I've worked at early stage startups (think 3-8 person teams) for over 5 years. A core part of working at an early stage startup is getting attention, of any kind, on your job postings, product announcements, fundraises, and more. But naturally, you do this from a major disadvantage: you're starting completely from scratch.
So people in early stage startups, just like anyone building out a small business, have to get super active. You have to do things you wouldn't do if you already had a brand, already had a following, around your core product.
This is where the meme of the startup founder or business owner doing a podcast was born. The concept is simple. If you're building a business, you must believe you have good insights on the focus, industry, or sector of that business. And if you think you have good insights, you want to get that story out to the world. You'll do it in any way possible. Podcasts are part of the standard basket of ways to do that. Some people enjoy getting information by listening. So why not meet those people where they are?
This was my thinking as I started, just six months ago, being yet another startup person trying to get a podcast off the ground. The process has been much messier than I imagined, full of bad tools, struggling to get straight answers to what now seem like simple questions, and finding myself trying to learn from people who are optimizing something they understand...not trying to figure out how to start something they don't.
This post is a first in a series focused on the absolute, simple basics. The full series will answer questions I had and to which I couldn't get straight answers. It will also answer questions or provide simple advice I didn't know to consider. I hope something in this series will make your journey easier than mine was.
YouTube has an excellent chapter feature. I thought it wasn't possible for me as a small-time podcast publisher.
One of my first challenges as a budding on-the-side podcast producer was feeling overwhelmed. My first thought for "how to get started" was to pay closer attention to the podcasts I listened to. It turns out I listen to highly produced, large podcasts. And they're incredible. They have all the bells and whistles. Their audio quality is the best in the world. They have catch-phrases, excellent show descriptions, perfect transcripts, video feeds in 4K, etc. Put simply, they have no defects. Put simply, they are excellent. Odd Lots from Bloomberg is wonderfully edited and has an immaculately professional structure. Stratechery is so good that people pay money to access it. I don't actually listen to it, but the Joe Rogan Experience has a whole podcast studio setup with tons of cameras, perfect sound, and ability to show fact-checking screens in real time.
But to my surprise, I noticed that none of these shows had the nifty YouTube "chapter" view I'd become accustomed to when watching content that last tens of minutes or more. For reference, you can see this March 24, 2026 episode of ABC News Tonight with David Muir to see an example. The chapter view is incredible as a user, especially when watching or listening to something on YouTube that is 30+ minutes long. Some times, you just want to jump to a particular part of a video, episode, or show. And YouTube's excellent chapter navigator lets you do just this.
How could three large, well-known podcasts not have this feature? My first reaction was that it must be a special feature, something nearly impossible, something reserved only for the those who had mastered YouTube. And if something this seemingly simple was this hard, how was I going to get anywhere?
I was completely wrong. Chaptering podcasts on YouTube is easy.
A bit of recent luck helped me realize how silly I was being. Adding chapters to YouTube is easy. Almost trivially so, especially if you make use of good tools for managing your publishing workflow for your show. Transcript Processor is one such tool. I didn't look for others because I built Transcript Processor in part to fulfill this publishing requirement with as little effort as possible. But please DM me on Twitter (@ArenRendell) if you come across tools you like.
So here's how easy it is to have nice, clickable, beautiful chapters on Youtube. Literally all you need to do is add a specific format of timestamp + chapter title directly into the video's "Description" input. That easy. Here's the format:
0:00 Title Of First Chapter
2:15 Title Of Second Chapter
8:32 Title Of Third Chapter
15:47 Title Of Fourth Chapter
25:13 Title Of Fifth Chapter
30:33 Title Of Sixth Chapter
42:11 Title Of Seventh Chapter
... and so on. The timestamps included above are examples. You should actually provide the real timestamp for the beginning of a section of your podcast episode in that timestamp format. Your titles should actually be descriptive. Here's a real example from a more recent episode I published to YouTube:
0:00 Cold Open: Speed Skiing, Jake Paul, and New York City Banter
2:23 Introducing the Topic: Trading On-Chain
4:52 What Is a Market Maker? The Grocery Store Analogy
9:27 Whole Foods, Farmers Markets, and Privileged Market Makers
13:38 Market Makers, Exchanges, and Price Discovery
16:24 Spread, Fair Price, and NBBO: How Market Maker Pricing Works
24:20 Automated Market Makers: How AMMs Work On-Chain
30:17 AMMs vs. Centralized Exchanges and the Evolution of On-Chain Trading
37:07 The User Experience: How AMMs Fit Into the Bigger Picture
38:56 Episode Recap and What's Still to Come
49:36 New York Pizza, Bagels, and Closing Thoughts
What happens from there? Once you save and publish, YouTube works its magic. It ingests those timestamps and titles, automatically, and gives your episode page a nice chapter navigator. That easy.
Conclusion: You can publish a professional-looking podcast.
Overcoming the feeling that my podcast could never look "legit" has been a huge step for me. I continue to be on my learning journey, as someone who still feels like a beginner in podcast world. But realizing how easy it is to get professional, user-friendly YouTube chaptering on my podcast episodes was a surprising, gratifying unlock.
For anyone else just starting their podcast journey or trying to level up, I hope this article and the others I post to this blog will be a huge help. As always, find me on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn any time if I can help in any way. And for now, just remember that chaptering podcasts on YouTube is much easier than you think.