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When they attempt to address the wider world beyond their area of expertise, things get weird. The problem is, VC podcasts don't stick to the core issues of venture capital. 2: The hosts don't know what they don't know The technical descriptions from the A16z portfolio - deep unpackings of things like the cryptocurrency ethereum's move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, say, or TikTok's algorithmic genius - sometimes went over my head, but I can imagine their utility to engineers and founders.
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But I did learn a bunch of stuff I'm unlikely ever to have the opportunity to operationalize, like how to structure a marketing division, or how to think about assembling an investment portfolio as a VC. I didn't hear any tips for Startups 101, like getting a meeting with an investor or building a pitch deck or a strategy memo. "So this was just some magical thing VCs started writing into contracts that said: We know our jobs are risky, but we don't want them to be risky?" Yup.

Wood immediately put her finger on how such provisions undercut the self-image of venture capitalists as heroic risk-takers. On "This Week in Startups," Jason Calacanis explained to his cohost Molly Wood that some venture-investment contracts feature a provision known as a liquidation preference, which enables the VC investors to profit even when a startup they've backed goes bust.
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On "How I Built This," the founder of the online game platform Roblox told charming stories about making educational software for Apple's then-new Macintosh in the 1980s. On "The A16z Podcast" (named for Andreessen Horowitz), Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies, lit into the investor Carl Icahn for lying about his effort to seize control of the company. But that said, the hosts on many of these shows are investors. I'm not sure anyone should contribute to a venture fund with a lead partner who has enough spare time to make five podcasts a week. 1: The hosts know their businessesĪt their best, the podcasts offer some interesting insights into how tech businesses run.

Well, I definitely learned some learnings. I also tried to finish episodes rather than noping out, even when they made me squawk or swear loud enough to annoy my work-from-home office-sharer. I leaped around somewhat whimsically, and I did my best to ignore the uneven production values, which rendered a few episodes almost unlistenable - and this was at 1x speed. So with the help of some expert colleagues, I put together a list of about a half dozen of the most popular and influential podcasts by tech investors - from "How I Built This" and "The Pomp Podcast" to "Acquired," "All-In," "The Twenty Minute VC," and "This Week in Startups" - and put my ears toward figuring them out.Īll told, I poured something like 40 hours of podcasts into my auditory cortex.
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They're designed to let tech investors and founders control their own narratives, free of annoying questions from journalists like me, but they also promise a kind of education - in investing, in entrepreneurship and innovation, in business. I wanted to hear what these shows have to say about the VC mindset. That critical mass warrants a critical response. Maybe this is the singularity they keep promising us. The big podcast networks, public-radio hosts, former public-radio hosts turned venture capitalists, venture capitalists with a lot of free time on their hands - every millionaire and billionaire within shouting distance of San Jose, it feels like, is podding. Which was stupid of me, because there are so many of them.Īndreessen Horowitz, the famed venture firm, produces a basic-cable channel's worth of programming. Recently I volunteered to listen to as many podcasts about tech investing and venture capital as my soul could handle.
