Craig Hewitt

Craig Hewitt is an entrepreneur best known as the founder and CEO of Castos, a podcast hosting, private podcasting and production company, and as the long-time host of the Rogue Startups podcast. His path from a productized service to a seven-figure SaaS is one of the most cited stair-step stories in the MicroConf community.

Hewitt got into podcasting as a host before it was a business. He started Podcast Motor, a productized podcast editing and production service, which gave him cash flow and a close view of what podcasters needed. To move into software he bought Seriously Simple Podcasting, a popular WordPress podcasting plugin, for a modest sum, and built Castos as the hosting platform behind it.

In 2019 Castos was the first company announced in TinySeed's batch. Hewitt took about $750,000 in total, from TinySeed and a small amount of other investment, but otherwise ran the company as bootstrapped, and it became profitable and self-sufficient. Castos expanded into private podcasting for businesses and folded Podcast Motor into Castos Productions, which still brings in a meaningful share of revenue.

Indie Hackers reported that Castos crossed seven figures in ARR, with the SaaS product making up about 80% of it. Hewitt has spoken candidly on Startups for the Rest of Us and other shows about the podcasting market, building a team and keeping his skills sharp.

He is now putting much of his energy into AI: he launched UltraClip, an AI tool for turning long-form video into short clips, writes the Founder Insights newsletter and publishes how-to sessions on building AI agents. For indie founders he is a clear example of starting with services, buying an asset, and stair-stepping into SaaS.