I recently had dinner with my eldest daughter Margot, who leads Edelman’s U.S. Tech sector. She opened my eyes to an entirely new world of tech journalism. I have spent the week trying to learn more.
The Information’s Weekend feature last week asserted that “Silicon Valley has come to distrust traditional journalists, perceiving them as holding an unshakeable bias against the industry, part of a broader shift in American culture against established media.” Instead, the important tech companies are favoring the tech podcasters such as Lex Fridman and TBPN (formerly the Tech Brothers). Who are these podcasters and why do they matter?
The most important is Lex Fridman, with almost 3.5 million monthly viewers or listeners to episodes on YouTube or via audio download. Fridman has attracted such tech superstars as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to his show. The two-to-three-hour discussions go deep, from business to the personal. According to one tech PR executive, you go for Fridman if you want to reach engineers or tech intellectuals. Fridman is a specialist in AI, robotics, and hard technology.
TBPN is a daily tech news talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays. They go to important tech gatherings such as the Andreessen Horowitz investor summit to broadcast live, attracting AH founder Marc Andreessen for a 26-minute conversation. The show attracts CEOs such as Box’s Aaron Levie and Flexport’s Ryan Peterson. They have more than 70,000 followers on their accounts on X and YouTube. Their audience is founders, investors and developers.
Tim Ferriss, host of The Tim Ferriss Show, is an author best known for his book The 4-Hour Workweek. His guests have included American entrepreneurs and venture capitalists like Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn and Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square. According to Ferriss’ blog, his listeners are well educated (nearly 50 percent have a Master’s degree and make over $150k per year). Seventy seven percent trust recommendations made on the show, nearly half tune in weekly, the average age is 40 years old, and the audience is 4 to 1 male to female. The same tech PR executive said he places executives on this show to reach tech entrepreneurs or to launch a tech product.
Waveform, The MKBHD Podcast featuring Marques Brownlee, focuses on consumer electronics and tech news. His podcast has nearly half a million listeners. His guests have included Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, American YouTuber and businessman Mr. Beast and the Qualcomm hardware team. He does visual product demos and has a big consumer following.
Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson and Andrew Sharp is a twice weekly podcast that focuses on how technology affects the world. Between the almost 12,000 listeners of the podcast and the more than 40,000 subscribers to the newsletter, the Stratechery Plus family reaches professional investors and tech executives.
The a16z Podcast is produced by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, featuring insights on technology and culture. It has nearly two million listeners.
The All-In Podcast is produced weekly by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg. It has featured Donald Trump, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Sam Altman. Topics covered include innovation, politics, societal issues, economics and markets. The audience is startups and venture capitalists.
On with Kara Swisher is another important show featuring the veteran tech journalist (former tech lead for The Wall Street Journal). She is also co-host of Pivot with Scott Galloway, professor at New York University. Guests have included Hillary Clinton, Sam Altman, Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, and Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
Joanna Stern is mainstream media’s most visible figure, through The Wall Street Journal’s Tech News Briefing, Tech Things Newsletter, and a video series called In the Elevator With, which features interviews with important tech figures in an elevator.
The Hard Fork podcast is hosted by The New York Times’ Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, editor of Platformer. This show takes a hard look at new technologies, including ethical issues.
Decoder is hosted by Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, who focuses on business models and deep product analysis.
A journalist at an important mainstream media outlet gave me a slightly sour take on the emergence of podcasts. “The podcasters don’t ask tough questions. It is a safe space for prominent people. We are competing for the same eyeballs and if they are attracting the top tech executives, then they are a true threat to mainstream media.”
Several tech media personalities have also moved to Substack, including Alex Konrad, who left Forbes to launch his Substack Upstarts Media, and Eric Newcomer, who left Bloomberg to run his Newcomer Substack and the Cerebral Valley conference.
Many of these emerging tech media players will join us at an event we're co-hosting with Tech:NYC this Thursday during New York Tech Week. RSVP here if you’d like to attend.
All credit to Margot for this post.
Richard Edelman is CEO.
