What VCs Are Listening To: Podcasts That Shape Startup Thinking

Some of the best insights don’t come from meetings or reports. Rather, they come from the quiet moments between them. Whether on a flight, between calls, or during a late-night walk, podcasts have become an essential source of reflection and inspiration for investors and founders alike.

At Blumberg Capital, we believe in learning by listening. Podcasts help us stay connected to the broader business landscape, uncover new frameworks for thinking, and hear how others are tackling similar challenges. Below are a few of the shows currently fueling our team’s curiosity and sharpening our perspective on building and scaling companies.

Business Wars: Understanding Competition as a Learning Tool

“Former Marketplace anchor David Brown dives into iconic business rivalries — from Netflix vs. Blockbuster to Nike vs. Adidas — unpacking market strategy and leadership decisions.”
— Recommended by Lior Carmel, Vice President, New York

Competition has long been one of the greatest teachers in business. Business Wars brings this to life by exploring the defining rivalries that have shaped industries and consumer behavior.

The stories go beyond the headlines — they reveal the strategic pivots, leadership calls, and cultural shifts that determined who stayed ahead and who fell behind. For founders, each episode offers an accessible case study in differentiation, resilience, and the power of storytelling in shaping a company’s identity.

By examining these iconic battles, investors and entrepreneurs alike can reflect on their own positioning: What’s our advantage? How do we adapt when competitors make bold moves? Business Wars provides timeless lessons on navigating dynamic markets with both insight and humility.

Invest Like the Best: Expanding the Way We Think About Value

“A must-listen for anyone motivated to think outside the box. Investor and entrepreneur Patrick O’Shaughnessy shares fresh perspectives on new business models, investment frameworks, and operators reshaping industries.”
— Recommended by Pramod Gosavi, Sr. Principal, San Francisco

Curiosity is at the heart of great investing. Invest Like the Best embodies that ethos; each episode brings together voices across venture capital, entrepreneurship, and innovation who are redefining what success looks like in their domains.

The conversations often blend financial insight with creativity, pushing listeners to question assumptions about valuation, growth, and risk. By spotlighting how leading operators think, the podcast helps founders and investors refine their own approaches, whether it’s designing incentives, identifying durable moats, or understanding what makes a market truly scalable.

For those who want to learn how ideas compound, not just capital, Invest Like the Best is a masterclass in continuous improvement and intellectual curiosity.

20VC: A Front-Row Seat to the Venture Ecosystem

“Podcast creator Harry Stebbings sits down for deep-dive conversations with tech entrepreneurs, investors, and operators. Especially valuable for insights on go-to-market strategies, fundraising, and scaling.”
— Recommended by Steve Gillan, CFO/COO, San Francisco

Few shows capture the pulse of the venture ecosystem like 20VC. Through candid interviews with top founders and investors, host Harry Stebbings offers a transparent look into the mechanics of company building, from raising capital to scaling teams and finding product–market fit.

For listeners inside the industry, 20VC is a touchpoint for understanding how others are solving universal challenges: how to balance growth with discipline, when to raise the next round, or how to build a board that adds real value. The format feels personal and immediate, giving founders the sense that they’re listening in on the conversations that happen behind closed doors.

It’s also a reminder that even the most seasoned operators are still learning and refining their approach to leadership, hiring, and risk management as markets evolve.

Why Founders Should Listen, Too

These aren’t just podcasts for investors. They’re powerful tools for founders navigating growth, uncertainty, and change. Each show provides something distinct:

• Business Wars helps leaders analyze markets and competition through narrative.
  
• Invest Like the Best expands mental models for innovation and value creation.
  
• 20VC brings practical insights from peers who have scaled before.
  

Together, they mirror the same curiosity that drives great founders: the desire to learn from others’ experiences, connect patterns across industries, and stay intellectually agile.

Listening is often underrated in leadership, but it’s one of the most effective ways to accelerate learning without burning cycles on trial and error. For founders building in fast-moving markets, podcasts offer a steady stream of perspective — real stories, tested ideas, and the occasional reminder that even the best strategies start with curiosity.

Learning by Listening: Inside Blumberg Capital’s Culture

Our team’s recommendations highlight a shared belief: every great investor is a lifelong student. Whether it’s uncovering lessons from past rivalries, dissecting new frameworks for decision-making, or hearing firsthand what drives today’s most innovative leaders, we’re constantly tuning into conversations that help us stay sharp and informed.

Listening is also part of how we stay connected to founders, to peers, and to the evolving global landscape of technology and entrepreneurship. Podcasts bridge those worlds, providing a mix of tactical insight and creative spark.

As the venture ecosystem grows more complex, the ability to learn from diverse voices becomes even more important. Each episode we listen to is another way to refine our pattern recognition; the muscle memory that helps us support founders through both the predictable and the unprecedented.

Staying Curious Beyond the Headphones

Just as great founders ask better questions, great investors seek out better ideas. The goal isn’t simply to consume more information, but to understand what resonates, what challenges our assumptions, and what inspires us to think differently.

Whether you’re building your first startup or managing a growing portfolio, the right podcast can change how you see your business and your role in it. At Blumberg Capital, we see listening not as passive intake, but as active exploration that sharpens our ability to spot opportunity, adapt to change, and lead with empathy.

The conversations in our headphones often spark the ones that happen in our meetings: thoughtful, informed, and forward-looking. And that’s the point: learning doesn’t stop when you leave the classroom or close the deck. Sometimes, it just begins when you hit play.