The 12 Best Podcasts For Entrepreneurs
Photo by Patrick Breitenbach
The first season was a breakthrough, with host Alex Blumberg taking listeners inside a startup from conception to funding and many more challenges. That startup: his own, podcast network Gimlet Media. The second season, which ended this summer, switched to follow Dating Ring, a dating company founded by two women in the 20s. Some of the challenges were similar, others different—including founder disagreements and sexism.
Built To Sell
Built To Sell fills a very specific niche: addressing how and when and why to sell your business. Serial entrepreneur John Warrillow wrote one of the best business books of 2011, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, which discussed how to create a company that you can eventually sell. Now he talks every week to a recently cashed-out entrepreneur to learn more about that process.
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This new podcast, started in July, comes from Y Combinator, the accelerator behind companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Zenefits, and Instacart. The show, hosted by YC partner Aaron Harris and former cofounder of failed tutoring marketplace startup Tutorspree, talks practical advice on starting, funding, and scaling companies through interviews with founders. A weekly extension of YC’s Startup School conference, it’s worth checking out.
The Pitch
Enjoy Shark Tank, but want something with a little less fake reality TV drama? You’ll like The Pitch, a podcast where early stage startups pitch their company and then three investors give real feedback and talk about whether or not they will invest—and why. A different startup and investor group every two weeks, The Pitch will keep you hooked.
Collective Wisdom For Tech Startups
Some podcasts stand out as much for the format as the content. A podcast from Founders Collective, a seed-stage venture capital firm that has invested in companies like Uber, Buzzfeed, MakerBot, and SeatGeek, Collective Wisdom is one of those. The show features interviews with founders—and then breaks up each full 30 minute to an hour episode into minute-long bites of wisdom.
She Did It Her Way
Enough with the men. If you’re looking for a women’s perspective on growing a company, look no further than She Did It Her Way. Every week, they talk with a successful female entrepreneur. And it’s a diverse group of startups and people, far from your typical tech company overload.
Reboot
Former venture capitalist Jerry Colonna is now an executive coach. His podcast Reboot focuses less on the business challenges than the psychological issues that founders deal with. On each episode, which come out twice per month, Colonna talks with leaders and business owners about the emotional struggles they face as they try to grow their startups.
Zen Founder
Sticking with the emotional theme, here’s another podcast that looks more at personal health of founders as they juggle work, family, and more. The co-hosts are a serial entrepreneur and a psychologist who specializes in trauma work, a unique combination for learning how to stay sane while starting up.
Rocketship
With three hosts and one startup founder, Rocketship has an unbalanced lineup but an engaging show. At 30 minutes per episode, this is an easy to digest conversational interview that you can learn from—and it’s prolific too, with two episodes per week for the last year and a half.
a16z
Want a window into the world of a top venture capital firm? Look no further than Andreessen Horowitz’s flagship podcast. This is a prolific podcast, often producing multiple episodes per week, is typically made up of interviews with startup founders and various partners and analysts at the firm. Good insight here not just into growing a business with venture capitals, but also into tech trends in general.
Re/code Decode
If you’re a tech entrepreneur, Re/code Decode is a great view into the decisions of some of the biggest and most successful tech founders and CEOs. Kara Swisher, with a mostly no-nonsense interview style, hosts Silicon Valley veterans like Marc Andreessen, Slack’s Stuart Butterfield, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, and LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner.
Traction
Traction is a podcast focused on going from zero to one: how do you raise your startup from nothing? A podcast from seed fund NextView Ventures, Traction host Jay Acunzo and his guests talk about doing things that may not scale, but help get results.
Brian Solomon writes about entrepreneurs and startups for Forbes. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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