Brands are becoming media companies.
Instead of buying ads, more brands now build their own newsletters, podcasts, and shows. The good kind, with real audiences. This is a running directory of who's doing it, and the channels they own. I add new ones as I find them, so send through anything I've missed.
a16z News
a16z's daily email newsletter on tech, culture, and software.
a16z Podcast
a16z's flagship podcast (launched 2014) on the most important ideas in technology with the people building it.
Beneath the Surface
A limited-series Stripe Press podcast about infrastructure, hosted by Tamara Winter. Seven episodes from 2022.
Big Desk Energy
beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk's newsletter on building the company. Startup insights, stories, and strategy, read by founders, operators, and investors at top startups and funds.
Blazing Trails
Salesforce's flagship podcast with global leaders on work, well-being, innovation, and equality.
Brand Chemistry
Weekly newsletter on brand building, owned media, and organic growth.
Chartr
Data-visualization newsletter turning business and society data into simple charts, acquired by Robinhood in December 2023.
Cheeky Pint
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Courier Media
Bimonthly print and digital magazine for modern entrepreneurs, reaching 100k+ readers across 26+ countries.
First Block
Notion's podcast, hosted by co-founder Akshay Kothari, where founders and operators break down the early firsts of building their companies.
Frameworks for Growth
Vanta CEO Christina Cacioppo interviews the founders and investors behind fast-growing startups on how they scaled, from product-market fit in the AI era to go-to-market, hiring, and leadership.
Future
An optimistic tech-and-society online publication a16z launched in 2021 and wound down in late 2022.
Going Through It
A Mailchimp Presents podcast about the quit-or-keep-going moments in people's careers. It ran four seasons from 2019 to 2023.
Gong Labs
Gong's data-backed sales research blog publishing findings from analyzing millions of sales conversations.
GTM Atlas
Attio's free, ungated guide to modern go-to-market. A structured library of GTM frameworks by stage, written by operators from companies like Vercel and Framer.
In Stock
Shopify's Substack newsletter of real stories from the front lines of entrepreneurship — founder Q&As, the 'Decoded' merchant-strategy series, and first-person essays. Launching it in October 2025 made Shopify the biggest company yet to start a Substack.
Increment
Quarterly magazine about how software teams build and operate at scale, founded by Susan Fowler. It ran from 2017 to 2021.
Indie Hackers
Community and newsletter for bootstrapped founders that Stripe acquired in 2017 and sold back to its founders in 2023.
Intercom on Product
Intercom's product and design podcast with co-founder Des Traynor and CPO Paul Adams on building in an AI-first world.
Leading Indicators
Ramp's data-driven newsletter spotting early business and financial signals — spending shifts, AI adoption, labor-market moves — from anonymized Ramp transaction data, before they reach the headlines. Published by Ramp Economics Lab.
Makerpad
No-code education platform and community that Zapier acquired in 2021, its first acquisition. Around 10,000 members at the time.
My First Million
Podcast about business ideas and how to build wealth, acquired as part of The Hustle.
Open Source CEO
Athyna founder-CEO Bill Kerr's newsletter on how the best companies are built. Deep dives on founders, leadership, and go-to-market.
Product for Engineers
Product for Engineers is a newsletter helping technical people build great products, especially those working at early-stage startups.
Ramp Economics Lab
Data-driven newsletter from Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian, turning the company's proprietary corporate-spending data into analysis of business spend and AI adoption (the Ramp AI Index, Top SaaS Vendors).
Reveal: The Revenue AI Podcast
Gong-produced podcast (originally 'Reveal: The Revenue Intelligence Podcast') interviewing sales and revenue leaders.
Salesforce+
Salesforce's free streaming service offering live and on-demand event content and original series from Salesforce Studios.
Sherwood News
Robinhood's editorial news website covering markets, business, technology, and the culture of money, launched in April 2024.
Snacks
Daily financial-news newsletter, descended from the MarketSnacks newsletter Robinhood acquired in 2019, now published by Sherwood Media.
Social Futures
Sprout Social's Substack 'haven for social marketers who need a source of joy, inspiration and validation' — research, peer conversations, and advice on demonstrating social's impact.
Stripe Press
Stripe's in-house book imprint publishing works on economic and technological progress, launched in 2018.
TBPN
A live daily tech and business talk show hosted by entrepreneurs John Coogan and Jordi Hays.
The Edge
A monthly newsletter by Kelly Breslin Wright with data-driven insights on sales, scaling, and building teams.
The Hustle
Daily business and tech newsletter.
The Marketing Cloudcast
Salesforce's marketing podcast on trends, tactics, and career advice. It ran from 2015 to 2021.
The Ticket
Intercom's customer service podcast, launched in 2015 as the Inside Intercom podcast and rebranded in 2024. Over 3M downloads.
web3 with a16z crypto
a16z crypto's podcast (launched 2022) on building the next generation of the internet through blockchains and web3.