Misti Cain Joins The Pitch to Host a New Show for Startup Founders
The former Techstars San Diego managing director will host a new show helping real founders solve the challenges threatening their startups, launching this fall.
The Pitch today announced that Misti Cain, former managing director of Techstars San Diego, has joined the company as host and executive producer. She will develop and host a brand-new show where founders work through the challenges threatening their startups alongside experts who’ve been there. The show will launch this fall.
The Pitch was never meant to be one podcast. Since 2015, the flagship show has opened the door to a room most founders never get into, where real founders pitch a panel of real VCs for real investment decisions, on air. The new show points that same DNA at a new question. Founders bring the problem that’s actually keeping them up at night, and experts who’ve solved it work through it with them.
“I’ve believed this since our early Gimlet days: the host is the show,” said founder Josh Muccio. “A clickable title gets someone to press play once. What makes listeners come back, season after season, is the host. So when we considered launching a second show at The Pitch, the whole thing hinged on finding the right someone. I believe we found that someone in Misti Cain.”
Misti spent seven years as a founder herself, then eight at Techstars, getting in the trenches with hundreds of startup founders, most recently as managing director of Techstars San Diego. “She’s lived the problems her show will help other founders solve,” Josh said.
The hire was years in the making. Josh first slid into Misti’s DMs in 2023 to ask if she’d be an investor on the show. It didn’t work out, but they stayed in touch. Co-founder Lisa Muccio picked up the thread in person at Camp Hustle. “We talked dreams and visions and BHAGs… and suddenly the stars aligned,” she said. “Among the redwoods, over a plate of eggs, we heard a pitch that sounded an awful lot like what we are building here at The Pitch.”
“It’s been hard to keep this under wraps,” said Misti. In her words, she’s joining “a truly dynamic team that’s also focused on creating more founders with fewer failures.” And the show itself: “Be on the lookout for a new show coming this Fall, hosted by yours truly, where we’ll help real founders solve real startup challenges in real time with incredible experts.”
Eleven years in, The Pitch has 30 million downloads, 600,000 subscribers, and a fund that invests alongside the VCs on the show. It’s still doing what it set out to do: opening doors for founders. Misti is here to open the next one.
The new show arrives this fall. Until then, Misti has a question for every founder reading this: What’s the biggest challenge threatening your startup right now? Tell her here. All submissions welcome.