From Market Gap to Marketplace: Phillip Glöckler's Journey with Lollipod
Volume #4 of "Happy Bootstrapping" - Lollipod - Podcast Ad Marketplace
In the second episode of the "Happy Bootstrapping" podcast, Philipp Glöckler shares his exciting journey from his beginnings as a founder to his current project Lollipod, a marketplace for podcast advertising that he built together with Philipp Grothe.
The interview was done in December 2022 and Lollipod is closed today - see the end of the article for details.
In the Monday edition you’ll receive an older story, starting from Episode 1 of the podcast - on Thursday you’ll find a brand new and recent episode.
The Path to Serial Entrepreneurship
Philipp's entrepreneurial career began in 2009 with the founding of avocadostore.de, a marketplace for sustainable products. "The market wasn't there yet," Philipp recalls. Although sustainability is on everyone's lips today, the concept wasn't as popular 15 years ago.
At avocadostore, the team developed an innovative marketplace with a "Buy Box" function similar to Amazon. This technical innovation allowed them to display the appropriate vendor depending on the product variant selected (such as shoe size) - a challenge so new at the time that no existing shop systems supported it.
"We had the time of our lives building it," explains Philipp. "Today I would do many things differently, but back then we really had to be creative to work with limited resources."
After avocadostore, Philipp founded a startup called "Verleih App," an Airbnb for everyday items like drills or books. "I completely overextended myself there and made all the mistakes you can make as a founder," he admits. This was followed by experience in the corporate world at Daimler before he launched the Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast with Pip in 2020.
The Doppelgänger Effect
What began as a hobby quickly developed into a successful format. "The first year we didn't do any advertising deals at all," Philipp remembers. "We just recorded once a week in a video call."
The podcast now has over 200 episodes, is published twice weekly, and has built an active community. "The Discord community would continue to live on even if we gave up the podcast tomorrow," Philipp proudly shares. "That's actually the most beautiful thing about the whole endeavor."
For Philipp, the podcast is more than just a content format - it opens doors and creates connections: "It opens an incredible number of doors. We see a lot, we travel a lot, we read a lot, and we have a real community."
The Birth of Lollipod
The idea for Lollipod emerged from his own frustration as a podcast host. "I wanted to buy advertising for Doppelgänger and inquired with a professional site," Philipp recalls. "Then I received a Word document with a list of 15 podcasts where I could advertise. I nearly fell off my chair."
Together with Philipp Grothe, he decided to find a better way to market podcast advertising. What makes the project special: They built Lollipod completely without external developers. "Philipp built the whole thing completely with no-code tools as a non-developer," Glöckler explains enthusiastically.
After just seven months, Lollipod already shows impressive results:
100 podcast shows on the platform
Over 3 million reach per week
Two founders who operate the entire platform themselves
Bootstrap Instead of Venture Capital
It was a conscious decision to build Lollipod without external capital. "Our goal is to make seven-figure revenue next year," says Philipp. "And that after a year and a half - that could already be a VC case. But why should I make my life or the product more complex?"
For Philipp, the appeal lies in the bootstrap approach: "I find it much more interesting to figure out how to reach seven figures with €50,000 in the bank than to start with €500,000 or €5,000,000. When the money is there, you can spend it quickly, but when it's not there, you have to think more carefully."
This pragmatic approach reflects Philipp's entrepreneurial philosophy: "We're simply two people who have immersed themselves deeply in a topic and are trying to get the maximum out of it."
Learnings of a Bootstrap Entrepreneur
Several important lessons emerge from Philipp's experiences:
Perseverance is underestimated: "Many entrepreneurs I admire have been doing the same thing for 10 or 15 years. Perseverance is something that's often forgotten."
Less is more: "When I look left and right, I find many people are doing way too much. I would rather do less but more focused."
No-code is revolutionizing bootstrapping: "The next 12-24 months will be incredible. With these no-code tools, 2, 4, or 6 people can now do something that would have required an army of 100 or 1000 people five years ago."
"I believe this whole small-scale bootstrapping is just beginning, because we're only now getting the real tools that enable us to do really amazing things," Philipp summarizes the current development.
Conclusion
Philipp was the second individual I interviewed, and he was the one who persuaded me to launch the “Happy Bootstrapping” podcast back in 2022. His own podcast has gained significant popularity here in Germany, attracting 50,000 listeners per episode. I was particularly impressed by his emphasis on no-code solutions in 2022, and I’d be excited to see what he could create this year using the impressive array of AI tools now available. I’d also like to highlight that, out of the 113 startups I’ve interviewed, only two are no longer in existence today - one of the two is Lollipod.
He also wrote an article (german) on why he quit Lollipod - here is an english summary of the reasons:
Philipp launched the Lollipod podcast advertising marketplace in early 2022, testing three hypotheses:
large brands would advertise in small podcasts
small brands would pursue podcast ads
brands knew their target shows
Lollipod initially succeeded in connecting brands with smaller podcasts and proved some demand from small brands, but by 2023, it was evident that large brands avoided the hassle of working with multiple small podcasters, and small-budget campaigns fit better elsewhere. Recognizing that top podcasts capture most ad revenue, Philipp’s friend found greater satisfaction in negotiating bigger, host-created ad deals, leading him to shut down Lollipod in September 2023 and focus on marketing his Doppelgänger Tech Talk podcast instead.
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