What do you get when you mix rom-coms, diverse storytelling and podcasts? You get Meet Cute, a modern media company founded by Naomi Shah.
What do you get when you mix romantic comedies, diverse storytelling and podcasts? You get Meet Cute, a venture-backed ($9.3M) modern media company that produces original, scripted rom-coms in podcast form.
Meet Cute’s bite-sized doses of uplifting content prioritize diverse storytelling and characters across the full spectrum of love. The company has created over 350 stories since its inception a year and a half ago and has accumulated over 2 million listens.
After studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Human Biology at Stanford University and working on the investment team at NYC-based Union Square Ventures, Founder and CEO Naomi Shah wanted to invest in something new, but the kind of company she had in mind didn’t yet exist.
So, like most visionaries who are ahead of their time, she created it. Today Meet Cute is filling a gap in audio where there’s a lack of diversity and different viewpoints.
I knew there was something interesting in short-form content, audio as a medium, and feel-good content.
With partnerships and guest appearances by Julianne Hough, Daymond John, Sara Shepard and Taye Diggs, Meet Cute has put a much-needed spin on the traditional rom-com and Naomi is at the helm.
Please enjoy 10 Questions with Naomi Shah, Founder and CEO, Meet Cute.
1. What is your business about?
Meet Cute is a rom-com entertainment company building a unique brand in feel-good storytelling. We develop, produce and distribute stories that are rooted in optimism and love across multiple platforms, leading with our beloved audio series.
2. What motivated you to start your business?
After I graduated, I jumped at the opportunity to move to New York and started out on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. I soon craved something more people-oriented, creative, and tangible and applied to Union Square Ventures, an early-stage VC in New York.
At USV, I developed a deep interest in our “wellbeing” thesis and investing in pockets of wellbeing that were often overlooked but extremely important to people. The part that people opt into for fun, including watching movies, listening to podcasts, and attending concerts.
Through spending time with companies in this space, I knew there was something interesting in short-form content, audio as a medium, and feel-good content. I work at the intersection of all three of those now with Meet Cute.
3. What’s the biggest thing you struggle with as a founder?
One thing I’m working on is the balance between tactical, roll-up-your-sleeves work and going deep on bigger picture ideas at Meet Cute. There has to be a healthy symbiosis between those two and it takes a thoughtful approach to balance time between them.
There are certain weeks where we are all pushing and I find myself neck-deep in tactical operations, and it takes consciously pulling myself (or someone else nudging me) up to the 30,000-ft view to put things into perspective.
4. What is the best thing that’s happened in your venture so far?
The best thing that’s happened so far at Meet Cute is the team we’ve built. I’m grateful to have convinced so many brilliant people to join this team and push the vision of Meet Cute alongside me.
And that goes outside of just our core team to our investors and advisors as well. Having such a wide network of support makes the difference when we are out chasing talent, heads down building, while fundraising, or anything in between.
5. What advice would you give to another person wanting to start their own company?
The piece of advice I would give is to have conviction, i.e. trust your gut and the people around you to back you up. Starting a company is full of decisions that just need to be made, and having conviction is a way to show up consistently for those around you and lead from a place of both vulnerability and confidence.
6. How does your culture/background influence your work?
Growing up, I didn’t necessarily see characters that looked like me on screens. We want to reinvent the rom-com, creating an entertainment and lifestyle brand in the process, to be for everyone.
When you look at a traditional rom-com, the characters and storyline are all pretty standard: boy meets girls, girl falls in love with a boy, they live happily ever after. But that formula is not inclusive to people of colour, LGBTQ+, and other “non-traditional” ways to fall in love.
Our mission is to inspire the full spectrum of love and tell inclusive stories about human connection that touches emotions, and have every listener feel like they can relate to our stories.
7. How do you unwind and relax after a busy day?
Like any CEO, there are always so many things to do and items that need my attention that sometimes it’s hard to focus on any one thing for too long without context switching into something else.
How I combat this is I like to turn off my notifications at the end of the day and go heads down in deep work blocks. It’s so hard to find this quiet time during the day that I like to reserve my early evenings for this to help me slow down and transition from the workday into my personal evening time without feeling like there are still loose ends.
8. What’s your favourite self-care hack?
For me, what helps is coming up with routines as much as I can, including making my bed in the morning, enjoying a cup of coffee, and going on a walk after work in the evening to bookend my day. And then in the evenings, my roommates and I generally eat dinner together and have a TV show that we’re all watching.
9. Cardio, yoga or strength training?
Ideally all three, but if I had to pick one, it would be either cardio and yoga– depending on the day!
10. How do you want people to remember you?
In building this brand, I hope to be remembered as someone who stepped off the beaten path and whose work made people pause and think a little differently. Above all, I hope to be remembered as an empathetic leader and a friend, as well as someone who cared deeply about the community around her.
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