The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

Why OpenAI Bought a Podcast — with TBPN’s John Coogan and Jordi Hays

July 9, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Why OpenAI Bought a Podcast

John Coogan and Jordi Hays met through a mutual friend in Los Angeles, both having built startups in Silicon Valley, raised money from overlapping venture firms, and found themselves at a similar life stage with young kids and no clear next move. They started recording their conversations about tech and business, sent a raw file to podcaster David Senra, and got back a surprising response: take this ten times as seriously. Treat it like a startup, not a side project. That advice became the operating principle for what would become TBPN, a daily three-hour live show covering tech and business that OpenAI acquired this spring for a reported nine-figure sum — making it the first media acquisition in OpenAI's history and one of the highest-value podcast exits ever.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (03:28) **Origin Story: From Two Strangers to a Daily Show** - John Coogan and Jordi Hays explain how they met through a mutual friend, bonded over being in a similar life stage (LA-based tech founders with kids), and decided to record their conversations.
  • 2 (08:12) **Zero-to-One Marketing: The "Love Letter" Strategy** - The hosts describe their early, unscalable marketing tactic of printing out and reacting to individual posts, then quote-tweeting the original poster.
  • 3 (10:05) **Founder Backgrounds: Humbled by Silicon Valley** - Both hosts share their entrepreneurial journeys, from Soylent and Party Round to being "humbled" by startup failures and market dynamics.
  • 4 (21:03) **The Business Model: Why TBPN Out-Earns Prof G** - Scott Galloway reveals TBPN's economics (11 employees, $5M in 2025, tracking to $30M in 2026) and asks how they generate 50% more revenue than his show with fewer downloads.
  • 5 (27:14) **Monetization Innovation: Ads That Reach the Unreachable** - The hosts detail how they get ads in front of powerful people who normally don't see them, including integrated ad reads during interviews with CEOs and branded clips.
  • 6 (32:45) **The OpenAI Acquisition: Why It Happened** - Scott asks the central question: why did OpenAI buy a 17-month-old podcast for a rumored nine-figure sum?
  • 7 (50:46) **The Anthropic vs. OpenAI Flip** - Scott tests a thesis on the rapid overtaking of OpenAI by Anthropic, calling it the most vicious number-two-to-number-one flip he's ever seen.

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Guests on this episode

John Coogan

Show Notes

Scott Galloway sits down with TBPN creators John Coogan and Jordi Hays to unpack how they turned a daily tech show into one of the fastest-growing businesses in media — and ultimately, OpenAI’s first acquisition. They discuss why most podcasts get advertising wrong, how a small but influential audience can be worth more than mass reach, and why they built TBPN like a startup.


Plus, they debate OpenAI vs. Anthropic and what Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with the next big thing reveals about the future of tech.


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