Maya Prohovnik
Maya Prohovnik is Head of Product, Podcasting at Spotify. She was the first employee at Anchor, the podcast creation platform that Spotify acquired in 2019 when it had approximately 20 people. At the time of her Lenny’s Podcast appearance, Anchor hosted over 75% of new podcasts globally.
She hosts four podcasts herself: a Stephen King book club, a Big Brother recap show (with her husband, produced entirely on mobile), a niche science fiction podcast about Children of Time, and a parenting podcast documenting her IVF journey. She has 8 backyard chickens (one rooster, seven hens).
Key ideas
- Wizard-of-Oz at scale: Anchor submitted hundreds of thousands of podcasts to Apple Podcasts via college interns creating Apple IDs by hand. Most users thought there was a secret technical deal.
- Three pivots to product-market fit: Anchor 1.0 (voice messaging/social) → 2.0 (radio creation) → 3.0 (RSS-based podcasting).
- Build for the 80%: the loudest feedback comes from power users who represent a small fraction of behaviour. Design for the majority who never complain.
- Gut is a type of data: treat gut judgment with the same rigour as quantitative data — name it explicitly when using it, track it, test for calibration.