Jake Storiale has recently shot into the podcast stratosphere. What began as two childhood friends – Storiale and Jimmy O’Brien – talking about baseball in front of a microphone for fun in 2018 has swiftly turned into one of the world’s most popular baseball podcasts. Talkin’ Baseball receives hundreds of thousands of plays each week on platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Their company, Jomboy Media, has gone on to oversee a portfolio of nearly two dozen podcasts, despite the fact that it still has a garage-like feel to it.

O’Brien and Storiale met on their high school baseball team in Connecticut and became friends because of their shared passion of the New York Yankees. After graduating from college, O’Brien began broadcasting himself watching Yankees games on Periscope and YouTube, often injecting pieces of humour based on what was going on in the game. O’Brien persuaded Storiale to join him in a new YouTube show about the Yankees after a few episodes. The duo’s unique blend of banter and insight helped them gain up to a thousand new members per week. O’Brien and Storiale rented a modest office near Yankee Stadium in early 2020 and hired a number of sports media figures, including Chris Rose, a former Fox Sports and MLB Network anchor who agreed to lead a livestreamed show with a rotating cast of current ballplayers as co-hosts.

Jomboy secured $1 million in February 2021 from a group of new and existing investors that included filmmaker Eli Roth, Chicago Cubs outfielder Ian Happ, and former Major League Baseball players Plouffe and Josh Satin. They have used the money to hire accomplished media people for the company’s new shows, expand a sales staff, and raise employee compensation to industry standards.