📍 We partner with local creators to produce local startup media. 🎙 We provide the hardware, software, and training to launch & maintain your podcast or newsletter. 🤝 We handle sponsorship and operations and share revenues with our local partners.
👋 Hey Product Hunt! This project began in 2017 when @ekhornung and I wanted to start a fund to invest in our friends’ startups.
That sounded like a tall order at the time, so inspired by @jason’s book "Angel" we decided to start by interviewing Pre-Series A founders who weren’t based in Silicon Valley.
We’ve told a lot of stories (we even produced a full-length documentary about the Columbus startup ecosystem), but we’ve barely scratched the surface.
So today we’re announcing the launch of the upside network!
We’re looking for local hosts and newsletter authors to partner with. We handle the upfront costs and backend operations to let our local creators focus on telling great stories. If that sounds like you, visit https://upside.fm/network/.
We’d love to hear your questions and feedback below!
@ekhornung@jayclouse Congratulations on the launch, and thanks for sharing it with our community. I'm sure wonderful makers on Product Hunt will resonate with the fact that talent and spirit to change the world is not geographically limited.
I'm sure it's an uphill task for the founders outside of the comfort of the valley, but that is what truly differentiates them... the grit, the determination, and the 'never say die' spirit! I salute you, and the founders for sharing their inspirational stories with us all :)
Wanted to know if you're also looking for local hosts and authors outside of US?
@ekhornung@adityavsc thanks so much! That's the spirit we hear so often from our guests on the show. We're definitely open to chatting with hosts and authors outside of the US if this is resonating. They'll just need to choose the "Not Applicable" option under "State" on our Network Form!
@jayclouse@adityavsc We're always looking! Our roadmap starts in the US, but I've had a long time aspiration to explore India, China, and Africa.
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This project will be absolutely amazing for the startup ecosystem and providing tools for more creators to enter the space. More stories need to be shared, whether is funding announcements, bootstrapping journeys, exits, failures, wins, etc.
For more stories to be shared, we all need more storytellers.
Providing those storytellers a ready made toolbox and blueprint for them to succeed will be an absolute game changer.
Exciting stuff!
@nick_potts1 Thanks Nick! Glad you are seeing the same thing we are; especially as a founder outside of Silicon Valley. Appreciate your continued support.
@nick_potts1 That's the goal. Just with two new shows on the network, we triple our publishing rate every week, triple the number of companies being covered...this scales very very quickly.
Eric and Jay are catalyzing startup communities by shining a spotlight on founders building great companies in cities with blooming but overlooked tech scenes. This network will help these communities bring out the 'upside' in themselves and each other - can't wait to see what happens once they roll out across the country.
@alex_wittenberg yesss network effects on the network! Thanks Alex 🙏
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This is awesome! Congrats @jayclouse and @ekhornung ! Love the focus on underrepresented startup communities + geographies and cannot wait to see the product help spur innovation across the lesser known US markets. PS how can I help with the Nashville market?
@jayclouse@rsopsanders Thanks Rachel! We'd love connections to potential hosts and/or authors in Nashville! Here's the shareable page to gauge interest: upside.fm/network/join
Hey everyone! @jayclouse and I have been talking about this day for a LONG time. We're so excited to finally have the upside network in a place where we were excited to share it with all of you.
Jay and I like to ask the question: "What sucks..."
In the localized startup media world, it sucks that the incentives, structure, business model, and operational know how to launch a local podcast mean that many fail or pod-fade.
In the national startup media world, we realized within the first 50-100 episodes of upside that we could go BROAD but we couldn't go DEEP into startup communities with a single podcast. There is too much happening in each city.
You don't hear about that local activity because the current structure of media isn't set up to deliver those stories locally or nationally. So, we developed a new model that took the best of the national model and merged it with the local model.
Today, we call that the upside network! We've beta tested the network with our friends in Cleveland and Cincinnati and we're ready to scale this up.
We're stoked to chat with you if you're a host, author, listener, sponsor, or fan! Leave us a comment.
@ekhornung Remember when we looked at the data and saw that 60% of our guests on upside had literally never been featured in any other article or podcast? 🤯
@jayclouse It's incredible how few stories are being about people building cool, innovative, and great companies. We've seen over 1,000 pitches and inbounds over the last 3 years. There is a huge demand for people who WANT to tell their stories.
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Great episodes to help understand what is happening outside of Silicon Valley! Been listening since one of their first episodes 3 years ago.
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