Former Vice UK CEO Matt O’Mara joins podcast company Novel

Matt O’Mara, former CEO of Vice UK, has joined podcast company Novel as Director and Chief Strategy & Operating Officer.

For the past 18 months he has been advising the business on strategy and expansion, with recent business enabling Novel to hire O’Mara permanently in an executive role.

Sean Glynn, Novel’s Founder, says “It’s been a remarkable year of growth at Novel which has seen us quadruple our number of full-time staff. To be able to close out a financial year that surpassed all expectations by hiring someone of Matt’s experience and pedigree is a sign of quite how far we’ve come.

“With Matt’s experience in leading dynamic creative businesses, we’re now ready to take Novel to the next level.”

Matt O’Mara says “since I’ve been working with the Novel team I’ve been blown away by their creativity and their level of ambition. Having spent 19 years working in media and publishing, I’m making the move into podcasting during a period of rapid growth and I couldn’t be more excited to be part of a team that’s at the cutting edge of premium audio production. There are a lot of companies and individuals making podcasts now, but very few that can compete with the premium American businesses, but Novel undoubtedly are.”

Over the course of his career, Matt has also worked at Dazed Group and DC Thomson in executive positions, but over half of his career was at VICE where he oversaw the UK business during a sustained period of creative and commercial success.

He joins Novel as the London-based audio production company is about to launch a slate of original long-form narrative podcasts. Since their foundation in 2017, Novel has produced the Bellingcat Podcast, launched the BBC Radio 4 series Sideways and produced podcast series for BBC Sounds, Audible and Spotify.

Earlier this year, Novel became the first production company in the UK to sign a multi-year slate deal with the world’s biggest podcast network iHeartRadio.