She Runs Wondery, a Podcast Company Known for Creative Risks. But It's Owned by Amazon, a Data-Driven Corporation. How Does She Make It Work? Jen Sargent was an entrepreneur before she became CEO of Wondery, and she knows that in any situation, to get the outcome you're looking for: "You'd better have a strong answer."

Want to make a great podcast? The CEO of the powerhouse podcast network Wondery, Jen Sargent, knows a thing or two about that.

"Put yourself in the listener's shoes," she says. "Everybody is really busy, and you're asking for people's time, which is their most valuable asset. So why should someone listen? You'd better have a strong answer."

Sargent's team consistently produces strong answers in the form of hit shows like Dirty John, Dr. Death, and Business Wars. It's one of the reasons why, this past February, Amazon officially acquired Wondery for a sum reported to be around $300 million. The move transformed Wondery from an independent studio into a key asset in Amazon Music's battle against Spotify. It also meant big things for Sargent, who was COO at the time of the sale but took over as CEO afterward.

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She has a lot of work ahead. The pandemic radically altered consumers' podcast consumption habits, and the podcast space grows more crowded every day. But Sargent says her career journey prepared her for this moment of change.

She began in investment banking at J.P. Morgan's tech, media, and telecom group, later moved into advertising, got an MBA, worked in digital marketing, and then launched her own media company, called HitFix, in 2008 — just as the recession set in. She managed to grow it anyway and sold it to Uproxx in 2016.

"What I learned during the Great Recession is there's a timidness and a hunker-down mentality that comes with certain types of externalities," she says. "Entrepreneurs need to remember their business fundamentals but also have this willingness to adapt. If you can bring those two things together, you can actually grow and thrive during challenging times."

She is now applying that attitude to Wondery. For example, during the pandemic's early days, advertising dried up and listenership dropped. But Wondery still pressed ahead with building its subscription app, Wondery Plus, which offers subscribers ad-free listening, early release for shows, and exclusive content. Wondery doesn't release user data but says the app is growing "exponentially." Meanwhile, the company is expanding globally with foreign-­language versions of its hit shows, has more than a dozen TV or film adaptations of its podcasts in development, and began developing books, music, games, and merchandise.

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Amazon's scale certainly helps those ambitions, though Sargent says her new parent company's notoriously data-driven mindset also presents challenges. "For brand-new things, especially content, it's hard to quantify the risk," she says. But she pushes her team to take risks anyway.

"When there's a lack of data, one of my favorite sayings I've learned at Amazon is "What do we need to believe to be true in order for this to work?' I love that because then it's like, Oh, OK, I don't have all the answers, but here's what I think is going to be true."

In that way, her outlook on building an influential podcast business isn't too different from her advice for creating a
great podcast: Why should someone listen? You'd better have a strong answer.