Podcasting news: PodTech.net's funding and TalkCrunch's first show

Busy evening on the podcasting front: first came the inaugural show of a new weekly podcast, TalkCrunch. Given the highly recognizable brand, you won't be surprised to listen to the audio extension of TechCrunch. The first show is about events and calendars, and you can subscribe to the feed here.

The second piece of news that I am delighted to relay is the Series A funding of PodTech.net, the podcast production company of John Furrier: the company just raised $5.5M (!!!) from US Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. Over the past year, John has tirelessly recorded and produced hundreds of shows with entrepreneurs, VCs, lawyers and senior executives - creating a market and a business model for himself and his growing team on both the consumer and the corporate side. It is not common for VC investments to get into content creation - traditionally a space where revenue multiples don't exceed 3 to 4.

Here a brief overview of PodTech.net's products:

PodTech is well known for its innovative InfoTalk™ podcast which has established itself as the leading Silicon Valley technology and business podcast. The Silicon Valley InfoTalk™ podcast has been host to some of the biggest names in technology and business. Notable personalities include Steve Forbes, Mark Cuban, and Sandy Berger, and hundreds of technology and media moguls. In addition PodTech has attracted leading corporations that include Yahoo, Intel, IBM, Juniper, among others.

In the past few months PodTech has innovated and expanded the InfoTalk model to include a new set of podcast media offerings. With this financing announcement, PodTech is launching the following media properties:

• PodTech News: Dedicated independent podcasting news team
• PodTech InfoTalk™ Network: Dedicated set of PodTech original and 3rd party podcasting content
• PodTech Sponsorship Network: Aggregated set of sponsors and paid content

Congrats John, it is fantastic news and I am really delighted for you, Linda and the team. You just have to add these Loomia recommendations we have been talking about.

More:

• Press release announcing the funding.
• Matt Marshall got the first analysis out (NPR is already heavily into podcasting by the way) .

Comments

[Alexander Muse]

PodServe( http://www.pod-serve.com ) is hosting the podcast and I wanted to get some feedback on the download speed and ideas on merchandizing the service. Since we do not charge for hosting, we are looking for ways to monetize the service. Thoughts?

Alexander Muse