Here we go again. A guy in his mid-40s, sat behind a mic, is telling a podcast host about the hard scrabble early days running his startup, when no one shared his vision. He almost lost his business. But don’t despair: it all worked out.
There’s an astonishing panoply of tech podcasts — an article to give you a taste and maybe a shiver is “60 Best Europe Technology Podcasts You Must Follow in 2025”. Many follow a format like the imaginary example above. College DROPOUT. ZERO engineering skills. Weirdly PREFERS Microsoft Teams to Google Meet. And his story only gets wilder from there… you get the idea.
People are in the bag for these tales: there’s a bottomless demand for the hero’s journey, startup edition. A founder talking us through the harrowing decision to pivot, a host gently interrupting with “Let’s unpack that”. An investor raving about founders with “scar tissue” (meaning: people who ran a business before) or a CEO telling us how they beat the odds to reach $100m ARR (increasingly doable the way the dollar’s going).
We are, perhaps, at, or even long past, Peak Podcast, a medium seemingly adopted by every investor, journalist or self-proclaimed marketing whizz. They even seem to be recorded in exactly the same place; every studio has the same sparsely decorated look, as if chosen off-the-rack from the podcast room department at Ikea.
I’m not here to quibble with anyone’s inalienable right to produce audio content — Sifted (hello) has some podcasts — but I would like to see a tad more variety, less guff and a few more sceptical eyebrows raised from hosts.
Alex Stöckl, an investor with Zurich VC firm Founderful, is among the pod doubters. “I really, really don't appreciate the massive oversimplification of those podcasts that just glorify the big outcomes and make it look as if it was all obvious and purely skill-based,” he says.
“Luck, timing and global trends have a massive impact on venture outcomes and I think most podcasts fall so short of acknowledging that,” he adds.
Russia threat and ‘liq prefs’
It’s very hard to make a good podcast. Everyone starts off in the same swampy water and only a few ascend into the cool clean air of actually being good.
Podcasts on European tech that I’ve dipped into recently include: 20VC, EIC Scaling Club, The Pursuit of Scrappiness, EUVC, Rockets and Radars, The Entrepreneur Experiment and The Balderton Podcast.
The best podcast name, though no one asked, is Twit (This Week In Tech), a hint of mischief here similar to tech news site Silicon Canals’s recurring feature: “AI tool of the week”. (Or is this unintentionally funny?). The best tech podcast jingle, while I’m here, belongs to EUVC, which mixes famous politician quotes — “Tear down this wall” etc. — with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy set to a techno beat. This combination sounds terrible but it’s surprisingly good, edging close to The White Lotus theme for ear-worm-iness.
Investor Harry Stebbings, host of 20VC, is the sun in the solar system of tech podcasts. When you recover from the sight of him in tiny shorts, which he wore recently for his interview with Wise cofounder-turned-investor Taavet Hinrikus (Stebbing’s pods also come with video), you can see why he’s got a big following.
While no one really disagrees on these podcasts, Stebbings does dig deep and prise interesting moments from his guests. In his chat with Hinrikus, he asked the investor whether he thought Russia would invade another European country; a rare instance of the real world entering the pod booth. Admittedly, there was plenty of inside baseball too, like when Stebbings introduced a new, unwanted term into my life: “liq pref”, pronounced “lick pref”, a colloquialism for liquidation preference. And we’re back.
Tech podcasts can get a bit lost in the weeds. Guests or hosts seldom pause to translate tech-speak or hold your hand for some opaque concept (what is private equity anyway? I’m still none the wiser). There are many humdrum hours where founders recount the perilous search for product-market fit. Some chats lapse into platitude/pat-ourselves-on-the-back territory.
5 point plan to rescue the pod
So how to make a better tech podcast? It’s a tad rich of me to suggest ideas — I’ve been on podcasts, I know they’re hard work! — but also, I do interview folk for a living (and I’d like to keep it that way, AI). So here goes:
- Don’t let interviews run over an hour: It’s great that podcasts create space for unhurried chats, but come on, don’t take the piss.
- Hold out for the right guest: To quote that guy from Inception, you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. Granted, there’s a limited number of tech folk in Europe with sky high name recognition but they’re worth holding out for. Don’t just interview that chief finance guy even if he’s with a hot company (have you heard finance people speak?).
- Book more women: I've seen these people, they’re out there, they exist, they can come and speak into a mic for a while.
- Probe more: My old editor told me the best thing you can say in an interview is “Sorry, I don’t understand”. Once you get over the risk of looking stupid, it’s an effective way to get people to explain something a little better. And let’s not just hear the varnished stuff — grill guests on screw-ups along the way. Also important: no question previews with guests or their say on what makes the final cut.
- Go off topic: Don’t get bogged down talking about liq prefs. I like the approach of comedian and podcaster Richard Herring, who fires off “emergency questions” during conversation lulls (such as: would you rather have a hand made out of ham or an armpit that could dispense suncream? Would love to hear Daniel Ek’s thoughts on this).
