Entrepreneurship 101: Podcasts every entrepreneur should listen to

Now is a glorious time for aspiring entrepreneurs to make their way into the Indian startup ecosystem, which currently has 100 unicorns. 

Today, India ranks third in terms of startups worth $1 billion-plus valuation, coming after the US and China. Recently, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade reported that India registers around 80 startups everyday. 

So starting up shouldn’t be as difficult right? 

Despite being the third-largest ecosystem for startups, about 80 to 90 percent of startups in the country fail within the first five years of their inception. For every Flipkart, Ola, Oyo, or Paytm, there are 90 failed startups. 

While YourStory never fails to take an opportunity to take pride in the overachievers of the startup ecosystem, Entrepreneurship 101 applauds the challenges that all founders go through every day in their entrepreneurial journey. And what’s a better way to learn than from the failures and challenges of those who made it to the top? 

With this in mind, YourStory has curated a list of podcasts that every entrepreneur should be listening to, to learn and implement in their journeys. 

How To Start A Startup 

How To Start A Startup is a series of lectures delivered at Stanford University in 2014, converted into a podcast. These lectures were delivered by Samuel H Altman, popularly known as Sam Altman, the CEO of AI-research lab OpenAI. 

The series answers important questions including why one should start a startup, advice for ambitious 19-year olds, how to hire, build a product and finally, what to do once the product-market fit is achieved. Additionally, Altman also shares lessons on business strategy, monopoly theory, raising funds, and company culture. 

Why should one listen to this? Besides the invaluable lessons that one can learn from the sessions, How To Start A Startup comes from the former President of Y Combinator– tech startup accelerator that has launched more than 3,000 startups, including the likes of Airbnb, Coinbase, Dropbox and Reddit. 

The Pitch 

Hosted by Josh Muccio, The Pitch is an independent podcast by Gimlet Media. It is almost like the podcast version of Shark Tank where real entrepreneurs go to investors for funds. The episodes cover it all– from the pitch, to follow up questions, and acceptance or rejection by investors, and the reasons for the same.  

The Pitch is a great way for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs to learn how to elevate pitch to investors, understand what goes into an acceptable pitch, questions they need to prepare for, and how investors come to a conclusion. The Pitch releases a new episode every Wednesday. 

Startup School Radio 

Another podcast series from Y Combinator, Startup School Radio is hosted by Aaron Harris, Partner at the startup accelerator. The podcast series focuses on stories from startup founders and investors on starting a company, failures and challenges, lessons on scaling up, and more. 

Originally the sessions were broadcasted by Wharton School on Sirius XM’s Business Radio.  Every week Harris hosts two guests. Some of the interesting guests invited so far include Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham and partner Yuri Sagalov, Insight Data Science founder Jake Klamka, Comprehend co-founder Rick Morrison, Suhail Doshi of Mixpanel and Docker founder Solomon Hykes, among others.

Through this podcast, entrepreneurs can learn how to start, scale and fund early-stage startups. 

a16z 

VC firm Andreessen Horowitz-produced podcast a16z is the go-to podcast for entrepreneurs to stay up-to-date with the trends of the Indian startup ecosystem. Besides covering tech news and trend highlights, a16z also discusses tech innovations by techies, builders, authors and emerging voices in the respective fields. 

The series will not only equip tech entrepreneurs with the latest updates but also help them prepare for the future software world. 

Some interesting episodes by a16z include ‘The Founder to Investor Journey,’ ‘Tesla and the Nature of Disruption,’ ‘Feedback Loops- Company Culture, Change and DevOps,’ ‘AI, WbRTC, Crypto and Full Stack Startups,’ and ‘Inside Apple Software Design,’ among others. 

Around three to four episodes are released each week.

100x Entrepreneur 

A product of India, 100x Entrepreneur is a series hosted by seasoned entrepreneur and venture capitalist Siddhartha Ahluwalia. The startup focused podcast brings in the best of the best of the startup ecosystem to share their journey, mindset and habits that make them successful. 

100x Entrepreneur has hosted more than 100 guests so far including the likes of Kunal Bahl (CEO, Snapdeal), Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Sequoia Capital), Deepak Shenoy (Founder of Capitalmind), Vamsi Krishna (Co-founder, Vedantu), and Vani Kalo (MD, Kalaari Capital), among others. 

To know about the five books that every entrepreneur must read, click here.