How lessons from the Chinese internet helped Castbox CEO build a popular global podcasting app
- The company has drawn on features popular in Chinese social apps, such as a community aspect that lets users discuss podcast episodes in a comments section
When Renee Wang set her sights on working for Google, she quit her job at a start-up and spent the next eight months preparing for interviews and submitting multiple resumes in the hopes that it would increase her chances of landing job interviews with the search engine giant.
So when Wang quit after just four years at Google, sold her apartment in Beijing and invested her savings to create podcasting app Castbox, her friends thought she was crazy to give up a job that paid well and had allowed her to live in Japan and Ireland.
“I learned a lot from the people at Google, and I enjoyed it, but after a while I wanted to move out of that comfort zone, to challenge myself in a new life situation,” said 32-year old Wang, chief executive and co-founder of Castbox, in an interview.
The kind of determination Wang displayed in giving up a well-paying job is perhaps indicative of the go-getter, driven personality that has helped her build Castbox – a podcast platform that is a one-stop shop for searching, creating and listening to podcasts. Today, Castbox has 28 million users across 175 countries, supporting some 70 languages. In comparison, popular US-based podcast platform player Stitcher has over 12 million downloads.
Wang studied psychology at Beijing’s prestigious Peking University, and taught herself programming and coding in university after she realised she had a knack for it while helping her then-boyfriend with a coding assignment. That led to a career in the technology industry – she started a small firm creating Android game apps that brought in advertising revenue, and later set her sights on working for Google.