Published: September 30, 2025 at 8:28 am
Steven Bartlett has told Press Publish NYC that he built Diary of a CEO into one of the world’s biggest podcasts by embracing failure as a competitive advantage.
The SocialChain co-founder revealed his dedicated ‘failure team’, tasked with running rapid experiments, and explained how pre-watch testing helps his team cut guesswork from content decisions.
Bartlett also discussed how AI is already reshaping podcasting, with his team producing AI-generated episodes that are said to be indistinguishable from human shows in retention data.
Despite turning down offers worth hundreds of millions, he said his priority remains creative control, happiness and the freedom to keep innovating.