Gimlet Media British advertising firm WPP announced it was investing $5 million in Gimlet for a minority stake in the company. Alex Blumberg, a radio journalist, producer for "This American Life", and co-founder of "Planet Money", came up with the idea of a for-profit podcast network after the success of a T-shirt fundraising campaign for "Planet Money". He chose to document the foundation of Gimlet in the first season of "StartUp", the company's first show. Gimlet's co-founder, Matthew Lieber, holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, is a former radio producer at WNYC, and worked as a management consultant
Gimlet Media with the Boston Consulting Group. "StartUp"'s first episode aired on September 5, 2014, and was hosted by Alex Blumberg. Through documentary-style storytelling, the podcast shares Blumberg's experience building Gimlet Media from an idea through to a startup business. In episode 12 of season 1, Blumberg announced his new co-host, Lisa Chow. The second season of "StartUp" focused on online dating company Dating Ring. Dating Ring differentiates itself from other dating companies by offering access to offline matchmakers, as opposed to purely algorithm based date-generating. The company was incubated at Y Combinator. The second season explored the difficulties of gaining success