Besides our great newsletter for startups, podcasts are one of the best ways to consume actionable insights, advice and tips on growing startups, and all while performing other tasks like commuting or cold emailing potential customers.
Today, we wanted to shed some light on our favourite podcast’s focused on growth and entrepreneurship. We hope you enjoy.
Jason Calacanis is the founder of Inside and the Launch conference, and a legendary angel investor (Uber, Calm and AdStage). He is also the host and creator of TWiST, a weekly round of interviews and conversations with tech industry experts, founders, VCs and investors.
They cover tech news, and conversations usually centered around growing startups, raising money, hiring and building web products. Some notable guests include Mark Cuban and Travis Kalanick.
One of the best episodes so far for us is a 2 hour-long conversation between Jason and Chris Sacca.
In this podcast, best-selling author and angel investor Tim Ferris talks to world-class performers and tries to dissect how they become masters in their specific fields of knowledge. It isn’t strictly ‘business’, but his business-related episodes are amazing.
Most days, The Tim Ferriss Show is the #1 business podcast on all of iTunes, and it’s been ranked #1 (of all podcasts) on many occasions. It was also selected to iTunes’ “Best of 2014.” Prior guests include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Thiel and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park.
We especially loved the episode with Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic, recently valued at +$1B.
500 Startups is one of the top startup accelerators and early-stage firms in the United States, with investments in hundreds of companies across the world.
Not so long ago, they started a weekly podcast featuring brilliant interviews with alumni, investors and mentors of the 500 Startups network. It focuses on early-stage founders and their stories, frustrations and wins.
If you are a startup CEO this is definitely for you. A great start is this episode, featuring Mattermark’s co-founder, Danielle Morrill.
As Paul Graham mentioned in his blog, startups = growth. If your startup isn’t growing fast, then it’s not a startup. The Growth Show is a podcast created by Hubspot and hosted by Mike Volpe, the company’s CMO.
It focuses 100% on driving growth – growing a business, growing a movement, growing an idea, growing a team. Each week, Mike seats with a guest who has achieved remarkable growth and tries to unpack the process.
The episode with Tom Tunguz, SaaS blogger and VC at RedPoint is brilliant.
Hatching, the Need/Want Podcast
Need/Want is a design studio based in St. Louis. They are responsible for great products like Emoji Masks, the Mod Notebook and SmartBedding. In addition, every other week they host Hatched, a podcast about early stage ideas, experiments and Need/Want.
In their lastest episode they talk about raising money, meditation, their new office and a bunch of cool stuff they are doing.
This brilliant podcast focuses on helping developers, designers and entrepreneurs launch software products. They have over 20 years of experience launching startups, so they know what they are talking about.
Episode 180 is genius – they talk about benefits and drawbacks of SaaS startups for users and founders.
Ryan Hoover is the guy behind Product Hunt, which he created as a side project and has now raised $7.2M from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Alexis Ohanian.
He also launched Product Hunt Radio, a weekly podcast where he talks to founders, investors and product people in the startup community to talk about product and tech.
We really enjoyed episode 12 with the Homebrew guys, Hunter Walk and Satya Patel. Besides, the opening music is addictive.
After more than 1,000 interviews, Andrew Warner knows how to do his job. He asks guests uncomfortable questions to dig deeper into the success and failures of the most successful startup founders and thought leaders. This creates a real, transparent conversation hard to find elsewhere.
Prior guests include Drew Houston, Tim Ferriss and Jason Calacanis, but our favorite interview is with Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, founders of Airbnb. You can listen to this episode for free on iTunes.
If you are a developer, then The Changelog is the podcast for you. They cover the intersection between software and open source, and release a weekly episode so you can keep up with the latest updated. It started in 2009 as a blog, but now they have hundreds of episodes and 160,000 monthly listeners.
Their latest episode with David Heinemeier Hansson covering 10+ years of rails is a must listen for any Ruby on Rails developers.
Rocketship covers interviews with successful entrepreneurs about strategy, growth, fundraising, hiring, and much more. They have dozens of episodes, featuring young entrepreneurs like Mattan Griffel, Ryan Hoover or Pieter Levels.
Their latest episode is a conversation with Mike Belsito, the author of Startup Seed Funding For the Rest of Us. It’s an amazing episode.
Foundation is a video podcast by Kevin Rose that features interviews with the most prominent and successful people in tech and life.
The most attractive quality about Foundation is that Kevin Rose, as a former TV guest, engages the guest in a fascinating way, building an organic conversation(it never comes across as a ‘canned’ interview).
Our favourite episode features Kevin talking with Dennis Crowley, co-founder & CEO at Foursquare, but the most recent one with Jamie Oliver is really good too.
James puts some of the most transparent and eye-opening content out there. He has built and exited several companies, written 11 books including #1 NYT best-sellers, run hedge and ventures funds and has invested in successful tech companies.
He has also lost all his money and gained it back several times, which gives him a unique perspective on things. The podcast features exclusive interviews with top entrepreneurs, authors and investors.
One of the most interesting episodes is an interview with Seth Godin, which you can find here.
Game of Growth is an excellent podcast by the company Truepush. The podcast focuses on growth, marketing, customer engagement, and digital trends. I recently listened to this episode on how direct to consumer company Ten on Ten was able to grow exponentially in 2020. It’s definitely worth a listen for anyone in the D2C space.
Their daily episodes might be a little overwhelming, but you can’t argue with their success – they have recorded over 860 episodes and last month made $269,000 from the podcast its self!
What’s really interesting is how the interviews are structured: first, the guest offers a story of failure; later, the conversation moves onto their success story and the steps required to get there; and finally, 6 rapid fire questions.
It’s impossible to pick the best episode, but the top 10 list is a great starting point.
Pat Flynn and The Smart Passive Income blog have been around for years. It’s one of the best resources out their. In this weekly series you’ll find brilliant information on growing your online business, building an audience, marketing tips and blogging.
I really enjoyed episode 150, where he talks about his daily routine.
William Channer is a British designer, founder and journalist and his goal is to help you build a successful startup by interviewing world-class entrepreneurs, founders, investors and designers. Prior guests include Justin Kan, Jason Fried and Patrick Collison.
The 26 minute episode with Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, is astounding.
Jon Nastor is an extremely interesting guy: he runs a six figure business while travelling the world, spending time with his family and playing the drums in a punk rock band.
Hack The Entrepreneur is a tri-weekly podcast in which Jon shares hacks and information for building a successful business.
Episode 67 with Adii Pienaar, founder of WooThemes, was fascinating listen.
After leaving ‘This American Life’, Alex Blumberg decided to start Gimlet Media, his own podcasting company. In ‘StartUp’ he talks about what it’s really like to start a business.
Across the first season, Alex talks about everything, included getting a co-founder, raising money from investors like Chris Sacca, name picking to team burnout.
When you first visit Adam’s website, the first thing you read is: ‘The Gently Mad is a show about life, business & entrepreneurship without the bullshit’.
He promises honest, meaningful conversation about things that matter, three times a week. Monday and Wednesdays are interviews with successful founders and internet people, and Friday is solo episode.
Episode 27 is called ‘Until You’ve Had 900 Rejections In A Row, You Have No Excuse’ and it’s astounding.
Join Drew Wilson and Keiran Flanigan define Narwhals as ‘individuals that design, code and manage business all themselves.’ That’s why they started this monthly podcast: to talk about design, development, business, family and fun, while making a living building web and mobile products.
In September 2014 they released an episode called Building Products as a Life. You should definitely check it out.
This isn’t strictly a business podcast, but is one of the most fascinating shows we consume. Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose get together every few months in a random place and talk about random stuff: health, tech, traveling, reading, drinking, personal goals and much more.
Their most famous episode is ‘How Kevin Rose and Glenn McElhose Got Scammed In China – Ha!’, which was taped in 2009, and it’s amazing. It’s a little bit outdated but hilarious nevertheless.
The Build Launch podcast is recorded by Justin Jackson who documents the process of building new products every week. The first season is a must listen if you are in the beginning stages of launching your first product, as they cover many aspects you’ll no doubt come across.
We like the Q&A episodes, can recommend you check out “How do you launch if you don’t have an audience?”.
