By Kim Oguilve
The term “Podcast” probably brings a hint of nostalgia to many of us. It feels like it was ages ago when Apple released it’s first iPod — being realistic, if you think of “Podcasts” probably iTunes is what some years ago would have come to your mind. However, Podcasting as a source and medium for communication dates way before the iPod and ITunes came to the picture.
Nowadays, technology has gone far and many of us have already scratched out our old school radios, Mp3 players, and instead we do it all in our mobile phones. Did you ever think of a mix between Podcasting + Artificial Intelligence and how would that work in practice? Then let us introduce you to Kieku and Sampsa Fabritius — their CEO and Founder! In fact, we’ ve been using Kieku for our Founder Interviews, so read on or listen to the full length interview here.
The Interview
Q: Kieku is not only a podcasting platform but an AI powered podcasting feed. How does this work in practice?
What we are aiming to solve is discovery and easy listening of talks so that is where the AI comes in. Kieku is sort of a radio channel but curated to you.
Kieku learns your taste with time, because you will start to follow talks, people, certain topics and once you listen to some things then the AI learns your preferences — that is how your personal feed is prepared. A great way to continue following those things that matter and are of interest without having to spend hours digging deep to finding them.
Q: AI is somewhat controversial. How do you talk about AI to people?
Globally people seem to be afraid of AI, one half seems to be excited about the AI doing all the work and the other side is afraid of AI stealing the jobs. — is it an opportunity or is it a threat? It comes back to things like whether or not it is helping up to communicate better.
Sampsa says that they don’t talk about AI to their potential users as they rather use terms like personalized or learning to explain how Kieku behaves. From the technology point of view, often times Sampsa and Kieku will talk about AI when people want to talk about it. For example it is often media that is willing to have a chat on the topic.
Q: For someone who isn’t into podcasting as of now, what would you say to convince that person to check it out?
What we are catering is that you just open the Kieku app, press play and there is a listening feed especially curated for you.
Sampsa mentioned that it is in the basic situations of everyday life that Kieku comes into “play”, just like radio in the past had its’ role. Nowadays when you think of the amount of content a person has to go through to find what they really like — Kieku is the perfect choice. If you want to go jogging or even while doing the dishes, there is nothing better that listening to content you enjoy.
Q: Where do you pull Kieku’s content from?
Basically, you can still subscribe to podcasting feeds you like and then on top of that anybody can do their shows with their phone and that’s what we call minicasts.
Kieku is an interesting mix of two worlds. When you find a regular podcasting app you are free to subscribe to the RSS feeds you like and even download the feeds. Commonly, people subscribe to a feed and listen to them one by one — Kieku keeps some of those features. Kieku’s twist is that because it is cloud- based anybody can share the feeds they like, so it is easier in between users to follow feeds your friends have been following. On top of that, anybody can also start their own shows by recording voice with their phone and that is what Kieku calls “minicasts”.
Q: You worked at Nokia for over 15 years. How was working for such a high tech company like? Tell us some of the highlights.
That’s an interesting question. Nokia for many in Finland has been an educating high school for learning the international business and working with all the possible continents.
To Sampsa, working for a company back in the day with bleeding edge technologies was educating in itself. According to him, being a market leader was always tricky because there is no one you can copy. However, being in that position means that everybody is trying to copy you to catch up at some point.
Q: When does your entrepreneurial mind shift begin? How did you come up with the idea of Kieku?
I had seen enough Nokia for 16 years and I wanted to try something else. I wasn’t going to leave my tech background behind me and entrepreneurship combines to be able to push something that I believe on and still carry the technical side.
Sampsa used to commute to Espoo and once while stuck in a traffic jam, he felt miserable that it was impossible to find something interesting to listen to. Firstly, radio jokes were overrated and he was just too lazy for podcasting. That was an amazing moment for him because he was working at a high tech company and he liked tech, but still he would find himself being too lazy with the podcasts and came to the conclusion that he was not the only one who could possibly feel that way. Taking into account his engineering approach to things: If you need to do something twice then it is better to automate it — that is how he begins working on the first idea of Kieku.
Q: Even though you had very high-level positions at Nokia, how different were those to your actual role as CEO of Kieku, which is also a very high responsibility role? How does a typical day as a CEO look like?
My days at Kieku vary a lot. Each day includes talking with the users and potential new users. It also includes considering the future long-term strategies. It also includes very basic team management situations that are always part of any company.
Sampsa worked mainly at the R&D side of Nokia and he had to lead various teams at different times. However, now as a CEO, the position to him is much broad because it includes marketing, finance, etc. When it comes to the responsibility he mentioned that one big difference is that in startups the point is always to proceed with the business opportunities and it is very business driven with hectic life-cycles, while in big corporate settings the plans focus more on the long term with multiple priorities. Another interesting point he mentioned is that in startups you can maneuver quickly while in a corporate setting the execution is much more rigid in the sense of fulfilling targets.
Q: What has been the biggest milestone at Kieku?
I think the most significant is that we are rolling out the minicasts. We have a flow of people coming in who understand and see the point of the minicasts and they are very engaged with what they do.
The minicasts have been a very exciting feature inside of Kieku because their uses have been able to make their own shows on a range of topics. For example, some people are reading their own novels or even some people are playing music — the possibilities are endless. For Sampsa it has been a milestone to see that people are finding different ways to communicate their messages using Kieku’s minicasts.
Q: What are Kieku’s plans for the near future?
Right now are eagerly listening to what people have to say so we are really focusing on you and everybody else’s feedback.
According to Sampsa, they do have a fixed idea on how to move forward. For decision-making moments they are putting ideas in front the customers for consultancy as to what to do next.
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