Executive Summary
On a hot July morning in 2025, a guy was jogging along a treelined path listening to a podcast. He kept having to slow down to skip over the ads. This slowed his pace and he didn’t have a personal best that day. It was worse fumbling with an iPhone on a moving chairlift, he remembered taking off his gloves and unzipping his coat in the freezing snowstorm to just to play the next episode of Hidden Brain. There had to be a better way. What if there was an app like Waze but for a listener’s journey? What if knew what you wanted to listen to and it told you were the ads were instead of telling you where the speed traps were? The lightbulb went off. The man got home from jogging and started writing HearCandy.
HearCandy is smart phone browser for playing all types of audio feeds, with an initial podcast product that is distinguished from all other podcast players by a crowd sourced ad skipping engine called SmartSkip(tm). Did you know that three quarters of podcast listeners skip ads? What if we tracked those trends and let the SmartSkip engine heatmap and refine these skip segments based on user cues and feedback? We would then be able to automatically skip ads and other unwanted content for users who have that default feature turned on.
And we made HearCandy more than just a podcast player. We added music and audio books to the offer because sometimes you just want to sit back and listen to music. And sometimes you want to listen to something longer than a podcast. HearCandy is a full featured audio browser designed to be easy for everyday listeners who value uninterrupted audio experiences to enjoy.
We’re NOT merely a listening app. Our goal is bigger: Allow people to hear ONLY the audio they want to hear. We place ourselves on the listener’s side of the producer-content-listener relationship. We are the listener’s advocate. We partner with good faith producers to provide them the audience who wants to transform their listening experience by automatically skipping unwanted segments of content via collaborative behavior-based intelligence. SmartSkip becomes smarter with every listener interaction. Through this initial feature, we hope to become the place where listeners hear and share listening experiences across all listening streams.
Company Description
WPRNY LLC is a New Hampshire–based technology company that serves as the parent entity for HearCandy and other emerging ventures in consumer-facing mobile application platforms.
HearCandy operates as a brand and product line under WPRNY LLC’s umbrella, allowing shared infrastructure, accounting, and intellectual property management while maintaining a distinct market identity. HearCandy, is the mobile app that delivers intelligent, ad-free podcast, streaming music via internet radio, and audiobook listening experiences.
WPRNY LLC
c/o Eric Wolfram
325 Pleasant Street
Concord, NH 03301
646-420-8287
hello@hearcandy.app
Market Analysis
- Industry: Global podcast industry valued >$20B with strong growth fueled by ad revenue and premium subscriptions.
- Problem: Ads and repetitive intros reduce listener satisfaction, but “ad-free” is often paywalled and publisher-controlled.
- Target Market: Tech-comfortable podcast listeners aged 18–54 in the U.S. and internationally, especially:
- Frequent listeners (5+ hours/week)
- Commuters and gym users
- Users of cross-platform listening apps (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts replacements)
- Competition:
- Ad-free subscriptions (show-by-show, limited coverage)
- Manual skip buttons (high friction, poor memory)
- A few advanced players with limited crowdsourcing capabilities
- Opportunity: Our network learning model improves with scale, creating a data moat competitors can’t replicate easily. More users = more accurate skips = stronger retention = accelerating growth.
Competitive Analysis
Player
The big players like Spotify, Apple, Overcast, and content providers like iHeartRadio
Strengths
Big distribution. Recognition. Huge audiences.
Weaknesses
They won’t ever remove ads from the content they publish, broadcast or sell.
Player
Premium subscriptions
Strengths
Ad-free versions of specific content
Weaknesses
Limited catalogs. Expensive when you have many subscriptions.
Player
Niche skip apps
Strengths
Some manual skipping for their own content. Special buttons. Tiny utilities, browser-side hacks, offline clients.
Weaknesses
No network intelligence
Player
HearCandy
Strengths
SmartSkip (™)
First to market. Platform-agnostic + adaptive + collaborative. Forever Free. Free Music. Free AudioBooks
Weaknesses
Needs scale to unlock full network advantage
Products & Services
HearCandy is the product. It has automatic ad removal powered by listeners and an intelligent automatic playlist generator called SmartQueue ™.
- Smart auto-skip for podcast ads and intros (core free feature)
- Personalized segment detection based on user behavior
- Analytics engine refining skip-segments in real-time
- We have added:
- Off-line listening
- Gamification of listening
- Cloud sync + device personalization
- Skip Segment Evolution
- Listening statistics and improved recommendations
Music
We added free live radio from around the world and gave HearCandy an intelligent radio layer because radio is not dead. It adds an easy discovery easy listening experience that fills the “I don’t want to choose” and “I don’t want to think” listener moods.
- Loads music based on user preference algorithm
- Always free and super easy
- Gets smarter with every user interaction
Music is where engagement lives. Spotify knows that playlists, which we have addedd via radio, give listeners the causual, low cognitive load listening experience that pairs well with the Podcast high intent deeper listening session. Together they make a full top to bottom funnel, increasing the retention curve and user stickiness. The more people listen, the better everyone’s experience becomes.
Book
We added Audio Books and made HearCandy a browser to a huge royalty free audio book library. We partner with LibriVox to deliver “all books in the public domain, narrated by real people and distributed for free, in audio format on the internet.” From Homer’s The Odyssey Or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles Or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, HearCandy listeners are exposed to classic literature for those long car rides or extended listening adventures.
Marketing & Sales Strategy
Core identity
HearCandy = the community-powered listening app that removes ads and filler.
We’re not a rebel brand yelling in a megaphone — we’re a quiet collective who simply chooses not to waste time.
Positioning
The “ad-free experience layer” for podcasts — without needing premium subscriptions.
- Not anti-podcaster.
- Anti wasted time.
- Community control > ad industry control.
Tone
Subversive, but friendly.
Smart, but simple.
Empowering, not angry.
Value
ALWAYS FREE. No memberships. No upsells.
Community skipping = everyone benefits.
Target Customers: We target tech savvy podcast listeners who are tired of ads and who seek a totally free, subscriptionless crowd sourced solution to podcast’s worst feature — the annoying ads. These people know the pain of ads. They’re tired of skipping ads everyday. They understand the value of crowdsourcing.
Although the app is full featured, we’ve made it easy. Ease of use and intelligent playlists are intended to also bring in and engage people who are new to podcasts or who may want the free audio book content or music. So intelligent playlist building is there to help new users avoid existing complications of getting started with podcasts.
Acquisition Channels:
- App Store / Google Play search optimization (high-intent discovery)
- Social media + short creator demos (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts). Social proof: user testimonials, “minutes saved” share cards.
- Community focused. Beyond listener communities, we engage producers of content and seek strategic partnerships with podcast communities, newsletters, and influencers.
- Referral incentives — forever free premium deals for inviting friends.
- PR outreach to tech + audio publications (The Verge, TechCrunch, Wired Podnews). “Why the app that removes ads is helping Podcast creators” story angle
Retention & Growth: - Delight: The app delivers value immediately by skipping long intros + repetitive segments.
- Gamified contribution: Reward listeners for refining skips (points → Forever Free) Improve accuracy and earn credit toward Smart Listener and Forever Free status for meeting certain listening and interaction achievements.
- Personalized recommendations based on actual listening behavior. Personalized suggestions improve with usage.
- Weekly “time saved” recap notices. Track ads skipped. In-app CTA: “Was this useful?” to increase confidence scores
- Viral Loop: “Smart listening” becomes a status feature shared among friends.
Revenue Model (post-scale): - Affiliate and discovery partnerships
Year 1 focus: Growth > Profit
Monetization introduced once:
30-day retention > 35%
Confidence score > 95% segment accuracy
Organization & Management
Ya, more bad news. I keep saying “We’re doing this” and “We’re doing that” but it’s just me right now. I coded this app because I didn’t want to hear ads and I was tired of skipping them manually. And I wanted a podcast app that already knew what I liked so I wouldn’t have to stop jogging to tell it what I wanted to hear next.
And here we are…
Founder with backgrounds in video/audio production, product development, marketing, and online development. Advisors include professionals experienced in marketing, mobile app growth, and data analytics.
Principal
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-wolfram/
Operational Plan
The main HearCandy app is fully developed and ready for beta testing. We will continue to support features listeners.
Coded in React Native using Expo and Github as the code repository. We use a cloud based database service called Supabase. We use various APIs to allow users to browse audio content.
- Listennotes is the premium podcast API that gives us recommendations.
- PodcastIndex is a free API for podcasts.
- RadioBrowser as the API to allow users to stream internet radio stations.
- We hook into LibriVox as the audiobook API.
We plan on releasing this on Android soon. The following are plans for the immediate future
- Continue beta testing with user cohort to refine segmentation engine.
- Deploy Over-The-Air (OTA) code updates via Expo for rapid iteration.
- Build admin dashboard for segment review and quality assurance.
As we gain more users, we intend to continue refining the SmartSkip algorithm and the SmartQueue system so that it meets the needs of the users.
Financial Plan & Projections
HearCandy is “pre-revenue”, which is the nice way to put it. Worse, we are not planning on charging users. And each user costs us money. To be completely honest, this might not even be a business.
We have several off ramps to use if this isn’t going well.
There is a small chance that the app achieves the coveted “pure play” status and we become valued by what we’re worth and not by what we earn. Only an extremely rare sustained exponential growth into a huge engaged user base could make that happen.
So mainly we are trying to keep costs super super low right now. So far:
- $200/month ListenNotes API
- $99/year Apple developer account
- Webhosting & ssl license $25 a year
- Domain purchase
- Phase 1: MVP testing and small-scale adoption → feedback → retention validation. (Goal 100 active users)
- Phase 2: Beta + demostration of growth loops → measurable engagement metrics (Goal 1000 active users)
- Phase 3: After reaching traction milestone (e.g., 100K active users) we will seek partners.
- Low infrastructure costs may enable high margin future revenue opportunities.
Appendix / Key Proof Points
- Patentable crowdsourced segmentation approach
- Strong early alpha results: high user satisfaction and skip utility
- Clear user value: time saved, ad avoidance, smoother experience