Founder & CEO

TapeTales

Founding Greece's first subscription-only audiobook platform and building a market from scratch.

TapeTales was founded by myself and my co-founder, Dimitris Peppas (CTO), as the first subscription-only audiobook platform in Greece. At the time, the audiobook market in Greece was non-existent: there were no competitors, no consumer adoption, and no available audiobook catalog.

The Challenge:

Launching TapeTales meant creating both the product and the market from scratch. The obstacles were significant:

  • No existing content: Greece had no audiobook catalog to license.
  • Limited partnerships: We secured one publisher, but most large publishers had already signed exclusivity deals with a competitor.
  • Reluctant stakeholders: Even after we created a narrator network, publishers were unwilling to invest capital in audiobook production.
  • Unfamiliar customers: Greek consumers had little awareness of audiobooks, requiring us to educate the market while introducing a new product experience.

This combination meant that TapeTales had to succeed not by outcompeting others, but by proving the viability of the audiobook format itself.

The Solution:

With limited content and stakeholder support, our strategy was to differentiate through product quality and user experience.

  • Focused MVP: Instead of trying to solve everything, we launched with the single publisher who partnered with us and built a lean catalog to validate demand.
  • UX-first approach: We designed a seamless subscription app with intuitive onboarding, simple playback, and clear pricing.
  • Premium brand identity: We crafted a modern, trustworthy brand that signaled professionalism and reliability.
  • Scalable production model: We developed a narrator network and studio pipeline to prepare for future growth.
  • Education through design: We designed the app experience to both showcase the value of audiobooks and teach users how to engage with them.

Revenue Share Model:

As part of building TapeTales, I developed Greece's first audiobook subscription revenue share model. With no local benchmarks, I researched international best practices, adapted them to the realities of the Greek publishing market, and created a transparent system that balanced publisher incentives with long-term platform growth. This work positioned me as the country's leading expert on revenue share business models in digital publishing.

The Outcome:

Although our catalog remained constrained due to exclusivity barriers, TapeTales achieved key milestones:

  • Validated that a subscription model for audiobooks could work in Greece.
  • Delivered the first UX benchmark for audiobook apps in the local market.
  • Built trust with early adopters through a frictionless and premium product experience.
  • Positioned ourselves as credible pioneers, despite structural limitations on growth.

The Acquisition:

In 2023, TapeTales was acquired by Bookvoice. My co-founder and I joined as Head of Product and Head of Engineering, where we leveraged the lessons from TapeTales to scale Bookvoice's infrastructure, expand content offerings, and transform the overall customer experience.

Press & Media:

Εξαγορά (Acquihire) Audiobooks: TapeTales από Bookvoice - Eanagnostis.gr

Learnings as a Product Manager:

TapeTales was a formative experience in product leadership under constraint. It taught me how to:

  • Prioritize ruthlessly: focus on what delivers value when resources and content are limited.
  • Balance supply and demand dynamics: design a product that works with minimal content while preparing for scale.
  • Drive adoption in a new category: create onboarding and flows that educate users as much as they engage them.
  • Bridge product and strategy: use product quality as a lever to convince skeptical stakeholders and build market trust.
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