Podcast in Numbers
Where we are and what's next
Hello,
Saurabh here taking a break from our usual podcast releases to update you on how we have been evolving the product and what's next.
Text is a beautiful medium but it lacks tone. And it is impersonal. A few years back, I noticed how much I was learning from podcasts. There was a gap in how we told stories. Podcasts would allow us to bring the best to a conversation and learn from them. So we started out with this episode in 2023.
We’ve put out 43 episodes, with a new one dropping next week. I’d be lying if I said it’s been easy—recording, editing, writing around each release— it takes a lot. Balancing that with keeping our written content sharp has been both demanding and deeply worth it.
Before I share some numbers, here’s a quick recap of three episodes that capture the range and tone of what we’re trying to build.
On Navigating Crypto Cynicism with Arthur Cheong
Conviction is often quiet and earned over cycles. In a space where sentiment whiplash is the norm, it helps to zoom out and think in years and decades, not weeks and months. Real investing and real building need emotional discipline and a willingness to hold unpopular views long enough for them to play out. Arthur reflects on staying optimistic in a jaded market, what it means to have “earned opinions” in crypto, and how founders should think about conviction vs. narratives.
How to fix DeFi with Andre Cronje
DeFi doesn’t need to mimic TradFi to prove it works. That design philosophy often creates complexity without durability.
Andre makes a compelling case for rethinking the protocol design entirely, starting with the EVM itself. Sonic found a way to store things that require 98% less space than Ethereum. The goal is to build resilient, efficient, and hard-to-game systems.
It’s a candid look at how Andre approaches yield, incentives, and long-term expectations.
Product Discipline with Prasanna Sankar
Good products aren't built in one sprint. They're shaped through small, thoughtful iterations and brutal self-editing. Teams that build for long-term usage resist the urge to over-optimise early. This episode is less about what 0xPPL does and more about how they’re building with clarity and a bias for utility. I could sense Prasanna talking from a place of having learnt a lot from finding quick success with his dating app (which went away soon) and scaling Rippling much more deliberately.
The Numbers
Now, here are some numbers:
43 episodes, 50k downloads across platforms (excluding X)
We captured attention for about 1.4 million minutes
The first 20 episodes did under 10k views/streams; the next 23 crossed ~40k
Our audience is globally distributed, with 27% in the US, 16% in India, 8% across Europe, 3% in Singapore, and the rest spread across the world
The Saurabh from a decade ago, who did his schooling in Marathi (not English), would be happy to know he now hosts a podcast in a niche, global industry. A lot has changed since we started. Back then, I used to anxiously hope that guests would say yes and actually show up. Today, we’re more deliberate and thoughtful about who we bring on and why. We were audio-only to begin with, but not anymore.
Every piece of content is a trade-off. You only have a limited window of the listener’s attention. Once will always have more to share. But the attention window is more or less constant. I think asking the right kind of questions makes or breaks an episode.
That’s where we think our edge is. Most podcasts in crypto either veer too far into technical weeds or lean heavily into finance speak. Thanks to my background that combines engineering with macro and equity research, and from years of writing in-depth, longform pieces on crypto at decentralised.co (and before) we’ve tried to hit the balance.
We've had a good start, but our ambition is much bigger. We want to build something that educates, sparks real thinking, and shapes how people engage with crypto. To do that, we want to partner with brands that share that mindset. Thoughtful, long-term builders who care about the substance of conversations, not just the surface metrics.
So we’re opening up slots for sponsorship.
If you’d like to build something with us around the podcast, please write to us at ops@decentralised.co.
Signing off,
Saurabh Deshpande