Alex Blumberg
Co-founder & CEO, DaisyChain Energy. On 4 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderjournalisthostexecutive@abexlumberg ↗LinkedIn ↗daisychain.energy ↗Wikipedia ↗
Alex Blumberg is an audio journalist who co-founded Gimlet Media and created or co-hosted hit podcasts including Planet Money, StartUp, and How to Save a Planet. Following Gimlet's acquisition by Spotify, he transitioned into climate technology to launch DaisyChain Energy.
4shows
4appearances
30statements
3resolved
2supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
20said about them ↓ Everything Alex Blumberg said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Blumberg: Successful Podcasts Should Be For-Profit Rather Than Non-Profit
“With planet money, I was like, no, there's, you can turn a profit on planet money. That's like advertisers want to be in that show. The audience is big enough. It can be profitable. And if it can, it should be. It doesn't make sense to force it into a structur…”
Blumberg: Gimlet spends at least $100k developing each new show
“We're spending at least a hundred grand before we even, before we're out the door with one single podcast.”
Blumberg: Media founders undervalue institutional support behind their success
“I think I was a risky venture. You know, like, there's not that many places that are set up to, like, take that kind of risk. Even though I didn't feel like a risk, even though I felt like, well, I know how to do this, and, like, obviously I've done it before,…”
Blumberg: NPR was sitting on financial gold with Planet Money
“I felt like we were sitting on gold. I felt like we, they recognized the editorial gold, but I felt like we were sitting on financial gold with Planet Money, and people love it, and it's brand new, and it's different, and they're consuming it in a different wa…”
Blumberg: Initially offered co-founder Matt Lieber only 1% to 10% equity
“I think it was, I think I said in the range of one to 10. I'm key to the success of the company, and I want to feel I want to feel that that is reflected in the cap table, I guess.”
Gimlet Media ignores data and analytics when greenlighting new podcast shows
“We don't do any kind of analytical process around it, and partly because it's not like, it's like we don't, right now the, sort of like the main, the capital that we need to start a show is Is, is human capital, right?”
Blumberg: Betting on talent is even more critical in podcasting than tech
“Like that's, it's like sort of like the startup equivalent is sort of you bet on the founder. I think that's even more the case in podcasting if that's possible”
Blumberg: Audio storytellers must prioritize curiosity and understanding over issue advocacy
“And empathy is like a big, big part of what we believe is important. Like you have to be motivated by a desire to understand you know, as much as a desire as any other desire, like sometimes like a lot of people get into sort of like this line of work for a va…”
Alex Blumberg estimates 30% to 40% of NPR listeners identify as conservative
“There was like, there was something like 30 to 40% of the listeners were identified as conservative, and it was a pretty big, you should check that number, but it's, it was, it's a, when people hear it, it's a surprising number to them.”
Blumberg: Top podcasts combine storytelling, companionship, and learning
“So we just try to figure out like, okay, what are we doing? And right now we've, we, and we try to do all of them. Like the big ones can sort of bring storytelling, bring that companionship and bring something that you learn.”
Blumberg: The best place to find podcast listeners is on other podcasts
“The best place to find podcast listeners is, is on other podcasts. That's still true.”
Blumberg: Audio only competes with other audio and music for attention
“You know, you're driving to work, whatever. You can't be looking at a screen. So all audio is competing with is other audio or music, basically.”
Gimlet Media operated without a single technology employee until late 2017
“Up until like a couple, up until about a month ago, we didn't have one
Technology person on the team.”
Blumberg: Gimlet is unlikely to build its own podcast platform
“It seems less likely that if we were ever going to build like our own platform, that seems less and less likely. Like just because, you know, the Spotify's and the tune-ins and the Apple's are definitely like for a while, like they weren't really paying attent…”
Blumberg: Building podcasts around host passion beats assigning hosts to concepts
“It's better to find something that the host is passionate about rather than try to sort of match the host with some sort of material that you think could work.”
Alex Blumberg says creators find their unique voice by copying their heroes
“You have to start with some, with a vision of what you want to be. And then like you copy that and then eventually you'll find your way to your own voice through copying. But like, if you're just starting out, I'm original, I'm going to do it my way. Like, it'…”
Blumberg: A good interview functions like a good therapy session
“A good interview is like a good therapy session. Where you're just trying to get people to put their feelings into words.”
Blumberg: All podcast shows launched by Gimlet Media are profitable
“The way we're operating right now, like on a per show basis, all the shows that we've launched are profitable.”
Blumberg: Podcasting will head toward premium television production values
“Our bet is that, you know, as this medium matures, that it's going to be heading in the direction of sort of premium television, that like, there's going to be, you know, higher and higher production values, more and more sort of like creative energy into crea…”
Reply All generates over $1M annually at 500k downloads per episode
“What a show like reply all if it's got 36 shows a year at the audiences that it's doing, which are about, you know, which are like somewhere close to half a million downloads per episode. You know, it's bringing in over a million dollars a year.”
Blumberg: Planet Money Sold 20,000 T-Shirts and Raised Nearly $600,000
“We sold, like, 20,000 t-shirts. We made, like, almost 600,000 dollars.”
Blumberg: Recording the Startup podcast was originally a marketing ploy
“So I had to do something that was going to attract attention to what we were doing, and I figured, like, okay, a guy recording himself trying to start a company. That'll be good. It was like a marketing ploy.”
Blumberg: No investors offered funding until Matt Lieber joined Gimlet
“Nobody was offering me money until, I literally, nobody, I don't think anybody offered money until Matt and I teamed up. I think when I was doing it by myself, I didn't even get to that point.”
The other half of the tape: Alex Blumberg's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 18 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 8Joe Saul-Sehy 4Guy Raz 4Margaret Brown 2
Statements about Alex Blumberg, by other people (2)
Matt Lieber: Gimlet's Success Came Primarily From Luck, Privilege, and Timing
“I think it's mostly luck but not in the obvious way. Like, I think I think for me it was the luck of, like, being born into the family I was born into at the time that I was. So I had the luck of being in a family where my parents sent me, like, paid for my co…”
Latka: Gimlet Media spends six figures per show before releasing samples
“No, like, each show, he'll put, he broke down the team structure for me. He'll put, like, I think six or eight people Per show. And before there's even anything out live, they're investing over six figures before they even put a sample out.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Top Founders 14
How I Built This 4
2023 3 mentions in 1 episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- This Teacher is Right About Education and You're Crazy if You Disagree with Joe Sual Sehy of Stacking Benjamins Podcast EP 245
- Numbers Behind Freedom Journal Launch with John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur On Fire
- $120k, Hustle, and a Hugely Successful Digital Magazine with Margaret Brown or Podster EP 195
- He's Taken No Funding, Doing $2,600,000 Per Year With SaaS Business Webinar Ninja, EP 252: Omar Zenhom
- EP 246: Will She Replace Lori Grenier on Shark Tank? Her Designs Have Sold Brought In Over $1,000,000,000 In Revenue with Tracy Hazzard of HazzDesign
- How To Make $500k/year Podcasting With Best Selling Author Jay Baer EP 197
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Alex's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, DaisyChain Energy | 1 | 14 | 0% 0/1 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, DaisyChain Energy | 1 | 8 | 100% 2/2 | full record on How I Built This → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, DaisyChain Energy | 1 | 8 | — | full record on Top Founders → |
 CATALYSTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, DaisyChain Energy | 1 | 0 | — | full record on Catalyst → |