The Duchess of Sussex’s new series from Lemonada Media premiered with an episode featuring Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd
Meghan Markle‘s podcast Confessions of a Female Founder debuted this week, and the numbers are in.
The Duchess of Sussex’s new series from Lemonada Media about women in business premiered on April 8 and ranked high on multiple charts at the end of the week. As of April 11, Confessions of a Female Founder hit second on Apple Podcasts’ Top Show chart and was the number one show in the platform’s business category. PEOPLE understands that Apple Podcasts’ charts are constantly updating.
Confessions of a Female Founder was the number two show on Spotify’s The Podcasts Charts in the business category in the U.S. It is also number 19 on the streamer’s general Top Podcasts chart in the U.S.
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Meghan’s new series is also trending in Amazon Music’s Business podcasts list as of April 11.
The Duchess of Sussex, 43, had a busy start to the year with the premiere of her Netflix series With Love, Meghan on March 4, the launch of her lifestyle brand As ever (which sold out on its April 2 debut day) and drop of her Lemonada Media podcast on April 8.
Exclusively speaking to PEOPLE in a March interview, Meghan spoke about how other female founders have inspired her entrepreneurial journey.
“What’s been meaningful is being able to talk about my own entrepreneurial journey with other female founders who are either on their own trajectory of growth or have IPO’d, sold, or created high-impact brands and gone through all of the learning curves that we all do at the start,” the Duchess of Sussex says.
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“You’re just trying to figure out how to walk, then you want to learn how to run, and then you want to learn how to fly. All of those things take time. There’s also something very exciting and energizing about learning something new as we get older,” she says. “The entrepreneurial journey, for anyone, is a lot, and I’m also really, really lucky that so many of my close friends are female founders that I can glean advice from.”
Meghan and Lemonada Media announced on March 13 that she would host a new series called Confessions of a Female Founder debuting in April with an eight-episode season. The series will chronicle her entrepreneurial journey launching the As ever brand and feature conversations with fellow female founders, including some of her famous friends.
Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was the guest for the first episode of Confessions of a Female Founder. She and Meghan spoke about their close friendship, juggling work with motherhood, their shared experience of “brutalizing” tabloid scrutiny and how they both navigated postpartum preeclampsia, a rare complication that can be life-threatening after giving birth.
“It’s so rare and so scary,” Meghan said. “And you’re still trying to juggle all of these things, and the world doesn’t know what’s happening quietly. And in the quiet, you’re still trying to show up for people – mostly for your children — but those things are huge medical scares.”
The Duchess of Sussex didn’t disclose whether the condition occurred after the birth of her son, Prince Archie, 5, or daughter, Princess Lilibet, 3, whom she shares with her husband, Prince Harry.
Confessions of a Female Founder is Meghan’s second foray into podcasting. She made her debut as a podcast host with the show Archetypes, which aired for one season on Spotify in 2022. A passionate advocate for women’s rights and gender equity, Meghan hopped on the mic to debunk the stereotypes that hold women back in honest conversations with Serena Williams, Mindy Kaling, Paris Hilton, Mariah Carey and more.
The show topped Spotify’s international charts when it debuted in the summer of 2022 and later won the People’s Choice Award for pop podcast.
Meghan and Harry split from Spotify in 2023, and Confessions of a Female Founder is her first project in partnership with Lemoanda in a deal revealed in 2024.
On April 10, the Duchess of Sussex celebrated her new podcast’s success with a post on Instagram.
“So grateful for the love and support! Keep listening to ‘Confessions of a Female Founder’ anywhere you get your podcasts,” she wrote with a star emoji below a video of her at work in her podcast studio along with a screenshot of it charting and supportive words from friends.
