Since the podcast was the <\/span>fourth<\/span><\/i> project he was simultaneously working on at the time of launching, it was his nighttime \u201cextra job.\u201d His goal was to develop himself and his skill set areas like hosting, writing, producing, and launching a show on his own outside the public radio world. It was because of his deep ties to public radio that the show received a boost from his colleagues and friends who put him and <\/span>99% Invisible<\/span><\/i> in front of their audiences, which helped the show really take off. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>The real gamechanger, though, was the Kickstarter campaign in August of 2012. As <\/span>99% Invisible<\/span><\/i> began gaining audience traction outside of the public radio system, the need for funding became real. The massive success of the Kickstarter (Roman met his fundraising goal in the first 24 hours) bypassed the station system and caused an existential crisis in the world of Public Radio. It became the second most funded Kickstarter in the Publishing industry and first in Journalism, raising over $170,000\u2014enough to pay Roman and another producer and fund the show. From there, everything snowballed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, while the money was pouring into the Kickstarter campaign, Roman was counting change at home to buy groceries. His advice to anyone considering this route to monetization is to make sure you have the audience to support the goals you are setting for your show first\u2026 and that you have plenty of coins in the piggy bank to hold you over just in case!<\/span><\/p>\n

The success of the Kickstarter caught the attention of advertisers who recognized that Roman had built a connection to the audience and began investing in placing ads on his show. Still, it took one more Kickstarter that brought in twice as much as the first for Roman to see the show as self-sufficient, and he let go of the other jobs he had cobbled together. The Kickstarter model worked so well, though, that he used it a third time to raise $620,412 from 21,808 backers to form Radiotopia\u2014a curated network of extraordinary, cutting-edge podcasts, including <\/span>99% Invisible, Criminal, Song Exploder, Ear Hustle<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t grow up with a lot of means, so I never overspent. When it came to my business, I never took investments. I grew slowly and deliberately, and that was just always the way I ran the shop. As you do more, you need more and more people, so when I had money, I hired them. That’s just the way it was. So suddenly, I was a boss, which is really weird, because I really was just a kid. I mean, I wasn’t a \u2018kid\u2019; I was in my 30s. But I was doing it alone. Not because I had this great desire to be alone, or I didn’t want a station to pay me lots of money to make it. I did it alone because no one wanted me.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

At the time of the first record-breaking Kickstarter, <\/span>99% Invisible<\/span><\/i> had around 50,000 – 100,000 downloads PER EPISODE thanks to Roman\u2019s existing audience and the traction and connection he had with it. That\u2019s when Roman knew something special was going to happen.\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cWe built a genuine audience<\/span><\/i> that was genuinely curious about the worldview of the show itself, because it was about being curious and engaged with the world and optimistic about design choices that were being made for them that they don’t know about or notice.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Every wonder why the buttons on your shirts are on one side for men and the other for women? Why the fridge handle is vertical instead of horizontal? Who made these decisions, and why?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the types of choices designers made for you that Roman\u2019s podcast explores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Eight years and 450,000,000 downloads later, the show and the shop employs 13 people, has produced over 400 episodes, and has been the Apple #1 Podcast in the Arts Category and #8 in all podcasts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, Roman partnered with Kurt Kohlstedt to co-author the book, The 99% Invisible City, coming out in October 2020.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever wondered about the invention of incubators, or how a new kind of store window mannequin was designed in the 1930\u2019s, or where the \u201csmiley face\u201d symbol originated\u2014dive into the archives of <\/span>99% Invisible.<\/span><\/i> Every single episode sticks <\/span>to the core of a joyful exploration and explanation of the built world, which remains at the center of everything Roman and his team create.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Created and independently produced by Roman Mars, 99% Invisible began as a collaborative project between San Francisco Public Radio KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[298,157,297,148,300,299,296,149],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n