Oudeschoot, 4 November 2021 - Springcast, a provider of privacy-friendly podcasting solutions, has completed its first capital round. The startup, currently active in the Dutch market, will use the capital injection for product development and to accelerate its international growth. Springcast's ambition is to become the European market leader by responding to the tech and privacy needs of the ever-growing European podcast market.
The global podcast market has grown exponentially in recent years. In 2018, there were about 525,000 podcasts worldwide, now there are more than 2 million [1]. In the Netherlands, too, the medium is impossible to imagine life without. It was recently calculated that almost half of all adults in the Netherlands listen to podcasts [2]. To illustrate the rapid growth: the number of Dutch podcast listeners on Spotify grew in the past year by 85% [3].
Springcast provides podcast from Dutch soil hostingdistribution and analytics for governments, companies and organisations in all possible sectors. Increasingly, organisations from the public and private sectors are using the public podcast as well as the private podcast within their marketing and communication strategy.
Springcast offers targeted custom solutions, such as its own branded podcast app. Hundreds of companies and organisations use the platform every day. Well-known companies such as Achmea, Adyen and Managementboek.nl, but also large government bodies such as the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, host their podcasts with Springcast.
Springcast recently completed a capital round with 15 well-known investors from the venture capital world. The investors bring, besides financial resources, a large amount of experience from the media, tech, human resources and finance sectors. The capital round will be used by Springcast for product development and to strengthen its European growth ambition.
Nico Oud, CEO and founder: "We are on an exciting journey, thinking the same thing every day: how can we provide our customers with the best podcast tools and solutions to support them in successfully launching and scaling their podcast? We're excited to take Springcast to the next level.”
Figures for the podcast market
The global podcast market has grown exponentially in recent years. In 2018, there were about 525,000 podcasts, now there are more than 2 million. The big-tech companies have therefore invested heavily in podcasting over the past three years, with Spotify leading the way with some 900 million in strategic partnerships in the podcast industry.
It is now a sector that is estimated to be worth 14 billion dollars, with Spotify and Apple alone having 28 million listeners worldwide who listen to a podcast every month. The rapid growth of this industry is also leading to an increase in advertising spend. In America alone, this doubled in one year and is expected to grow further to more than 2 billion in 2023.
Furthermore, it is expected that the entire podcast market will account for a market share of almost 95 billion by 2028. All these figures underline that the podcast market is one of the fastest growing markets today [1-9].
About the Founders
Nico Oud is the founder and CEO of Springcast. After a career in various sales, marketing and communication roles, Nico started doing business about 12 years ago. He was the founder of e-commerce agency 360 E-commerce, the hosting company XLhosted and Funnellab. After selling his companies, he has been a business coach for the creative and marketing sector for 4 years now. Nico has coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, but blood is thicker than water... So in 2020 Nico started Springcast.
Jeroen Broekema is co-founder and CFO of Springcast. After studying at Leiden University and the London School of Economics, Jeroen did the management traineeship at ABN AMRO and worked there for 7 years in various positions. He then spent 5 years building the growth of fintech company Funding Circle. A year after the company's IPO, he started the Leaders in Finance podcast and founded Springcast.
