Guy Raz Acquires Ownership of ‘How I Built This’ Podcast, Partners With Vox Media (Exclusive)

Guy Raz is acquiring full ownership of his business podcast How I Built This and adding in video as he partners with Vox Media on the future of the show.

Starting later this fall, How I Built This will premiere video episodes on YouTube and social media platforms, and in early 2027, the show will begin publishing twice as many episodes. Vox Media and Raz also plan to bring back live events for the podcast.

Raz acquired ownership of the show from NPR (the show also previously had a licensing deal with Amazon’s Wondery). The podcast, in which Raz interviews entrepreneurs about how they built and grew their businesses, launched in 2016 and has since published more than 700 episodes. Guests have included Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, Spanx’s Sara Blakely, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, fashion designer Tory Burch, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. How I Built This is a top 50 U.S. podcast, according to Edison Research.

“I felt like right now was the right time to make the long-term commitment to the show that I really intend to make,” Raz said. “We want to do more stories. We want to really turn this into a video show, live events, and really new ways for people to find the archive because there’s so much content and material in the archive that I feel like we have so many opportunities to really expand the show, and having full ownership of the show really gives me the opportunity to make kinds of investments to do that.”

The move to video comes amid the broader push toward the medium in the podcasting industry. Raz notes that he believes audio will remain an important component for listeners on drives and on-the-go, but that video has become important for discovery and for reaching new audiences. He added that on his show, interviews with founders can often become emotional, which can be better showcased on video.

“We have an opportunity to really professionalize it and to get the video right and to do it in a way where hopefully a whole different audience and maybe even parts of the same audience will find those conversations and stories in a video format and find it to be really interesting or appealing,” he said.

As for increasing the volume of episodes, Raz said the show has been publishing about 45 episodes a year for the last several years, but typically receives about 1,000 incoming pitches a week. So the additional episodes will be able to encompass more of those stories.