Gimlet Media than advertising. Members were given early access to pilots for new Gimlet shows, a Gimlet T-shirt, and access to the company's Slack channel. Gimlet then hired Blumberg's spouse and former "Rachel Maddow Show" producer Nazanin Rafsanjani to explore other ways to diversify the company's revenue. Rafsanjani spearheads Gimlet Creative, a wing of the company that "creates highly produced narrative audio in partnership with brands." On August 2, 2017, Gimlet announced it closed a $15 million Series B investment round, led by Stripes Group. Emerson Collective, Graham Holdings, Betaworks, and Cross Culture Investors also contributed to the round. In September, 2017,
Gimlet Media with the Boston Consulting Group. "StartUp"'s first episode aired on September 5, 2014, and was hosted by Alex Blumberg. Through documentary-style storytelling, the podcast shares Blumberg's experience building Gimlet Media from an idea through to a startup business. In episode 12 of season 1, Blumberg announced his new co-host, Lisa Chow. The second season of "StartUp" focused on online dating company Dating Ring. Dating Ring differentiates itself from other dating companies by offering access to offline matchmakers, as opposed to purely algorithm based date-generating. The company was incubated at Y Combinator. The second season explored the difficulties of gaining success