I got tired of commoditized content for entrepreneurs. Here’s what I started watching instead.
12½ great YouTube channels for entrepreneurs. No Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk or Mark Cuban. Promise.
I’m not the kind of guy that consumes typical entrepreneurship pep spam. I cringe whenever I hear the names Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk or Mark Cuban, not because these people aren’t smart, but because the content associated with their names has become so commoditized it’s completely irrelevant to me.
Too often, content aimed at entrepreneurs is reduced to repeating well-worn catchphrases and habit improvement techniques. Disobedient entrepreneurs are a clever bunch who need clever insight. They want to be exposed to interesting ideas that change their perception of the world and make them feel giddy with the sense of discovery.
It’s this kind of entrepreneur — the disobedient kind — that we’d like to converse with over the pages of this blog. The kind that appreciates weird and feels talked down to by typical “10 habits that changed my life” articles. The kind that prefers sophistication to ease and discovery to the comfort zone.
YouTube is in general quite a populist platform, and straying off the beaten path isn’t always easy. Here are some YouTube channels I genuinely enjoy, and I think you might, too.
Startups
Y Combinator
Interviews with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, office hours from the world’s top startup consultants and streams from startup conferences — this is a YouTube channel powered by Y Combinator’s extensive network.
How to Start a Startup
Cut-the-crap, actionable, real world advice by top tier startup founders on how to start a business, structured like an online course.
Khosla Ventures
Khosla is one of the best venture capital funds the world, and their YouTube channel is chock-full of excellent interviews with their portfolio companies.
Work in Progress
Super authentic daily talks from Basecamp’s founder and CEO, Jason Fried, and Highrise’s CEO, Nathan Kontny.
If you enjoy Work in Progress, check out Nathan’s personal vlog about building his startup, Highrise.
Business
Some of the best business schools in the world have their own YouTube channels broadcasting interviews and classes. Worth a 👀.
Stanford Business School
Columbia Business School
Berkeley-Hass Business School
Storytelling
Nerdwriter
Nerdwriter creates in-depth videos that explore different storytelling aspects and techniques in film, music and media. It’s fascinating, and the videos are exceptionally well made.
Minutephysics
This channel explains complex physical concepts in 1 minute of hand drawn animation. It’s great to see how every idea can be boiled down into a 1 minute humorous youtube video.
Design & development
Flux
A relatively little-known channel in a very well-known space: designer talk. In Flux, Ran Segall shares his design experience in vlog format, and it’s great.
DevTips
There aren’t many development-centric youtube channels that are great for people who aren’t developers. DevTips is a rare find: super simple, yet super in-depth tutorials about everything programming.
TED Talks
You probably know TED Talks: videos of clever people sharing interesting ideas. Here are some ideas related directly to business and entrepreneurship.
