Should you start a podcast?
by Iván Peña, Co-Founder | Software Engineer
Updated on June 30, 2025 · 4 min read
Giorgio and I recently received a query through HARO from a company called She Rises Studios, inviting us to share the story behind our podcast for a chance to be featured in the PODCASTARS Magazine – August 2025 Edition.
If you’re looking to promote your podcast or content, getting featured by platforms with more authority than yours is one of the smartest strategies you can use. Below is the content of our submission. We hope you find something useful in it, and hopefully we get selected! 🤞
Why and how you started your podcast?
My colleague Giorgio and I decided to leave our corporate lives behind to start our own business. After more than a decade building software for others, we wanted to create something we were passionate about, something we could be proud of.
We set our sights on the indie hacking space, building small projects that could generate modest, recurring revenue. Our goal was simple: gain independence. And once the basics were covered, maybe aim for something bigger.
From the start, we knew we wanted to document our journey. We noticed that many people share their stories after they’ve found success, but very few talk about the journey when things don’t go as planned. We wanted to be transparent throughout, whether we succeeded or failed.
To do that, we started a blog on our company website, not only as a place to share our story but also to help distribute our products and build a connection with our audience.
At the Qatar Web Summit in 2024, we received a free marketing coaching session, where someone suggested we start producing audio or video content to increase our reach. We’re a couple of introverted nerds, so at first the idea didn’t sound too appealing. But we gave it a shot. Audio felt easier to edit than video, and it also felt like less exposure. Not having to show your face on social media helped a lot.
And that’s how we started Bootstrapped for Cash, our podcast about entrepreneurship, technology, and AI.
The biggest lessons, strategies, or insights that have helped you grow
One of the most important things we’ve learned so far is that consistency is key, not just for your audience, but because platforms like Spotify actually penalize your reach if you don’t publish regularly. Sometimes it feels like we just switched from working for someone else to working for the algorithm.
The trick to not being stuck on a publishing treadmill is to batch content in advance, so you can schedule it and still take breaks. Hopefully, once we’ve built a reliable listener base, we’ll have more freedom to publish whenever we feel like it. That’s our hope 🙂
Another major lesson: people love stories. They want to hear about real journeys. Our most popular episode features a friend who quit a 6-figure salary, grabbed his backpack, and set off to travel the world, becoming an indie hacker along the way.
We also learned that in the age of clickbait, you either play the game or get ignored. If you want people to listen to your podcast, you need compelling titles and hooks. You’re fighting for attention.
Another insight: doing our podcast in English has helped us grow much faster than other similar podcasts I know in Spanish (my native language). We considered using AI to fix our grammar and accents, but we chose not to. We wanted to keep it authentic, and the feedback has been great. In a world where AI makes perfection the norm, imperfection is becoming a rare and valuable trait.
Do you believe others should start a podcast?
You might think starting a podcast is a waste of time, considering how many already exist. But we’ve found it to be a fantastic way to build our brand, connect with interesting people, and reach a wider audience. And it’s surprisingly easy to get started, much easier than video content.
Here’s a quick guide we created to help you launch your first podcast.
A short spotlight on your podcast: what it’s about, who it’s for, and where to listen
Bootstrapped for Cash is a podcast about entrepreneurship, technology, and AI. It’s for entrepreneurs, indie hackers, and anyone interested in building a business, understanding tech, and learning from our missteps along the way.
You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube.
