Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders

You know that daily commute that just feels like a waste of time sometimes? I’ve got just the solution to add efficiency and a rewarding feeling to those time fragments.

I put together a rundown of entrepreneurial podcasts to avoid another doom scroll, and made sure they come packed with first-hand industry experience. Let’s go.

1. StartUp

StartUp is an American podcast from Gimlet Media hosted by Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow. While the first two seasons follow stories of starting businesses — Season 1 about the starting of Gimlet Media itself, and Season 2, a dating company called “Dating Ring” — the third season follows one business per episode.

2. CTRL SHIFT!

Featured on the Apple Podcast Top, CTRL SHIFT! stories from different industries across the globe have one common feature — an unexpected pivot that led to success. A CEO going from a typical startup to an award-winning social enterprise, career shifts in the design world, game theory applied in medicine, and even the story of how rosé became a premium wine.

3. Masters of Scale

Masters of Scale is a business and finance podcast hosted by Reid Hoffman. In each episode, Hoffman introduces a theory on how successful businesses scale, and tests its validity by interviewing founders about their path to scale, including guests from Netflix, Starbucks, Slack, etc. Episodes also feature brief “cameo” appearances from other founders and experts in different industries who build on Hoffman’s theories.

4. How I built this

Guy Raz interviews the world’s best-known entrepreneurs to learn how they built their brands. In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure, and share insights on their eventual success.

5. The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter, best known for his book The 4-Hour Workweek. In this show, he deconstructs world-class performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc.), digging deep to find the tools, tactics, and tricks listeners can use.