Balanced Portfolios: Applying Investment Philosophies to Acast’s Product Management
At Acast, we host more than 135,000 podcasts, attracting more than a billion listens each quarter. Our product team is dedicated to connecting these podcasts, and their vast global audiences, with the right brands.
More specifically, we do this by building software products that allow us to match podcast creators' audiences with brands that want to advertise to them. We enable this matchmaking through our productized Acast marketplace. We also serve the podcast episode to the listener and dynamically stitch in the ad, depending on who that user is. Essentially, we help match advertisers and audiences in a way that helps grow the creator economy and allows more people to connect through storytelling worldwide.
So suffice to say that if you’ve listened to a podcast ad recently, you’ve probably interacted with an Acast product – whether you know it or not.
Over the past decade, my career has spanned advertising, strategy consulting, and product management, leading me to my current role as VP of Product at Acast. Interestingly, I've often told my hedge fund-managing brother that I could never do what he does—managing vast sums of other people's money seems overwhelming. Yet, I've come to realize that product management shares similar responsibilities. While the stakes may feel different, product management involves overseeing a portfolio of investments, with each decision impacting millions in potential revenue or growth.
In product management, we're not just creating features; we're making strategic choices on where to allocate resources, much like an investor balances a portfolio. Let's explore how applying core investment principles can help build and manage a successful, resilient product portfolio.
Investment Principle 1: Diversification
Diversification involves spreading investments across different assets to reduce risk. In finance, this means ensuring that the underperformance of one asset doesn't sink the whole portfolio. The same applies to product management.
Diversification in product means spreading your focus across various initiatives, customer segments, and product lines. This way, if one doesn't perform as expected, others can pick up the slack. Early on, when gaining product-market fit, it's natural to focus on one area. But as your company grows, diversifying your offerings becomes critical to maintaining a competitive edge.
Diversification isn’t just a “nice-to-have”; it’s the bedrock of resilience and future-proofing in any industry. Microsoft, for example, didn’t merely add cloud services as an extra revenue stream—it fundamentally shifted its strategy to ensure it wasn’t dependent solely on traditional software sales. By moving into cloud computing with Azure, Microsoft not only opened up new growth avenues but also safeguarded against a potential downturn in traditional software demand. Similarly, Netflix’s transition from DVD rentals to streaming, and ultimately to original content production, wasn’t just a pivot; it was a deliberate move to control its own content pipeline, giving it a unique market position and a hedge against the rising costs of licensing third-party content.
Acast’s Diversification Story:
Acast started by delivering ads to podcast content through an open, RSS-based system. We focused heavily on audio delivery and dynamic ad insertion. But as the market evolved, we recognized the need for diversification.
With 86% of Gen Z consuming podcasts on YouTube, we needed to expand our focus beyond traditional audio. Advertisers were also seeking ways to reach creators across multiple platforms, not just through podcasts. In fact, according to Acast’s recent Podcast Pulse report, 93% of media buyers agree podcast hosts are valuable cross-platform influencers.
In response, we diversified by investing in products that allowed us to understand creators' audiences across all their platforms. In 2022, we acquired Podchaser, the largest audio creator media database, enabling us to better analyze audience demographics. Later that year, we launched Collections+, a tool that helps match brands with these valuable audiences. In 2023, we introduced Ad Collab, our real-time workflow tool that streamlines brand-creator collaborations for more effective ad placements. Each of these marked key steps toward competing in the broader creator economy.
And the results speak to our ability to differentiate in a changing ecosystem: Collections+ enabled 24% more Acast podcasters to monetize their work with brands in the first year and Ad Collab improved workflow efficiencies to book a host read campaign by 85%.
Investment Principle 2: Rebalancing
Rebalancing is essential to sustaining relevance and agility in an evolving market. It’s not just about adapting—it's about proactively aligning resources with the areas of highest potential. Companies often need to rebalance when diversification goes too far or when market conditions change.
Take Airbnb: as the pandemic unfolded, it faced a seismic shift in the travel industry. Rather than sticking rigidly to pre-existing plans, Airbnb rebalanced its focus back to its core business of hosting and cut ancillary ventures like hotels and transportation. This reallocation of resources allowed Airbnb to thrive amid an uncertain landscape by doubling down on its strongest value proposition. As travel rebounded, Airbnb emerged stronger, with a streamlined portfolio and a reinforced market position.
Acast’s Rebalancing Story:
At Acast, we run a marketplace with two core user groups: podcast creators (supply) and advertisers (demand). Balancing these sides is a constant challenge.
In 2020, we focused heavily on attracting new podcasts by investing in tools to grow our supply base (subscription options / new growth tools in our publishing infrastructure). However, as market conditions shifted, with ad spend tightening during the economic downturn, we realized we needed to stimulate demand. We quickly rebalanced our efforts, releasing the industry’s first self-serve ad platform and innovative targeting tools, like Conversational Targeting and First-Party Data Targeting. This allowed us to attract more advertisers, ensuring Acast remained the top choice for podcast advertising.
Rebalancing isn't easy—shifting focus has upfront costs. But it's crucial to keep your product investments aligned with strategic priorities.
Investment Principle 3: Risk Management
Risk management isn’t just about minimizing downsides; it’s about building flexibility in the face of uncertainty. In finance, you wouldn’t make a significant investment without understanding the risks involved, and the same goes for product management. Here, it means assessing risks through market research, user testing, and phased rollouts while designing a strategy that allows for course-correction as you learn. By planning for multiple paths to success, you reduce potential setbacks and create a more resilient product journey.
Consider Slack: originally created as an internal communication tool for the team behind the now-defunct video game Glitch. When the game failed to gain traction, instead of discarding the messaging tool, Slack’s creators saw its broader market potential. They pivoted, transforming it into a standalone product that addressed a universal need for streamlined team communication. Today, Slack is a leader in workplace collaboration, boasting millions of users and a multi-billion-dollar acquisition by Salesforce. This wasn’t just luck; it was smart risk management, using insights and existing assets to build something entirely new.
Acast’s Risk Management Story:
In 2022, Acast launched a self-serve platform for podcast ads, allowing advertisers to buy pre-recorded and host-read ads across our catalog and see them go live within 24 hours. This move promised significant upside—Spotify had a similar offering, and we knew there was demand from smaller advertisers who found traditional audio ad costs prohibitive. We also saw the potential to reduce our delivery costs with a more automated, scalable model.
Yet, there were risks: what if we overestimated the incremental revenue and failed to attract new customers? To manage this, we initially offered the platform to existing clients within our managed sales process, ensuring it could meet current customer needs. This approach allowed us to limit risk by testing with lower-spending clients, monitoring usage, and ensuring it didn’t harm relationships or reduce spending. With positive trend data showing clients maintained their frequency and spend, we gradually migrated more users, establishing a scalable model that freed our sales teams to focus on complex cases while self-serve users enjoyed speed and control.
The result? A multi-million dollar platform, in the second year of its life, that continues to grow with both returning and new advertisers.
The takeaway: start small and release early. By testing and iterating, you can de-risk major investments and make informed decisions on where to scale.
Conclusion: Strategic Investment in Product Management
Applying investment principles—diversification, rebalancing, and risk management—can transform the way you approach product management. By thinking like an investor, you can make more informed decisions, minimize risks, and build resilient product portfolios that thrive in both good times and bad.
Product management is not just about being the "CEO of your product"—it’s about being a responsible custodian of your company's future growth, making thoughtful and strategic decisions that drive long-term success.
At Acast, we host more than 135,000 podcasts, attracting more than a billion listens each quarter. Our product team is dedicated to connecting these podcasts, and their vast global audiences, with the right brands.
More specifically, we do this by building software products that allow us to match podcast creators' audiences with brands that want to advertise to them. We enable this matchmaking through our productized Acast marketplace. We also serve the podcast episode to the listener and dynamically stitch in the ad, depending on who that user is. Essentially, we help match advertisers and audiences in a way that helps grow the creator economy and allows more people to connect through storytelling worldwide.
So suffice to say that if you’ve listened to a podcast ad recently, you’ve probably interacted with an Acast product – whether you know it or not.
Over the past decade, my career has spanned advertising, strategy consulting, and product management, leading me to my current role as VP of Product at Acast. Interestingly, I've often told my hedge fund-managing brother that I could never do what he does—managing vast sums of other people's money seems overwhelming. Yet, I've come to realize that product management shares similar responsibilities. While the stakes may feel different, product management involves overseeing a portfolio of investments, with each decision impacting millions in potential revenue or growth.
In product management, we're not just creating features; we're making strategic choices on where to allocate resources, much like an investor balances a portfolio. Let's explore how applying core investment principles can help build and manage a successful, resilient product portfolio.
Investment Principle 1: Diversification
Diversification involves spreading investments across different assets to reduce risk. In finance, this means ensuring that the underperformance of one asset doesn't sink the whole portfolio. The same applies to product management.
Diversification in product means spreading your focus across various initiatives, customer segments, and product lines. This way, if one doesn't perform as expected, others can pick up the slack. Early on, when gaining product-market fit, it's natural to focus on one area. But as your company grows, diversifying your offerings becomes critical to maintaining a competitive edge.
Diversification isn’t just a “nice-to-have”; it’s the bedrock of resilience and future-proofing in any industry. Microsoft, for example, didn’t merely add cloud services as an extra revenue stream—it fundamentally shifted its strategy to ensure it wasn’t dependent solely on traditional software sales. By moving into cloud computing with Azure, Microsoft not only opened up new growth avenues but also safeguarded against a potential downturn in traditional software demand. Similarly, Netflix’s transition from DVD rentals to streaming, and ultimately to original content production, wasn’t just a pivot; it was a deliberate move to control its own content pipeline, giving it a unique market position and a hedge against the rising costs of licensing third-party content.
Acast’s Diversification Story:
Acast started by delivering ads to podcast content through an open, RSS-based system. We focused heavily on audio delivery and dynamic ad insertion. But as the market evolved, we recognized the need for diversification.
With 86% of Gen Z consuming podcasts on YouTube, we needed to expand our focus beyond traditional audio. Advertisers were also seeking ways to reach creators across multiple platforms, not just through podcasts. In fact, according to Acast’s recent Podcast Pulse report, 93% of media buyers agree podcast hosts are valuable cross-platform influencers.
In response, we diversified by investing in products that allowed us to understand creators' audiences across all their platforms. In 2022, we acquired Podchaser, the largest audio creator media database, enabling us to better analyze audience demographics. Later that year, we launched Collections+, a tool that helps match brands with these valuable audiences. In 2023, we introduced Ad Collab, our real-time workflow tool that streamlines brand-creator collaborations for more effective ad placements. Each of these marked key steps toward competing in the broader creator economy.
And the results speak to our ability to differentiate in a changing ecosystem: Collections+ enabled 24% more Acast podcasters to monetize their work with brands in the first year and Ad Collab improved workflow efficiencies to book a host read campaign by 85%.
Investment Principle 2: Rebalancing
Rebalancing is essential to sustaining relevance and agility in an evolving market. It’s not just about adapting—it's about proactively aligning resources with the areas of highest potential. Companies often need to rebalance when diversification goes too far or when market conditions change.
Take Airbnb: as the pandemic unfolded, it faced a seismic shift in the travel industry. Rather than sticking rigidly to pre-existing plans, Airbnb rebalanced its focus back to its core business of hosting and cut ancillary ventures like hotels and transportation. This reallocation of resources allowed Airbnb to thrive amid an uncertain landscape by doubling down on its strongest value proposition. As travel rebounded, Airbnb emerged stronger, with a streamlined portfolio and a reinforced market position.
Acast’s Rebalancing Story:
At Acast, we run a marketplace with two core user groups: podcast creators (supply) and advertisers (demand). Balancing these sides is a constant challenge.
In 2020, we focused heavily on attracting new podcasts by investing in tools to grow our supply base (subscription options / new growth tools in our publishing infrastructure). However, as market conditions shifted, with ad spend tightening during the economic downturn, we realized we needed to stimulate demand. We quickly rebalanced our efforts, releasing the industry’s first self-serve ad platform and innovative targeting tools, like Conversational Targeting and First-Party Data Targeting. This allowed us to attract more advertisers, ensuring Acast remained the top choice for podcast advertising.
Rebalancing isn't easy—shifting focus has upfront costs. But it's crucial to keep your product investments aligned with strategic priorities.
Investment Principle 3: Risk Management
Risk management isn’t just about minimizing downsides; it’s about building flexibility in the face of uncertainty. In finance, you wouldn’t make a significant investment without understanding the risks involved, and the same goes for product management. Here, it means assessing risks through market research, user testing, and phased rollouts while designing a strategy that allows for course-correction as you learn. By planning for multiple paths to success, you reduce potential setbacks and create a more resilient product journey.
Consider Slack: originally created as an internal communication tool for the team behind the now-defunct video game Glitch. When the game failed to gain traction, instead of discarding the messaging tool, Slack’s creators saw its broader market potential. They pivoted, transforming it into a standalone product that addressed a universal need for streamlined team communication. Today, Slack is a leader in workplace collaboration, boasting millions of users and a multi-billion-dollar acquisition by Salesforce. This wasn’t just luck; it was smart risk management, using insights and existing assets to build something entirely new.
Acast’s Risk Management Story:
In 2022, Acast launched a self-serve platform for podcast ads, allowing advertisers to buy pre-recorded and host-read ads across our catalog and see them go live within 24 hours. This move promised significant upside—Spotify had a similar offering, and we knew there was demand from smaller advertisers who found traditional audio ad costs prohibitive. We also saw the potential to reduce our delivery costs with a more automated, scalable model.
Yet, there were risks: what if we overestimated the incremental revenue and failed to attract new customers? To manage this, we initially offered the platform to existing clients within our managed sales process, ensuring it could meet current customer needs. This approach allowed us to limit risk by testing with lower-spending clients, monitoring usage, and ensuring it didn’t harm relationships or reduce spending. With positive trend data showing clients maintained their frequency and spend, we gradually migrated more users, establishing a scalable model that freed our sales teams to focus on complex cases while self-serve users enjoyed speed and control.
The result? A multi-million dollar platform, in the second year of its life, that continues to grow with both returning and new advertisers.
The takeaway: start small and release early. By testing and iterating, you can de-risk major investments and make informed decisions on where to scale.
Conclusion: Strategic Investment in Product Management
Applying investment principles—diversification, rebalancing, and risk management—can transform the way you approach product management. By thinking like an investor, you can make more informed decisions, minimize risks, and build resilient product portfolios that thrive in both good times and bad.
Product management is not just about being the "CEO of your product"—it’s about being a responsible custodian of your company's future growth, making thoughtful and strategic decisions that drive long-term success.
