Our picks for the best venture capital podcasts in 2026 let you hear working investors explain their reasoning: 20VC for partner interviews, Invest Like the Best for frameworks, Acquired for company histories that double as case studies, Venture Unlocked for how funds are built, and TechCrunch's Equity for deal news. All 10 shows here released new episodes in 2026.
Around that core sit The Full Ratchet, This Week in Startups, All-In, The a16z Show, and First Round's In Depth. Below: who hosts each, how often it publishes, and a listening plan that turns hours of audio into notes you can cite. All 10 are free to stream in the usual podcast apps.
How to use venture capital podcasts if you want to work in VC
Podcasts are among the easiest VC resources to consume. They're also the easiest to waste.
A 90-minute interview may hold four transferable ideas. If you don't write them down, you keep little more than a vague sense of familiarity, and familiarity doesn't survive an interview question.
Two habits help. First, listen with a question: "what would I have asked this founder?" or "how does this fund decide between two seed deals?" Second, keep a running notes file with one line per takeaway, tagged by topic (sourcing, diligence, terms, portfolio, fund). After a few months you have a personal playbook, which is often what interviewers are really asking about when they say "tell me about a company you find interesting."
For how investors think
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), Harry Stebbings. One of the largest interview archives in venture, with more than 1,500 episodes on Apple Podcasts and new ones several times a week. Stebbings also runs the 20VC Fund, and episodes now run well past twenty minutes. The value is breadth: you can hear how a dozen firms think about the same question (reserves, ownership targets, LP allocations, when to pass) and notice where they disagree. Start with guests at the stage you want to work in.
Invest Like the Best (ILTB), Patrick O'Shaughnessy. A weekly interview show, launched in 2016, with investors and operators across venture, public equities, and private markets. It is part of O'Shaughnessy's Colossus podcast network, and he also runs the investment firm Positive Sum. Recent guests include former Sequoia partner Michael Moritz and Conviction founder Sarah Guo. Because the show crosses asset classes, it's a fast way to understand how an LP compares venture with everything else it could fund.
The Full Ratchet, Nick Moran. Launched in May 2014 and billed by its host as the first podcast dedicated to demystifying venture capital. Moran leads New Stack Ventures, which invests in founders outside the Bay Area, and releases an interview with a VC or operator about every two weeks. More tactical and more early-stage than 20VC, and a good fit if you're preparing for seed-fund venture capital interview questions.
For company histories and pattern recognition
Acquired, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. Each episode is a history of one company, typically around four hours long, which the show says takes about 200 hours of research and production. Both hosts worked as venture investors before going full time on the show. New episodes arrive every month or two (The Home Depot in September 2026, Disney in August), and its multi-part series on Nvidia, Meta, and Berkshire Hathaway work as free business-school cases. For an investor, the lesson is in the early chapters: what the company looked like at seed, and what investors saw or missed.
The a16z Show (Andreessen Horowitz). The firm's flagship show, formerly the a16z Podcast, now releases episodes most days on technology trends, AI, and company building with founders and partners. It's useful for market framing and for hearing how a large multistage firm talks about themes. Remember the source, though: a16z talks about the markets it invests in. (Its written essays are covered in our best venture capital blogs.)
For deal news, fund building, and portfolio support
Equity (TechCrunch). TechCrunch's flagship startup podcast, with more than 1,100 episodes, now publishes about twice a week with reporters including Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Bellan, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane. It's the audio companion to a deal newsletter, and pairs well with the daily briefings in the best venture capital newsletters.
This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis. More than 5,000 episodes, per its site, of founder interviews, investor conversations, and news, now released almost daily with co-hosts and guests. The early-stage founder interviews show how a company describes itself before it has a track record. Calacanis also invests through LAUNCH, his accelerator, funds, and syndicate, so treat his views on his own portfolio as opinions.
All-In. Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg discuss markets, technology, and politics weekly, with frequent extra interview episodes. At the time of writing it has by far the most Apple Podcasts ratings of any show here (more than 10,000). In our view it's also the least useful for learning the craft. Listen for how experienced investors argue about macro and valuations.
Venture Unlocked, Samir Kaji. Our pick for how venture firms are raised, structured, and run. Kaji, co-founder and CEO of the private-markets platform Allocate after 22 years in venture banking, interviews emerging managers, established GPs, and LPs about fund terms, portfolio construction, and LP diligence. It has 160+ episodes and publishes roughly monthly (after a break from December 2025 to June 2026). The show lives on a Substack that also sends occasional written essays, which is why we list it here rather than in our newsletter guide. For the practical steps of raising a first fund, see how to start a venture capital firm.
In Depth (First Round). First Round partner Brett Berson interviews operators on hiring, management, product, and go-to-market, with a new episode every few weeks (Microsoft's Jay Parikh in August 2026). It's the audio side of First Round Review, which is in our blog list. For investors, it trains the part of the job after the check clears: knowing what a first product hire, a pricing change, or a sales-team build looks like.
Venture capital podcasts at a glance
| Podcast | Host | Cadence (Sep 2026) | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20VC | Harry Stebbings | Several a week | Investor reasoning |
| ILTB | Patrick O'Shaughnessy | Weekly | Cross-asset frameworks |
| The Full Ratchet | Nick Moran | Every two weeks | Seed tactics |
| Acquired | Gilbert and Rosenthal | Every month or two | Company case studies |
| The a16z Show | a16z partners | Most days | Tech themes |
| Equity | TechCrunch reporters | Twice a week | Deal news |
| This Week in Startups | Jason Calacanis | Almost daily | Founder interviews |
| All-In | Four investor hosts | Weekly plus extras | Macro debate |
| Venture Unlocked | Samir Kaji | About monthly | Fund building |
| In Depth | Brett Berson | Every few weeks | Portfolio support |
Cadence is based on each show's recent episode dates in September 2026 and will change.
A listening plan for venture capital podcasts that produces work you can show
This is one illustrative plan. It takes about four hours a week, so adjust it to your own schedule.
- Weekly, 45 minutes: Equity. Note every round in your target sector in a deal log with company, stage, amount, and lead.
- Weekly, 60 to 90 minutes: one 20VC, Full Ratchet, or ILTB episode. Choose by guest. Write three takeaways, tagged by topic.
- Every two weeks, 60 minutes: one Venture Unlocked or In Depth episode. Alternate between fund mechanics and operating skills.
- Monthly, in chunks: one Acquired episode. Write one page on what a seed investor should have seen in the company's first three years.
- Skip or sample: All-In, The a16z Show, This Week in Startups. Listen when a guest or topic is directly relevant to a company or thesis you're working on.
After three months this produces a deal log with roughly 60 rounds (about five a week), about 40 tagged takeaways, and three written company cases. That's a portfolio of thinking you can bring to a coffee chat. It's the difference between "I listen to a lot of VC podcasts" and "here is what I learned and what I would do with it." It's also the spirit of our advice on breaking into venture: do the job before anyone gives you permission.
Common mistakes with VC podcasts
- Listening at 2x while doing something else. Fine for news, less useful for craft. Slow down for the episodes you plan to take notes on.
- Only listening to famous investors. The most instructive episodes are often with seed managers on their second fund, who explain their process because they're still building it.
- Mistaking confidence for evidence. Investors on podcasts often speak with certainty about decisions that were partly luck. Check claims against data from Carta, PitchBook, or the NVCA before repeating them.
- Not closing the loop. Pick a company discussed on a show, track it for a year, and see whether the investor's reasoning held up.
From listening to doing
Podcasts let you overhear the job. What they can't give you is something at stake in the answer.
Fellows in 1752vc's Venture Fellow program earn payouts for the deals they source and carry on select deals sourced for partner funds, after eight weeks of live virtual sessions spent on case studies, real pitch materials and diligence on live companies, with applications reviewed on a rolling basis. Bring the notes from your listening plan; they may hold up better against a live company than you expect.
For reading to go with the listening, see the best venture capital books.
The bottom line
Ten good shows won't make you an investor. Four hours a week of notes, a deal log and a few written cases might start to. The listening is the easy part.
Anyone can say they listen to 20VC.
Few can show you what they wrote down.
Key takeaways
- Our picks for building skill are 20VC, ILTB, and The Full Ratchet for investor reasoning, and Acquired for company case studies.
- Venture Unlocked is, in our view, the strongest show on how funds are raised and run; Equity is the twice-weekly deal-news briefing.
- First Round's In Depth trains the portfolio-support side of the job; All-In, The a16z Show, and This Week in Startups are worth sampling by guest or topic.
- A four-hour weekly plan with a deal log, tagged takeaways, and monthly written company cases turns listening into interview-ready material.
- It helps to treat investor certainty on podcasts as opinion and to verify claims against Carta, PitchBook, or NVCA data.
Frequently asked questions
Our picks for investor reasoning: The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), Patrick O'Shaughnessy's ILTB, and The Full Ratchet. For company histories: Acquired. For deal news: TechCrunch's Equity. For fund building: Venture Unlocked. For operating skills: First Round's In Depth. All-In, The a16z Show, and This Week in Startups are worth sampling. All ten released new episodes in 2026.
In our view, Venture Unlocked with Samir Kaji. It focuses on how venture firms are raised, structured, and run, with general partners and limited partners discussing fund terms, portfolio construction, and LP diligence. Episodes come out roughly monthly, and the archive of 160+ episodes is a good place to start.
Not strictly. Acquired tells long histories of major companies across industries, but both hosts worked as venture investors, and each episode covers the company's early funding and the decisions that mattered. That makes it one of the more useful case-study resources for investors, with new episodes every month or two.
One approach is to use them to build a deal log, a file of tagged takeaways, and written company cases. Those become concrete material for coffee chats and interviews, where hiring managers often look for evidence of a sourcing habit and a point of view rather than a list of shows you follow.
For most people, about four hours a week is enough in our view: one weekly news episode, one long interview, one fund or operating episode every two weeks, and one Acquired episode a month, all with notes. More than that often means listening without retaining much.
Sources
Disclaimer: This guide is for general education only and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Laws, market data and program terms change, so it may not reflect the latest developments or fit your situation. Treat it as a starting point, not a source of truth, and talk to a qualified lawyer, accountant or financial adviser before you make decisions.
