When I started writing about tech, I searched for some sort of tome that contained most – if not all – the technology startup knowledge in the world.
My goal was; if I could get access to this tome, I could binge on it, become an overnight authority and pontificate about subjects I have little experiential knowledge of. As I would come to find; no such book exists and it’s impossible to be an overnight authority. I was optimistic much.
However, acquiring this knowledge is important, even more so for a startup founder still wet behind the ears.
Knowledge about startups is scattered across the internet in articles, webinars, eBooks, infographics, books, a lot more other content channels, and then, podcasts – my favourite. For one, listening to them is convenient, and it’s a good way to maximize my daily commute and my-not so-regular daily workout.
There are many of those out there and in my search for the ultimate startup knowledge cache, the following podcasts come close:
1: Seth Godin’s Startup school
This isn’t like your regular podcast – it’s not updated periodically. This fourteen-part podcast series is a segmentation of a weekend of startup knowledge-transfer that Seth Godin held with a group of founders in 2012.
Sessions from the time were cut into different episodes packed with lessons from figuring out whether you are an entrepreneur or a freelancer, raising money, managing your cash flow, managing a dip in productivity and more. The founders were at the beginning of starting their businesses so it’s easy to relate to questions they asked. The average podcast length in this series is 30 minutes, so you can run through it over a weekend.
If you would rather read up the transcript, it’s available here.
Like Seth’s Startup School, the series is not updated. It is a series of lectures delivered by Silicon Valley experts and founders at Stanford University. The series was coordinated by Y Combinator and some of the lectures were hosted by Sam Altman, current Y Combinator chairman; Paul Graham, Y Combinator co-founder; Ron Conway; Marc Anderseen and other industry leaders. It’s a twenty-part series that covers generating startup ideas, raising money, how to blaze past competition and more.
I am a sucker for narrative podcasts. Serial and Megan Tan’s Millennial are my favourite. This podcast is a switch from the convention as it were. Unlike the other podcasts that share ideas on starting startups, this podcast takes you along on a journey with a founder trying to start a business. The podcast follows Alex Blumberg, a podcasting veteran as he begins to build his podcast business without prior entrepreneurship experience.
It breaks through the sunny startup mythology and shows all the goo a founder will deal with as she begins her business. I recommend you start this series from episode one to get the best out of it. So giddyap, you have some catching up to do.
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