How an Audio App Leverages Data & Curiosity to Reinvent Journalism
Discover Why We Backed Curio
We recently led the $9m Series A round of London-based Curio, alongside Horizons Ventures and Draper Esprit, as well as their existing investor, Cherry Ventures. Curio revolutionizes how the world consumes expert journalism. During current times of information overload, we believe access to curated knowledge is increasingly valuable. Curio’s app provides users with easily digestible audio tracks based on curated content from globally leading publishers, while helping users to learn and to become wiser, more empathetic and more fulfilled.
If you’re curious why we placed our bets on Curio, we’re sharing a deeper look. We explore why Curio’s positioning is compelling and unique to the audio space, and how they reinvent learning through stories and insights in an inclusive and surprising way — bringing together new audiences with media creators. You’ll see why we’re so excited about this member of the EBVC gang.
Advancing both journalism and audio
When Govind Balakrishnan grew up in India, people were listening to BBC news on the radio. He became intrigued by the idea that information was being distributed across the world, democratizing its access. Today, access to information is less of an issue. People are overwhelmed by news tickers, dramatic headlines, and more than 7 hours of average media consumption per day (Statista).
New issues arise as well: 1) superficial online content, 2) distrust in information, and a 3) lack of time to consume professional and curated journalism on a daily basis. While working at BBC, Govind noticed that exceptionally reported pieces were getting absorbed into endless feeds of unorganized content. The world needed a more straightforward and engaging way for people to discover and learn from compelling stories. He teamed up with his friend and former lawyer, Srikant Chakravarti, to found Curio and help people learn in real-time from current world events through trusted, high-quality audio stories.
Consuming content over audio is a huge trend, with 37% of the US population listening to podcasts, a figure that has tripled over the past decade (Statista). This trend is mainly due to both increased multitasking, as well as the rise of new technologies like smart speakers, bluetooth-enabled cars or wireless headphones. These technologies enable listeners to consume content on-the-go or while multitasking — audio is a lot easier to integrate into one’s daily life than reading newspapers or watching TV.
Nevertheless, the audio space is ripe for innovation. The “podcasting” category within audio is still in its early days since Apple introduced its Podcasts app 8 years ago (combining the term “broadcast” with “iPod”, A16z). The subsequent podcast value chain seems fractured with poor discovery, poor monetization, poor data, highly variable quality and limited format innovation. As Sean Rameswaram puts it, when comparing audio with film, “we’re still in the black-and-white period of podcasting. What’s color going to look like?” (Vox) We believed someone had to unlock the next wave of innovation in audio, challenging the “podcasting” format as we all know it.
Navigating the jungle of tech leaders and challengers in audio
Today’s audio content is mainly consumed on Apple Podcast. According to Morgan Stanley, Apple Podcasts account for 60% of podcast downloads overall and 43% of unique device downloads. Other market leaders include media companies with broad audio/music offerings that increasingly focus on podcast content, such as Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Google Podcasts. Spotify for instance, has redesigned its app since 2019 to give podcasts nearly the same attention as songs, while spending $600m on acquisitions in the space (Statista), including podcast production companies (Gimlet, Parcast, The Ringer) and one of the most popular production tools (Anchor).
We have identified three major categories for content-focused challengers in audio:
- “UX and business model innovators”, i.e. content aggregator platforms that mostly try to differentiate through better podcast discovery, recommendations, and other user-facing features, while delivering general podcast content, and not changing the “podcast format” as such. Examples include Luminary Media in the US backed with $100m in venture funding (TheVerge), or Podimo from Copenhagen who also try to lock in creators with financial incentives (Techcrunch). A trend in Chinese podcasting apps is to offer user-generated audio content as well as livestreams and to monetize through virtual donations by their users — this is, for instance, a model applied by Lizhi, a company with over 50 million MAUs.
- “Production companies” as another category of VC-backed challengers largely lack direct relations with end users and therefore monetize through advertising during the tracks. This approach requires content with lengthier session times that must appeal to a wide audience. Moreover, the industry still faces challenges when it comes to analyzing return on investment (ROI) for advertisers, as reliable consumption and conversion data are still lagging behind other channels (Techcrunch).
- “Vertical full-stack audio players” that mostly focus on a specific content category or a unique audio format, while owning both content production as well as the direct relationship to their subscribers. Popular examples include Calm and Headspace in the meditation segment.
Curio is part of the third category, as they own the customer relationship, monetizing through a paid subscription for ad-free listening. They produce and distribute audio stories end-to-end, while accessing the underlying content from leading publishing houses. And this allows for two notable things: 1) scalable content production without sacrificing quality and 2) a data-driven feedback loop.
The Curio app is clearly positioned as a premium audio platform aggregating articles from renowned publishers that give readers deeper background information, as opposed to omnipresent news tickers. Whoever downloads the Curio app, will soon realize that audio tracks on Curio largely differ from a general podcasting format — Curio’s tracks are shorter and have less of a broadcasting style, when compared to podcasts. In fact, Curio users primarily seek the pure essence of professional content, presented by objective speakers who neither add advertising nor unnecessary “small talk” to their sessions.
The team around Govind and Srikant has created a new type of audio format. This explains why 60 % of their global user base were not prior podcast listeners before purchasing Curio. Moreover, the completion rates of Curio tracks outperform industry averages of podcasts by 20+%.
At Earlybird, we think of full-stack content platforms as one of the hottest categories in consumer technology. Our portfolio company Inkitt, a Berlin-based crowd-publishing platform that raised a Series A led by Kleiner Perkins last year, invented a new “bite-sized” reading format with specific effects (with their mobile app, Galatea). Similar to Inkitt, Curio owns content production, curation and distribution end-to-end while introducing a highly engaging new format for learning and consuming content.
‘Content is king’ — accessing stories from globally leading publishers
The Curio team has acquired a breadth of high-quality content from the most distinguished publishers in the world, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Economist, WIRED, and Financial Times. Curio established deep relationships with publishers and can produce audio tracks based on their endless libraries of the highest quality stories. The ultimate goal is to create network effects across the industry while driving up engagement in stories that people listen, learn and grow from — a growing number of engaged users attract more publishers to Curio, which further increases the value for Curio users.
To achieve this, Curio has developed an AI engine which analyzes usage data while steadily improving their content curation and audio production process. At the same time, it creates a personalized feed for their users. The engagement data shows that once a user gets introduced to the unique value Curio provides, the app creates a strong stickiness in user behavior.
In the words of a Curio user: “Curio became a routine part of my life. I listen to it instead of music when I drive to and from the office, and sometimes during breakfast. It feels effortless to learn about what’s going on and new things around us.“
At Earlybird, we invest in companies who scale their tech to have the broadest possible positive impact. We identified that spark in Curio. We can’t wait for more people to discover their app and feel as genuinely curious as we do about its impact on the future of journalism.
Are you a founder, industry expert, VC, or researcher interested in the next big trend in consumer tech or audio, then we’d be more than happy to learn about your work. Feel free to reach out via info@earlybird.com.
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