Pierson Marks, a former employee at Amazon working on Alexa voice services, left the company after three years to launch his own startup called Jellypod. A Southern California native who studied computer science at UCLA, Marks decided to stay in Seattle and create an AI-powered service that transforms daily newsletters into personalized podcasts. Marks has always been passionate about voice technology and staying informed with credible sources of information, which led him to the idea of creating Jellypod.
Using open source and fine-tuned AI models, Marks built Jellypod’s underlying technology to extract key details from a wide range of newsletters. The challenge was to create a system that could process this information, de-duplicate topics, and compile everything into a 10-to-15 minute daily digest podcast. The goal was to make the podcast sound natural, similar to a human podcast host presenting the information in an engaging manner.
Jellypod officially launched in December and is currently available on iOS. The service offers users a free version where they can create a 6-minute podcast that can be played through the app. A premium version is also available for purchase within the app, allowing users to add more newsletters, listen to longer podcasts, and export podcasts to other players. Listeners can choose between six different voices, three male and three female, to personalize their listening experience.
With over 1,000 users as of April, 10% of which are subscribed to the premium version, Jellypod has seen steady growth since its launch. While the startup is currently bootstrapped, Marks plans to raise money in the near future to further develop the platform. In addressing any potential rights issues related to the original newsletter providers, Marks clarified that Jellypod is not redistributing content but rather summarizing it and presenting it in audio format, similar to services like Blinkist that provide digestible summaries of books and podcasts.
Marks believes that Jellypod can help people consume the newsletter content they are already subscribed to by providing a convenient audio format that can be easily consumed on a daily basis. He sees the service as a way to encourage people to prioritize the information in their email inboxes by presenting it in a podcast format. Marks is committed to using his tech skills to help more people stay informed, especially younger generations who may be spending too much time on short-form, non-authoritative sources of information such as social media. He is a strong advocate for long-form content by knowledgeable writers and believes that audio format can make it more accessible to a wider audience.
