Like many entrepreneurs, especially those of a certain age, Alex Blumberg never intended to ditch it all to launch a business. He was a producer for public radio program This American Life and worked on the popular business podcast/blog Planet Money. He was winning awards. Getting raises. Life was great. But all along Blumberg had an idea he couldn’t shake: to produce narrative journalism podcasts, in serial form—to be, as he puts it, the HBO of podcasts. Blumberg tried to sell the idea to his NPR bosses. No luck. So he decided to go it alone, launching Gimlet Media in the fall of 2014.
