#563 From Geology to AI: Ahmad Saleem on Building the Google for Podcasts

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, I’m joined by Ahmad Saleem, Founder and CEO of Podyssey.

Ahmad’s journey is anything but linear. From working as a geologist in mining and natural resources to earning a PhD in economics, moving into private equity, and eventually founding an AI startup, his path reflects deep curiosity, resilience, and systems thinking.

We dive into why podcast discovery is fundamentally broken, how AI and natural language processing can unlock the real value hidden inside long-form audio, and what it takes to build and scale a product in an uncertain, fast-moving market.

This conversation blends founder storytelling, product strategy, and honest reflections on failure, team building, and the future of content discovery.

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👤 About the Guest

Ahmad Saleem is the Founder and CEO of Podyssey, an AI-powered search engine designed to help people discover specific insights within podcasts rather than just episodes.

With a background spanning geology, economics, private equity, and natural language processing, Ahmad has been involved in nearly 20 ventures across his career. His work today focuses on applying AI to large-scale content discovery problems, particularly in long-form audio and multilingual environments.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmad-saleem-ansari/

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🧠 Key Takeaways

• Why podcast discovery is harder than ever despite the explosion of content

• How AI and NLP enable searching inside conversations, not just titles

• The difference between finding podcasts and finding relevant moments

• Why categories and genres no longer work for modern podcast discovery

• Lessons learned from nearly 20 ventures and how failure reshapes founders

• How to build lean, distributed teams that move fast without sacrificing clarity

• Where AI agents fit and do not fit in long-form content consumption

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🎯 What You’ll Learn

• How Podyssey is rethinking podcast discovery at a global scale

• Why transcripts alone are not enough to understand context

• How founders should think about feature creep after product-market fit

• What changes when you build AI products in a remote, asynchronous world

• How experience with failure changes decision-making and leadership

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⏱ Episode Highlights & Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction and Ahmad’s background

• 02:00 From geology and mining to economics and startups

• 05:00 Why podcast discovery is broken

• 09:00 AI, accents, transcription, and context challenges

• 12:00 From episodes to snippets: rethinking podcast consumption

• 15:00 Podyssey’s business model and monetization paths

• 17:00 Avoiding feature overload after product-market fit

• 20:00 Building lean, remote AI teams

• 25:00 AI agents and the future of long-form content

• 27:00 Failure, resilience, and restarting as a founder

• 33:00 The global future of podcasting and multilingual discovery

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Podyssey platform: https://www.podyssey.com/