Alex Blumberg

Alex Blumberg Biography

Alex Blumberg is an American entrepreneur, radio journalist, former producer for public radio and television, best known for his work with This American Life and Planet Money. He is the co-founder and CEO of the podcast network Gimlet Media.

Alex Blumberg Age

He has not disclosed his age, to be updated soon.

Alex Blumberg Awards

He won George Polk Award in Radio Reporting for his reporting with Adam Davidson for a May 2008 show titled “The Giant Pool of Money”. The episode was linked widely in the blogosphere and remains one of the show’s most-downloaded podcasts. He shared three Gerald Loeb Awards: the 2013 Broadcast Enterprise award for “When Patents Attack” on This American Life, the 2014 Online award for “Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt,” and the 2017 Audio award for his story “Dov Charney’s American Dream”.

Alex Blumberg Career

He received a B.A. from Oberlin College and is currently an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University. He was once the producer of the public radio show This American Life and his stories were regularly featured on the show. He also worked as a freelance radio reporter, contributing to This American Life, the Savvy Traveller, and Chicago Public Radio.

During his work, he collaborated with National Public Radio economics correspondent Adam Davidson to co-host the Planet Money podcast, which posts new episodes twice weekly. He started Gimlet Media along with Matthew Lieber. The media is a podcasting business. He documented the startup process in the first season of a podcast hosted on Gimlet Media, titled StartUp.

Alex Blumberg Wife

He married Nazanin Blumberg who is a creative director at Gimlet Media. Previously she was a producer for The Rachel Maddow Show.

Alex Blumberg Gimlet

Gimlet Media has launched several other podcasts, including Mystery Show, Surprisingly Awesome, and Reply All. The company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. After raising most of its initial capital from investment firms Betaworks, Lowercase Capital, and Knight Enterprise Fund, Gimlet invited the listeners of its shows to help raise the last $200,000 through crowdfunding platform Alphaworks.

In December 2015, Gimlet closed a Series A round of funding that raised $6 million at a $30 millionvaluation. On February 6th, 2019, the Swedish audio streaming service Spotify announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gimlet Media.

Gimlet co-founders Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber spoke to Kafka just hours after the sale was officially announced. Lieber said they did consider that given the success of its hit shows like StartUp and Reply All, Gimlet might be able to “navigate the stormy seas of media” and remain independent. But ultimately, they decided that was a risk, and Spotify had more to offer.

Blumberg, the original host of StartUp who used the warts-and-all podcast to chronicle Gimlet’s early days, was characteristically candid in his reasoning: Yes, he and Lieber are very aware the acquisition will make them personally wealthy. But that’s not the only reason they sold.

Alex Blumberg Podcast

A StartUp is an American podcast from Gimlet Media hosted by Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow. The first two seasons follow stories of starting the business. Season 1 about the starting of Gimlet Media itself, and Season 2, a dating company called “Dating Ring” – the third season follows one business per episode. Season 4 began by following Gimlet Media again, then aired episodes focusing on other companies. Season 6 followed the making of the TV series created about the podcast. The most recent season covers the founding of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City.