An Interview with Johanna Hoof, Co-Founder of Social Audio Network Logcast

Hackernoon spoke to Johanna Hoof, co-founder of Logcast — a social audio network empowering the next generation of audio creators in web 3.0.

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend my career working with two of my greatest passions — the creator economy and audio. Before co-founding Logcast, I spent 10 years working with some of Scandinavia’s fastest growing media and tech companies. Pushed by my excitement for sound innovation and the boom around podcasting, in 2018 I founded a production company focusing on podcasting where I was responsible for creating 20+ leading podcast shows in Europe.

In a sentence or two, what does Logcast do?

Logcast is a social audio network empowering the next generation of audio creators. With just one tap, users can record and publish short-form voice updates (known as “logs”). We see ourselves in the sweet spot between Spotify — who look after full length podcasts — and Clubhouse, which is about live talks and jump-ins. Logcast is in the middle, for people who don’t feel comfortable recording a longform podcast, but also don’t feel confident jumping into a live conversation. On Logcast, you can follow friends, build a community, and discover new voices through our data-driven recommendation engine. Soon, creators can offer their fans access to exclusive content and experiences through our fan-to-creator paywall feature.

What is the origin story?

Logcast was born in Stockholm — the home of sound innovation — in February 2020. Prior to starting Logcast, I was running my podcast production company here in Sweden, and was producing podcasts for some of the top music artists, influencers, celebrities, and brands across Europe. During my time producing podcasts, I discovered creators were desperate for an easier way to share their experiences, creative processes, and lives through voice content. They didn’t have time to go to a podcast studio, record it, edit it, and then wait for Spotify to get it live.

They wanted an easy, instant, and more intimate way to communicate with their fanbase. While trying to find a more authentic and spontaneous way of sharing audio content, I developed a new short-form podcast format, called “logcasting”, in collaboration with the music artists, influencers, and podcasters I was working with. In early 2019, I began experimenting with this short-form content on existing podcast platforms and the format received huge traction — so it was decided that the concept would be developed into its own social audio network later that year.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Logcast’s biggest unfair advantage is our team. In addition to the creator community ready for change was a group of supporters — some of the most influential names in entertainment, tech, and business. We paused and looked around at the people raising their hands to help and invited a few of them to jump in and share our journey. Our team is built up of super-humans with experience building their own consumer software companies and with experience working with the likes of MTV, Spotify, Ericsson, and Voi Technology.

If you weren’t building Logcast, what would you be doing?

My biggest interest aside from connecting people is the energy and life science industry. I’m investing my time in both fields, but if I didn’t throw everything at building Logcast I’m sure I would invest my resources into contributing there. Life extension, space, and quantum physics is my passion and if I didn’t also find a business opportunity to start a company in these areas, I’m sure I would explore a career path as a scientist or astronaut.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Success for us is watching creators and their community love and engage in the app — loggers that first sign up for the tool, but stay for the community. We have celebrated over 40,000 minutes of audio being streamed on Logcast since the launch of our public beta in April 2021. The monthly minutes streamed is growing over time, in proportion to the growth rate of our user base. The percentage of daily unique users is also increasing over time, showing that users are spending more time engaging with the app the longer they are users.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

It’s been four months since we shipped the Logcast beta to the App Store in Sweden. Since then, we’ve had thousands of creators join our platform, millions of earned media impressions, and just last week, we were named as a nominee for Hackernoon’s Startup of the Year.

But, beyond all the noise, here’s the number that really got us: 40,000. Since launching Logcast, our community has streamed over 40,000 minutes worth of content. We believe the world is hungry. Hungry for a new way to interact on the internet, hungry to get back to our roots. The internet was initially created as a place for us to be our true, authentic selves. But our world has gotten away from that. We have a chance to change this with Logcast, building a new way to share and connect, using the one thing that makes us truly human — language.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

At Logcast, we are obsessed with empowering creators in web 3.0 and are excited about the potential of blockchain technology for consumer social. We believe that cryptoeconomic models can lead to better monetisation and deeper engagement in creators’ businesses, where the ownership of data will truly give the power back to the producers on content. There will be a war between centralized and decentralized business models when it comes to use of data.

We see big tech giants investing in artificial intelligence to direct users in directions incentivized by advertising opportunities, while new startups have the chance to favor community-funded projects.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

We were excited to be nominated by Hackernoon as one of Stockholm’s top startups in 2021, we’ve always been big fans of this constructive and inclusive network for entrepreneurs.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Don’t be like the rest of them. Crave growth rather than validation ..and invest all your money in crypto 😜.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. You truly only see what you know, and what you don’t know, you don’t see. Know what you want. Feelings are emotions. What you focus on expands - do one thing really well.