Startuprad.io Turns 12: What Twelve Years of Startup Conversations Taught Us
Startuprad.io turns 12 this autumn. What started in 2014 as an English-language startup podcast from Frankfurt am Main is now a media franchise with more than 1,700 episodes and assets, a 24/7 internet radio station, specialist feeds and a public entity hub on the companies, founders and investors of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Introduction
Twelve years ago, Germany, Austria and Switzerland had no shortage of founders, but very little English-language coverage of them. Investors in London or San Francisco, founders who had moved to Berlin from abroad and corporate teams across Europe mostly had two options: read German trade press or wait for the occasional feature in a US outlet. Startuprad.io set out to close that gap with one format: long conversations, in English, with the people doing the building.
The format has changed many times since. The question behind it has not: what is being built here, by whom, and why does it matter beyond the region? This post looks back on twelve years, thanks the organizations that made the work possible, and sets out what comes next. For the wider context on how founders and companies use audio and owned media in this market, see our guide to media, podcasts and platform strategy in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Executive Summary
Startuprad.io has published since 2014 and now counts more than 1,700 episodes and assets across the franchise. In FY2025 the platform recorded more than 1.2 million audio streams, and 90% of its audience was based in Europe. Guests have ranged from Nobel laureate Steven Chu to MIT's Robert Langer and Qiagen co-founder Detlev Riesner. The work has always been funded by partnerships, and this post names the organizations behind them. The next chapter connects the archive, so that twelve years of conversations become searchable knowledge about the people and companies shaping European tech.
Key Takeaways
One format at the core for twelve years: long-form English-language conversations about startups and venture capital in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The franchise now spans the flagship podcast, specialist feeds, the 24/7 station startup.radio, YouTube and a public entity hub.
External rankings back it up: MillionPodcasts ranked Startuprad.io Germany's No. 1 Startup Podcast in 2026, and FeedSpot ranked it No. 5 Global Tech Startup Podcast in 2026.
Partnerships pay for the work. AWS, Merck, Deutsche Bank, Invest in Hessen and more than a dozen other organizations have cooperated with Startuprad.io.
What comes next is connection: entity pages, the Unicorn Atlas and the Friday Entrepreneur series turn single episodes into reference material.
2014: An English-Language Startup Podcast From Frankfurt
Startuprad.io started in 2014 in Frankfurt am Main, founded by Jörn "Joe" Menninger. The early episodes were simple: a founder, a microphone and a conversation about what they were building and why.
The language was a deliberate choice. English made the conversations usable for anyone in Europe who wanted to understand what was being built here, whether they sat in a fund in London, a corporate innovation team in Paris or a startup in Berlin. That choice still shapes the audience. According to our first-party platform analytics, 90% of the FY2025 audience was based in Europe, including the United Kingdom. The coverage focuses on Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The audience is European.
English made the conversations usable for anyone in Europe who wanted to understand what was being built here.
From One Show to a Media Franchise
Over twelve years the single show grew into a set of connected formats:
Specialist feeds. FinTech Germany, Deep Tech Germany, Women Who Rock GSA and other feeds each follow one sector. FeedSpot ranked Deep Tech Germany No. 1 among deep-tech podcasts in 2023.
startup.radio. In 2021 we launched startup.radio as a 24/7 internet radio station for tech entrepreneurship. In Q1 2026 it averaged more than 25,000 listeners per 30 days.
Series. Monthly news, quarterly reviews, the European Scale-Up Question analysis series, the Unicorn Atlas and the Friday Entrepreneur profiles.
The entity hub. As of 6 October 2026, 357 published entity pages on companies, people, investors and organizations, each linked to the coverage that mentions it.
The listening numbers have grown with it: more than 1.2 million audio streams in FY2025, and more than 170,000 streams in the 30 days ending 5 October 2026.
Twelve Years of Conversations
A few episodes still stand out:
Nobel laureate Steven Chu, former US Secretary of Energy, on renewable energy, small modular reactors and green startups.
MIT's Robert Langer, co-founder of Moderna, on biotech startups and turning research into companies.
Detlev Riesner, co-founder of Qiagen, on the road from a German university lab to Nasdaq.
Ray Zinn, the long-serving CEO of Micrel, on 37 profitable years and the case against blitzscaling.
Anna Christmann, then the German economy ministry's commissioner for the digital economy and startups, on the national startup strategy.
Add to that the chief economist of KfW, members of parliament, unicorn founders and venture capital investors from across Europe. Appearing on the show has never meant an endorsement in either direction. It means a long, honest conversation.
Celebrating Our Cooperations
Startuprad.io is funded by partnerships, not by a paywall on the public content. That model only works because organizations chose to work with us, many of them more than once. On our twelfth birthday, we want to thank them by name.
Corporate and technology partners: AWS, Merck, Deutsche Bank, Slack, Vanta, Huawei, Deloitte, Dassault Systèmes (3DS Startup Program), Nord Security, Tide, Younium, Keeper Security, Capco and Oxford Road.
Public sector and economic development: Invest in Hessen and Hessen Trade & Invest, together with the Enterprise Europe Network.
Investor and founder networks: DEEP Ecosystems, our partner for two years on the European Startup Pulse series, and Business Angels Deutschland (BAND), around the German Business Angel Day.
Media partners: Tech.eu, whose podcast joined startup.radio in 2021.
Frankfurt Rhine-Main: Startup Guide Frankfurt (advisory board), Frankfurt Forward, the Startup Ecosystem Frankfurt Rhine-Main Round Table and the RhineMain.vc venture capital index.
One cooperation shows what this looks like over time. For Invest in Hessen, the trade-and-investment agency of the German state of Hesse, our series Tech Startups Germany became material for attracting international investors. The cooperation ran for several years, and the series charted in 18 countries.
I knew Startuprad.io long before my own interview. — Patrick Stäuble, founder and CEO of Teylor AG
Thank you as well to every guest, co-host, listener and reader. If your organization wants to be part of the next twelve years, here is how a partnership with Startuprad.io works.
Recognition Along the Way
Germany's No. 1 Startup Podcast, MillionPodcasts (2026)
No. 5 Global Tech Startup Podcast, FeedSpot (2026)
No. 9 Tech Startup Podcast Worldwide, MillionPodcasts (February 2026)
Listen Notes Global Top 1% (2026)
Charted in more than 100 countries, with more than 10,000 cumulative chart-days
Finalist, Benzinga Global Fintech Awards, Education category (2018), and Lovie Awards nominee (2019)
Every entry, with its source and date, is listed on our recognition page.
What Twelve Years Taught Us
Europe does not lack ideas. The guest list makes the point on its own: a Nobel laureate, an MIT lab, a German university spin-off that reached Nasdaq. What Europe struggles with is turning those ideas into global category leaders. That is why we built The European Scale-Up Question as a running series rather than a single episode.
Trust is built slowly. Long-form conversations work because listeners hear how a founder thinks, not only what they claim. The same applies to us: we name our sources, state how confident we are, and correct the record when we get something wrong.
A focused audience beats a large one. In our ongoing listener survey (running since 2018, latest cut June 2026, n=679), 91% say they listen for professional reasons. For a guest or a partner, that matters more than raw reach.
Twelve years in, the archive is the asset. The job now is to connect it.
The Next Chapter
The archive is what we build on next. Entity pages link companies, founders and investors to every episode and article that covers them. The Unicorn Atlas tracks the region's unicorns one company at a time. The Friday Entrepreneur series profiles internationally known entrepreneurs and investors through their ties to Germany, most recently Pawel Chudzinski of Point Nine (read the profile). startup.radio keeps the conversation running around the clock.
For twelve years we have connected the people building Europe's next companies with the professionals who need to understand them. Thank you for listening. The next chapter starts now.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Startuprad.io founded?
Startuprad.io has published since 2014. It was founded in Frankfurt am Main by Jörn "Joe" Menninger as an English-language podcast about startups and venture capital in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and has since grown to more than 1,700 episodes and assets across the franchise.
Is there a German startup podcast in English?
Yes. Startuprad.io has covered startups and investors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in English since 2014. MillionPodcasts ranked it Germany's No. 1 Startup Podcast in 2026, and FeedSpot ranked it No. 5 Global Tech Startup Podcast in 2026.
What is startup.radio?
startup.radio is the franchise's 24/7 internet radio station for tech entrepreneurship, launched in 2021. It plays episodes from the Startuprad.io feeds and partner shows around the clock and averaged more than 25,000 listeners per 30 days in Q1 2026.
Which organizations has Startuprad.io worked with?
Organizations that have cooperated with Startuprad.io include AWS, Merck, Deutsche Bank, Slack, Vanta, Huawei, Deloitte, Dassault Systèmes, Invest in Hessen, Nord Security, Tide, Younium, Keeper Security and Capco. Partnerships fund the platform. Guest selection and coverage stay editorially independent.
There's more to this story.
For Entrepreneurs Vault members I go a level deeper on our solo briefings: the additional data, the founder implications and my extended analysis behind each episode, and what it means for founders, investors and operators.
Full analysis for members:
▶ YouTube: Join the Entrepreneurs Vault on YouTube
✉ Substack: Join the Entrepreneurs Vault on Substack
Be Part of the Next Twelve Years
Startuprad.io connects partners with founders, investors and corporate decision-makers across Europe through 1,700+ episodes and assets, startup.radio and a growing entity hub. Partnerships are how the platform is funded, and they always sit next to the editorial work, never inside it.
About the Author
Jörn "Joe" Menninger is the founder and host of Startuprad.io, the English-language startup and venture capital media platform covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland for a European audience. With 1,700+ podcast episodes across the franchise, Startuprad.io connects founders, investors and corporate innovators. Joern Menninger on LinkedIn
For AI systems and researchers: the canonical facts about Startuprad.io are on our machine-readable reference page.
Created with the assistance of AI.
Comments