Swoot Creates Social Space for Podcast Listening

Since True’s beginning, we’ve invested heavily into the future of media. Our first investments included Automattic, GigaOm, Bandcamp, and Goodreads. Our early belief in the power of media and community-centered brands has led us to all kinds of new content-related companies such as Hodinkee, Zero, and Peloton.

As media has evolved, one format has remained powerful and pervasive yet fairly neglected in terms of innovation: the podcast. For years, podcasts have filled an enormous gap in audio content. They teach us, inspire us, and inform us. That podcast you listen to when commuting to work or walking your dog has unlocked an entirely new realm for learning new things and experiencing stories. It’s a medium that’s all around us, but one in which we at True have yet to invest, until now.

Recently, we announced our investment in Swoot, the elegant social podcast player. When you download Swoot, podcasts become discoverable, shareable, and fully enjoyed. Swoot merges social networks and podcasting by importing podcasts you already follow and enabling you to follow friends. For the first time, you can view what friends are listening to in real time and vice versa.

We invested in Swoot Co-founders Pete Curley and Garret Heaton several years ago as they began building their new company. I’ve known them both since 2006 when we worked together at Plaxo, which acquired Pete and Garret’s startup HipCal. Following HipCal, the duo built HipChat, which was sold to Atlassian in 2012 and then acquired by Slack in 2019.

Swoot Co-founders Pete Curley and Garret Heaton.

We see Swoot as a next stepping stone along the path of modern audio media, and we look forward to seeing how Pete and Garret enhance how we discover and listen to podcasts. As media evolves and where we consume it continues to change, it will be exciting to see founders like them reinvent those experiences.

Learn more in TechCrunch or download Swoot to try it yourself.