Show HN: AI-driven pre-production tool for quick and efficient podcast planning
sicross.com
Research and episode structuring are some of the most time-consuming tasks but also crucial for successful podcasts. We help you with that and keep track of your podcasting activities, so you don't run out of ideas and can keep your audience engaged.
You can sign in and create your first show right away at https://app.sicross.com.
We started by building a solution for secure company internal podcast distribution, which is why we have a web application for content creation and a mobile app for listening. During our corporate work at SAP, we experienced that most of the issues faced in business are related to communication issues. By talking to quite a few companies, we realized that there's a high interest in using podcasts internally and externally to improve communication, but the biggest challenge for them is how to plan a proper podcast.
si:cross helps podcasters develop their initial show structure based on a simple idea. With the built-in AI support, si:cross proposes episodes for the show and continuously generates new ones to support the ideation process. Different Kanban boards provide a quick overview of what's already scheduled, what's in process, and what topics still need some more research.
Our Research notes feature comes with AI-supported episode structure proposals. You can adjust the proposed structure or add your own thoughts until you're satisfied with the episode outline and then use it as your script during recording. After you record an episode, getting feedback and clear instructions on where to cut is essential. Our comment feature after recording or uploading your episode makes that really easy by giving you the related timestamp with one click.
We built the current features to be most useful during the pre-production process, but si:cross also comes with its own mobile app, audience management, and analytics feature. We are using a serverless stack on AWS for all our backend components complemented by React and React Native for our frontend solutions in both browsers and mobile apps respectively. Our data storage originally relied on DynamoDB, but due to the difficulty of managing our evolving data structure amidst changing requirements, we migrated to an SQL database over time. To keep efforts manageable, we looked for a one codeline solution to serve both iOS and Android mobile applications and decided to go with React Native.
Each account comes with a free trial plan. After the trial ends, you can activate a paid plan for AI support, an additional producer, a co-show owner, and an increased listener count or simply continue with the free plan.
If you ever wanted to start a podcast or want to improve your podcast management, we'd love to get your feedback!