GetForward has rounded up compelling podcasts that include some quality food for thought regarding business building, entrepreneurship, and leadership. If you’re curious how future-proof businesses are born and how to make them thrive, these are the podcasts to dig into.
a16z
The a16z Podcast is the go-to place for discussions about technology, innovation, and change as it impacts all our lives. It covers everything from tech trends and culture to company building for companies of all sizes. As technology changes everything — not just in Silicon Valley or in traditional “tech” companies, but across all industries — it’s also changing the way we all work, live, eat, learn, and play.
As a result, this is a perfect show for builders, for the tech curious, for anyone seeking to understand the future, now, through carefully curated, in-depth yet accessible, nuanced conversations with top industry and academic experts from around the world; company leaders, builders, makers; book authors; and emerging voices.
HBR IdeaCast
A timeless classic: Harvard Business Review’s a weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management. With over 800 episodes, it’s one of the most reliable audio sources of quality information for entrepreneurs out there. One of the noteworthy recent episodes would be with the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony, professor of strategy at HEC, talking about “noise” that prevents even the smartest of us from making the right decisions.
How I Built This
Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world’s best-known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists—and the movements they built. The episodes include interviews with founders of Canva, Patreon, Airbnb, Yelp, and Chipotle.
How to fail
Elizabeth Day and her guests aren’t discussing business per se, but a crucial aspect of it: failure. How to Fail reminds you to celebrate the things that haven’t gone right, and the impressive guest lineup proves that failing makes for a great story. You’ll hear celebrities, artists, leaders, and people with fascinating life stories.
To mention a few: Ed Miliband, who openly talks about anxiety, personal failures as well as the 2015 general election he didn’t win. Nicole LePera (known as The Holistic Psychologist) shares her thoughts on failing at marriage, failing at work, and family estrangement. Mo Gawdat, the former chief business officer for Google X, joins for a special episode on dealing with anxiety and isolation in the times of Coronavirus.
The Dropout
If you want to know how NOT to build a business, the story of Theranos and deceitful Elizabeth Holmes is the one for the books. The youngest self-made female billionaire was about to make history. After dropping out of Stanford, her star began rising miraculously quickly. She managed to persuade the world that Theranos could detect hundreds of diseases just from a few drops of blood. But all of that was an elaborate lie. Fast forward to today, and Holmes could spend 20 years in prison on wire fraud charges. The podcast recruited people who were there as Theranos crumbled. You’ll hear from former employees, investors, and patients, and it makes for a thrilling listen.
The Tim Ferriss Show
It’s not like anyone can exclude this podcast on any list about entrepreneurship: or maybe on any podcast list. After all, Tim Ferriss is the Oprah of audio, and his show is regularly topping the charts. It even became the first business/interview podcast to pass 100,000,000 downloads (now it’s at 600 million). Ferriss interviews people who are very, very good at what they do: whatever it may be. Let’s face it: when you can get people like Neil Gaiman, Jane Goodall, Peter Thiel, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Naval Ravikant to share their favorite routines and go-to tactics, you know that something special is going on.
This Week in Startups
This podcast gives you an insider’s look into venture capital and helps you learn how to start and scale your own startup and ride the cutting edge of technology in today’s headlines and beyond. Angel investor Jason Calacanis (Uber, Calm, Robinhood) interviews the world’s greatest founders, operators, investors, and innovators. And true to its name, it’s also a very convenient spot to listen to the best and sometimes even outrageous news from the startup world that happens every week.
WeCrashed
This podcast dissects the borderline unbelievable story of WeWork’s downfall. Or, in other words, it demonstrates how to “tell the difference between a unicorn and a donkey”. WeCrash tells the story of Adam Neumann, a man who, among other fantasies, had planned to live forever. On top of that, also wanted to become the world’s first trillionaire AND the president of the world. Supported by billions in funding, his co-founders and he went on insane spending sprees. On top of that, they turned the company into something fairly reminiscent of a cult. When the business filed for an IPO, its $47 billion valuation was reduced to shocking $10-12 billion. And while Neumann was removed as the CEO, he still walked away with a ridiculously high severance package of $1.7 billion.
Naturally, it’s too much of a great story to leave it only in audio. And so the podcast will serve as the basis for an upcoming TV show. The creators have clearly understood the potential: Oscar winners Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway will star as Neumann and his wife.
