KNOWABLE

Shaeffer had already built and sold one company. His video app Vidme got scooped up by Giphy.

For his next act he looked at podcasts and saw a gap. Podcasts were great for browsing ideas.

They were terrible for actually learning something start to finish. So he and Alex Benzer launched Knowable in October 2019.

The pitch was simple. Buy a course, listen to an expert teach it properly, and get real structure instead of a rambling chat.

The launch courses were made by producers from NPR, the Washington Post, and MasterClass.

Knowable sold audio courses one at a time. A course cost around $100.

You bought it, you owned it, and you listened through iOS, Android, or the web. Think of it as a textbook you listen to instead of read.

There was no ad model and no free tier doing the heavy lifting. The money came straight from people paying for a class they wanted to take.

The core product was the course library. Each course ran for hours of long-form audio taught by one expert.

It came with lesson summaries, a downloadable e-textbook, and access to a private student community. Everything ran through Knowable's own iOS, Android, and web apps.

The audio was produced by people who came from NPR, the Washington Post, and MasterClass.

The whole strategy was quality over volume. Knowable hired producers from NPR and the Washington Post to make the audio sound polished, not like a Zoom recording.

Each course was a real production. The bet was that premium audio would feel worth paying for.

It leaned on the credibility of its experts and its a16z backing to get noticed in a crowded learning market.

Selling a $100 audio course is hard when Spotify and Apple give away millions of podcast hours for free. Knowable had to convince people that structured audio was worth real money.

Building an audience one paid course at a time is slow. That is likely why the standalone app never got huge.

The team found a better home inside Medium instead.

The $4 million seed round was led by Andreessen Horowitz in October 2019. Upfront Ventures, Initialized Capital, and First Round Capital also joined.

That is a strong list of names for a seed round. It gave Knowable credibility right out of the gate.

In November 2021 Medium acquired the company, and Shaeffer joined Medium as VP of Audio.