Venture Everywhere Podcast: Aaron Hsu with Ron Baetiong
Aaron Hsu, the co-founder and CEO of Blerp chats with Ron Baetiong, co-founder and CEO of Podcast Network Asia, Podmachine and Serye FM.
In this episode of Venture Everywhere our host is Ron Baetiong, founder and CEO of Podcast Network Asia, Serye FM and Podmachine, a podcast SaaS platform that helps podcasters edit their content. He chats with Aaron Hsu, co-founder and CEO of Blerp, a company that empowers users to create and share soundbites. Aaron shares Blerp’s evolution from "Giphy for sound" to a streaming monetization tool. Ron and Aaron also discuss how sound can transform live-streaming experiences and build deeper connections between creators and their audiences.
In this episode, you will hear:
Blerp established its primary user base by integrating with Twitch.
Boosts monetization through creator-driven product development.
Audio as a competitive but valuable medium for content creators.
Impact of voice-based technology on digital communication.
Prioritizing customer problems over initial solutions.
Reassessing the value proposition to refine and scale the business.
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere Podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:34 Ron: Welcome to the latest episode of the Venture Everywhere podcast. My name is Ron Baetiong and I'm the founder and CEO of Podmachine, Everywhere Ventures Investee. And again, just like our normal conversation here in the Venture Everywhere podcast, it's gonna be founders talking to other founders.
00:00:51 Ron: And today we will have our very, very special guest, Mr. Aaron Hsu, who is the co-founder and CEO of Blerp. They're building powerful products that empower people to create and express their digital voices through soundbites.
00:01:04 Ron: Aaron, welcome to Venture Everywhere podcast.
00:01:09 Aaron: Hey, how's it going Ron?
00:01:10 Ron: I'm great. Thanks so much for having the time. But again, let's go straight to the jugular. For those people who are wondering what Blerp is, what is Blerp?
00:01:19 Aaron: So Blerp has actually changed in the past year a little bit more from when we started it, but it originally started out as I would say, Giphy for sound in the way that we wanted to be the platform for anyone to find any short sound clip and we want it to be plugged into any place for people to share.
00:01:39 Aaron: What happened was we found that gamers are the people that use this the most. And from that solution, we've taken a more customer-centric approach. And Blerp has evolved into this way of like, how do we solve these problems for gamers where they are able to interact with their fans in a way that they're able to share a sound clip in the right moment is just one of the features of the app.
00:02:06 Aaron: So today we really more define Blerp as in some ways the monetization layer of streaming is what we call it. Any way that a fan decides to support a creator, we want to be part of that.
00:02:17 Ron: Absolutely.
00:02:18 Aaron: And that's how we see it today.
00:02:21 Ron: And sound has been the biggest catalyst in terms of content creation lately. I mean, if you can just see how TikTok just allowed sound to be embedded in videos. Before, you know, right, videos are just going to be meh, and everything now has sound, Instagram.
00:02:33 Ron: But again, gamers are basically the epitome and the epicenter of all this creation. But can you talk a little bit of why gamers were the biggest users that you guys were able to do? And how does the monetization come into play in a very hard space to monetize, which is audio?
00:02:50 Ron: I know this because I also have an audio startup. But why is this the focus that you guys have and how are you able to monetize it for gamers?
00:02:58 Aaron: I think the gamer section came out of luck. As in when we first made Blerp, it was just a website. And what happened was Twitch was growing big at the time. Amazon's acquisition just happened where they bought them for $1 billion.
00:03:15 Aaron: And they were just trying to expand their developer ecosystem and they found us and they saw like our site and they saw a lot of the content we had, which was lot of fun sounds that people have created and all that.
00:03:26 Aaron: And what we found is that when we plugged this database for these creators, people were not only willing to use this content to enhance their content creation, but they were really excited about letting their fans be able to play these sounds live on stream with them, knowing that like it created an experience that a lot of people didn't have before while watching a live stream.
00:03:49 Aaron: And that was just a very exciting experience for sound. And that's why people use them because sound is such a good way to enhance the content without being intrusive. It's the perfect way for these creators to give their fans a way to be part of the stream that lets them make the content better, which I think sounds really good.
00:04:11 Ron: Totally agree. I want to go step back because every single startup journey comes from a very, very interesting origin story. Aaron, I'm very, very curious about key moments or key people that helped you out in putting you on your current path.
00:04:24 Ron: Because as you know in startups, it's never a straight path. It's a meander of so many things. And as you said, Blerp is not what it was a year ago. Can you walk me through the moments or people that helped you go through this current path?
00:04:38 Aaron: Looking back, I always see different things that built it. I think one of them growing up, my dad ran a restaurant in Utah.
00:04:46 Ron: Wow!
00:04:47 Aaron: It was one of the first Chinese restaurants, I think in Utah.
00:04:50 Ron: No way. In Salt Lake City?
00:04:51 Aaron: In Salt Lake City. Yeah.
00:04:52 Ron: Oh, wow!
00:04:53 Aaron: It was called Yummy Tree at the time. I personally don't have as many memories working there, but I always heard all the stories of just how much work it took to build something from the ground up.
00:05:03 Aaron: I think taking that experience into high school, I always thought, “Wow, we should be like doing more. We should be creating.” And I think the first time I found out how powerful making money on the internet was, was when marketplaces and Craigslist started popping up.
00:05:20 Aaron: I was looking around and one day I saw hard drives that were cheaper on Craigslist and I could flip them on eBay for like $50. And at the time I was making $9 an hour from a lifeguard job, where I was like, “Man, I just bought 10 of these hard drives and just flipped it for 500 bucks.”
00:05:36 Aaron: It like completely changed my perspective of like, “Oh, this is how you can make money on the internet.” And YouTube came out at the time and I think video and storytelling was always a part of who I was in that sense of how you can just upload the video and millions of people could see it.
00:05:53 Aaron: And me and my friends just made stupid films. And one of them was a Bigfoot film that we put out and it got like 300,000 views.
00:06:01 Ron: What?
00:06:02 Aaron: It was a dumb video, but it was just one of the times where I was like, “Wow, putting your stuff out there on the internet is just fun.”
00:06:08 Aaron: But anyways, I bring that moment up because I feel like it's been so fun to be able to take those experiences and be like a part of what I would say is the creator economy that people are talking about now.
00:06:19 Aaron: I think gaming and streaming has just been one of the next evolutions of it, where people are streaming themselves live all the time. And while gaming is one of the main things people do on sites like Twitch or Kick or YouTube, it's not the only thing that people livestream crazy things.
00:06:37 Aaron: And from that experience, I think we've been really excited to be a part of it. And I think from that, I always knew I wanted to be working in a YouTube type economy or a creator type economy. We always wanted to. And that's why it's been fun to be able to work on Blerp and being able to do that.
00:06:54 Aaron: But I know you talked about more moments where Blerp came from. My sister was a huge part of my life. So when I went to college, I was like, “I sort of want to study film.” She's like, “No, you should do something like learn the hard skill that's really useful.”
00:07:08 Aaron: And she was studying computer science at the time. And I was like, “Oh, okay. What is this coding stuff?” I didn't know anything about it. And her pushing me to use it made me get really excited about the idea that building a product is like crafting a film, crafting a story.
00:07:24 Aaron: And I think those skills that we picked up were a huge part of being able to leverage Blerp and get off the ground and code the first version of it.
00:07:33 Ron: I love the background. And the fact that you are a creator by default says a lot of things. Because I, myself, when I created Podmachine, technically, it started out of my own podcast. I host and run the number one business podcast in the Philippines.
00:07:44 Ron: But all of a sudden, when I looked upon the horizon, I see that, “Oh my God, the problems that I encountered as a podcaster exists in probably 90% of podcast creators out there.” Nobody wants to edit. Nobody wants to do all the dirty work and everything else in between.
00:07:58 Ron: Everybody wants to talk, but nobody wants to edit. So that's why we created a podcast network in Southeast Asia, was able to do it at scale. But then we’d realized that again, this problem doesn't just exist here in the Philippines where I'm coming from, but all around the world.
00:08:13 Ron: That's why we created a podcast SaaS platform that literally helps podcasters edit their content. But I'll zero in on your background. It's such an amazing skill stack, but how did your background in computer science, game design, and of course, film influenced you the way you built Blerp?
00:08:30 Aaron: The first inspiration with Blerp was I just wanted to learn coding. I thought an app was the best way to do that. And we made our first app or I did, which took about a week and it was a soundboard of Shia LaBeouf saying, “Just do it.”
00:08:47 Ron: I know it. “Just do it.”
00:08:50 Aaron: Yeah, exactly. Just do it. I got really lucky with that one where the minute we shipped it to the store, it got a hundred thousand downloads.
00:08:58 Ron: Wow.
00:08:59 Aaron: Now looking back on it, I'm like, “Wow, breaking through the app store is harder.” I've shipped stuff after that where I'm like, “Man, breaking through the noise is a bit hard.” I think what helped us back then was actually being able to be on top of the trends and being able to make it work.
00:09:13 Aaron: But the bigger part of that was just this inspiration of like, wow, the sound content was just so powerful in the way of being able to share it and easily access it. And that was something that I personally took and was like, let's do it for like more sound content, not just Shia LaBeouf.
00:09:29 Aaron: But I would say it's influenced me a lot. I don't think I would have understood Twitch as well without a game design background and just seeing like, oh, now you're building games, not just for people to play, for people to be able to watch and then for creators to be able to use. I think the computer science background, without it, we wouldn't have gone as far.
00:09:48 Aaron: The Catch 22, I feel like there's founders who are not technical and they're able to make it work because they're so charismatic. They can get people around and build it. For me, I always felt like that was the weakest thing for me to find someone to be able to do so I was going to learn everything and do it and get this off the ground.
00:10:07 Aaron: Blerp was probably 70% of the reason why I was able to develop the skills that I have today because we saw this thing we wanted to build and we want to make it. I would say that's why it's been so vital in the sense of getting this off the ground.
00:10:19 Ron: I love what you said there. Cause at the end of the day, as founders, sometimes it's a parallel. People always say, “Hey, you are not your startup,” or “your startup is not you.” At the very first stages of your startup, you cannot blur the lines.
00:10:31 Ron: Those lines are blurred every single time, that your own personal growth is tied to how fast your startup grows. And the more your startup grows, you grow as an individual yourself. But I want to understand several things because as you grow, there's always going to be trials and tribulations and whatnot.
00:10:48 Ron: But what's super impressive about how you guys did it is, Blerp has gained significant traction in the gaming and live streaming space. Again, consumer is a really, really hard game because in traction and consumers, especially in audio, you can't just have okay traction. You have to really hit it out of the park. But what did you guys do that you think has driven this growth?
00:11:12 Aaron: I wish we were more focused throughout the years we started this because I think how we got the initial growth was really just the first 10 creators. We put this on Twitch and we found a few people started using it.
00:11:24 Aaron: And some of them even just like our friends who are streamers were using it. And we started to hit. And that worked pretty well for the first year or so. We grew maybe 100K ARR.
00:11:36 Ron: What?!
00:11:36 Aaron: I'm glad you're excited about that. For me, it was okay.
00:11:39 Ron: Okay, I'm going to go on a tangent here because it's so hard to monetize audio. I'm in the podcasting space and in the podcasting space, you are lucky if you get to monetize your show. And we're talking about the top 5% of podcasts around the world who are able to do that.
00:11:54 Ron: That's why I'm so happy, especially in audio, man. I love audio. This is obviously my game and I've been doing this for the past six plus years now. But it can be a really, really dry run without anything.
00:12:06 Ron: So when you hit water, in the middle of the desert, like, ah, yes, there is water. Now you can build an oasis. Was there something similar like that? It’s tough.
00:12:16 Aaron: I agree with you. I think not only audio is hard. You're breaking through all the noise. I think content creation, everyone wants to build a creator company. It's very saturated and you're competing against the big platforms in that way too.
00:12:30 Aaron: So by itself it’s competitive and then in gaming, the number one problem most game developers face isn't building their game. It is marketing. And this really did solve a need at the beginning.
00:12:42 Aaron: Sound was a powerful enough medium to solve this need of interaction on a stream that really helped it be adopted at the first part. And it started for us the first 10 and we just kept scaling from there after that.
00:12:56 Aaron: But that was after like a year of lulls. And I don't know which lessons you want to dive into, but that's the beginning story, I would say.
00:13:05 Ron: You said it perfectly. What were the biggest lessons here? Because the lessons will always not just be the outcome of the successes. We learned the most out of the mistakes that we did and how we find a pivot or how we bounce back for every single heavy blow that we take.
00:13:19 Ron: It's never the wins that teach you to see the best lessons. But what were those lessons and which mistakes did they come from that allowed you to put you in a position that you guys are in today?
00:13:29 Aaron: I would say, recently we've 5X our engagement since then. And part of it I would attribute to this idea of taking a step back for the company for the first time after working on this and thinking you know your business a little bit and reshifting with that value proposition was from the beginning where we started as a company more on the solution.
00:13:49 Aaron: In a way, I was always trying to be away from trying to push solutions into the market. Everyone always says, focus on the problem, focus on the problem. We did do that, but not to the extent like the company was built around the solution, which was sound was a cool thing that this world needed.
00:14:06 Aaron: And what we found is that as we talked to customers more, there was just so many more problems, especially around this fan interaction space that we could essentially solve by expanding our proposition. And for us to take a step back and reshift that a year ago. I think that's made one of the biggest differences on our growth.
00:14:25 Aaron: And we've seen it with the traction we're getting now. But the lesson I always repeat there is focus on the problems, not the solution and get close enough to your customer so that you can solve those problems for them. But also don't be afraid to reposition your company after a few years of working on it.
00:14:44 Ron: Absolutely. It’s never a straight path. There's meanders. And when you think you've got to somewhere already, startup life always finds a way to pull you over and then put you in another path of meandering.
00:14:57 Ron: We're running out of time, but I want to dive deep into this because every single startup has an amazing lesson to teach, especially for founders who again, been heads down, hustling day in and day out and we sacrifice so much of our own lives to get to that utopian future that we think of. What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs looking to build their own tech startups?
00:15:20 Aaron: This is probably one of the most generic ones, is just start doing it.
00:15:23 Ron: That sounds like the clip that you uploaded.
00:15:28 Aaron: Just go do it. If you have an idea that you're excited about, don't be afraid to just do everything you can to figure out how to get it off the ground. Because I think of every lesson I've learned over the past few years building this, we’ve probably could have been a little bit more strategic.
00:15:44 Aaron: We’ve probably could have gone places a bit faster, but through that, I would have never known how to do any of that if we just didn't start. And I think that some people think things need to be so perfect before getting it off the ground or our insecurities stop us from wanting to do things sometimes. And I think it's just so sad because you've learned so much from doing in the space.
00:16:06 Ron: That is amazing. But before I let you go, we do have an amazing speed round. This is a rite of passage. So we're going to do a quick speed round. So first question, what's the book, news or podcast that you listen to the most?
00:16:19 Aaron: The one problem I've been struggling with recently is writing. I realized I'm not that good of a writer. So I've been listening to an audio book called Stories Sell by Matthew Dicks. I thought it's been pretty interesting in being able to craft the story in a concise way. He takes it from a non business background too, which I think those are the best people to learn from because they actually specialize in it.
00:16:44 Ron: All right. Second question. If you could live anywhere in the world for one year, where would it be?
00:16:49 Aaron: I would do an Asian country because I feel like I just never had that experience where everyone else is Asian.
00:16:57 Ron: You grew up in Utah. So, man, you got to have your rice on rice on rice or noodles on noodles on noodles experience.
00:17:04 Aaron: Yeah. And like the food too. I've been to Taiwan. I just haven't lived somewhere where everyone else was Asian for an extended part of my life.
00:17:12 Ron: We’ll welcome you back here, man. Just let us know.
00:17:14 Aaron: Yeah, go to the Philippines.
00:17:17 Ron: That is amazing. Okay. What's your favorite productivity hack today?
00:17:21 Aaron: I always think that there are three things you need to get done during the day to achieve a certain goal. Before a week, I was just trying to figure out what's the main problem I personally can solve. And then throughout the week I keep myself accountable and trying to get three things done.
00:17:37 Aaron: And that usually keeps me on track on do I need to work all night to get this done? Or is this like unrealistic? But that's usually, how I manage at least my own time on productivity.
00:17:46 Aaron: I feel like with everyone else on the team, it works really well too, where you know the three things they need to be getting done. And you're not trying to track a bunch of things as long as you can simplify your mind to those top three things has been really helpful.
00:17:59 Ron: Just focus on impact. And last question before I let you go. How do you unwind when you're stressed?
00:18:05 Aaron: I quit. It's funny. When I started a startup, I feel like I never had time to game, but recently I've picked up GTA 5.
00:18:12 Ron: No way. Are you one of them sad boys that GTA 6 hasn't come out yet.
00:18:19 Aaron: Yeah. It's something that lets you get stuff out.
00:18:22 Ron: Oh, man.
00:18:24 Aaron: There's just something about making it so realistic to do things you would never do in real life.
00:18:28 Ron: Right.
00:18:28 Aaron: It’s just really fun.
00:18:29 Ron: Absolutely. Just running people over and not worry about getting those five stars. Man, I totally resonate. I learned so much from GTA San Andreas and how I live my life and how I carry myself around and not to go far away from Grove Street.
00:18:47 Ron: But again, thanks so much. But before I let you go, where can listeners find you and invite people over to check out Blerp? And if they want to work with you, where do they go and how do they do that?
00:18:57 Aaron: For Blerp specifically, we're most active on Twitter/X. For me. I've been most active on TikTok, @kchsu or Aaron. You can find me wherever.
00:19:08 Ron: There you go. Just search very well. But again, thanks so much, Aaron. And again, this has been Venture Everywhere podcast with your guest co-host Ron Baetiong, the founder of Podmachine. And Aaron, thank you very much.
00:19:19 Aaron: Thanks, Ron.
00:19:20 Ron: All right. I'll see you guys in the next episode. Peace.
00:19:25 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first-check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, and we'll catch you on the next episode.