Maya Prohovnik

Head of Product, Podcasting at Spotify

Maya Prohovnik leads product for Spotify's podcasting platform, was employee #1 at Anchor (acquired by Spotify), which now powers over 75% of all new podcasts globally.

The Growth Architect The Operator

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 70%

Execution & Craft 85%

Data & Experimentation 50%

Growth & Distribution 80%

Team & Leadership 65%

User Empathy & Research 90%

Key Themes

dogfooding as product practice friction reduction obsession startup-within-a-corporation creative growth hacks podcasting platform strategy senior leadership productivity

Episode Summary

Maya Prohovnik shares how she built Anchor from employee #1 into the platform powering 75% of new podcasts, largely through obsessive friction reduction and a legendary growth hack of manually submitting podcasts via Apple accounts. She discusses dogfooding as a core practice, maintaining startup culture within Spotify, and her productivity systems for senior leadership.

Leadership Principles

→ Be obsessed with reducing friction — this should be your constant battle
→ Everyone on the product team should dogfood the product by creating their own podcast
→ Do things that don't scale to unlock massive distribution advantages

Notable Quotes

"We hired college interns to manually submit hundreds of thousands of podcasts through Apple accounts. People think we had some secret backdoor deal, but we just had college students doing it manually."
— On the scrappy growth hack that gave Anchor massive hosting market share

"We were obsessed with reducing friction, this was our constant battle."
— Describing Anchor's core product philosophy that drove their dominance

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