Podcasts Like Tim Ferriss: 8 Shows Founders Actually Learn From
The Tim Ferriss Show is at 884 episodes and over a billion downloads.
I get why. Tim basically invented the "deconstruct world-class performers" interview. Long, obsessive, zero filler questions.
But here's my problem with it as a founder: most episodes aren't about building a business. You get chess prodigies, ultra-athletes, meditation teachers. Great for your brain. Not always great for your MRR.
So this list is the version I wish existed when I was binging Ferriss at $15K a month and wondering why nothing applied to my SaaS.
8 podcasts like Tim Ferriss, ranked by how useful they are when you're actually building something. Same long-form interview DNA. More operators, fewer monks.
Quick note on how I picked these. Three filters:
→ Long-form and question-driven. If the host talks more than the guest, it's out.
→ Real numbers on the record. Revenue, downloads, deal sizes. Shows that let guests hide behind "we grew a lot" didn't make it.
→ I actually listen to it. Every show below has survived months in my own queue, not a weekend of research. I run a podcast and a founder community all day, so my tolerance for filler audio is basically zero.
1. Profitable Founder Podcast
Full disclosure: this one's mine.
I started the Profitable Founder Podcast because Ferriss-style shows kept interviewing people so far ahead they were unrelatable. Nobody at $10K MRR needs Richard Branson's morning routine.
So I interview bootstrapped SaaS founders making $100K to $10M a year, and I ask the questions Tim would ask: what exactly did you do, in what order, and what did it cost you.
Except every answer is about getting a software business to profitability. Pricing changes, churn fixes, the first 100 customers, the month everything almost died.
I've been on both sides of it. I paid $13,000 for a mastermind while making $15K to $20K a month (stupid decision, right?), hit $75K a month six months later, and sold that SaaS. The interviews go where I know the bodies are buried.
It's the Ferriss format, pointed at MRR.
Listen to the Profitable Founder Podcast
2. The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
The closest thing to Ferriss in spirit.
Shane Parrish ran Farnam Street, the mental-models blog Wall Street quietly reads, before turning it into an interview show. He's at episode 286 now, and the recent guest list says everything: the Roblox CEO on decision-making, Daniel Kahneman before he passed, Tobi Lutke from Shopify.
The difference from Ferriss: Shane cares less about routines and more about how people think. Fewer "what's your morning cold plunge" questions, more "walk me through the worst decision you ever made."
Listen when you have a real decision in front of you. Hiring, pricing, quitting. It's the best decision-making show in podcasting.
3. Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson
Chris Williamson is past episode 1,100 and publishing three times a week, which is a frankly unreasonable pace.
Modern Wisdom covers the same territory as Ferriss's non-business episodes: psychology, performance, philosophy, health. David Goggins, James Clear, Ryan Holiday, Huberman, all the names.
Why it makes this list: Chris asks follow-up questions like someone who actually read the guest's work. And the production quality embarrasses most shows twice its size.
It won't teach you SaaS. It will keep your head straight while you build one. Founder psychology is half the game, and I say that as someone who has written a lot about founder loneliness.
4. The Jordan Harbinger Show
Over 1,000 episodes of the most Ferriss-like interview mechanics on this list.
Jordan Harbinger gets an absurd range of guests: Ray Dalio and Simon Sinek one week, an ex-jewel thief or an arms dealer the next. The skill is the same as Tim's: extract the practical lesson from someone whose life you'll never live.
His "Feedback Friday" episodes are a bonus Ferriss doesn't have. Real listeners write in with real problems (career, negotiation, awkward cofounder situations) and he workshops them live.
Pick this one if what you love about Ferriss is the interviewing craft itself.
5. Founders with David Senra
Not an interview show. Better.
David Senra reads a biography of a great founder every week, then talks for 60 to 90 minutes about what he found. He's 430+ episodes deep: Rockefeller, Estée Lauder, Enzo Ferrari, Steve Jobs from four different books.
It scratches the exact Ferriss itch (deconstructing greatness) but with a hundred years of hindsight instead of a live guest managing their image.
Senra's energy is unhinged in the best way. He'll yell "THIS IS THE WHOLE EPISODE" about one sentence in a 400-page book, and he's usually right.
One warning: you will end episodes wanting to work 16-hour days. Dose accordingly.
6. My First Million
Shaan Puri and Sam Parr, 856 episodes in, riffing on business ideas and interviewing operators like Zapier's Wade Foster and Poppi's Allison Ellsworth.
This is the anti-Ferriss in format: two friends brainstorming instead of one host deconstructing. But the outcome is weirdly similar. You leave every episode with two or three frameworks and at least one idea you want to build this weekend.
Sam sold The Hustle to HubSpot. Shaan sold Bebo to Twitch. They talk like people with nothing to prove, which makes the numbers they share more honest than most interviews.
I broke down my favorite episodes in podcasts like My First Million if you want to go deeper down that branch.
7. The Game with Alex Hormozi
Closing in on 1,000 episodes, most of them under 30 minutes.
Hormozi built Gym Launch, sold it, and now runs Acquisition.com, a portfolio doing hundreds of millions in revenue. The Game is him talking directly at you about offers, pricing, sales, and volume. Most episodes have no guest, just Hormozi working through one problem in 20 minutes.
Where Ferriss explores, Hormozi prescribes. "Your offer is weak, here is the checklist" is a very different energy from "what would you put on a billboard."
Best consumed when you're stuck on something commercial: your pricing page, your churn, your close rate. It's the most tactical show on this list per minute.
8. The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett
The biggest show on this list. Around 800 episodes, over 120 million downloads a month, 15 million YouTube subscribers.
Steven Bartlett does the long-form celebrity-expert interview at a scale even Tim doesn't touch anymore. Two hours with founders, scientists, athletes, and the occasional guest who breaks the internet.
The founder episodes are the reason it's here. Bartlett built and exited Social Chain, so when a founder guest gets vague about numbers, he notices.
It drifts toward health and psychology content more than it used to. If you want the full map of that neighborhood, I wrote up podcasts like Diary of a CEO separately.
How to pick (instead of subscribing to all 8)
Don't add eight shows to your queue. You'll listen to none of them. Match the show to the job:
→ Building a bootstrapped SaaS right now: Profitable Founder, then The Game.
→ Facing a big decision: The Knowledge Project.
→ Need energy and standards: Founders.
→ Want business ideas and market chatter: My First Million.
→ Miss the wide-ranging Ferriss feeling: Jordan Harbinger or Modern Wisdom.
→ Want the biggest guests in the world: Diary of a CEO.
Two shows, listened to properly with a notebook, beat eight shows on 1.5x while doing dishes.
FAQ
What podcast is most similar to The Tim Ferriss Show?
The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish. Same long-form interview format, same obsession with how excellent people think and decide, and a guest list that overlaps heavily with Tim's (Kahneman, Lutke, top investors and CEOs). If you want the interview mechanics specifically, The Jordan Harbinger Show is the closest 1:1 substitute.
Is The Tim Ferriss Show still worth listening to in 2026?
Yes, selectively. At 884 episodes the back catalog is the real asset: the Naval Ravikant, Derek Sivers, and Seth Godin episodes are still some of the best business audio ever recorded. I'd cherry-pick the archive rather than follow the new feed, which leans more toward psychedelics, health, and lifestyle than it did in 2016.
What are the best podcasts like Tim Ferriss for business specifically?
Founders, My First Million, The Game, and the Profitable Founder Podcast. All four stay on business almost every episode, where Ferriss might go five episodes without one. If your goal is revenue this quarter rather than general self-improvement, start there.
What should bootstrapped SaaS founders listen to?
Start with shows where the guests share real numbers at a stage near yours. That's the entire filter I use for the Profitable Founder Podcast, and it's why I keep a separate list of the best podcasts for SaaS founders. A $10M exit story is entertainment. A $40K MRR founder explaining their churn fix is a playbook.
The bottom line
Tim Ferriss taught a generation of us that you can reverse-engineer excellence by asking better questions.
The shows above take that idea and point it at the thing you actually care about: building a profitable business without burning your life down.
If that's the season you're in, start with the show I built for exactly that.
