Local podcast software firm beating growth projections during pandemic

High Alpha portfolio company Casted, which makes and markets a platform for branded podcasts, this year has more than doubled its staff, tripled its customer base and quadrupled its revenue.  And with some high-powered partnerships in place, Casted expects that momentum to carry into next year.

The Indianapolis-based company, which was founded in early 2019, has grown its staff from seven to 20 full-time employees over the past year.

While the company does not disclose its revenue, company officials said it is up 400% now over December 2019.

Casted, which touts itself as the first and only podcast platform built for business-to-business marketers, closed on a $2.35 million seed round of funding in February and at that time reported it had 15 customers. This week, company officials declined to disclose how many customers it has.

One thing is certain, however. Its roster includes some blue-chippers. Casted’s customers include tech firms Salesforce, Drift, Terminus, Sumo Logic, ZoomInfo, Lev, Lumavate and OpenView.

The company is backed by High Alpha Capital and Elevate Ventures, both based in Indianapolis; Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Tappan Hill Ventures and other venture capital firms.

The pandemic notwithstanding, the timing of Casted’s launch and scale-up has been good.

Podcast listenership reached an all-time high in 2020 and continues to grow exponentially, leading more organizations to use podcasts as engines to power their entire content marketing strategies, relying on the authentic conversations from their shows to fuel other marketing channels and assets.

Casted’s continuous innovations since its launch has helped it exceed market expectations, said the company’s co-founder and CEO, Lindsay Tjepkema.

Several key integrations have fueled Casted’s growth.

This year, the company announced integrations with industry leaders Drift, HubSpot, WordPress, Marketo, Eloqua and Pardot to supercharge the modern content marketing strategy.

Casted paired these integrations with new offerings, including audiograms, hosting, premium transcription, and measurement and metrics to enhance podcast delivery, company officials said.

“Casted jumped in and made a huge impact at Salesforce in a very short time,” said Michael Rivo, director of Salesforce’s podcast group. “They consolidated our 25-plus shows around the world—and growing—into one place. And then worked with our digital team to roll out custom pages on our website’s resource center.

“Now our global team can deliver audio content in ways they never could before,” he added. “Not only do we deliver to an external audience across podcasts and social channels, we build valuable journeys across audiences on our owned properties using the Casted embedded player.”

Tjepkema said the Casted staff learned a lot about itself while operating during the ongoing pandemic.

“Founders are innately wired for uncertainty,” she said. “We’re accustomed to pushing through the unknowns until we find success. But when surprises like all those we’ve faced throughout 2020 enter the mix, a young startup’s ability to thrive through adversity takes on a whole new meaning.

“In spite of all that 2020 has thrown at us, the success we’ve seen just this year on a local, national, even global scale, beginning with our launch early in the year, to speaking at events like Inbound [a business conference hosted by HubSpot] and coverage in publications like Forbes and Forrester, to the incredible customers that have become a part of our journey are true testaments to the Casted solution and the ridiculously talented people behind it.”