One Year of Metacast: The Survaviversary
Celebrating one year of surviving as a bootstrapped indie business with 50% off Premium
TL;DR
It’s been one year since we launched the Metacast podcast app in the App Store and Play Store. We’ve survived a full year and would love to celebrate the occasion.
We’re language nerds and always appreciate a good word play. Read on to learn about our first survaviversary.
Metacast Premium is on sale for $9.99/year until Monday, October 20, 2025 (50% off).
A year in production
Just over a year ago, we launched Metacast on iOS and Android.
We set out to unlock knowledge in the vast library of 100M+ podcast episodes. From the first version of Metacast, every podcast episode had a transcript, which made podcasts searchable, bookmarkable, and shareable.
In the following 12 months, we’ve improved the experience with powerful features, like chapters, summaries, podcast inbox, private RSS feeds, and a web app. We’ve also shipped a private beta of Metacast for Podcasters.
From the very beginning, we committed to making the app powerful while also keeping the user experience simple (it’s a lot harder than it sounds). “Powerful, yet dead simple” is our core tenet. Always has been. Always will be.
We wish we were writing this post from the cozy comfort of our yachts (or from a private plane, take your pick), but the truth is that we’re still in survival mode.
The reality of bootstrapping
Building a business is hard. Bootstrapping a business is harder still. Unlike VC-funded startups, we take the risk with our own money.
The current state of business
We’re at just over 1k monthly active users, of which ~200 are paying Premium subscribers. It doubled in the last few months and we hope this trend will continue and accelerate. At this point in time, hope is still a strategy, luck is still a factor.
Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is on the order of $400. Our infrastructure cost is about $600/month with occasional spikes when our website gets DDoS-ed by bot traffic.
Distribution is still a challenge
We believe we have a great product. We have a loyal (albeit, small) user base. But we struggle to find effective distribution.
In the last few months, our SEO efforts started to pay off — we’re getting about 20k visitors/month on our website. Some of them try the app and become paying users. We’re also getting new users through ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.
It’s still worth it
Arnab’s LinkedIn post nailed the “why” behind being a founder:
I visit this dashboard at least once a day. This is Metacast usage in real-time, across the world.
Each dot is a person somewhere in the world listening to a podcast. It’s still small. Still growing.
But these aren’t metrics. These are real people.
Someone commuting in Australia with a podcast... Someone learning something new in Ghana... Someone in Scandinavia settling into bed with a sleep podcast...
Across all the dashboards from the plethora of tools we have, this is the one that energizes me most.
This is why we do what we do.
The journey of building Metacast has taught us a lot about product development, marketing, and ourselves. We chronicled our journey on our “Behind the Scenes” podcast, where we share the raw, unfiltered story of building a bootstrapped startup.
Let’s celebrate! Shall we?
Now, you’re probably wondering about the sale part... We’ve not done a sale since we launched and we don’t plan another one any time soon.
To mark the occasion, we’re making Metacast Premium $9.99/year for the first year. You’re eligible if you’ve never had a subscription before.
If you’ve never had a Premium subscription
Grab your chance to get a good deal. Seriously, for power users, it costs us more to run Metacast than we sell it for.
Simply download the app from the App Store or Play Store and subscribe when you see the paywall or activate the subscription in the Settings screen.
If you’re already a Premium user
Please share Metacast with your friends. Let them know they can take advantage of a great podcast app with transcripts, bookmarking, chapters, summaries, playlists, and private feeds.
If you haven’t already, please rate us on the App Store or Play Store. Every review makes a difference.
Tipping is not just for the cows
If you’re feeling extra generous, you can buy us a coffee.
Onward
We want to conclude this post with a huge thank you to everyone who’s been with us from the very beginning and to everyone who joined us later.
Your support means a world to us!
P.S. Also available as a podcast
You can also listen to us talk about the Survaviversary on the Metacast: Behind the Scenes podcast episode 71. Survaviversary: We survived 1 year in production + limited time sale for new users.