A person can have money to invest and still have very little idea how investing works. In 2013, Nick Moran began angel investing and encountered a business whose rules seemed to travel by private conversation. So he went for coffee with people who knew those rules. Then he made a consequential decision: other people should be able to listen.
- Free interviews explain how investors choose startups and founders raise money.
- Short Investor Stories compare several investors’ answers to one question.
- The archive doubles as preparation for a pitch, a diligence meeting or an investing career.
The Full Ratchet, launched in May 2014, is the result. Today, its public description names Nick Moran and Nate Pierotti as hosts. The company occupies a particular corner of business media: it lets listeners hear venture practitioners reason through their work. The attraction is the question that comes after the polished biography. Why this founder? Why that price? What did you miss?
The checkbook wasn’t enough
Moran had worked in mergers and acquisitions and product management at Danaher, including developing a drinking-water testing device. He brought operating experience to investing. But in his hundredth podcast episode, he recalled a problem: he lacked a distinctive reason for entrepreneurs to choose him. Money was available from other people, too.
He could wait to accumulate a track record or build a public reputation while learning. Venture bloggers already had their territory. Audio looked like an opening. That choice explains the show’s shape: questions about an unfamiliar profession, addressed to people actually doing it. Expertise was something to investigate in public.
Getting an early guest such as Brad Feld sounds like the sort of breakthrough that should require a secret handshake. Moran’s account, in episode 194, is more practical. He sent a cold request. His explanation was short: “I just asked.” The lesson for an unknown founder is pleasantly unglamorous. A brief, relevant request gives somebody something they can answer.
One question. Several answers.
The central product is a free interview podcast, accompanied by episode pages with topic lists, guest links and, on many installments, transcripts. Alongside it sits Investor Stories: shorter pieces built around recurring prompts. Investors discuss lessons, missed opportunities, exceptional founders and conflicts. The two formats solve different problems. One gives you time to follow an argument; the other lets you compare judgments.
Follow the whole argument.
Compare advice across guests.
Moran has said the inspiration for Investor Stories came from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Borrow the pleasure of hearing different people approach a subject, then apply it to investing. It is an amusing ancestry for a program about term sheets. It also makes editorial sense: a repeated question exposes differences that separate interviews can hide.
Consider September 2026’s installment 494. Glenn Solomon stresses founding-team quality. Vivek Vaidya discusses delegating authority with sufficient context. John Chen considers the danger of dismissing an opportunity because of its deal terms before understanding the company. Three answers, three places to look for an error. A listener can compare those lenses with a decision already on the desk.
The audience has two jobs
Founders use the show to understand the person across the fundraising table. Angels and aspiring VCs use it to learn investment processes. Experienced investors can compare their own assumptions with a guest’s. The company’s LinkedIn description puts investors and startup founders together in its remit. Its distribution through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube makes those conversations accessible well beyond Chicago.
There is a second audience function. The podcast helped Moran form relationships that mattered to his investing business. In episode 101, he described future New Stack partner Jeff Heitzman as a listener who became an engaged source of analysis and deals. A conversation published for strangers could become the beginning of a working relationship.
“We run a VC podcast, which subsidizes our operations in a significant way”Nick Moran, in a Darden interview
The business has more than attention behind it. Sponsors support the free programming: recent episode pages credit Ramp, while the company announced a .TECH Domains partnership on LinkedIn. Moran historically described sponsorship and consulting as ways to pay near-term bills while investment returns took time. The Full Ratchet and New Stack Ventures are related, but fund capital and podcast income belong to different business activities.
A library beats a listening queue
The most practical way to use The Full Ratchet is to begin with a problem. Preparing a pitch? Its written elevator-pitch exercise asks for the target customer, the problem, the solution and the resulting benefit. Write those four answers before polishing the slides. Reviewing an investment? The early Imran Ahmad diligence interview and Rob Go portfolio discussion offer starting points for better questions.
The archive also follows the market’s changing preoccupations. Interview 500, with Ben Orthlieb in January 2026, examined AI-assisted venture operations. August’s Vivek Vaidya conversation addressed AI pricing and data. September’s Ross Fubini and Manish Patel interview considered founder networks and strategy. These are discussions of how practitioners think; the episode titles describe the guests’ subjects, rather than results achieved by the podcast company.
Alternatives include 20VC’s investor and founder interviews and Venture Unlocked’s focus on building venture firms. The Full Ratchet’s useful distinction is its combination of long conversations, recurring comparison segments and older instructional material. You can move from a current debate to a basic fundraising question without leaving the archive.
That usefulness has conditions. A guest’s answer belongs to a particular market, career and investment stage. Listening cannot establish whether your customer wants the product, whether your terms are appropriate or whether an investor will back you. Use an episode to identify a question worth testing, then test it in the business. Moran’s original move remains available to almost anyone: find the thing you do not understand, ask someone who does, and listen closely enough to ask again.