The Best of Tech Podcasts
Published in
7 min readJan 21, 2016
Read the highlights from 16 tech podcasts, and listen to the episodes you’ve missed.
a16z Podcast
Highlights
- People prefer to pay for tangible goods, find to bundle your intangible products.
- Unbundling of financial institutions through software.
- Making a successful podcast comes down to nailing four core aspects: user experience (voice modulation, editing and soundtrack), discoverability, engagement tracking and branding.
- Podcasts are the future of content marketing.
- Every innovation entails a risk, but is worth it since we gain so much.
- Software is entering the physical world where there are regulators like the FDA.
Listen
Startup School Radio
Highlights
- If you want to change the world and have a real impact, you should work at a startup.
- The internet has barely affected education.
- Adapt to serve people’s needs, rather than force use cases.
- Competitors can’t be successful in copying your model as they don’t understand the intent behind your decisions.
- Speed of iteration is essential for the survival of startups.
- Regulators don’t have a vendetta against medtech innovation. Healthcare companies should understand the potential risks to patients and mitigate them.
Listen
What’s Tech?
Highlights
- Reblogging used to be controversial.
- Chris Neukirchen came up with the original tumblelog.
- Every social media network goes through a phase where they pay creators for original content.
Listen
Hack To Start
Highlights
- Taking a job at a tiny startup has a steep learning curve.
- Always optimize for learning.
- Fintech is an uncomfortable space when it comes to growth, but is more than it appears.
- Going from the lab to customer development for sake of transparency in science funding.
- You have to stay in tune with your users while scaling.
- Anyone can be a scientist.
Listen
- Previous Episodes
- Listen on iTunes
- Listen on SoundCloud
- @FrancoVarriano
- @tylercopeland
- @hacktostart
- Show Notes
Re/code Decode hosted by Kara Swisher
Highlights
- The tactics for managing a winning football team can also be applied to venture capital.
- Successful leaders are persistent and are obsessed about one thing.
- The best startups demand high performance.
- Technology infuses so many more sectors than it used to.
- On-demand food services are infantilizing San Francisco millennials.
- In the future, self-driving cars will pick up food for you from distribution centers.
Listen
Startup Grind Podcast
Highlights
- Being a brand, rather than a platform, allows you to control the entire experience and deliver an incredible one.
- Experiment to find out what people truly care about.
- Build a customer base before launching.
- You need to discover new ideas in a rapidly changing market.
- Mcommerce is growing faster than ecommerce.
- Invest in people, and build a diverse team.
Listen
Product Hunt Radio
Highlights
- You can’t recruit the same top performers everyone else is trying to hire.
- Don’t try to pick a rocket ship, before it’s a rocket ship.
- The real estate market is the biggest market in the world that hasn’t been affected by technology.
- One day, a machine will diagnose and treat you.
- Can audio go viral? Can Virtual Reality go viral?
- There is less of a divide between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, as things like Virtual Reality blur the line between tech and entertainment.
Listen
Reply All
Highlights
- Podcasts: almost as popular as soup in summer.
- The internet gave consumers a voice against businesses.
- Using technology to ruin a competitor’s career.
- Site owners can’t be responsible for the content people create.
- Technology can’t make people better or worse. However, it can give us new options for how to behave.
- Tech is providing evidence of racism.
Listen
Robot Overlordz
Highlights
- Older generations are used to one-way communication.
- Media has become interactive.
- Connections that start online deepen significantly after a face-to-face.
- Are we going to let corporations build AI and decide on the future of human evolution?
- There’s a tendency for futurists to discuss market trends rather than the ethics of technology.
- Open source software, the creative commons movement, and functioning democracies have all been positive trends powered by technology.
Listen
FemgineerTV
Highlights
- Making audio searchable for future access.
- Communication workshops with a neutral third party helps improve communication and empathy between co-founders.
Listen
Building The Future
Highlights
- Automate repetitive tasks that take time away from your core skills.
- One software company solves social good, team-building, and recruiting.
- How to become an angel investor.
- Email Newsletters & E-Signatures — No PDFs, Apps, Faxes Or Scanners Necessary.
- Changing The Way The World Collects Business Information And Insights.
- Grow your network with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Listen
The Pitch
Highlights
- A startup is crowdfunding a 100 homes in a 100 days, and will share the video of families moving with donors.
- Even companies that offer a great experience need to plan for re-engagement after the initial press and word-of-mouth spike.
- A CPM approach allows a startup to capture value early on and monetize without worrying about conversations.
- Startup Positioning: Ad Network vs. Deals Platform.
Listen
StartUp Podcast
Highlights
- Declining money from a despicable VC.
- Investors start asking tough questions after you’re done riding the YC wave.
- Experiencing sexism as a female founder.
- All the fundraising hacks and tips are secondary to believing in what you’re doing, and knowing it is good.
Listen
The Reboot Podcast
Highlights
- Constant public rankings and discussion of VC’s performance makes them anxious, and they end up putting pressure on their portfolio companies.
- You shouldn’t associate the success of your portfolio or company with your own self-worth.
- One day you’re the hero, the next day you’re the goat.
- Founders are artists, who can’t expect to replicate their way to success.
Listen
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
Highlights
- Embracing a rookie mindset.
- How challenges can lead the way for growth.
- New entrepreneurs should get comfortable with every worse case scenario before launching, which is more comforting than being scared of the unknown.
- Beware of the fake it till you make mentality, it’s okay until you start lying to yourself.
- Ship with the knowledge that it will change, instead of waiting for it to be perfect.
Listen
Traction with Jay Acunzo
Highlights
- The process for finding any speaker is already flawed, so it makes it even harder to find diverse speakers even if you’re trying.
- Clicks on your content are more meaningful when you can see the names of each person.
- An algorithm doesn’t have any bias.
- As the barrier for creating a startup gets lower and doesn’t require a technical background, more diverse ideas and models will start to appear.
Listen
