Best venture capital podcasts in 2026, ranked on go-to-market

The 8 venture capital podcasts at a glance

Every host below either invests for a living or used to. Every episode I point to is one I opened before writing about it. If you run growth at a B2B company, this table is the short version.

What is a venture capital podcast?

A venture capital podcast is a show hosted by an investor, or by a fund, where the conversation is about how startups get built and funded. Some interview other VCs about their bets. The more useful ones interview the founders and operators inside portfolio companies, with an investor asking the questions.

That second kind is what this page ranks. A VC has watched the same motion work in some companies and stall in others (that's the whole job), so a good one knows which follow-up question gets past the press-release version. If you want podcasts where VCs talk about startup growth instead of their own fund returns, that's the filter.

For the founder-hosted shows, I wrote a separate list of the best podcasts for startup founders. For marketing-specific shows, start with my review of the best B2B marketing podcasts.

How I ranked them

I ranked on one question: after an episode, do you know something about how a real company sold that you didn't know before? Shows that name the segment, the first hires, the pricing call and the mistake rank higher. Shows that tell a great story about a company's history rank lower, even when the story is better.

I've carried a revenue number myself, so I listen for the parts most hosts skip. I took an AI startup from zero to $600K ARR in 5 months, and the useful episodes were always the ones where somebody admitted what they got wrong in the first 2 quarters.

Every show here is free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. No show paid to be here, and nobody on the list is somebody to hire.

The best venture capital podcasts, ranked

1. Harry Stebbings (20VC)

20VC describes itself as operating at the intersection of venture and media, and Harry Stebbings is the reason most people found it. The part a growth leader should care about is the 20Sales series, where he interviews revenue leaders instead of investors.

Start with Matt Plank, Rippling's CRO, from December 20, 2024. Plank joined Rippling when it had $0 in revenue, and the episode covers deal reviews, pipeline reviews, which reasons for a slipped deal are acceptable and which aren't, and whether founders should write the sales playbook. That last one is worth the whole hour if you're a founder still running every deal.

2. Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)

Jason Lemkin started the SaaStr blog by writing up his own mistakes, became a partner at Storm Ventures, and now runs SaaStr Fund. His show is the most consistently B2B venture capital podcast on this list, because almost every episode comes back to how SaaS companies hire, sell and price.

The best way in is episode 500, which he recorded with Harry Stebbings. The advice is specific enough to act on: hire your first reps from people who have sold at your price point, expect quotas of roughly 3 to 5 times fully loaded comp at scale, and expect top VP of Sales candidates to wait until you're near $10M ARR or a big Series A.

3. Joubin Mirzadegan (Grit)

Joubin Mirzadegan is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he helps founders build go-to-market teams, and before that he built sales teams at companies including Palo Alto Networks. He created Grit, and his guests are mostly the CEOs and operators who scaled companies, so the questions come from someone who has run a sales floor.

The episode to start with is Leadership Lessons From Snowflake's Sales and Marketing Duo, from October 6, 2025, with Chris Degnan and Denise Persson. It's 1 hour and 23 minutes of a CRO and a CMO in the same room (rare enough on its own), which is exactly the conversation most B2B companies avoid having internally.

4. Logan Bartlett (The Logan Bartlett Show)

Logan Bartlett is a software investor at Redpoint Ventures, and his show runs on the line that startups grow faster when they learn from those who came before them. Recent guests include Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor, and he asks them about the business more than the headlines.

Play EP 147, How Chris Degnan Built Snowflake's Sales Org From Scratch, from June 13, 2025, right after the Grit episode. Degnan was Snowflake's first sales hire, and here he covers scaling sales past $3B in ARR, along with hiring and enablement. Grit gives you the CRO and CMO together, Bartlett gives you the sales org on its own, and the 2 back to back are worth more than either.

5. Roelof Botha (Crucible Moments)

Sequoia's Roelof Botha hosts Crucible Moments, a series about the decisions that nearly ended companies Sequoia backed. It's beautifully produced and lighter on tactics than the 4 shows above, which is why it sits at 5.

The ServiceNow episode, which opens season 2, is the one for B2B leaders. Fred Luddy started the company after 50, Frank Slootman says on air he didn't think they would survive, and at one point there was a $2.5 billion offer on the table to buy it. Slootman's line on that offer is the best summary of founder versus investor incentives I've heard: "When you're a VC, you're betting on many companies. We only have one."

6. Alex Rampell and Erik Torenberg (a16z Podcast)

The a16z Podcast is the flagship show of Andreessen Horowitz, and the hosts change by episode. Erik Torenberg is a general partner there who runs the firm's marketing and ecosystem orgs, which makes him a useful host for anyone who owns distribution.

Start with Atlassian CEO on the SaaS Apocalypse, from March 6, 2026, where Rampell and Torenberg talk to Mike Cannon-Brookes about the SaaS selloff and why not every software company faces the same AI risk. If your pricing is per seat, listen to this one before your next board meeting.

7. Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (Acquired)

Both hosts used to be venture capitalists, and Ben Gilbert worked at Madrona and Pioneer Square Labs. Acquired spends more than 200 hours researching each episode, and the result is a 4-hour history of one company from founding to today.

The recent episodes are consumer giants like Disney and The Home Depot, so the B2B one to pick is Epic Systems (MyChart), from April 21, 2025. Acquired notes that over 90% of American medical schools' graduating doctors, nurses and administrative staff are trained on Epic. That is a distribution story disguised as a software story (and a good argument for getting into your buyer's training before you get into their budget).

8. Garry Tan, Diana Hu, Harj Taggar and Jared Friedman (Lightcone)

Lightcone is Y Combinator's twice-monthly show, hosted by 4 YC partners. It's mostly about what's newly possible with AI, so it sits last for go-to-market depth, but the guest episodes can be very practical.

The one to play is The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew, from September 12, 2025. McGrew helped pioneer the forward deployed engineer model at Palantir, and he explains why "doing things that don't scale at scale" works. If you sell AI into enterprises, that idea is a sales motion, and this is the clearest explanation of it I've found.

Which venture capital podcast to start with, by problem

Your listening hours are a budget. Spend them on the problem you have this quarter.

• Your reps miss quota and you don't know why: 20VC's Matt Plank episode, for the deal review and slippage questions.

• You're hiring your first sales team: SaaStr episode 500, then the 2 Snowflake episodes.

• Sales and marketing blame each other: Grit's Snowflake episode, because it's a CRO and a CMO who worked it out.

• Your pricing is under pressure from AI: the a16z Atlassian episode.

• You're early and selling AI to enterprises: Lightcone's FDE episode.

If you want people to follow between episodes, my list of growth marketing experts covers the operators, and the best startup books list covers what to read on a flight. For the investor backdrop, my briefing on European versus US venture returns has the numbers.

Hear VCs explain how their companies grew

Most of the best VC podcasts interview the VC. I wanted a show that makes the VC explain one portfolio company's growth, stage by stage, with the go-to-market detail left in.

That's Sell That S*it!, my show. Every season-one guest is a VC, and season one is still filming, so there are no episodes out yet and it doesn't belong in the ranking above.

If you'd like the first episode when it lands, the newsletter box below is the way in.

FAQs about venture capital podcasts

What are the best venture capital podcasts in 2026? For go-to-market detail, my order is 20VC, SaaStr, Grit, The Logan Bartlett Show, Crucible Moments, the a16z Podcast, Acquired and Lightcone. The first 4 spend the most time on how companies actually sold.

What are the best podcasts where VCs explain why they invested in a company? Crucible Moments is built for it, because Sequoia's partners walk through the calls they made on companies like ServiceNow. Its season-2 opener has Sequoia's Doug Leone and Pat Grady on the ServiceNow decisions.

What are the best podcasts where investors break down how one startup grew? Acquired does it at the longest length, with 4-hour single-company histories. For a sales-specific breakdown, play the Snowflake episodes on Grit and The Logan Bartlett Show back to back.

What podcasts are like 20VC but focused on growth and go-to-market? The SaaStr podcast is the closest, since Jason Lemkin is an investor who talks about B2B revenue almost every episode. Grit is the other one, because its host runs go-to-market work for Kleiner Perkins' portfolio.

Is a VC podcast useful if I'm not raising money? Yes, if you pick episodes with operators as guests. A growth leader gets more from a CRO explaining a sales org than from 2 investors discussing valuations.

About the author

Part of the stage playbooks: what to do for growth at pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and Series C. The glossary →