🎧 The Drunken Walk, S1-E2: Peter Koechley— Co-founder, Upworthy

Subscribe to podcasts from Matter Ventures here.

We’re excited to have you along for the next episode in our The Drunken Walk podcast series. This time our guest is Peter Koechley, the co-founder and co-CEO of Upworthy.

You know how that hockey stick curve, up and to the right, is the holy grail of startup growth? Well, the Upworthy team lived the “rocket ship” experience — it was once called the fastest-growing media site in the world.

In this fireside chat with our Managing Partner, Corey Ford, recorded before an audience of early-stage media entrepreneurs, Koechley describes how it felt to “reverse engineer virality” and deal with the expectations instant success set. He talks about why Upworthy eventually abandoned “clickbait with a conscience” in favor of more original content, particularly video, and lets drop the clanger of a name he and his co-founder Eli Pariser had originally earmarked for their media startup.

“I had a sense that we would be able to do better than a lot of media companies because we had no idea what we were doing, none of the preconceived notions and ‘you can’t do that’ kind of thoughts.”

The Drunken Walk is a series of live fireside chats, blog posts, and podcasts from Matter Ventures, the world’s only independent startup accelerator for media entrepreneurs. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

To join the next class of our accelerator program in San Francisco or New York City, apply now on our website.

Join the conversation about the future of media by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and of course here on Medium! We’d love it if you could share this podcast using the hashtag #drunkenwalk.

Sign up for our newsletter to get regular updates on our program and portfolio.