Like every other podcaster in the known universe, my show went all-virtual in mid-2020. It was a weird transition for someone who’d insisted on doing every interview in person for the six years prior. There was a learning curve and some growing pains — all of which mostly means the audio quality really sucked for the first six or so months.
Now that things have reopened and artists have started going back on tour, I’ve often wondered: Am I ever going to go back to in-person interviews? Sure, you lose something when you’re not sitting across from an interview subject, but when I think about all of the great opportunities I missed out on demanding in-person interviews, I really kick myself.
All of this has, of course, been a boon for online podcast recording services like Zencaster and Riverside. The latter, which is a fairly new entrant (founded in 2019— talk about fortuitous timing), just announced a beefy $35 million Series B. The round was led by Oren Zeev and featured Lachy Groom and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. It brings the platform’s total funding to $47 million.
“We are not a trivial company, being where we are in the market with the quality and quantity of content creators using Riverside on a daily basis,” co-founder and CEO Nadav Keyson says in a release.
The company is still fairly small, with around 90 employees, though it lists some big-name media powerhouses among its clients, including The New York Times, Fox Sports, Marvel, iHeartMedia and Microsoft. This round will be used to expand the team — which is currently spread out between Tel Aviv, New York and Amsterdam — and help further build out the platform.