Ex-Googler Bet Her Own House on Podcasts and Raised $13 Million
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Wang Xiaoyu literally bet the house on making her startup work, quitting a lucrative job at Google in late 2015 and selling her home to build a podcast app. Two years on, she still sleeps in shifts on a communal bed at her Beijing office and has yet to take a day off.
But her company, CastBox.FM, has completed a $12.8 million funding round backed by the likes of IDG Capital and GSR Ventures - early investors in local giants Xiaomi Corp. and Didi Chuxing. It has more than 1.5 million monthly users and is one of the best-reviewed of its kind in Google’s Play store.