Pick by host, not by brand: Every show here is named by the person behind the mic, because the host decides which questions get asked and which ones get skipped.
Founders interviewing founders are the strongest format: John Collison of Stripe (Cheeky Pint) and Rob Walling, who most recently sold Drip, ask the follow-up a journalist wouldn't know to ask.
Video is where the new shows live: TBPN launched in March 2025 as a daily live show on YouTube and X, and How I Built This starts publishing video on YouTube this fall.
Europe has its own feed: Sifted's Startup Europe podcast covers the founders and operators building on this side of the Atlantic, every week.
Want the investor view? That's a separate list, and it lives on the best venture capital podcasts page.
The best podcasts for startup founders at a glance
Each row names the host, what the show is known for, and who gets the most out of it. Every link goes to a page you can check in one click.
| Host (show) | Known for | Who should listen | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Collison (Cheeky Pint) | Stripe's cofounder interviewing founders and CEOs over a pint | Founders scaling after a Series A | Apple Podcasts |
| Reid Hoffman (Masters of Scale) | How companies grow, from the LinkedIn cofounder's 2017 show | Founders between seed and Series B | Apple Podcasts |
| Guy Raz (How I Built This) | Over 700 founder origin stories since 2016 | First-time founders before product-market fit | TheWrap |
| Rob Walling (Startups for the Rest of Us) | Over 800 episodes on bootstrapped and lightly funded SaaS | Founders who want revenue before a round | Show page |
| Sam Parr and Shaan Puri (My First Million) | Business ideas, from a host who sold The Hustle to HubSpot | Founders hunting for the next idea or channel | Interview |
| David Senra (Founders) | One deep biography of a great founder per episode | Founders who learn best from history | Show page |
| John Coogan and Jordi Hays (TBPN) | A daily live tech show on YouTube and X since March 2025 | Founders who watch more than they listen | The Next Web |
| John Thornhill (Startup Europe, The Sifted Podcast) | Weekly interviews with European founders, operators and investors | Founders building in Europe | Sifted |
What makes a startup podcast worth a founder's week?
A startup podcast is worth your hours when you can take one thing from an episode and run it at your company that week. Most of the lists ranking the best startup podcasts mix 3 very different jobs into one feed: inspiration, news and how-to. That's why you end up subscribed to 20 shows and finishing none.
I picked these 8 on 3 tests. The host has built something, or interviews people who have and asks the follow-up. The show is about building and scaling a company, so investor-hosted shows like 20VC, the a16z feeds and Acquired sit on the VC podcasts list instead. And there's a sourced reason for each one, which you can check in a click.
I've built 4 companies and sold 2 of them, and the problem in front of me changed at every stage. So pick the show for this quarter's problem and use this list like a menu (your commute is not infinite).
The 8 best podcasts for startup founders in 2026
There's no ranking inside the list. Each one does a different job, and the stage section below says which to start with.
John Collison (Cheeky Pint)
Cheeky Pint is Stripe's cofounder interviewing founders, builders and leaders over a pint. The 2026 run is a list of the people founders actually study: Christina Cacioppo of Vanta on compliance at scale, Bret Taylor of Sierra on AI agents and outcome-based pricing, and Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs on voice AI.
It works because Collison has scaled a company himself, so he asks about the operating detail instead of the origin myth. Start with the Pieter Levels episode, which Levels wrote up on his own blog in July 2025. They argue about whether you need venture money at all, which is a useful hour to sit through before you raise.
Reid Hoffman (Masters of Scale)
Hoffman cofounded LinkedIn, and Masters of Scale has been running since 2017, with 747 episodes on how leaders grew their companies. He's also a Greylock partner, but the show's subject is the operator's side of growth, and it now has other hosts in the rotation too.
Recent episodes stay close to the build. One has Hipcamp founder Alyssa Ravasio on building a marketplace from scratch, and another has Kalshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara on the lawsuits and the long game. It's the show I'd point a founder to between seed and Series B, when the question shifts from "does anyone want this" to "how do we grow it without breaking it".
Guy Raz (How I Built This)
Raz created How I Built This at NPR in 2016 and has hosted it ever since, and the show has released more than 700 episodes. In late September he agreed to take full ownership of it from NPR, with Vox Media handling the business side.
The format is the founding story told end to end, including the parts where it nearly died. That makes it the most useful show here before product-market fit, because you hear how often the version that worked was the third or fourth one. Video episodes start on YouTube later this fall, and the show plans to double its episode count in early 2027.
Rob Walling (Startups for the Rest of Us)
Walling has started 6 companies, 5 of them bootstrapped, and most recently sold Drip. He also cofounded TinySeed, an accelerator for B2B SaaS. His show, Startups for the Rest of Us, is past 800 episodes and 15 million downloads.
This is the show for founders who'd rather get to revenue than to a round. The advice is specific and unglamorous: pricing, churn, the first channel, when to hire. If you're not sure venture is right for your company yet, listen to a month of this before you build a pitch deck.
Sam Parr and Shaan Puri (My First Million)
Parr sold The Hustle to HubSpot in February 2021, and the podcast went with it. In an interview about the sale, he explains how My First Million started at 60,000 downloads for its first episode, fell to around 10,000, and only grew after 2 years of releasing 2 to 3 episodes a week.
That growth story is the lesson, honestly. The show itself is Parr and Puri pulling apart business ideas and the people making money from them, which makes it the best feed here for spotting a channel or a niche you hadn't considered.
David Senra (Founders)
On Founders, each episode is an in-depth biography of one successful business leader. Recent ones cover Sam Walton, Michael Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg, and the catalog is past 430 episodes.
There are no guests and no news. Senra reads one person's life and the decisions that mattered, so you don't have to. It's the right show when you're stuck on a problem and want to know how someone else handled the same thing 50 years ago.
John Coogan and Jordi Hays (TBPN)
TBPN launched in March 2025 as a live show that airs daily on YouTube and X for about 3 hours. Both hosts are former tech founders, and the guest list has run from Mark Zuckerberg to Satya Nadella.
It's also a startup story in its own right: about $5 million of ad revenue in 2025, on track for more than $30 million this year with 11 employees. One thing to weigh before you make it your daily feed. OpenAI acquired TBPN in April 2026, and says the show keeps its editorial independence, so listen to its AI coverage with that in mind.
John Thornhill (Startup Europe, The Sifted Podcast)
Startup Europe is Sifted's weekly show about European tech. John Thornhill interviews founders, operators and investors building Europe's startups, and Freya Pratty runs a second segment with Sifted's journalists on the companies they've been covering.
If you're building in Europe, most of the shows above will describe a funding market and a hiring market that aren't quite yours. Start with the January 2026 episode on the 26 startups Sifted is watching this year, which doubles as a map of which cities and sectors are moving.
Which show to start with, by stage
Your listening hours are a budget, so spend them on the problem you actually have this quarter. If you haven't found product-market fit, start with Guy Raz and Rob Walling, and pair them with the pre-seed guide to first customers.
From seed to Series B, Masters of Scale and Cheeky Pint carry the most operating detail. The Series A playbook covers the same stretch in writing, and the stage playbooks hub has every stage from pre-seed to Series C.
If you want the books behind half of these episodes, there's a best startup books list too. And if growth marketing is the bottleneck, the growth marketing experts page and the B2B marketing podcasts roundup go deeper on that one job.
Prefer to watch? The best YouTube channels for startups right now are TBPN, Cheeky Pint and, from this fall, How I Built This. If you're looking for people to put on a stage rather than in your earbuds, the marketing keynote speakers list is built for that.
Hear how VCs got their companies through each stage
Founder shows tell you how one company did it. Investors watch the same stage play out across a whole portfolio, and that's the angle I'm building Sell That S*it! around. Every season-one guest is a VC, and each episode breaks down how one of their companies got from one stage to the next.
Season one is filming now and no episodes are out yet. Use the newsletter box at the bottom of this page and you'll get them when they land.
FAQs about the best podcasts for startup founders
What are the best podcasts for founders scaling after a Series A? Start with John Collison's Cheeky Pint, where 2026 guests include Vanta's Christina Cacioppo on compliance at scale and DoorDash's Tony Xu. Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale is the other one, because the whole show is about how leaders grew their companies.
What are the best podcasts about how startups get from seed to Series B? Masters of Scale covers that stretch most directly, with episodes like Alyssa Ravasio on building Hipcamp's marketplace from scratch. For the investor view of the same stretch, the VC podcasts page lists the shows hosted by people who fund it.
Which startup podcasts are hosted by founders who have exited a company? Rob Walling (Startups for the Rest of Us) has multiple exits and most recently sold Drip. Sam Parr (My First Million) sold The Hustle to HubSpot in 2021.
What are the best video podcasts for startup founders on YouTube? TBPN streams live on YouTube and X daily, and Cheeky Pint publishes its episodes on YouTube too. How I Built This starts posting video episodes on YouTube later this fall.
What are the best podcasts for startup founders in Europe? Sifted's Startup Europe is the weekly show built for it, with John Thornhill interviewing founders, operators and investors building in Europe. The Pieter Levels episode of Cheeky Pint is also worth an hour, since Levels talks through his push to cut regulatory burden in Europe.
What are the best new startup podcasts in 2026? The newest shows on this list are TBPN, which launched in March 2025, and Cheeky Pint, whose early episodes date to mid-2025 and which has had guests like Sundar Pichai and Evan Spiegel this year. How I Built This is old, but its video version on YouTube is new this fall.
About the author
Alex Muresan is a 4x founder with 2 exits. He built his first company, a physical entertainment center, to 60 employees and $2M in annual revenue in his early 20s. His second exit came in 2026, when he sold a media company. He took an AI startup from 0 to $600K ARR in 5 months, and at his current startup he took revenue from $800K to $1.4M ARR in his first 3 months. He also hosts Sell That S*it!, where every guest in season one is a VC.
Part of the stage playbooks: what to do for growth at pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and Series C. The glossary →