out first.
I'm going to be second to market, but I never would even use it. And then a lot of issues came about because it was first. I didn't anticipate that. And so I love your idea of you build something that you use. And then if you use it, then you know other people will definitely have the same problem and use it too. So now, okay, so you built it. I love what you're saying around.
You can create an MVP now without any knowledge, which is insane. Like it's insanity how the times we're living in. So you build this app, you get this data, you put it together. And then how do you actually get traction? Because I think that's the other piece that people are like, okay, I build something, but it's not easy to get significant traction.
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Just one last point on that. And then we'll go to traction. I also think a lot of people who are non-technical get caught up and like to spend time on like the visual component or like the user interface or the like front end component. And it's like, oh, I'm going to like build wireframes in cloud. And like, that's all great. Like, like that can be helpful, but like,
I would say really focus on getting like a concrete, like something that's actually being created or happening, right? My general mental framework is like transforming data to create an output that has value to some audience. Now to your point, you know, actually gaining traction, way harder than everybody thinks.
Everybody thinks, oh, I'm going to build a great product and then I'm just going to sell it and then I'm going to be a millionaire. And the reality is great companies die every single day because they can't find customers and or communicate to potential customers in a really effective way and put together a good offer or a good price that makes it easy for a customer to say yes.
And growth and demand generation is really challenging. This took us about...
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Chapter 3: How can no-code tools empower aspiring entrepreneurs?
And the reality is, is like, you kind of just have to try things. It's going to be super messy early, but like the important thing is getting money in the door. And so what we used to do is like, We'd be like, okay, cool. Like we're gonna sell it. Well, initially off the bat, we knew that, okay, we wanna build a business model that is reoccurring.
By design, reoccurring business models are more valuable than transactional business models. And so that was like a non-negotiable. The other non-negotiable is like, we wanted it to be a really fast sales cycle. Because again, it's like, look, if this is a 10 week sales cycle, we're not getting feedback until 10 weeks from now.
And so how do we sell something where somebody could make a decision really quickly?
again part of it was like we needed to eat and like live uh but the other part of it is like you get a lot of feedback data really fast so we are like okay we need to craft an offer that is reoccurring and so you know we we did subscription based pricing and we we started with like okay we'll do uh like maybe an intro price um and then we tested different price points and on calls we would literally like
somebody to be sold they'd be like cool like how much is this right and that's after you've sold it like like you kind of know this this type of person's willing to buy this is a real problem they have and it's just like cool it's 2.99 a month it's 3.99 a month it's 5.99 a month it's 6.99 a month right and you start to get a sense of like where you start to get a gauge right of sort of like where most people are landing and and that i think is a really good initial step
I think the step two of that, which, like, I don't think we've done an excellent job at, and it's something we're working on right now, is thinking about tiered pricing for, like, the different type of customer. You know, our kind of pricing sort of ops out certain smaller types of customers because it's too expensive for them.
And then really big customers, like, they're like, oh, this is nothing, right? And so, like, in reality, like... Paying attention to that over time and setting up tiers where it's like, okay, you can kind of get more coverage on your customer base while providing specifically to their needs, I think is sort of that next step.
But it's super trial and error off the bat and understanding, okay, what's scalable? What actually builds a good business model? So that's pricing. It's a huge challenge for everyone. There is no magic bullet. The second component is pricing. How do you actually grow? How do you actually reach the audience? And for us, it's just like, okay, where does our audience hang out?
And a lot of it, again, is trial and error. But what we found early on is we tried kind of advertising, we tried doing different outreach methods. And then we partnered with a Substack newsletter that was to PR agencies. It was pretty small. They have like 900 followers, maybe not even, like 500 followers. And we placed one advertisement in there and we booked like 75 demos in three days.
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges of gaining traction for a new software product?
Like, you know, they have a horrible backache. Well, if you give them a pill and you say, wow, you take this pill, you're going to have no pain. Super valuable. People hate pain. They'll do anything to get rid of pain. And then you have gains, right? Creating a gain can be valuable, right? Oh, I want to be hydrated right now, right? Okay, I could go buy some electrolyte salts.
But that is inherently a supplement. And that is not something where if I have a pain or a job to do is going to be a priority. It sort of is like the deprioritized quadrant, right? Now, if you can do all three of those things, it's like fucking magic, right? But when thinking about the framing of like, what type of solution does our product provide? Is it a supplement, which is sort of the gain?
Or is it a pain pill, right? Which is sort of this job and pain concept. It's definitely, you definitely do not want to build a company around a vitamin. You do not want to do that.
It reminds me of those old school copy people are like, move people away from pain. Don't move people to pleasure. Because if you really want to close, you've got to focus on moving people away from pain because that's really what everybody wants. What is one of the craziest or standout stories during your whole life of entrepreneurship?
Was there a moment where it was like, I'm losing everything? You know, like the highs, like I just closed a million dollar deal. And then the next five, I just lost a two million dollar deal. You know, like what are those moments, like the standout moment in your life?
Yeah, I mean, man, I feel like I blacked them out. But so probably at a company. Yeah, probably at a company. Okay, I have a few ones. So early on, I built a Twitter account to like 750,000 followers. And one day it got hacked and I lost access to it for like two months and then was able to regain access through this like complicated Twitter process.
But I remember waking up that morning and being like, oh my God, like somebody hacked. And I thought like that was gonna like make my life. You know, I thought my life was like made. So that was maybe one. And then the other one, is for my last business, Forage, which was like a health food startup. You know, again, it was a vitamin concept. Big learnings. CPG is really hard.
I moved into... So I lived out of a tent for two years in my backyard in Seattle. And I threw up my bed and we used the bedroom as like our office, which was, I think, just...
awesome but probably more notably after that stint I moved into a pop-up camper van and I drove around the country for about a year and I would stop at grocery headquarters and try and sell our product in and I remember one day like I was carrying a lot of product in the van but it was really hot like in the south and like
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