I’ve never really fully cracked podcasting.
Dead Cat, our tech media criticism podcast with Tom Dotan and Katie Benner, had a niche following among tech reporters, public relations people, and other insiders who wanted to hear the story behind the story. But then Tom went to the Wall Street Journal and the podcast came to a sudden end.
When the mood strikes I’ll co-host the Cerebral Valley podcast with Max Child and James Wilsterman but we usually record those episodes leading up to Cerebral Valley. There’s only so much to say about just artificial intelligence year-round.
Last year, I tried hosting the Newcomer podcast solo. But I felt like I was handing over the microphone to my guests half the time. Episodes varied wildly from show to show. I missed having co-hosts.
I’m excited to bring back the Newcomer podcast with Madeline Renbarger — the other reporter here at Newcomer — joining as my co-host. We’re working with Christopher Gates, who was the founding producer of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. So he has the tech news know-how to make sure we’re talking about the key stories of the week.
We plan to deliver a weekly, tight 20-minute show, covering the top stories in startups and venture capital. We aren’t going to email out every episode here in the newsletter so make sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast feed. (Here’s Apple and Spotify.) We’ll publish the occasional audio interview when the mood strikes.
We had a lot of fun recording this episode and we’re excited to reintroduce a regular podcast into our repertoire here at Newcomer. We think this podcast will be a time efficient and enjoyable way to stay on top of the key things happening in Silicon Valley startups each week.
Episode 1: AI + Robots, YC Preview, and Why the Cool Kids Keep Picking on Tech
In this week’s episode of the Newcomer Podcast, hosts Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger discuss three top venture capital deals, including World Labs and delivery startup Flink. They also wade into Y Combinator’s upcoming Demo Day, highlighting trends in defense tech and the implications of AI’s power consumption.
The conversation touches on Runway’s licensing deal with Lionsgate and concludes with an examination of John Mulaney’s performance at Dreamforce.
Chapters
00:00 World Labs: A New Era in AI Robotics
05:10 The Rise and Fall of Delivery Startups
09:19 Y Combinator’s Demo Day
11:46 Defense Tech
20:09 Powering AI: The Nuclear Debate
24:24 Runway’s Licensing Deal
28:02 John Mulaney’s Roast
AI + Robots, YC Preview & Why the Cool Kids Keep Picking on Tech