Justin Jackson and Jon Buda Grew Podcast Hosting Into a Subscription Business

What they sold, and how big it grew

Justin Jackson co-founded the paid podcast hosting service Transistor with Jon Buda. When a creator uploads a recorded file, the service stores it, distributes it to listening platforms, and lets the creator analyze usage. Rather than a business that produces shows itself or gathers listeners to sell advertising, it is closer to providing the underlying service that people running a show need.

An Indie Bites interview published on July 25, 2021 introduced Transistor as hosting more than 13,000 podcasts. That figure is the number of shows, not the number of paying customers or individual episodes. Since one account can run multiple podcasts, you should not multiply this number by a monthly fee to estimate revenue.

From a solo content business to a co-founded company

Jackson had built experience in product and marketing before Transistor. In 2015, while working as a product manager at Sprintly, he sold Marketing for Developers, a marketing course for developers, and in 2016 he went independent based on that product and MegaMaker. But he experienced a structure in which his marketing, video production, and coaching all stopped when his own condition worsened, and he felt the burden of having to keep doing new selling to grow revenue from content products. That experience led him to look for a software business that could grow over the long term, and for a partner to work with.

The two first met in 2014 at the XOXO event in Portland. In 2016 they built a community platform together on a trial basis and then dropped it, and in that process they learned how each other worked. In late 2017, when Buda introduced the new podcast hosting project he had been building, the co-founding discussion became concrete, and in February 2018 they signed a partnership agreement. Transistor is therefore not a product Jackson conceived and built alone, but a business where Jackson joined as co-founder a product Buda had started.

Their roles were also divided fairly clearly. Buda was strong in software development and design, while Jackson was strong in customer research, marketing, and product development. In his own co-founding retrospective, Jackson explained that the difference in temperament (himself wanting to decide quickly, Buda reviewing carefully) complemented their judgment. It was less a relationship of a developer with a publicist attached and more a partnership in which they reviewed each other's product and business decisions.

Podcast hosting was already a market with competing services. Jackson initially saw podcast creators as hobbyists and rated the market potential low, but he changed his mind as he saw interest and demand grow after the popularity of Serial. Buda, who had previously built an early version of Simplecast, was also watching a competitor's growth and real companies' production demand. The two concluded not that they needed to invent a new market, but that they could build a business they could run in a market that was already growing.

The first paying customer was the card game company Cards Against Humanity, for which they hosted The Good News Podcast. According to Jackson's founding post published in March 2018, the beta service had been running since December 2017. Early on they paid particular attention to companies making their own podcasts to reach an audience, and they expanded the service while real paying customers were in place.

Launch and going full-time happened in stages

The two did not cut off all their other income from the start. Buda developed evenings and weekends while holding a job, and Jackson kept his existing business while handling marketing and customer support. At the end of July 2018, Jackson visited Buda's home in Chicago to finish the analytics screen, pricing, and marketing website, and they officially launched on August 1. On Product Hunt it was the highest-rated product of the day, but the launch response alone did not cover the two founders' living costs.

In the first month after the official launch, 46 new paying customers signed up, and monthly revenue at the time was about $1,400. Both had roughly $21,000 in monthly recurring revenue in mind as the level at which they could both go full-time, and at first they expected it would take about five years to reach that level. In practice they reached $20,000 in monthly revenue about 12 months after launch, laying the groundwork to go full-time sooner than expected.

The order of going full-time is recorded in detail in Jackson's 2019 year in review. Monthly recurring revenue was $5,000 in early 2019, and when it reached $10,000 in April, Jackson began drawing a small regular salary and went full-time. Three months later, when monthly recurring revenue hit $19,000, Buda also left Cards Against Humanity. In the last quarter of that year, both were able to pay themselves at the level of their previous jobs.

Market conditions also played a role in later growth. Jackson said that as more people started podcasts during the 2020 lockdowns, that year's April and May saw record growth. In a 2021 interview he said annual revenue had already reached seven figures, meaning more than $1 million. This is the revenue figure stated in the interview, however, and it is not the same number as a confirmed result for a specific fiscal year, net income, or the founders' personal income.

The product and pricing sold operational convenience

The basic flow is that a creator uploads an audio file and registers the generated RSS feed with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and similar platforms. After that, publishing a new episode lets listeners receive it in whichever podcast app they use. Even when running multiple shows, each gets its own RSS feed, website, and analytics screen, so it is a structure that makes it convenient for a production company or brand to manage shows separately.

The base monthly pricing checked on October 1, 2026 is $19 for Starter, $49 for Professional, and $99 for Business, with monthly download limits of 20,000, 100,000, and 250,000 respectively. Every base plan lets you create multiple podcasts, but the download limits and some features differ. In other words, rather than adding a separate charge each time you increase the number of shows, the design moves you to a higher plan according to your usage scale and the features you need.

Private podcasts created uses beyond public shows. Companies can deliver internal training or executive messages, and instructors and community operators can offer members-only audio content. Because it issues a dedicated RSS feed per subscriber and manages access rights, it supports the needs of organizational and membership services that differ from ordinary public shows.

In 2021 they launched Dynamic Audio Insertion as a major feature that lets you insert ads or announcements into multiple episodes. Creators can manage the messages that go before, in the middle of, and after a show, and Transistor went beyond simple file storage to help with running and monetizing shows. Note, however, that the ad revenue a creator earns from their own show and the hosting fee Transistor receives are different sources of income.

Customer acquisition started with existing relationships and widened across several channels

In early sales, what Jackson used first was the podcast creators he already knew. From the stage of discussing the co-founding, he contacted acquaintances and asked whether they would move to the service under development, and he offered early discounts as well. Because Buda had built the base product, people who showed interest could be taken on as actual users, and the first customer, Cards Against Humanity, became grounds for explaining the service's credibility.

The Build Your SaaS podcast, in which the two founders made their business process public, also became a long-term point of contact with customers. By talking every week about the experience of building a product, they made the company and the founders known and gave listeners a reason to think of them later when choosing a hosting service. In a 2023 interview, Jackson shared a case where someone who had heard the show about two years earlier recommended Transistor when their workplace needed podcast hosting. This case shows that the effect of content does not appear only as signups right after publication.

The growth path did not rest only on the founders' personal recognition. In a post about his marketing operations, Jackson described search, content, partnerships, and word of mouth as the main customer touchpoints. He asked people starting a trial directly how they had found the service, and he also checked separately the revenue generated through affiliate links. Because visiting, trialing, and paying are different stages, the awareness of a particular channel cannot be read directly as its contribution to revenue. The approach was to understand together how a customer first learned about the service and why they actually signed up.

Even after growing, they chose the company's scale and complexity

Describing Transistor as a company where the two founders kept handling everything leaves out the growth process. In April 2021, Helen Ryles joined to handle customer support, and in August the developer Jason Pearl joined, making a team of four by the end of the year. In his year in review for that year, Jackson said revenue grew a little over 31% compared with the previous year, and along with growth they expanded the staff handling development and support work.

Conversely, they did not accept every deal just because it could greatly increase revenue. In a 2023 interview, Jackson recalled that while the two were working alone, a large company approached them about bringing in about 5,000 accounts, but they did not accept a deal structure that also demanded legal and trust-and-safety organizations. This is not a story of canceling a signed contract, but a case of reviewing the required organization and operational burden and then not proceeding with the negotiation. It was not a rejection of enterprise customers as a whole, but a judgment of whether a particular deal would change the shape of the company they wanted.

The hosting scale grew further afterward. An official announcement on May 11, 2022 said they ran 20,199 shows, including private podcasts, and the official introduction page checked on October 1, 2026 states more than 30,000. In his 2025 year in review, Jackson said revenue stayed stable but did not give an exact amount. So there is no basis for reading the increase in the published number of shows as the same rate of growth in paying customers or revenue.

The challenge as an independent business is its relationship with the large listening platforms. In his 2025 year in review, Jackson pointed out that a distributed podcast ecosystem gives small companies opportunities while also making them subject to the direction of companies like Apple, Google, and Spotify. That same year, he took an active part in the Podcast Standards Project, recruiting new participants, running meetings, and discussing standard adoption. The view is that keeping an open structure like RSS connects not only to creators' freedom of choice but also to the conditions under which an independent hosting company can keep doing business.

What characterizes Transistor is not only that a small team produced large numbers. Two founders with different experience confirmed real paying demand, kept their other income sources and then went full-time in step with revenue, and after growing distinguished the hiring they needed from the deals they would not take on. The goal Jackson and Buda repeatedly emphasized was also a company that leaves room for time, health, and relationships, not only profit. This case is more accurately seen as a co-founding example that chose a sustainable scale and roles than as a solo-founder story of doing everything alone.