Max Cutler

While many who listened to the This American Life podcast Serial were inspired to search for everything they could about defendant Adnan Syed and solve the case, 29-year-old Max Cutler was inspired to start his own true-crime podcast network: Parcast, which Cutler launched in 2016 without outside investment; three-quarters of its listeners are women. Cutler sold Parcast to Spotify in 2019 for more than $50 million and still runs its operations.