The A Team.
The product of Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz and home to "Software is Eating the World", Andreessen Horowitz or a16z is a Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) firm "that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology".
a16z features regular podcasts on everything technology. Recurring themes include Machine Learning/AI, transportation/mobility, distributed systems (cloud, blockchain), open source, AR/VR, emerging markets (China), food-tech, to name a few.
Because who better to make investment decisions and advise founders then former founders/operators, CEOs, and CTOs? And who better to listen?
Formula: Diverse set of tech topics and internal/external guests. Engineering 1st, business 2nd. If you like getting excited about the future, these are the people to listen too.
This may just be The Best One Yet (TBOY). Robinhood Snacks formerly MarketSnacks is the financial market podcast that X's the jargon, ditches the buzzwords, and doesn't sound like the typical PR blurbs you come to expect from MSNBC's guests. Robinhood Snacks feeds you the news and tells you why it matters (the takeaway).
Nick Martell & Jack Kramer bring comedy and brevity to financial market news. The best part. Each story (3/weekday) doesn't conclude with X company grew revenues Y% or entered Z market. The writers at Robinhood Snacks find bigger themes and break those down into something you can digest.
Formula: Legal disclosures in hip-hop fashion, 3 stories, 3 takeaways, 1 fun fact. Oh and yeah each episode is The Best One Yet (and roughly 15 minutes long).
Partnering with Bloomberg TV, David Rubenstein (Co-Founder of the Carlyle Group) interviews thought-leaders in Peer-to-Peer conversations. Bill (then Melinda) Gates, Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella, Oprah Winfrey, Mike Krzyzewski "Coach K", Richard Branson, Anthony Kennedy, Jerome Powell, Benjamin Netanyahu... it goes on.
Given the diverse background of guests, this is a broader podcast where the value comes from themes of personal determination, life & work passion, and leadership characteristics.
David Rubenstein isn't any ordinary interviewer. With many measures of his own, he relates to his guests which makes for a conversational Peer-to-Peer exchange. David Rubenstein asks his guests well-thought-out questions and adds a touch of humor (probably the billionaire-philanthropist in him).
Volume + Technicals + Commitment = Valuable.
Software Engineering Daily or SE Daily was started as a personal now includes hundreds of interviews, spanning multiple categories of computer science such as Cloud Engineering, Data, Open Source, Blockchain.
This isn't your typical managerial-level content. SE Daily is by and for engineers or those aspiring to be. There's an array of guests with ranging seniority, functional domains, and employers. Here are 3 titles to jog your imagination "Serverless Cloud", "Airbnb Engineering", "Self-Driving Engineering".
Formula: Long episodes, longer backlog (of episodes), engineer interviewing engineer (heavy on the technicals).
Tom Keene (a personality that grows on you), Jon Ferro (an accent that adds intellect), and company deliver daily financial, economic, and political news.
Each daily segment consists of multiple interviews covering a range of topics. The news is timely. The FED, corporate earnings, and any news-worthy corporate or political action is pretty much delivered in breaking fashion.
Formula: Frequent, professional (most of the time), and informative. Warning: This can be CFA level stuff.
Harry Stebbings brings high-energy and full-time ambition to his show.
Harry is well prepared for each interview and solicits awesome guests. A-List actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt was recently on 20VC to talk about his startup. Who else can you expect? CEOs, VCs, and serial entrepreurs.
Formula: "Can I ask you?". There's a lot of those.