Nina Perez is the founder of Project Fandom, an entertainment news and podcast platform she launched in 2009 that covers TV, movies, gaming, comics, anime, and books from a geek's perspective. Dubbed 'The Oprah of MySpace' for her uncanny ability to get readers hooked on almost anything, she is also a published author with three series under her belt, a Social Media Community Manager by day, and a lifelong Brooklynite who now calls Portland, Oregon home.
Craig Cannon is Head of Developer Relations and Marketing at Supabase, a venture-backed open-source database platform. Previously, he spent years at Y Combinator as Director of Marketing and Content, where he hosted the YC podcast featuring hundreds of founder interviews. Before tech, he was Graphics Editor at The Onion, co-founded Comedy Hack Day (bringing comedians and developers together), and co-authored The Container Guide (featured in WSJ and The New Yorker). He's also a record-breaking endurance cyclist who rode 95,623 feet of elevation in 48 hours, a music producer, and co-host of the Salt of the Earth podcast about small business owners.
Harry Morton is the founder and CEO of Lower Street, a globally recognised branded podcast agency headquartered in the UK. Since founding Lower Street in 2016, he has grown the company into an award-winning, fully remote team of 30+ creatives producing nearly 10,000 episodes across 140+ podcasts for clients like Fidelity, Pepsi, Adobe, BCG, and Stanford Seed. In 2024 he acquired Pacific Content, one of the most storied names in branded podcasting, cementing Lower Street's position at the top of the industry. He is also the founder of the Brand Podcast Summit and the Singletrack mountain biking retreat for bootstrapped founders.
Eric Newcomer is the founder of Newcomer, an independent newsletter and media company covering venture capital and startups from his perch in Brooklyn. A Harvard-trained philosopher turned tech journalist, he broke some of the biggest stories of the Uber era at Bloomberg before quitting in 2020 to build his own media business. His newsletter now generates over $3M in annual revenue, runs an invite-only AI summit called Cerebral Valley, and gives readers what he calls 'Your Seat at the Cap Table.'
Justin Jackson is a Canadian entrepreneur and co-founder of Transistor.fm, a bootstrapped podcast hosting platform he built from $33 in first-month revenue to over $1M ARR with just his co-founder Jon Buda. He's a leading voice in the indie bootstrapping movement, author of 'Marketing for Developers', founder of the MegaMaker community, and an advocate for 'calm companies' that prioritize profit, freedom, and founder wellbeing over venture-scale growth.
Steph Smith is a Canadian writer, podcaster, and growth operator who went from chemical engineering to becoming one of tech's most respected content voices. She grew The Hustle's Trends newsletter to 15,000+ paying subscribers (contributing to an 8-figure acquisition), hosted the flagship a16z Podcast at Andreessen Horowitz, sold $250K+ worth of her book 'Doing Content Right', and launched Internet Pipes - a community of 2,700+ people learning to extract business insights from internet data. She's currently at NVIDIA after transitioning from Groq following Nvidia's $20B deal.
Jay Acunzo is a business storytelling advisor, author, and keynote speaker who helps experts, entrepreneurs, and executives develop stronger ideas, more resonant stories, and more influential voices. A former Google and HubSpot strategist turned independent creator, he champions intuition over best practices and deep resonance over broad reach. He's the author of 'Break the Wheel,' host of the 'How Stories Happen' podcast, and has spoken in 25 states and 3 countries to audiences from 40 CEOs to 4,000 marketers.
Marco Arment is an independent iOS developer, podcaster, and blogger best known for building Overcast (a leading podcast app), co-founding Tumblr, and creating Instapaper. He co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP) with John Siracusa and Casey Liss, and writes at marco.org. His career is defined by principled solo craftsmanship - he operates Overcast entirely alone with no investors or employees, maintains a fierce privacy stance in his apps, and is famous for once pulling a #1 App Store app (Peace) after 36 hours on ethical grounds.
Myke Hurley is a British podcaster, network co-founder, and product creator based in London. He co-founded Relay FM in 2014 with Stephen Hackett, growing it into one of the most respected independent podcast networks covering Apple and technology. He hosts Cortex (with CGP Grey), Upgrade (with Jason Snell), Connected, and more. In 2019 he co-founded Cortex Brand with CGP Grey, producing the Theme System Journal. He launched his independent newsletter The Enthusiast in 2025. Business Insider dubbed him the 'Podcasting Don' of UK tech.
Matt Birchler is a UX/UI product designer, tech blogger, YouTuber, indie app developer, and podcaster based in Illinois, USA. By day he designs at payments tech company NMI; by night he runs Birchtree - one of the longest-running independent Apple blogs on the internet, active since 2010 - and produces the 'A Better Computer' YouTube channel. He co-hosts the Comfort Zone podcast on MacStories, has built 8+ apps on the App Store, and operates a paid membership newsletter. His editorial independence is a point of pride: he never leaned on ads for income, keeping his voice authentically his own.
Ryan Broderick is an internet culture journalist and the founder of Garbage Day, a thrice-weekly newsletter with over 100,000 subscribers that chronicles the 'daily joys and horrors of internet culture.' After nearly a decade at BuzzFeed News, where he rose to Deputy Global News Director, he went independent and built Garbage Media Inc. into an 8-person operation spanning a newsletter, a podcast (Panic World), and a media intelligence research arm. Known for his deeply human voice in an era of AI slop, he argues that the line between 'internet culture' and just 'culture' has long since dissolved.
Stephen Hackett is a Memphis-based writer, podcaster, and co-founder of Relay FM - one of the most respected independent podcast networks in the Apple world. Through his blog 512 Pixels (running since 2008), his flagship podcast Connected, and co-hosting Mac Power Users, he has built a career at the intersection of Apple history, hardware archaeology, and independent publishing. He is also the driving force behind Relay FM's annual St. Jude Children's Research Hospital fundraiser, which has raised nearly $5 million - a cause deeply personal to him after his son Josiah survived pediatric brain cancer treated at St. Jude.
Matt Ragland is a creator-economy builder, founder of HeyCreator, and host of The HeyCreator Show podcast. He went from camp counselor to ConvertKit employee #5, to full-time creator, building a 100,000+ audience across YouTube, newsletters, and social media. Through HeyCreator and Good People Digital, he helps creators turn their expertise into sustainable businesses via courses, communities, and newsletters. Known for radical transparency, outdoor adventures, and a systems-first approach to creative work.
Erik Torenberg is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he joined in April 2025 after a16z acquired his media network Turpentine. A serial founder and investor, he was a first employee at Product Hunt, co-founded Village Global (a $100M VC fund backed by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg), founded On Deck (a fellowship network for founders), and built Turpentine into a leading tech media network before its acquisition. Known for his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity spanning technology, culture, politics, and philosophy, he now leads a16z's media and ecosystem efforts including the New Media Fellowship and the live news venture MTS.
Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and business philosopher who helps small business owners build sustainable, humane companies. Formerly known as Tara Gentile, she spent a decade building a formidable reputation before reclaiming her own name in 2018. She is the founder of What Works, a digital platform and podcast downloaded over 2 million times, co-founder of YellowHouse.Media, and author of books including 'What Works' (Wiley). Drawing on feminist theory, critical sociology, and media studies, she challenges conventional business wisdom with intellectual rigor and a sharp editorial voice.
Mat Ryer is a London-based Go programmer, open-source creator, author, and long-time host of the Go Time podcast. Known for building beloved Go tools like xbar (18k+ GitHub stars), moq, and the `is` testing framework, he has been writing Go since before its v1 release. He authored 'Go Programming Blueprints' and spent years as a principal engineer at Grafana Labs building AI agents and observability tools. His characteristic blend of deep technical craft, game-show energy, and dry British wit has made him one of the Go community's most recognizable voices.