Anchor's first version locked both podcast creation and listening inside the Anchor app itself, with no way for a recording to reach any other podcast platform.

“it wasn’t yet a podcasting platform; it was a social audio app that made it easy to create and share audio content”

By spring 2017, roughly a year after launch, growth had stalled with no product-market fit, putting the company at real risk of running out of cash before it could close a Series A.

“we hadn’t yet found product-market fit, our growth metrics were completely flat and unimpressive”

To build advertiser demand for the new Anchor Sponsorships marketplace, the team's first move was hiring a small sales team (plus the founders themselves) to cold-call brands directly.

“got to work calling brands and pitching them on the concept”

Direct outbound sales calls were too slow and manual to build enough advertiser supply before the marketplace's hard launch deadline.

“this slow, manual process would never help us reach our SuperGoal”

The team then tried routing advertiser demand through agencies that already had a roster of brand clients, rather than signing brands one by one.

“Rather than spin up new brand relationships, we aimed to work with others who already had a stable of brands ready to spend money”

Agency buying cycles were too slow and seasonal, and agencies would only buy ad formats that already had a track record, which a brand-new marketplace didn't have.

“we found that the buying cycles were slow and seasonal”