Female Founder Friday: In Conversation with Charlie Perry, Founder of Astrid

This week’s Female Founder Friday shines a spotlight on Charlie Perry, founder of Astrid, the UK’s leading female-first podcast network. Built from Charlie’s experience across journalism, BBC radio, social media, branded content and podcast production, Astrid was created to fill a gap she could clearly see in the UK media landscape: a podcast network making shows for female audiences, produced by people who genuinely understand those audiences. Astrid describes itself as a female-founded, podcast-first media brand, producing diverse and culturally relevant shows through an all-female team.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Charlie about her journey from radio to founding Astrid, why entertainment is more powerful than people often realise, the barriers facing women in media and fundraising, and why her advice to other founders is refreshingly direct: just get started.

FC: Can you summarise your professional background and your company?

CP: Yes. I studied journalism at university and was really interested in radio, which led me to work with the BBC, first through local BBC radio and later through internships with production companies in London. Through those internships, I supported shows across BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, while also gaining experience at local stations. At the time, I was based in the North, so I was travelling around quite a lot for different opportunities.

I then moved to Manchester to work at a small independent radio station, where I was a producer and presenter. I was also making a lot of social content. Then there was a big restructure, and my contract ended there.

After that, I went to work at Social Chain, which was a marketing company. I was a content developer, so I was taking my skills from radio production and content creation and applying them to social media instead of radio.

While I was there, podcasting became really popular. Because I already had that audio skill set, when my boss, Steven Bartlett, wanted to offer podcasting to Social Chain clients and take his own podcast more seriously, I was invited to apply for the podcast producer role. I’m pretty sure I was the only person who applied, but anyway, I got the job.

So I led on podcast production, and at the beginning, I was making the shows on my own. I then started to grow the team at Social Chain and eventually led that team.

After about two years, I realised I wanted to work on shows I would actually listen to. I was doing a lot of branded content pieces, and I decided to think about what came next. One of the options was to create the podcast network that did not exist yet, which was a network making shows primarily for a female audience.

I took all of those skills across journalism, radio, content production, team management and podcasting, and put them into Astrid. It has been a journalism and radio evolution into social media, then somehow back into audio.

FC: Can you expand on the idea of creating shows for a female audience?

CP: When I was working at Social Chain and could see podcasting becoming really popular in the UK, there were a lot of independent podcasts and a lot of people who had already been doing it for a long time.

But over in America, there were podcast networks. That basically meant a slate of shows, or multiple shows, that were all made and monetised by the same company. Some of them were female-focused networks, like Dear Media and Betches, and they were doing something similar to what I had been doing at Social Chain, making podcast content and social media content.

In the UK, networks were not really a thing in the same way. I thought, why does that not exist here? Maybe I could be the producer to make that happen, because I had the skills to do it.

I could see that it was working in other territories, and I could see that nobody was making space for it here in the UK. But the more meaningful reason behind it was that a lot of female podcasters, or female talent who want to have a podcast, do not necessarily want a producer who does not understand them.

They need someone who understands the content they are trying to make, the conversation they are trying to have with a guest, and the goals and ambitions of the show. I had experience of producing football club podcasts when I did not support the team, and while I like football, I was not deep in the detail of the players and the culture. I remember thinking they would be so much better off with a producer who really knew what they were talking about.

It is the same thing. If talent want to make a podcast, they are going to want a producer who understands them and the content. The only way to make the content amazing is to have brilliant creative ideas, as well as the production skill set.

Because the video and audio industries have historically been very male-dominated, the pool of female producers is smaller. I also think many women working in the space probably felt the same way I did. They were not necessarily working on things they were genuinely interested in or excited by, or where they could offer the strongest creative and editorial input.

If you look at the podcast charts, they are mostly men. I think part of that is because they have strong production teams who understand the content. Men have also historically been able to afford to invest in shows, and the people making commissioning decisions have often been men making decisions based on their own opinions and interests.

I do not think women have been forgotten about on purpose, but it is the by-product of a patriarchal society and media landscape. I want more female voices to have access to those big opportunities. There are huge multi-million pound and dollar deals happening in podcasting, and most of them are going to men. I’m not saying they do not deserve it, I just want to see the industry become more equitable.

FC: Have you faced any barriers as a female founder?

CP: I think the first barrier was that I could not go and get a job that I genuinely enjoyed or felt excited by. I loved podcasting, and I clearly had the skills to do it, but there was not a company making the kind of shows I would want to listen to, let alone work on.

So the first barrier was feeling a bit lost with what my career looked like. Even though I knew I was good at what I did, I did not really know where I could apply those skills.

Another barrier has been financial, although I do not think that is entirely because I am a woman. I do not come from a family with money. I did not have pots of cash sitting there. I started the business with £2,000, and that was my last £2,000. I just thought, I will run and see how long I can go for. Bootstrapping was a barrier because I did not have access to immediate cash.

In terms of gender-specific barriers, I think a lot of people, including women and female investors, do not fully understand the media landscape and how powerful entertainment is. People can view entertainment as whimsical, like something we do not really need. But when you look at how the world is shaped, people use entertainment to speak directly to audiences and influence how people think.

I think media is overlooked, and women’s media is overlooked even more. It can be dismissed as beauty, lifestyle, pink and fluffy, but that is not what I am building.

What I want to do with Astrid is have a stable of shows. I want a finance show packaged in a way that is as entertaining as it is informative for women in the UK right now. I also want people to be able to listen to a really silly, fun podcast that is not self-help and is not trying to change the world. Sometimes I just want to make people smile. Hopefully, we will also have a politics show, wrapped up in a way that is interesting and informative.

I think one of the big gender barriers is that people view women’s content as narrow or lightweight. But women do want to listen to politics, finance, culture and everything else. It just does not always feel particularly exciting to listen to those topics through a lens that was not made with you in mind.

FC: What advice would you give to younger female founders just starting out?

CP: Stop trying to find all of the answers before you start. You just need to get it done.

I think sometimes we can really overcomplicate things. One thing I did not do was sit down and write a huge business plan, read a million books, or wait until everything felt perfect. I took my experience, I took my understanding of my industry, and I trusted myself enough to know that I had the bones to do the hard work required to start a business.

I see a lot of people saying, I need to have this before I can do that, or I need to do this before I can start. But no, if you want to launch a product, just start. You know what steps you need to take to get closer to that thing. Those steps are not written down in a book or hidden inside a podcast interview. You learn so much by doing it.

The more time you spend planning, the more time you can end up wasting. That might sound like bad advice, but I find it frustrating when I see women with ideas feeling like they need to have all the answers before they begin. The truth is, when you are actually doing it, that is when you run into the hurdles you could not have predicted.

I would also say that if you are working in a space where you have never had to deal with finances beyond your own personal finances, get professional support early. You need to understand what tax you need to save for, what happens when you hit the VAT threshold, and all of those financial responsibilities that come with running a business.

I had a close network of friends who were helpful with that, but having a really good accountant is so important. You need someone you can call and say, I’m starting this, I’m not sure about this, can you give me a quick breakdown? That is what they are there for.

I would stay away from getting financial advice from someone who is not a professional or who is not running a business themselves. Get that support in as early as possible.

So my two actionable pieces of advice would be: just get started, and take your early financial understanding from a professional.

FC: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

CP: The main thing for me is making sure it is clear what we do and how we operate as a product, as a podcast network. Sometimes people can get confused if they are not familiar with what that means.

We are also working on a launch that will hopefully be going live towards the end of summer, which is really exciting. That will be our first step into the US, which is great.

There are also a lot of changes happening from our perspective because we are going through investment. I bootstrapped, like I said, so I have never been through this process before. It almost feels like I’m back at the beginning. It feels similar to how I felt before I spoke to my accountant at the start, where there is a lot of information and sometimes it is hard to see the wood for the trees.
So while I am really excited by it, the investment side is also quite difficult. My focus at the minute is getting this new show launched, raising investment, scaling, making more shows and getting into America.

The goal is to build that slate of podcasts, with amazing Instagram and TikTok pages too, for women who want to be entertained and informed in equal measures.

FC: Are there any Astrid shows you would recommend people start with?

CP: One of our shows is called Not Being Funny Babe, and that is really funny, silly and not serious at all. We film it in our studio, which is very bright pink. It is the Love of Huns podcast, and we are working with them as a co-production between Astrid and Love of Huns.

That show is really fun, and it is growing quickly. It is a chill, easy-listening podcast, and very silly in the best way.

If someone likes famous guest interviews, Table Manners is a really good one. Greg James has also launched a new show, which will be popular. It depends what kind of thing you like, but Spotify can be a useful place for discovery if you are looking for new shows.

A huge thank you to Charlie for sharing her journey with such honesty, clarity and energy. Astrid is a brilliant example of what happens when a founder spots a genuine gap, trusts her understanding of the audience, and builds something with both commercial ambition and cultural purpose. We are excited to see Astrid continue to scale, launch new shows and bring more female voices into the podcasting mainstream. You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn and explore Astrid through the links below.

Website: https://astridpodcasts.co.uk/
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-perry-26155767/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/astridpodcasts/
Author: Jen Jeffries, Marketing Executive at FounderCatalyst