Julep is a provider for the marketing, production and distribution of podcasts. Founded in 2019, the startup completed a successful seed financing round just over two years ago and now announces its acquisition by Libsyn, an American “Podcasting As A Service” platform that enables developers to host, distribute, monetize and measure their audio content. With this step, Libsyn aims to create the conditions for Julep’s internationalization in Europe, with Germany remaining the platform’s core market. The management team with Steffen Hopf as CEO and Christian Rymarenko as COO remains unchanged.
Julep was founded by a founding team that includes Marcus Englert, Sebastian Weil and Björn Jopen. Additional shareholders of Julep Media include the investment division of Rheinische Post Mediengruppe RPM Invest, the Müller Medien family business, and private investors including Andreas Mayer, Andreas Wiele and Feliks Eyser. All of Julep’s previous investors will simultaneously become shareholders of Libsyn and participate in the company’s further development.
“Continuation of a success story”
Marcus Englert, co-founder of Julep, comments on the current acquisition:
“Having developed and built one of Germany’s leading podcast advertising platforms in less than three years is an enormous success, and I want to sincerely thank both CEOs Steffen Hopf and Christian Rymarenko and the entire Julep team for this. I am also delighted that the entire investor group of Julep will participate as future shareholders of Libsyn in the continuation of this success story.”
The future of podcast marketing: technology and automation
Brad Tirpak, CEO of Libsyn, says:
“We couldn’t imagine a better way to enter the European market than to launch with Julep in Germany. The entire team has made a fantastic development since founding and has focused on exactly the topics where we also see the future of podcast marketing: technology and automation. The podcast advertising market in Europe is still at the beginning, and it’s a great opportunity to develop it further together with Julep.”
And Steffen Hopf, CEO of Julep, says:
“The new partnership with Libsyn takes us to an entirely new level. From the start, we never lost sight of internationalization as an important milestone for our further development and have already laid the groundwork for this in terms of our platform technology. With its expertise in the American podcast market, which is a few years ahead of the European one, Libsyn comes at exactly the right time for us to continue our growth trajectory internationally.”
