Rexburg entrepreneur builds what he calls the ‘best podcasting software on the planet.’ Here’s what’s next

REXBURG — For more than two decades, entrepreneur Nathan Gwilliam has been quietly shaping some of the most influential digital platforms in the world.

Today, the Rexburg resident is turning his experience toward the new frontier of an all-in-one podcasting company called PodUp, a venture he believes is poised to become a billion-dollar business.

Gwilliam’s path to entrepreneurship began as a young missionary serving in Brazil in the early 1990s. During his two years there, he developed a deep love for the country’s street children.

“The internet was exploding by 1993,” Gwilliam said. “I came back (from my mission) and saw this opportunity with the internet. It felt like homesteading back in the Old West, where you could just go find land and homestead on it. If you stayed there for a number of years and did a good job with it, you would own that land, and it would sustain you. I decided that I want to stake my claim on adoption, and I wanted to help children and families with the adoption process.”

With the Brazilian orphans he had come to know and love in mind, Gwilliam realized he could use emerging digital tools to help vulnerable children.

Accordingly, during his junior year at Brigham Young University he launched Adoption.com, an online platform that pioneered the digital adoption experience for prospective parents and adoption clinics. It also helped adoptees search for their biological relatives. The company won BYU’s Business Plan Competition in 1997 and grew into one of the largest adoption resources in the world.

Over the next two decades, Gwilliam built and sold multiple digital platforms, including one to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called Social Nexus. As part of the acquiring agreement, he joined Deseret Digital Media under CEO and Harvard professor Clark Gilbert and went on to play a key role in reshaping the church’s digital reach.

Using a methodology he calls Passion Marketing, Gwilliam and his team reorganized the church’s digital strategy around targeted interest-based channels such as “I Love My Family” and “I Love Jesus Christ,” rather than traditional brand pages. The approach won great results, and Deseret Digital’s combined social media following grew from under 100,000 to more than 130 million. At its peak, the family-focused network the company built reached 280 million unique visitors monthly.

After years working in Utah, Gwilliam and his family relocated to Rexburg. Using a data-driven rubric, they selected the small college town as the ideal place to raise their daughters, valuing its community feel, religious environment and distance from Utah’s poor air quality. From Rexburg, Gwilliam reacquired Adoption.com, ran it locally, and later sold it again in 2019.

But it was during this period that the seeds of his next major project took root.

Gwilliam had been publishing a daily podcast at the urging of mentor, digital-marketing leader Russell Brunson. The process quickly exposed cumbersome flaws and challenges involved in hosting, editing, distributing, and marketing a podcast. The endeavor required more than 30 unique tools, none of which were integrated, he says, and cost thousands of dollars while demanding hours of daily labor, even after recording was finished.

“I realized somebody was going to build the ‘Shopify of podcasting,’ a single platform that brings all the tools together,” Gwilliam said. “And I thought it might as well be me.”

Gwilliam’s realization became the foundation for PodUp, a comprehensive podcasting platform built over several years by Gwilliam’s team of developers in the U.S. and India.

PodUp combines more than 60 tools — recording, editing, AI features, websites, distribution, social clips, guest booking, monetization modules, and more — into one system.

The company also offers a full-service talent agency called PodAllies, which books podcast guests, edits videos, writes blog posts, manages marketing and guarantees traffic for clients.

Today, PodUp serves medical clinics, adoption agencies, influencers, and entrepreneurs across the country, including some local clients in Shelley and Idaho Falls, and it offers international services. It services Heart to Heart Adoptions, a wellness company and notable personalities such as Eileen Noyes, host of “The Unsidelined Life,” a rapidly growing podcast for spouses of high-profile professionals.

Gwilliam believes the opportunity in podcasting is enormous. The global podcasting industry was valued at $24 billion in 2024 and is projected to exceed $130 billion by 2030. But beyond the market size, he sees a cultural shift.

“Podcasting feels like the early days of the internet,” he said. “It’s a new frontier where everyday people can stake a claim. If they create great content and stay consistent, they can build a meaningful business.”

PodUp now supports more than 40 employees globally and offers software packages starting at $25 a month. The company’s long-term vision is to become a billion-dollar leader in podcast technology.

And from his home in Rexburg, Gwilliam believes it’s well on its way.

“We’ve built what I think is the best podcasting software on the planet,” he said. “Now it’s just a matter of helping people find it.”

Click here to find out more about PodUp.