Our guest today is Seth Miller, Founder and CEO at Rapchat. Seth is on a mission to democratize music creation with Rapchat’s mobile app. Rapchat takes the friction out of making music, and has helped millions of artists unleash their creativity.Seth earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis on management information systems, from Ohio University. Before founding Rapchat, Seth worked as a consultant for Adidas, and an IT Systems Engineer.On the podcast we talk with Seth about bootstrapping his way to signs of product market fit, raising money from strategic partners like Sony Music, and what it’s like to have Facebook completely rip off your app.In this episode, you’ll learn:
Finding the right niche for your app
Bootstrapping and early funding
Using the right marketing channels for your app
Filtering out the wrong users for your app's paid features
How to transition your app from free to paid

Links & Resources
Sony
Nico Wittenborn
Twitter
Adjacent
Complex
Seth Miller’s Links
Follow Seth on Twitter

Rapchat
Follow us on Twitter:
David Barnard
Jacob Eiting
RevenueCat
Sub Club
Episode Transcript00:00:00 Seth:We would be dead for sure if I didn’t learn how to code. It’s an invaluable skill that I’ll have in this organization and future organizations. It also just helps me think about things. It’s a really great way to look at the world sometimes.00:00:31 David:Hello, I’m your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, RevenueCat CEO, Jacob Eiting. Our guest today is Seth Miller, founder and CEO at Rapchat. Seth is on a mission to democratize music creation with Rapchat’s mobile app. It takes the friction out of making music, and has helped millions of artists unleash their creativity on the podcast.We talk with Seth about bootstrapping his way to signs of product market fit. Raising money from strategic partners like Sony, and what it’s like to have Facebook completely rip off your app.Hey Seth, welcome to the podcast!00:01:06 Seth:How’s it going? Thanks for having me.00:01:07 David:It’s been a long time coming. You and I first chatted way back in 2019. You were the first office hour call I ever took at RevenueCat.00:01:18 Seth:Oh, wow. 00:01:19 David:Yeah, going way back in my RevenueCat days. 00:01:22 Jacob:It tells you how bad of a CEO I am that we’ve never actually spoken on the phone in those two years.00:01:30 Seth:Or how good David was!00:01:31 Jacob:Yeah.00:01:32 Seth:I was sold after one call. I’m like, all right, dude, where do I sign up? How do I get this going? 00:01:37 Jacob:We have a lot of cross connections, because you’re an Adjacent portfolio. Nico is a co-investor. We’re also both Ohio-based. So, yeah, lots of cover today.00:01:54 Seth:We got to hang out. 00:01:55 Jacob:We should. It’s beautiful in Ohio today, but I’m not going to make an Ohio podcast.But, maybe kickoff and tell us, what is Rapchat?00:02:07 Seth:Yeah, absolutely. So, Rapchat is the easiest way to make music on your phone. We have an iOS and Android app. You really just like tap in, and open the app. We have hundreds and thousands of free beats on the app. So, you just pick a beat, you can record over it, and then you can share that anywhere.We have people making full-length studio-quality songs from their phone and sharing it to Instagram and SoundCloud. And then also on the platform, we have a social layer as well. Which is really cool. Pretty much a recording studio in your pocket, with a community, with a social layer.Similar to Visco, or Instagram for music. Our mission is really to democratize music by providing access and tools to the next billion music creators.00:03:01 Jacob:How did you get on this idea?00:03:05 Seth:Well, like just scratching my own itch in the early days. Almost eight years ago when I was in college, apps were really starting to become a thing, and same with social networks and you-do-see platforms that let you create content and share it. You know, the golden era of Vine, Snap, all of