Stratechery (with Ben Thompson)
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Markets got a nice bump today. You're get feeling a Better room.

Yes, I get this wide room. You know.

I want to to, like wake up on this twenty, twenty one side of the bed one day. Feel like, you know, times for good back .

then because categorised c damage that needed to get unwound at some point. But well, that was up IT was all good.

Do I really need to keep bringing out on the hammer?

Let's take this F, O, M.

C meeting off. I went to post the story. I need to go to start a beat with a drink.

Who got? you. Easy, you see me down story. On .

welcome to season eleven, episode eight of acquired the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I am then gilbert and I am the cofounder and managing director of seattle based pioneer square labs and our venture fund p. Sl.

and i'm David rosenthal, and i'm an Angel investor based in separate esco.

and we are your hosts today. We are telling the entire history and strategy of strategic, and we are joined by the man himself, then thomson, on the eve of strategy eries ten year anniversary. Strategy ery is innocently built on his website as the business strategy and impact of technology strategi eben puts IT started as some guy in taiwan with no access today.

Tratement ery is a powerhouse, shaping the thoughts and conversation of the entire technology industry around the world at the highest levels. Ben has interviewed mark zuker berg, jenson huang, saw anadolu, soon, darpa, chi rich, Martin marais, copt levy in of the new york times, pat girl singer of intel and joan Collins and many, many more, many of which are regular readers. He is the father of aggregation theory, the most important business framework developed in the last twenty years in bed, really pioneer the internet subscription newsletter business model. We SAT down with him to talk about a bunch of his recent changes, going big into podcasting, bringing on cohoes at expanding the empire, and even now launching a strategical property that he does not appear on at all.

Regardless of what your business model is, regardless, if not most of what your company is, I don't think there's any creator, certainly not any business creator out there today who doesn't directly or indirectly look to ban and say, you inspired me. You pave the way for what I do. I mean, we certainly feel that way. I feel that way.

David. I even feel like you're in my friendship developed early on from reading ben's pieces and sharing them with each other with our thoughts. We have these all the mouth roads in twenty fourteen of U U. And I discussing ben's writing totally.

We might talk about that on the episode.

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This is not an investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. And now onto our interview with ben.

Ben thomson, welcome to required. Thank you. Have to bear. great.

Have you with us. We've done surveys .

over the years for audience, and we say, what is the number of one topic that you would want to see us cover a person we should have on the show? And your name comes up many, many times. So um excited to be doing this.

You will promise me I was number one. Now you would feel like there's a bit of all let out going on.

We asked who the number one was and you were very high in the rankings.

Well, we have another number one though that is very near. And due to our hearts, then was searching his email today, and he sent an image over text that was very sweet. IT was the first email between us, and that was about tratement ory.

okay. Final take that .

David and I think got drinks and we're talking about uber and IT was your don't blame uber peace from twenty fourteen yeah.

it's kind of interesting in retrospect to think about that. I think that was about health care and rights and workers and things on those lines. It's pretty interesting.

You could probably write a similar piece about easy money and the macroeconomic envionmental. Lots of pieces. So I mean, it's body.

I ve never thought about that piece in years and years. I usually have a very good memory of everything that i've written. But every now, then, I will encounter peace, whether someone linked to IT or come up. And i'm searching for the Normal user of just such a research.

You built that for yourself.

I completely forgot that. I know about that. I usually I would go back and read like, that doesn't bad, so does you go back about but IT is what IT is, is what happens. You're written thousands of posts over approaching ten years now .

it's just prolific, is interesting. I went back and just read the early days preparing for this. You've post you imported from a tumbler in two thousand and nine that are like all the way back in the back halo gue.

Yeah, i've started multiple blogs through the years. I thought they were relevant and interesting. And also, I think it's useful to have a back cat logue when you watch. And that's something that I do when I watch podcast now is it's important to those sort of establish the first time someone encounters you that this is in just a flash on the pants or a thing and something that is interesting.

You mean like doing thirty episodes of detherage before you released a single one?

Know, in that case, we really wanted to figure out what that podcast should be. And then also working with john, I can be a bit of perfectionist. So is that want the one like looking guess? I don't know anybody else like that.

There is a technical opponent that would that as well. But I think it's good for both sides, is good for the creator because if you can't have the discipline and sort of staminate to build up a backpack, og, you're probably not going to have the discipline staff. We ought to keep going for a long time.

So it's almost good internally to sort of get that done. But then also, when someone encounters IT and then they feel wild, there's an excitement, not just an anticipation of new episodes. I'll be down the road.

But wow, there's already a whole bunch of stuff here for me to listen to. If you like, the first one eques into a second one. And I think that sort of second one is super important, is the point I made about writing in general.

Anyone can come up with one really good post or one really good podcast. I don't mean to say say that dismissively. I think there's a lot of people. There are three smart insights. I think it's a very distinct skill and capability to come up with interesting things consistently. And the sooner you can demonstrate that to someone, the sooner they are going to take advantage whatever means you have to follow or to subscribe or whatever might be because it's not just a promise of consistency, but it's evidence of that. And I think that's really important to all my businesses in general.

I think about that element a lot. I also think about every piece of content you create as a turn opportunity. David ee, regularly look at each other mid episode or like a is this of acquired quality? Or is IT actually net negative for us to released this episode? Because we have now reduce the average quality of a thing that someone comes to expect from us. Yeah, I mean.

well, things were putting the pressure on me right up there. I Better sure this is interesting, but it's interesting because I would push back against that a little bit. And this is why the consistent part is important.

I mean, there's an ongoing discussion. I think there is that new social network post news or something, and I just saw I twitter I actually fall through, but they want to do micro payments for which I think are terrible. And there is a tendency and a lot of things to get overly indexed on the consumer.

Which kinds sounds wrong with, why when you want to give the consumer exactly what they want. Just to take the most obvious example, if a creators not making money, well, the consumer may get what they want, which is free content. But I can get for very long.

There is a short term perspective versus a long term perspective, which well know if by charging for this, I can do this over the long run. But from a micro transaction perspective, I think when the issue is to create the piece of content is very time consuming. And then obviously, you get the free distribution in the back end, your margin cost in the back end.

But the problem is you have a timing this match with mr. Transactions between when the payments made, when the investment is made. And so you want to put a lot of time into an article and that hope IT attraction. So I can not just make money, but also repay what i'm doing from there.

And I think that the way to think about publishing online is, what are you selling? I think when you get in the trap of thinking you're selling a single episode or selling a single art that's actually gaining an and is wrong, what i'm selling to my subscribers is consistency. And yes, certainly quality bar.

When I write something that I am not happy with, I miserable for the next time for hours or if it's the end of the week to get to next week. And that really sucks because I certainly have the drive and compulsion to make sure that what I put out is high quality. But at the same time, there is an aspect of what i'm actually selling to my subscribers, and this is more of an implicit promise.

But I think it's the reality is the consistency and the regularity and the knowing that something happens, you're going to be able to get my take on IT. And I think that's where subscription pricing does make much more sense for content production because in this case, you're actually get the money up front. The money is funding the work as opposed to the work.

Being a speculative bid for the money. And one thing that i've pushed over time and i'm very happy about is trying to give people to sort of annual subscription. So I think my audience disport is like seventy percent descriptions .

at one hundred and fifty boxy year. Is that right?

It's twelve dollars a month. S one hundred twenty dollars a year. So you do get a twenty four doors discount by being annual.

You have the strip. Ece, yeah, it's like a sixteen dollars rence. So that certain of makes a big difference. But then also, I just think it's good for me and it's good for my customers to know that well, I have a chance to .

make IT up to you. Your internet media business about the business of technology is a very different business. That our internet media business about the business of technology across the number of dimensions, right?

There's obviously the business model. Your primary business model s is our primary business model. You being subscriptions are being advertising, but there's also the period nature of content. I think one of the reasons we feel such pressure on the g episode de is we're dropping one, maybe two episodes month. How many peces of content are you're doing .

a week at this point? Well, less than I once did believe that are not usually three written pieces, one interview, two sharp shock episodes and two differing episodes. So I guess that is eight pieces of content.

When I first started the daily update, I was doing two, three articles, five paid articles and a podcast that was eight. So I guess i'm doing more now. But revealing my secrets podcasts are easier to do than writing.

So IT feels easier today that I was back then. IT certainly is a lot I don't think that will always be the shape of IT forever, but yeah, there definitely is a lot more than two per month. So it's a fair push back.

right? So because this is required and i'm playing format police, David, I take us back the beginning and we're going to try not to do well too. Longs band, I know you ve told your story else, but I think it's important for context.

So you get this singling of an idea that you can do this, and you have an idea for a way to cover the intersection of strategy and technology in a differentiated way, then has been done before, and you decide that you want to start doing that. I think you are still doing IT while you're at microsoft. And in two thousand and fourteen, is that right then.

I had started tons of blocks to the years. I, in summer respects, felt I am missed out because I am the same age as folks like, as required. And Matthew glaciers, and, you know, I was right for the school newspaper, and you know, I started a blog, and my man, if I had sorted, kept with IT, know I could be doing what they do. And then john gruber started during fireball around two thousand and three. And so there was some aspect of, like, well, obama.

I miss out on that. It's like the famous market and reason you show up in silicon valley and you feel like go down. It's already all .

happened without question. So so many people push me. You should ready again. You should do and I think I did those tumble post while I was at business school.

And yeah, I mean, he was definitely something that I always wanted to do just from a personal self interest perspective. But also, it's not enough to just want to do something. There needs to be a market. There needs to be an opportunity. The way I always put IT is there's lots of sites writing about the products and wall street is writing about the financial results, but there is a big gap in the middle there.

Know like what is the strategy that goes into the products? Like what are the margins in the business models that undergo those products that drive to the financial results? How does company culture impact decision making? Why do companies do stupid things? This is a common question in business school.

And you will do these interviews, interviews, prop, when you're the first year doing secure students and you have the first students. And my favorite question was always, what's a decision or a product this company has made that you think is about idea you disagree with? And everyone will always have an answer to that.

But the more interesting questions, the follow question, which is, why did they do that? And what you would see is a lot of people, their answer really was because they're stupid. And the reality is, no one at these companies is stupid.

Very popular choice backed an. Is microsoft making the zoo players? like? That's a dumb idea about all. Well, why do microsoft do that? It's not just useful for critique but also useful for saying where company should go.

So I think probably microsoft of the microsoft of facebook are probably my two biggest successes as far as an analyst. You I think particularly microsoft, where I think I very clearly articulated what their issues were. And also by understanding those issues, the sort of organza they were, the sort of capabilities they were and not just the weakness.

Is that entailed also the strikes that entailed where they should go and the sort of strategy they should adapt. And that's basically the specially they have adopted. And obviously, it's tremendously successful. But there's no one writing that sort of stuff back in twenty thirteen.

One of the things we thought a Better lot was we are not journalists, and we came at this from having worked in the industries that were talking about, and obviously you ve did you having been at microsoft to apple in plenty other places, was that in your mind, like everybody you mentioned as reliance groupers different will talk about grubber later. But they were journalists, they came out of the media where we were all coming out of the industry.

Yeah, it's interesting. I wouldn't classify either cite or glacier as journalists. I mean, they were blogger, that's what they were. And they ended up as somewhat journalist, although I would say both of them, their best work has always been more analysis than journalism.

I mean, maybe it's a stupid classification, I think, about journalist as sort of writing about what is happening at best, uncovering facts. Analysis is explaining why IT happened. And opinion is some aspect saying what you think should happen.

Those have certainly gotten conflated over the years. That's probably a different discussion. But analysis and opinion, I think, to go together to some extent, but it's actually a line that i'm actually pretty real about.

I really try to not break news. That's actually an explicit choice on my side. I mean, I was an easy decision to make IT the beginning because I knew no one.

I like twitter followers. When I started, everything that I wrote was self generated, right? He was just my own inside, my own view of the situation.

You didn't have any particular no access.

a negative access. I sort of felt like you because I could write microsoft because I was some p on there. I think that of my work experienced the microsoft bit was certainly the most impactful, not just because of what I learned about microsoft, but just what you learnt about big companies.

I think in general, and it's very easy on the outside to etherton ify these companies in like a single entity sort of making decisions are doing what you want and doing what you don't. And the reality is pits thousands and thousands of people. There's massive coordination problems.

Everyone has different take different opinion, which is why the culture stuff is so interesting, which is why the b shared understanding of what the company is and is not capable of is so important to understanding why companies do what they do actually tends me much more impact for than single individuals and definitely single individuals below, like the CEO level. And even then, what constrains the CEO actions is a pretty thing. But they had to build a team to get apps for windows eight.

And so I was responsible for social media other than facebook and twitter. So I guess logging, I was responsible for publishing. So the book publish, amazon kindle thinks on those lines, I was responsible for lifestyle.

So really got to know the publishing industry very well, both unlike the magazine inside the newspaper side, book publishing side, and all that was certainly useful learning for writing about those industries, but also very useful for understanding absurd dynamics, developer dynamics. IT was super fun, very busy, very high, trying to s about the door, working with ha, build, S, D, and fine all over, and working with developers. And then do they want to kind of sucked that? That was up until then.

So I was at microsoft and I member, my wife and I knows our first average to who why I think this was the winter of two thousand twelve thirteen and set down and talk bodies like it's probably gonna time to move on pretty soon. I mean, any of microsoft is always a bit of an upset. I was always sort of an apple person.

That was my obsession. I want to work at apple at the good, being able to in turn there. And I was at apple university when apple university had just started.

And the original vision for public university was that it's going to be really focused on apple lize. This notion of is the top two hundred, although I think it's actually today more like top three under or something. They go to this big company retreat.

There are the ones that know all the future plans. Everything is going on. And that's really sort of decision makers at apple. And it's not necessarily by management position like there's ics that are you have no major respons sibly, but are you know sort of part of that core that was an amazing experience and really trying to figure out like what makes apple apple sort of defining the culture and IT did seem problematic.

That is very hard to write culture down because then that kind of a rest, I think, for your osio ation and getting sort of walked into something. What is interesting is IT was written a lot about is the sort of Steve jobs initiative. And do you i'm sure he OK IT, but he had basically no involved in at all. Tim cook was very heavily involved, like the whole tim cook doctoring thing that folks talked about to get the earnings call that was that apple university first.

did you coin the code? dicon?

No, I think horis deducted from a sim code of the reality is as culture comes from doing and IT doesn't come from saying. And there is a issue like if you make is based on data, right, it's inherently backwards looking because the data has to be generated first. And I think there's analogy to culture along those lines.

That and the concern about writing IT down and getting focused on that is your sort of knocking yourself in any cultures are very, very powerful. It's the way that you coordinate a massive company and keep IT going in the broadly same direction. Because there are so many things that you cannot calculate.

You can speculate that this is the way we do things. If you did, you would be bogged down with the transaction cost. Communicating every little detail are massive.

And so culture keeps you going in the right direction. But culture is also very dangerous, because if you have to change direction, suddenly you realized you in a straight jacket. And I do wonder if writing stuff down and saying this is the way we do things is actually like sowing the three jackets.

And not sure how that pays off, right? Culture and process accomplished the same goal in many cases. And so either IT can be done in a process lightly because the culture sort of facilitates IT getting done, but then you have no processes to change something if the culture is no longer facilitating what you want to do.

Yeah, I think that that's an interest way to put IT culture is probably the processes that can be written down to some extent because it's just an understanding of this is how we do IT. I left that summer feeling like this is not the right thing for me. You get to business school, you have to get a job. Everyone else is getting jobs and you feel know, and there was pretty tough for me.

and you feel like what you do. Immediately after business school, I had this such weight to that career decision, and I just sly whatever .

is like a did well, I was held bent on being in tech, and I had lots of opportunities and offers that was consulting was an option. It's interested. It's a very non traditional background. Being an english teacher in taiwan, you know, I built a sort of distributed presentation system for a group of schools here. There was like some sort like teagle persae but really I was just like any good teacher .

from diwan we you back to sort of as recline matic glaces. You were kind of cut from that cloth before getting in detect, right? Like you were polite, major, right? You were in politics.

You and honestly, a lot of that was my background and my grew up definitely blue collar, but my parents were ministers and you're a small town of two thousand like the pastor is like the most educated person around by large. So there's aspect.

While the alternative to working in the factory on the farm is you go to college, you would be like a professor, something there just wasn't even any awareness of any sort of opportunities, and I think is very not well understood by elites in general. And people on the coast where it's not a lack of opportunity is a lack of even knowledges that their opportunities elsewhere. And so for me, going to the universe with consent was like this big act of rebellion.

And I goo, i'm not gna go to a bible college or i'm not going to go to whatever. And in a retta respect, I had the grades and test scores to go somewhere. Me, I mean, we got to the great school, but I probably to, I even that this wasn't .

on your radar screen.

not even about radar screen, not on the radar screen of anyone around me. And I think this is a perspective that is probably not very well understood by a lot of our audience, I think, to say the least. And so I actually love tech. I was very into IT. I like I was the first person I knew around me and email address to sort of be a line.

Did you get the internet at home before you went to college? Or was college your first experience with IT?

No, I pester red and pester red my parents to get internet. I I think we started out with like a juno account, which is just email only.

Wait, you know, the one that was A D shop.

Now, yes, that was an incubation of a there before mazo.

Yes, I like a and client that was emerged. You, so even a college, you know, I was super online meeting microbe friends stayed in the dorms after a year, just because the prob and connection broadband is used very loosely here, think is like two begger bikes up and down. I worked the school newspaper, which I ve one of the things that I did at the newspaper was I took over the editorial section of my senior year, and so we SAT down.

We had five things that we want to see happen with first decided. Number one, editors will only ever be about things that affect students. And what we did was, look, we're going to buy an editorial, al, every single day, monday through thursday, friday, the whole page. Are we given a way to guess combs? We're going to right editorial every single day, no matter what, and work and right about these five issues.

And do that mean you're writing an editorial .

every single day? Well, so we had an editorial board, but IT basically ended up me right every single day what you came down to every day with the vast majority. It's interesting because there is certainly there is an echo of what I ended up doing with my career, right, this sort of daily hitting points having to generate content.

But IT was number one, just from a practical perspective. IT was fun and interesting, something I definitely enjoyed, an opportunity worked of our five sort of things. We had goals. We accomplish four of them.

So I want to go forward to your leaving microsoft. Give me the emotional moment where you're like IT feels like I could work like I think there's something here. I think I have content market fit.

So to go to back the White trip, there wasn't aspect about going to microsoft like, well, I should go to a place that is directly opposition to everything I believe in, right? And can I make changes at microsoft? You know, very sort of arrogant, really.

I learned a lot from microsoft is supposed to the other way around. I sort of signed up for IT, knowing this is probably not where I was going to be a long term. And after that trip is when I did start protector, I wanted to figure out to waiting a back.

Taiwan at some point, my wife from taiwan, and we enjoy living here also. Again, I just felt like there was this whole an opportunity. And I sort of looked at gruber as someone that was like, well, he did IT. But IT was also pretty clear that in advertising base model was probably not going to work. I mean, that was obviously a red theme of mind about the central ation advertising under a google, facebook and that world of starting a blog and thrown us google ads was not going to be a viable one.

What made you think that, to my mind least, there is a very viable and robust alternative history where the teacher er is an advertising business model?

Well, I think that I would have to have started much earlier. And I think gruber's model is the right one. Where is I think is actually underrated, that I think he actually kind of invented of advertising because you read every piece of content, tty writes.

And one of them just happens to basically be an ads is the same format, same content, is what's there. And I would bet that the rate of consumption to encountering IT for his ads or like hier, that almost anything else out there, and obviously, facebook does that at scale. And this all automated itself serve and you screwed through and there's different because the content you should there were ads.

but you didn't think you could do the same thing. The john d as well.

I thought that was a possibility of potential lag of the store. But number one, I didn't know that I could do the same for but I mean what works for him very well is because most of the for short sniff its and wake out. It's very easy to check in and read everything.

I ended up moving more towards longer pieces. I think I did experiment and play around with the format and IT didn't seem right to me. And then also just strategically, you could see where things were going.

This idea that. Users are going to google, going to social media. And that's the best, most obvious place to put advertising because that's what the users are.

They're understanding about them, all those of things. Advertising is our life measurement. It's not just what you're return, but also how much work you have to do to get IT. And why would someone want to go to a small blog and put the effort of putting in out there you didn't see like a very scalable possibility. And meanwhile, at the same time, there have been this new company that was sona called strike.

And IT seemed viable to me that if you thought through the idea, look, if I produced super highly differentiated content, that is something that is not going to appeal to the whole world, but to the people who like IT, they'll really like IT. And if you have that sort of audience, you should maximize your revenue per user. And the way to maximized your revenue per user is to charge A, A subscription. And the tools were then becoming available to sort of do that.

just to validating the point. Roque k. And David, this is my push back on there being an alternative history wordstar techy could have been added. Ven, for anybody who doesn't read during fireball and doesn't know who john gruber is, that we're talking about quick lesson when then says that he invented the infect advertisement you go to during fire 报道。 那 yes， that that and you see the same exact website this spent there for ten close to twenty years at this point.

And most of IT is links out to other things, some of its long form wealth out through pieces, and some of IT is sponsored post. And I consumed, just like many other people, the entire feed and our accessory, or, and the sponsored post would show up just like any other post in R. S. S. reader.

Now, I think the set of people who are likely to use an rs reader and who are likely to go directly to dairy fireboat that does the place where they are intentionally typing A U R L or clicking the bookMarks bar and going to IT that set of apple nerds is far more likely to do that behavior than anybody else in the world. The world is shifting away from going directly to pages. And a lot of your readers are like, i'm just getting my news from twitter and or ever else at this point doing our assisting.

Yeah I think the more issue are, interestingly enough, that does have an suggestions. You can also work well for advertising. I think gruber was at the right place, the right time for apple for sure, not just in terms of apple's growth, but also the explosion, the APP store.

There was a period where you'd have lots of apps as a sort of feature things. And so IT works great for him. I did have sponsor to post a little bit when I did go independent because I figured out of multiple revenue streams.

I didn't remember that. How long did you do that for like six months?

Again, the R I was in there for me either. I couldn't charge that much and IT was a big hassle and going IT arranged. And then also, there's a lot of complicating factors like pushing about the email was not a good fit for that. And so I started to actually pretty quite that subscriptions would be the core bottle. I was gonna watch the things to moitie clear .

to you that you pie near that. I mean, there was no substantial in many ways. Sub stack was, I don't know the exact history, but probably modeled after you.

I know subsets. Sea dex says sharing in a box that was their pitch.

So this was a big innovation .

yeah I I think like this subscriptions did exist, I think on wall story in particular. But they were generally like twenty thousand dollars and you would get called the hetch fans to subscribe in the banks. That model still exists, is actually a very, very profitable one.

But what I do think your tec innovated was sort of descriptions at scale where you're charging a low Price, twenty five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars and you're doing on ourselves are based of people sign up the credit ard. And I get stripe was a really important part of making this possible. But there were no role description tools.

I had actually hack IT altogether. When I first started, there was like where Price tools, then there was strike, and you had to gloom together. And I was sort of a big mess when I started, a year after I started a company called memorable and watched, which I switched to them, that made things definitely much easier. And then I would say, I my is now you've .

worked with the outside development agency to custom build software for which you are the only user to publish protector now, right?

Yeah, at the beginning was on me like I built my own page and I did all that integration myself and i'm not really developed. So he was very happy. Actually, one of my nights mayors was when I watched the paid product.

So I actually, I mess around four matter. What about the beginning? Actually, the real pioneer who I should mention was Andrew solvin. And he had this manic posting schedule, like tens of posts a day, and he didn't have a team to help on the daily dish.

And he switched to a subscription when I think you have the atlantic and IT was successful like he quickly was doing a million dollars in revenue a year. But he sort of maintain that matic posted schedule that was kind of made sense of an advertising world where you want people always coming back and getting lots of impressions. And the paywall was super loose.

He was like thirty posts and that you hit a paywall or something. And the really is what happens heared out, I think, had some health issues and ended up leaving. And IT was funny because when he left, everyone's like, boggs's dad, it's finished, was a failure.

And I here, I I like, and I think this was actually a huge success. One of the problems was he had this posting schedule and system, and then he try to drop a payment top of. And so when I thought about Sherry, I wanted to the opposite, where I wanted, uh, description to not feel like from a customer perspective that I was taking stuffing but that I was giving them more just for most psychological perspective.

And so once I realize I definitely want to do disruption model, I started become super disciplined about never writing more than twice a week. This is back in twenty thirteen, was a teachery because my plan was for subscribers, if they subscribe to get more and they would be like an exciting purchase, I supposed to, I am having a pay. All this sucks.

And your audience that you are building up before putting the payout in would still keep getting the same.

That's right. And so my initial model was still daring fireable, like where I figured I had have big articles. And then if you subscribe, you're going to get a whole feet of them, which a little stuff. My commentary on news articles. I built a new website, again, as a not very good web developer.

And the metrics I was paying attention to was people who visited the home page on days I didn't post, because to me, those were people that were hoping I had written, and they wanted more from me. And I figured the classic, if I just X, Y, Z of y. But I thought, if I get ten percent to the audience, that would be something that would be reasonable.

And that magic was pretty high. I mean, I didn't appreciate that just how powerful social media was. And publishers, but moon social media, but those are publishers with business models.

If you have a new business model with a very little constructive social media is a god. Thank you. Basically get free marketing. What a lot of people don't understand is I think a lot of writers give a way, way too much content on twitter.

And there are, after posting, like, why should I read your site with everything you think, witter? And the reality is, the power of social media is not that that gives you another platform. I have a platform, but struck her to come. What IT does do is give all my readers a platform to tell other people, wow, this is really great. Look smart I am for .

having a take on this thing, the bend rote, which you can read about on his website.

right? If you share something that's great, you get the likes and you get the retweet, and you get the the status of people feel while this person is sharing good stuff, and that's really powerful. This is probably an angle.

You mention the market and dress and called. I thought I was too late. In this case, IT turned out I was early.

I was the only person doing this sort of model out there. And there was still a air of twenty thirty twitter, 20 twitter， where people would share links to something. And IT would breakthrough, if I was exist.

Ly, good. This is also where the principle of having the second article be good to super important. You know, this is, I think you need to the social media era where people following to a site and they have pay no attention to what the site is, they don't even know what that is.

It's basically a twitter article for intents and purposes. So I did want the site to be sort of visually distinct. So I did like a custom font, which back then was very rare.

That was sort of a new thing. I had the orange, you know, there weren't, remember, in size CT then. And I did a lot of these sort of hand drones.

which were very visually distinct.

I D hand you a good artist. The boats, even in the first post, the sailboats is quite good.

Yeah, take good this for ipads in the ability to sort about. And but the reason for that is what I was really thinking about was a, they found an article that was a good article a day later, a week later, a month, or they follow another link. And I just got wait.

I've been on this site before. It's trigger ing my memory and that's really, I think, the key moment. And like, okay, i'm going to follow this guy in twitter or i'm going to put this site in my bookMarks, i'm going to put my r reader or whatever you might be.

And that sort of the key thing that I think you want to accomplish. This is one of my big criticisms of sub stack. Let me is interesting because such sic, I think, is achieving some degree of network of facts where everyone's familiar with IT that your payments are on file.

All that stuff is true, but nothing visually about subject is memorable. Every single site looks the same. And also I will be reading a post after, like bring down the other gram who reading again the turnings also .

weird this is a weird typography that but i'm like IT always looks slightly wrong to me and i'm reading the body text.

Yeah agree, the protector, even the name I know in many respects is a bad name for a word of mouth sight to be a name that knowing knows how to pronounce.

but is not an audio word of mouth say it's a word of tweet.

It's super memorable for good or bad reasons. It's one of those. No exposure.

Is bad exposure, sort of things? More importantly, the ural existed. The twitter handle existed.

I didn't exist in in google search. So there was postpones. When did you come up on the name that i've always been the most?

Jeal is a simko. Again, to go back to horror. Ati, IT has all those qualities with the advantage of being productive all and easily available.

So in retrospect, CT, I always make fun of the cheery name because it's easy, make fun of. But I do think there's a lot of positive qualities to IT that are under appreciated from this member ability aspect. But there is an aspect where IT is kind of harder for now. And people are afraid to say that because the word y'll say IT wrong. And if they say they want to spell IT.

so it's not perfect by me means IT is based on the strategic movie bit right where it's going to be .

strategic yeah so it's strategy in text and yes, there was a strategic bit and so that I might wash a pronounce ticker that was a terrible idea. Think I do that for .

someone didn't even say on the website it's pronounced a techy yeah.

at the very beginning yeah. Then I quickly realized that was a very bad idea because that is strategy and tax of abuse. Cheery, what's the poor decision? It's very easy to look back and see all the good ones.

but this is how you build brands. The only way is to, like, do this stuff. I feel like every single time we talk to someone who built something in their own image, from first principles, with their ideas, in a super opinion way, about how they wanted to sort of like burst their internet child into the world, IT has all these really rough edges for a while.

Yeah, that by a lots of pieces. I mean, I had my people vision the home page of days I post. In the meantime, I, I, I was really looking for a job at microsoft where I could still block .

is all jobs of microsoft. He just chill black. I could .

microsoft. And also, I was in a lot of attention because I was surprised how quickly IT blew up. I mean, this is where the other group er story comes in, where and a pendillion s i'm laying in a hospital bed going away for surgery.

I like way around a few hours I had waited to email john because for the same principle at the beginning, I want to have a body of content, not just like to check you, like how many details does he get? And so I waited a couple months or a month or so, and I even say, hey ba, big fan. He had just been on a podcast talking his origin story, and he also worked the students paper and X, Y, Z.

So I shared that, you know, like I router related this. I regret not doing what you did back to thousand three, but i'm giving a shot now here's a few articles would be interested. And I heard nothing back, did no spots.

And so my surgery is very successful. No problems. Couple weeks later, i'm at microsoft and I get an email from him pointing out that I made a grammatical error. I think I dive like, I used the wrong one, and he's like, I make a mistake all the time. He's like, tell me the animal logy of each one and that's all the email said.

no closing like, I love your work or just like, no full now he was just explaining .

that I used the wrong word and what different words meant, what I probably an to use. So I thought what he's party on post link to the size was very excited. So i'm like sitting on the anted page and i'm sitting on during fireplace and when you'll post and I was hoping for just a short link, right? He has all the short steps.

Instead, it's a full article, and he starts out saying, all my readers should be reading this new site i've discovered. I've discovered, of course, called the sec is the best new site i've encountered years. And he was like three articles .

that i've discovered with the help of its author.

like you, this article, this article, this article. It's like five words of just the most glowing praise of manageable. And then he gets the end. He's like, but for the first time, I disagree with talent and then he spends another thousand were saying, well, I was wrong about something which was fine. I think.

I think he was wrong. And there was the start of a beautiful friendship.

Do you remember new miracle? What happened to your traffic after that?

So the thing always was index on his twitter followers, because that was a very clear metric of people who had affirmatively decided that they wanted to know what I had to say, and I don't think is the case anymore. But for a long time, my percent of describers actually followed was A X percent tage of my twitter followers.

huh? Paid subsidies wear up fixed percentage like people who subscribed the daily update.

Yeah, which meant I knew my writing factor on subscribers was awareness of who I was. So I five hundred and followers when he posted that. And within twelve hours, at fifty hundred twitter followers.

And that sounds very small. I and I have two hundred and thousand some flowers. Now tripling .

hour over hour is a great rate to compound that.

That's right. And also, IT was a lot of people that were also bloggers or writers or influential. There is two step changes, instruction growth. That was really the first one for sir. The next day I get reached out by the head of strategy .

at microsoft. We print way worse.

So he, I would be with him. He want to hire me. He's like about level sixty five. I go to .

strategy at the time.

No, his name is Charles song harse. Oh yeah. So and I kind of sift out, I know he was probably living soon.

He didn't believing shortly after. Like, no, go live. And I want just find back once a month and they'll find. But fortunate turned him down. But all this is a circuitous st way to say I did feel ideally microsoft lic this thing was taking off IT wasn't sustainable.

What I quint write about microsoft, if he was stuff that people like the highest levels cared about IT wasn't like writing about the final details of VPN or sunday on those lines. And so i'm looking for a job and up an automatic. And that's where I met map.

So you went looking for a job, and you're like heart of hearts for you, hoping that you could something .

not have a job without question. No.

he was my plan. You just felt like .

you couldn't do IT yet. yeah. I think I had a family like a business that I needed to have a job that paid the bills. I want to find a job that will let me continue to do this.

So automatic worked out IT actually worked out even Better because I was like hired as like a growth engineer or whatever, which I didn't really know anything about. But then the team I was on pivoted shortly after I was there to building like a new backend, wordpress. And so there is nothing for me to do.

We didn't have product out. But fortunately, there was a little bit to push back in internally because I was becoming this very visible blogger, like what this guy is working for us, I thought because back then, automatic was won, a few distributed. The companies could live where you want to do so as so I got the job, we moved back to one and you weren't proposed to have a second job for sort of obvious reasons. And I think matt did run some interference for me where he's like, don't don't worry, he's good. And the one thing I did do for automatic, I went through a lot of the company, what they were doing, and I wrote this big strategy document about where they're out, what they should do IT had some impact, I think, on where they end up going.

You can should buy tumbler.

yeah. Those at the time when they were a bit of very small company, and at around that time, they decide to raise a lot of money and grow into being sort of much bigger one. I I don't know how much impact I had.

Max says I had a big impact. He maybe be big, generous, I don't know, but I I can't actually not working mainly directly with matt, and he mostly left me alone. And then he would have a question of whatever I would think about and write something up and come back.

Well, nominally being the growth engineer for the team that did not have a product in the market. So I owe automatic a lot, but IT was also very stressful. I felt really guilty, exact like I really devoting all my energy and the time, degree, and I getting fade by automatic just that was internally very stressful to me.

And you know, that wasn't the idea like I i'm getting paid far more than I made any time my life. And I don't feel like i'm devoting all much time energy to this company that was very internally stressing. And so I got this jo B2Be lik e a c on sult for thi s com pany tha t wan ted to exp and the asi a pac i c. And I like, well, I can do this consulting job and then I can make sure that a paid things I could do that was that automatic? Again, you can have a separate pay job while being there.

And so you have left automatic to go do this sort of potential consulting thing.

Well, no. First, I left automatic because I like, I need to build this subscription bit and this new website before I started this consulting jobs. So I left automatic, i'm working on building this. What happened was that could so shop felt through IT just didn't materialize. 哦， no way you burn the vote.

There was no car.

So I watched a teary and the idea, as you would log in, you get this much full experience. And I watched IT. In number one, I had something wrong with security certificates.

So the first twenty four hours known can make a purchase. So I like up thirty six hours straight. I barely stop the week before I like finalizing the site.

I stupidity had like reached out to like care wisher and record. And so he had a pretty dule post going out pay and stupid artificial deadline that made zero difference other than stroking my ego. And so he was awfully was a horrible experience.

But the worst thing was that the product, sut IT, was super confusing. I didn't achieve my goal of having a good experience for non paying customers that was ideally lure them in and for paying customers. IT didn't work well.

IT was very jenky and it's suck. IT was really, really bad. So over the weekend, i'm just miserable, and I know I screwed up and I burned my bridges and all the sort of thing, and I realized that, look, I missed up.

The business models right? The products wrong. So over the weekend, I tour the whole thing out. I went back to the old website and I told the people that subscribed on my look, I appreciate describing the formats all wrong. What i'm going to do is for your subscription.

I'm just going to tell you, i'll email you once a day with the extra stuff that I promise you. And so I felt completely an ugly ask backwards in the email. I thought I would all be on the website. I've been thinking this whole time.

I'm like we have not talked about email once.

but tell is always been struck with the website first and foremost. But like, look, i'll deliver you this extra stuff at email and IT will also be on the website on the side bar and you IT will be archive there, but you're going to email and IT worked out in the long run. In the short run, though, I had a one day goal for new subscribers.

Well, I guess, a two day goal because the site was approval for the first day, I had a one day go, a one week go and a one month goal. And I failed to reach all them and failed pretty significantly, honestly, to reach all them and so on. There i've given up this six figure job, living in iwan business, school debt and an idea that I thought could work, but did not need to be working very well.

And he was very, very trustful. I mean, I stop paying on my credit cards because especially back then, I want is very cash centric. So I needed preserve cash.

I was your not sleeping. I also washed a podcast at the time, which was exponent with James, all worth. So i'm writing as I measure before seven times a week, plus doing a podcast.

I'm doing all the editing for the podcast, all the production, all the sort of stuff. And I thought i'm going back to buy, go teach english again to I pay the bills at the same time. And then I think like the first month when I tall that out, I screw the scription, so I double charge the homes of people. So to process these refunds as customer support and IT was pretty tough. I watched in April.

This is April twenty fourteen.

fifteen, twenty fourteen. So next you'll ten years chequering by nine years of IT being my job. So fast forward to the summer. We're back in the states. My wife and I had plan a long stand trip.

parents and with my part, if you some thoughts in those intervening months where you like, well, shoot him to give up on all this.

right? yeah. But like there was certainly prime factor. I couldn't bail on IT.

Like, I mean, no, I thought I would succeed. I had watch people reach out to like bad. I love you.

But substance are not a thing of the internet. It's not going to work. And a lot of people in tat, especially VC.

which is weird because they always know exactly what's right. No.

they're very conventional wisdom drive. And I think so I can. So picture I sitting at the kitchen table and my parents in wisconsin and you get the numbers and my mace subscribers were more than April, june was more than may and july was unpaid.

Me more than june. And we're still talking like a couple hundred, not very many. Oh, and i'd also had like multiple level, so so not reply like the three and dollar level where I like .

chat and ls everybody start quickly, get rid of.

And i'm also trying to do sponsor post is really just an overwhelming amount stuff, but I look at those numbers and like I think it's going to work. And so I paid off all the credit cards that had been running up for the last few months. My wife like, so we cancel the trip like no or not cancel try SHE was very mad at me.

She's like three way to for your job. I don't want to tell how poorly things are going. You don't give an access to the analysis.

S no, of course, is that we're not to our trip. Things are going great. But so with the parents around the world car dall back up again, of course.

And in parents I remember, I would wake up every morning at four, sit the bathroom and red, a daily update. And then my wife had wake up, and we, should I go for the day? And that I ve been truth, I just sort of kept increasing.

I mention there is two big step changes, the group, a one being the first one in november. I actually reaching a thousand, just one year old. So I hit my one year go much earlier than I expected. One year hundred dollars, year thousand rate funning .

about expansion. Al growth. You miss the only goals, but you know the later ones.

Yeah I don't think expensive growth really applies on my business, but maybe more about the beginning. There's more of an expensive curve as the problem with a word of mouth business. And expense growth is people run out of people to talk to. And so that's the limiting factor.

right? It's only the new subscribers give you the exponential, right?

There's a little bit exponential with every news described as they will tell new people. But that works get exhausted. And so it's more than winter, but it's if you zoom out, it's really what is the way this sort of growth works.

But so what happened was in november, I put a little post out first. I simple fy my model and no more. There's three hundred level, cheap level.

One Price and one product is all you're getting. And then never chill, mick, I got those describer is business about the works. Know this is definitely to be my job to are going forward. And in the next twenty four hours, you got two hundred and fifty news subscribers. By far, the biggest step changed in my describer growth.

Did all the vcs email again and say, ban genius, will you please come talk to our .

portfolio companies? I was right about my metric of people visit the home beige is I don't subscribe. What I was wrong about is that the vast majority of people thought I would fail, go to business, that they want to lose their money, and so they didn't subscribe.

But once I was clear, I would be an ongoing entity that, oh, okay, I guess my money will be safe. And so I will now subscribe. I was right about the market. I just I do understand that psychology aspect. One thing I think is great for that, that I would like to subject, we can easy to pay.

I think the real great thing for sub stack and subject matter today, it's not that it's easy to pay, but people aren't scared to give their money to some right and right the internet. And they were previously and they're not. I think that's really great and something .

i'm very proud of. Wait, so what wasn't about years where they suddenly became not afraid?

Because out of thousand rivers.

as many hundred thousand years IT was IT that they thought before they knew that you were secure, that you might just stop and then they would have paid you and then they would get nothing for IT.

That's right. I think that, that was really the case. And so then since then, you never had a growth explosion like that since twenty five percent growth in one day, but IT spin sort of slow and steady since that point.

That accidental email hack, how do you think about IT now you say you still think about the tea primarily as a website, but how do you think about email now? Like obviously, it's a big part of what you .

do yet what IT is. But it's not I mean, I think if you see the stuff that i've done, for example, now you can consume the daily update via a podcast or my articles of the a podcast, I think that's actually very much in line with my vision and view of character, which is this is a publication that I write and I will make IT as easy for you to consume in the way you want to consume as possible.

And back in twenty fourteen, that meant sending emails. And certainly, there's all the adventure of emails that everyone talked about. It's a fee that everyone checks daily. You don't need permission to get there. There's no algorithm.

You know, it's funny because I think once sub that came along, IT became overwhelming and people started to setting up rules to send other emails to a folder which they never cheat. Your back is out of the same problem. Self imposed algorithm, which is where pocket is great.

It's the same idea. It's a feed that people check that I bit works through polling, but to people feels like push. And that certainly a great thing from an independent publisher perspective.

And I think in line with my vision, I mean, one of my criticism of substate was I think they were too email centric to start again. I think the web experience is important is super important for growth because that's where people find out about stuff is often via social media and sharing wings. And email is a tactic.

It's not a strategy. And at the end the day, the strategy is about differentiation, about consistency. And I wanted to be easy to use and fit in your life. And email was a way to do that again, sort of back into now pocket. To do that, you can get struck articles on the ms, which gives you a link, and you can read on the website.

Obviously have always had our, and I just want to make IT as easy for you to access the content that you're paying for as possible because that sort of makes solve and going you Better to turn. The beautiful thing about this model is, number one, from a rider perspective, I really need to worry about is keeping my scribers happy. And so like, should this to be a free article, should be paid well, you know, if I should have been free, but I made a paid fine, like they are go, they paid for the good about that.

And that recurring revenue is really, really powerful. And that also, that's my marketing channels and telling other people about that this is good and you should sort of check IT out. I want things to do. The passport is a big weight. Stuff spreads is people forwarding emails.

And passport is the technology infrastructure you've built to enable. There are people to build to text like experiences if they are White listed by you has that work?

No, it's just my stuff for now. I mean, obviously, we would love to make IT probably available, but it's not all finished yet. And the cost support issues and things that would tell that, but something that would like to do.

But one of the things we did with that is I wanted to myself a lot which people make fun of and deserve. So because it's kind of A A ring job between me, my readers. But a way I think about shakeri is it's a live thing, is an ongoing journal of my attempt to understand the world, understand technology.

And sometimes I was right about something, and I was always fun to point back, and I was right and I was wrong. And like, why was I wrong? What mistakes that make? So this is a trend and is like, well, this happened back then, and this happened here.

And then, O, K, I think about is being sort of a live thing. And so waking back to myself as a way to do that, it's also a great way to trigger that second article sensation where you read article and then there's a link right there and you go read another. Well, absolutely, also really good.

And then there's X, Y, Z. So one of the things that I want to do a passport was, how can I really leverage email fording to accomplish this, especially when I am looking to paid articles? So like one of the things we do there is every link to myself in a shaggy email is toko ized.

And that token in goes one link deep. So even if the emails forward to you, you can go read old stuff s you get that second article sensation. Now you're in that second article when you cook another link. Now you to pay wall and then you're realized alive to pay to get this. But there's all these little bits and pieces that the score makes possible, which is really winning into just serving your customers, trying to make IT as good of an experience for them as IT can be.

And the other really important descriptions is there is always debates about, oh, people just write for clicks, but and then the publishers or the editors will come back to know we don't even show our writers their quick numbers like they don't know we want to reduce their content. And I think that's so foolish because everyone wants feedback, they want affirmation, they want to know, did I do a good job? And if you don't even get access to your quick numbers, where do you go? You go to twitter. Like, what are people saying about me.

right? You will find a way to figure out if you resonated or not.

right? Who's on twitter? The biggest loud mouse, right? And when the things that I worked on twitter about twitter very early on, I was, I would be very nice on twitter. I be responding to people, and that's only in occurred to me. I'm responding to the same ten people .

or current people whatever is right. So you're .

engaging with point two percent of your audience.

right? And so that's a fix number. And meanwhile, I have a feedback mechanism, which is my subscriber number, which is going up, which means I know there's a huge number people that like and appreciate and are sharing, and it's all dark matter.

I don't know who they are, I don't know where they are, but they like what i'm doing. And I need to anchor on that, not worry about with a lot of also twitter are saying. And so descriptions give this feedback mechanism and feedback mechanism for people that will never tell you, that will never contact you, but they will pull out their credit card and y'll give you money.

And I think that's so valuable and so positive from an instance structure. Now there is a downside where descriptions are niche, right? And I do think you tend up.

People will, if they dislike you, they could stop paying. There is a worry and a chAllenge. Ge, that you not like panda to your audience, whatever might be.

I think i'm kind of lucky because I was so early, because I was the only person in the space doing this sort of stuff. I got to a large of audience size where I could not care. And if someone wants to cancel the description, I don't care. In fact, if someone comes back and if they are just over the top, rude or respectful or instituting things that mean I will not just cancel the description, I will refund the their title purchase and say please .

is not the thing about an approach able Price point. You're like actually your dollars are insignificant to me because subscribers is so much larger, it's very different than like if apple decides to stop advertising on twitter, it's like, oh, crap. Oh, i'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Come back.

Yes, that's exactly right. And again, would I be able to do that when I had a very small number? scribers? No, but I IT was easier back then because, I mean, I started in two thousand thirteen. And the entire opinion of the tech press in all three is that apple was doomed because, of course, to apple, the windows mac. But so I, the west having fruit the world of now, I don't think apples doing, to be honest.

You know, that's what I wrote, that why congresses was wrong because all the disruption people were like, we own apples for search crew and once they go on market and now I don't don't think they need to go to market. And so that was great because if not I writing anything that controversial. And so I didn't even run in to any issues where people would try to hold over me. And by the time I got into issues where that matter and I was large IT off that I didn't matter. So I think I was definitely fortunate that regard.

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Can you share like what is the shape of the curve look like in terms of if you graph IT on the exact is is time and on the way access is number of subscribers from the startup techy today, we talked about going up to a thousand and then adding to fifty. And that step change, even if it's like relatively linear, has IT sort of tapered off over time. Like are you saturating the world of tech people who care about business strategy? Yeah, it's interesting because .

they're been different periods where IT actually I thought I was started a paper that actually accelerated. This is proba twenty thousand around there over the last couple years. IT has tappet off. It's not quite what I was.

which is fine in terms of the growth is tapered dof.

I be the subscribe revenue. If IT stays flat.

you're a create ship. Ah well, then also I raise ed Prices a couple years ago, which is the only time I raised Prices and I still kind of my regret IT. It's funny because everyone's like always your Prices to low, you raise Prices.

That's definitely the absolute easiest way to increase revenue. I think the easiest thing for me to do would be to just keep doing what i'm doing and just raise the Price of dollar year every year. And for sure, my revenue increase would very much outs in my turn.

I've got really the biggest change that happened when I did race Prices was a denef CT growth at all, except that I A lot of people switch to ano descriptions because I like cream out is like, hey, if you want to get a year at the old Price, which is great, I want people I O descriptions as we sort of discussed the beginning so I could do that. I think my view on IT has always been, I think in the internet general and the markets are much larger than people think I thought was much larger than all the folks are critical mother thought, and it's been more than I thought. All I thought.

We take five years build as my business that took a year. And I would rather explore the edges es of that market, how big IT is as opposed a sort of maximum my revenue too soon. And so that sort of number one.

Number two is I do want to have an impact. I do want people to read by definition, the larger your subscriber base, the more your sure margin customer is not aware of you is not a merse in the space. Their willingness to pay is going to be lower.

And so when you start raising Prices, you're going to hit a wall very fast. Things as far as the scriber growth. But sort by definition, that sort number two, the sort of shift over the last couple years has been, well, is this IT i've reached my natural base or whatever IT might be, which is in massively larger than I ever expected. I just wanted to pay the bills yeah .

like tens of thousands of people that pay you to read your work and millions of people that i'm sure come to your website and read the free product like there is a real market for this.

I would definite pushed back on the millions. I think it's interesting because I do think this is an area where I do feel I got there in time. I think the ability to spread on social media on twitter has really diminished. You twitter famously really started devaluing tweet with links a few years ago, which I think is made the product much worse. I mean, that's how we end up all these threads because those .

spread more red.

oh my god, which should be the post. So I think that has hurt the other thing that has hurt my growth, Frankly, is really this off as a podcast. So my subscribers love IT. Half my subscribers now listen instead to read, which is amazing.

And T I consume every single post. yeah.

And then the other good thing is people would turn because emails have build up and they look at their inbox. They be like two hundred and they're like why I paying for this minute podcast just feels like conduct this offer a quick so it's been very good for turn. But the problem is people don't share podcast, right? You wish do a podcast, you the next pocket, you do X, Y, Z.

Whether if you're reading something is super easy to eet for the email, click forward. Yeah, yeah. So I do think that might be the biggest issue on why my grows slow down, to be honest, which is fine.

If is what IT is and you obviously leaning more and to the test.

I did face decision this year, which is growth is somewhat leveled off. Do I raise Prices and just sort of be happy with the base that I have? And I figured IT to be worth a shot to see if I can restart growth, in this case, by a sort of working to increase in brought in the value of a shark ery description, and not just my own content.

So I watch gendering with gruber, obviously is not my podcast partner. A couple years ago, that was like an add on. So you pay extra and you get deering. And that was really on the when you make more money for my best describes this as a way to raise Prices in my best describes without explicit raising Prices, right?

With launching did doing a business decision or just this is can be a fun thing with a good friend or both.

both. And then also, I had this technology for a paypal cast that was a way to do IT. And so now we watched IT.

It's been successful. I mean, IT has I think like from the day one, we are like ten thousand and drivers and then it's sort of level. It's going out where we stuck. We didn't turn IT all.

But how do you grow paypal casts? We haven't done anything around free episode marketing. We will. But there was a defective Price race of my best customers. And what I want to sort of explore this space, it's like, well, is my market as big as I can be? And is there a way to sort of go broader?

I figured out the news letter thing like I think subscriptions make ton of sense for podcast because people have get so attached to a podcast, they get so attached to a particular host. And IT becomes such a part of their routine to a much greater extent than reading, which is sort of more than affirmative choice. Have to go read this.

Where is like all of this in my pog, get away, get away into this next. And so I think it's a great product force subscription, but it's totally unclear how do you actually build a podcast, particularly a pay podcast, is really hard to get people to start to listen to IT. And so in general, I think writers tend to succeed with podcast because writing is a good marketing medium.

Again, it's surprisingly disposal. So people begin familiar, oh, all, try your pot gas. I like you a writer, but if you're just appear podcast, how do you sort of grow? And so what i've decided to do is detherage no longer to be add on this to be a part of structure scription. So now again, your struck scription is worth more because you have this sort of extra piece and you have one quote free.

so you don't sell IT separately at all.

IT is available separately. It's called with john and seven of his describers may you don't like me, they would describe they can. But it's no longer as an ad on cheery. If you are to c describer, you get discern its party or scription washed a new podcast, le sharp tech, that again, there is both three episodes and paid episodes is available to all structure scribes. So your scription is worth more.

So people are sort of opting in just to make the point click i've ve listen everything club site of detherage, including the back all before you launched, I started to listen to sharp tech and of course, sharp china you're about talk about IT seems to me that sharp tech and dithering a sort of like, well, I get band and I get band thoughts and I get a lot of the same thoughts. And I basically am picking, whether I like Andrew or john Better, and am also picking the format and duration of the episode.

Yeah, right now the bundle is kind of a joke is it's mostly just me, right?

And different flavors have been.

I only have so many of videos, I A lot of videos, but I only have so many. So it's not in its long term place now for sure. And it's very tRicky because there is an extent to your point about if you release a bad absence of acquired, you'll do worry about turn.

Am I diluting what category is somewhere? It's no longer just an email. And now i'm reintroducing the possibility that people felt overwhelmed with content and then they also feel like all benz repeating himself all the time.

I think there's a lot of underrated risks in doing what i'm doing, but no one. I think watching shark china was a good signal to my audience of what I do want to sort of accomplish going forward with. That's a acclivity with bill bishop who write cynos m.

And it's the first to check product that i'm not on, but I think it's a important topic. Understanding china, I think it's of a similar tone and quality level of what you should expect from security. Do I expect all structures less to know? Of course, some people like me specifically and i'm not on there is so they're not going to be interested.

But I think for a lot of folks, it's like, well, I keep hearing what to do from china. Where do I go? I'm already a secret describer.

There's this other product here and if they become a rigor shark, china listener, i've now decreased my turn that much more for that sort of person. And I think again, a big party scription is just turned management. It's like I want to make sure this is a long time describer and you get that recurring revenue time.

As you might imagine, there are plans for other podcasts, you know sort to be at in the long run and what see what happens. I mean, growth has, I think, picked up or months. So early indicators are that it's working where i'm increasing the value and will make up for the cost.

Will I make as much if I just raise the Prices and didn't bring the additional costs of pain for Andrew and other broke sters? And these are those lines? Probably not. Again, the revenue maximizing thing for you stayed with membership and just right to and .

it's nice and simple.

yeah. But number one, i've always been worried about getting stale. I know I have critics, I hear twitter, who think I already.

but the point two percent of your audience.

well, who does the very long I do IT right? Number two, what things are so proud about? Watch cheery, I was said, but so proud the business and that IT exists and the fact that sub stack is out there and there are hundreds or thousands of how many people making their living doing this.

And I feel responsibility for that in a very positive way. And I really wanted get this working for podcast. I think there is a similar opportunity.

And so helping to help pony, that is fun. Building software is fun, even though cost me a lot of money as you might have. Matching, producing new post has fun.

Fair out. This bundle thing is fun. How do you crossing stuff like you have less to stack your episode because we know who you are because it's a unique feed to you. You could just add another podcast without having to sign in or do anything like really smoothing out this experience of cross promotion is fun.

And I think unfortunate enough that trajectory has been successful enough that I can make choices that, at least in the short term, are more optimal for figuring stuff out and having fun. Even if it's not revenue optimal and obviously there's upside, maybe it'll end up being a huge thing. I'll make much more money than I ever would have just doing to check re, but I do feel very fortunate that I could make that choice in the short.

medium term. Nice thing about having no outside shareholders. You're your own little occur over they are ruling by and whatever sounds most fun to you.

you no activist shareholder no for sure.

I actually thought about building a sub stack a few years before they watch actually had a team together added up flying apart. But my big head was always I just wasn't sure if I would be a venture scale.

And from my perspective, if you have the stamp on capability to produce readily descriptions are amazing ability to sort of bootstrap and again, you're asked people to pay for the republic of company is actually a very straight transaction and can be sort of very sustainable. How many of those are venture scale businesses? I think maybe not as many.

And you're right, IT comes with a buch of mizer cost tradeoffs you have to optimize in certain ways. And I think venture is a phenomenal thing. I think I not anti venture at all, just anti venture for me. Personally, I don't think I would make much sense. I like the lifestyle, a lifestyle business for me.

You are talking to two rica, caitlyn, who have a business which is structured the same as years. So I love that we've had this part of the conversation because I was really curious, been selfishly for us. I'm curious your thoughts on there are corporations that have large numbers of people that make products that are scalable.

And then the opposite of the spectrum there is being talent. You are a solo business, but your business is being talent in other people's productions. But the internet has enabled this hold new classic stuff like protector, like acquired, like not boring, like would have you. How big do you think this third class of whatever is we are can be? Is that part of what this experiment is for sure?

Like i'm not passionate about like meet as business prospect, I definite have takes on IT you. I think that's either company i've mostly been pretty right about over the years along with microsoft. Are pride my two long standing best calls? But i'm not like waking up in the morning killing myself, like with their socks s upper down. I don't really care .

you going to go work at.

I'm not going to work at Better. I think that's a pretty safe. I want to buy me five hundred hundred dollars, I guess earn out.

I will rest, invest. I marked your listening. But what does get me super excited, I am really passive about is this completely new arena of possibilities. And I think. New jobs that are made possible by the internet.

And actually, whether is I actually am in general favorable able torr's meta is I think they're an essential component in the rather ecosystem of niche businesses because if the entire world is your audience, how does the world find out about you? I'm lucky because I produce content that people want to talk about, and so they share IT for free on twitter, right? If someone makes, like, a really cool new piece of clothing or accessory you like, you are gna talk about that on twitter, like you need a way to advertise.

And I think that's what facebook, verizon is always been the best that and I think is really valuable. And so I am, in general, a big defenders of that because IT actually is in line with what I am personally very passionate about, which are the economic opportunities made possible by the internet. What the internet does do industry after industry and the supplies to creative talents as much as anything else is, number one, there's always of our bell fact.

You're very large. You're very small. You, you're very large, you get scale, you get irrigation effects, and then you can make massive investments or acquisitions.

Now you can immediately feed that two hundreds of millions or billions of people and get a pay off. Or you take advances the internet and opens your software or where R, I, P or different platforms and your cost structures are basically zero. And you only need a thousand true fans, like the thousand.

Two fans was one hundred percent true. That was by guiding vision and up in the case. And so if you're stuck in the middle, which all the old publications were stuck in the middle, they weren't big enough to get arrogation effects. Their cost structures were way too harsh to handle a fractured audience. They were all in trouble and got a lot of track about .

saying they were doomed and then they were doomed, like you say that that's why they hate social media.

You arve a no, that's right. It's amazing asset. So that's number one, the internet has this effects. Number two, the internet has winner take all effects in specific markets.

So it's going to be hard for someone to be a generalist tech media analyst and do what I do. It's possible, I mean, anything people that are very good, but just because I got there first, but that doesn't mean there's only one analyst role available. There's a guy, neil cyber. I think it's like an equally researched.

a prominent in .

a bank and apple and he very much with his business after me. He was pretty early too. So he stuff himself.

He's done a really great job. He's been an independent apple analyst for eight years or something like that, which is fine. He write was apple every single day. Believe me, there are people that want to hear about apple every single day. And so that's an example where IT seems like we're doing the same thing, but we're in different markets.

Is what the internet makes possible, is the key to success on the internet, is you want to be the biggest fish in the pond, but the success metric is not competing with other fish, is finding your own pond. The opportunity is brought. It's not deep like in each pound. There's probably be one or two fishes that survive, right? But there's an infinite number of potential pons.

You can define your pond in very specific parameters.

I'm still surprised there is not someone that right from ams on every day but gets a best of spring business. There's so many things to write about. I think you send me a google casey nut and basically right for social day every single day.

It's been Christus for him over there because the twitter stuff. But that's fine. I feel guilty you about twitter too often.

It's very exhAusting. I cover a lots of other stuff. There's other things to talk about. And so i'm writing about IT more than I want to pretty yesterday. I really don't know twitter obviously twitter take out apple is going to be everyone's been anticipating IT.

right? It's the super bol of bentham and fence.

I kind have to write about IT, right? But casey, like that's the expectation is that he was about sba. So he's read about twitter every single day for a month and that's exactly what people want.

And i'm glad he exists for my perspective. Hey, if you want winter cover, general, they go release here. That's great thing for my perspective.

And I think that sort defines this market. And so number one, i'm really proud that this business model for newsletters exist. I think you should exist for podcast.

And I think part of that is just figure out the mechanics of IT, like how do you market, how do you grow stuff? I ve never done a good job marketing pay podcast, I would say, other than leveraging chequering, but that's the number one we want to work on. I would see there should be some video stuff like there should be.

So what's the ratio of free stuff to clips to snip hits things on those lines? We're actually experience that more with sharp china and shop tech where even if you on the free feet, even more clippers and snip its also I think that the technological aspect is important. It's alty even free podcast.

It's like, oh, we have a guest on go us to his podcast, go to your podcast player, search for X, Y, Z. And it's like offloading this huge number of steps to the user, hoping they follow through and do IT. Whereas we've built something where go to your show notes, click the link boom with in your market player, like I think that's something that's going to be important to sort of you the sharing stuff is really tRicky because people don't share podcast naturally.

So I wanted figure that stuff out. And it's gratifying, again, not just because it's fun and new and different than my day job, but also that is my passion. My passion is the sort of businesses, the internet, not just destroying old business models, but making new as possible. And not just the big guys, but like for individuals as well. And so i'm very grateful and feel very fortunate that I sort of going to do both.

Yeah, I want to switch gears and ask you about aggregation theory. There's a multiple one question here. So the business that you're running is far, far, far superior to a thing that I am sure you've been asked a million times about.

Why do you write a book? You make one hundred and fifty dollars as a year per subscription. At least that's .

what I pay for the full bundle.

I think you D O T hundred and I pay a hundred .

dollars is now rapped into a rap. So I should be clear for anyone listening, you got a credit on your description. We did not issue refunds, but you did get a credit.

But that is to say, I have no idea what i'm paying. And there are some segment of your listener's. There are so widely Price and sensitive about what you do that IT doesn't matter. So it's probably to Price dirigisme.

Yeah, no one should looked to me for pricing strategies because I know it's not at all.

What are you quick math was if you did one hundred and fifty dollars year, and I know one hundred and twenty, and you assume some five your lifetime on customers, and you compare that to like what you would make selling somebody a book once, which is what twenty dollars times seven percent goes to the author is literally five hundred times more revenue to you to do what you do versus writing a book.

And on the other hand, there's something that you've become known, foreign aggregation theory and some other topics around the edges of IT that sort of deserve a canonical work is sort of the modern porters, five forces IT deserves a canonical notion rather than something that's been eternit and revised and attached and rethought. true. So have you thought about what form canonical bentos and topics would take at aria?

There is the obvious one. I think the time to have written network would probably be twenty seventeen. I mean, I was writing about the ideas of arresting theory from the very beginning.

It's hard to imagine. But back in two and thirteen, again, like back then, people thought apples doomed. People thought the internet was inherently decentralizing. Oh, IT was not doing up .

to the facebook IPO, and there was a disaster.

Yeah, facebook do what? Then back off of the other thing, I was able to come out the gate with really four takes that were provide to the, that was one. Apple is not doomed.

There actually good to be doing very, very well. Number two, the internet is centralizing. It's not decentralizing everyone's understand the annam ics are completely wrong again today, everyone understands that, but there was believe there are not very controversial decade ago.

Number three, this is what micros I should do like there actually is a clear platform they're not doing to arrivals. And then number four, facebook is way more dominant and valuable than anyone thinks. And so that was, again, I said, what's the hanging brut is out of fac? Well.

it's is your big self degree here, obviously. But I think a big part of the reason this behind the question to o IT deserves a the reason these are accepted truth in realities now is in large part due to your work.

This is a bitter humbling to be a writer, because I think people would understand all those things had I not written IT. I think at best they understand that maybe a few months, or at best a year two, before IT becomes common knowledge. And that is the reality of the game.

The edge you can provide is usually measured in sort of monster years or a very low number of years. I do the irrigation theory should be a book IT was probably get more pertinent at the height of all these sorts of things. Maybe it's important now, but number one, others just a logistical issue.

I write every day into your point, I make way more money ready every day that I went writing a book. That's number two, there is a fear factor, which is people think I very productive, but I, reality, have daily deadlines that spur that productivity. In the absence of those daily deadlines would terrify the interns of a book.

In number three, there is a second fear factor, which is a book is frozen in time. And if I would have written an aggregation three book a couple years ago prior have centered on netflix, and that ended up being wrong, I was wrong. You know, another way that I read about where content is super important as you break away from arrogant or is having high diversion content.

And I had the baLance wrong between effects, arrogation effects first is the power of content. And so i'm very fortunate to write up what where's now I was still wrong, but I have the medium and ability to go back, say, I was wrong. This where I was wrong.

What does this mean for discovery? Time Warner, does this me for dd, what does this mean for the other platforms? So that is a fear factor.

And then before I think there is an aspect, yeah maybe this serves a treatment, but trajectories is very much of the internet. I think that nature of the internet is it's transient. It's not permanent.

Get another thing people got wrong. I think actually when the bigger mistakes twitter made, and it's understandable no could see at the time, but twitter should have had disappearing tweet from day one. IT should have always been a just in the moment sort of social network, I think would be a much Better product. I don't say they still do that now people experience IT and think of IT as a in the moment product and then are stuck with this archive that induces fear, induces ruin in IT, reduces the first song of what it's like to be on twitter. That's a big reason twitter is is not what I used to be because now people are scared what today.

Again, every point I think i've heard you make this argument before, but articulating ing in the way you have over the years and revising IT on strategi is actually a Better product than if you were to, like, have writing a book five years.

I so disagreed. David IT makes IT really difficult to explain what IT is to people I like. Okay, i've i've on the board of a company and i'm trying to like explain to them that they need to reframe. They're thinking and think bad aggregation. There is something like what's that like? I actually don't know what to send you like read these things in this order to watch this guy contradict m self and say we got wrong and then sort of take away what you think .

the modern interpretation is. I think you're right. There should be stone trees. Honestly, there's just a matter of priority. I mean, I think again, IT would be good to share and pointing this thing and go read this would to be clear.

I mean, the middle of massive right now for IT explain why this in the case, to take everything and saying with a Green sault. And the other thing is i'm just having more fun and more interested in building software and fAiling out podcasts. And I would like to think a book is just really about my ego and putting that out there.

So i'm not that sort of person. I just want to give back to me that I said I definitely razing. You're definitely, but no, I should write a book.

I just haven't. I don't know if ever will, but I agree that I should have by now in a book. But alas.

one last quick question on aggregation theory. Obviously, you are building up towards IT even as you said at the time, I think was at one or two years, you are doing strategy before you wrote the first post.

This is actually an example, the power of branding. I wrote articles that were basically irrigation theory well before I wrote irrigation theory. But giving IT a term and coining IT is what made IT stick.

And actually some of those articles that I rote before, there's one I think is called economic power in the age of abundance, doesn't have the same room to IT. I think it's a Better articulation of our irrigation theory. Mental respects I wrote in fourteen I think. And yeah number one does every good ring to IT. Number two is when my wife read articles up to that date, just no one got IT and understood I was talking about and it's a weird thing as a writer like there's things that i'm thinking about now or that I know I will write about, but it's not the right time.

Doesn't you just learn over time where you can be too early as a writer too? This kind was back to like, I didn't know how to communicate, right? Like, I remember I was in there are some media, microsoft, and we walked out and my matters like, but you're the only person in the room that actually understood the issue and what we should do.

And absolutely everyone, no one understands we are talking about that. And people are kind of things like, the problem is we want to get to h, but everyone that rumors on a and you cannot talk about h, you have to talk about b and d IT is J, R. yes.

And it's funny because that applies to writing online. Two, number one, sometimes i'm wrong, so it's good to wait or to be or a sure. But number two, there's an where there's just the right time in place for things. There's always stuff and sort of thinking about. And one thing i've learned is it's definitely Better to write about something occurred event, which is bad from a book perspective. I right an article that actually has some key insight, but talking about some event that happened twenty fifteen, which no remembers or cares about, but in the nature of my business, that is actually much Better for helping people rock IT get IT spread and share IT those sorts of things. So there is IT a bit where the incentives of my business do work against time with pieces in a certain respect.

okay. So when you hit publish though, on aggregation theory, did you think that could be what IT became?

I didn't know the I thought about the name. I would say I was inspired by play Christians and disruption theory. That was sort of one of the things.

But I had written a number of articles going up to that, that were clearly building to that point. So is what airbnb. There is one about netflix, there is one about just websites and publications.

And then aristion theory was sort of short and weak, because I was basically distilling what was in those previous articles into one thing. I felt very confident. I had a thing, and I wanted to have a definitive peace that was doing. What I wasn't need every name. So that's what that was we want .

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Yeah, fanta is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here and acquired jeff basis, this idea that the company should only focus on what actually makes your beer taste Better. I E spend your time and resources only on what's actually gonna, move the needle for your product and your customers and outsource everything else that does IT. Every company needs compliance and trust with their vendors and customers. IT plays a major role in enabling revenue because customers and partners demand IT, but yet IT adds zero flavor to your actual product.

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Well, then I have one more section that I want to do, which is you do all this analysis on companies and you have this very enviable able position of getting to comment on and critical their strategies after they announced them or an event after they do them. And I wants to play a game where I give you a company. And i'm curious, either if you were the CEO or you were giving advice to the CEO, what would you do strategically? And I think an interesting place that actually talk to about a bunch on this episode is meta. You are the new CEO of meta. What do you do over the .

next five years? What I think, matt, is actually doing a fair number of things that they should. Now the apple changes were very devastating and they're structurally devastating. And so they deserved to see if a hit other valuation because of that.

But I also think they were mote enhancing in the long run where I question whether any other companies ever gone to build top of the fund advertising product that will be competitive with Better assuming they can keep the audience IT appears that they done a good job living the sort of the tiktok threat, tiktok growth that sort of flattened out over the last few years. So I think they're actually in good shape. What I do worry about is this is the company is only ve been growing.

It's really hard for those companies to shift to more away scariously mindset. I mean, they wait off seven thousand people, which only brings the back like nine months. They probably need you that smaller, but it's also very destructive to company culture and morale.

Do they still have the people that they need to pull that off? Those are probably some of the bigger questions and obviously, any arrests or is dependent on having that audience. But I do think that the network effects of their products are still underrated.

I think everyone has in their head that they're shrinking. And actually, every product they have is still growing, which I think is underappreciated. So number one, I think there are kind of broadly in the right track.

And number two, I would acquire a shop fy, and I would take the fcc just to court when they used to stop IT. I think they need to close the loop on e commerce and advertising. And again, I think that probably bad generally, but I think that would be very good for metal.

So I would do that as far as the metaverse stuff. I think it's a about idea is very hard to talk about the metaverse. Like where are the prospects for is is U X Y Z?

I do think that it's not just a bad idea because it's taking so many resources and attention, I think, from mark work. But also, I just don't think innovation is necessary born of masses expenditure in large companies. We sort of skipped over a period of experiment and ecosystem building that in the long run, perhaps would be consolidated into a couple companies.

But he says just one mono with are trying to bruford this sort of bit. And the reality is his facebook is a service as company, is a social network and everything about their strategy works against that. To succeed, they not only need to sell headsets, they use sell headsets and sufficient scale and into front network such that people can social network on the headsets.

And so their place of winning is even further way that I think people think. And so I don't think straggly it's the best thing for them to be doing and i've been pretty anti them doing from day one. They bought A S I said I was bad and get its very hard to distinguish between well where are the prospects of this veris zoom ing out and should they even be doing this? But I think the market is overly down a meta, in part because the branding was too successful.

This is still a powerhouse in social video advertising. And the about of their spending, the Better verse is all things considered. Red, not that much, are still you have a five billion hour profit a quarter. So yes, I would double down and what they are and I would could solid profile and spend three years finding out in court because I think the be worth.

right? Second one, rather than going with another big american tech company, I want to go with one that is acquired fan favorite, and one is very close to home for you. T sm c, any change to what T S M C is doing now if you became C E O tomorrow? Not really.

It's a very complicated situation, to say the least for a lots of reasons and not just political, technological. I think probably doing what you're doing probably IT makes sense. Now I I, I have a tone about them and where they are, and you could talk about maybe some of the pricing stuff.

They were pretty slow to raise Prices even in the face storage. Theyve been much more aggressive about that over the last little bit, which seems reasonable to me. IT is opening the door for winning. If competition comes along to undercut them in that regard, I think they are probably blessed by the weakness of their competition. But the long term risk is, I was see number one, just the geopolitical risk.

The reality is, is tmc a core to the model essential to the model of being so flexible, being so adaptations of incorporating new equipment, of accommodating hundreds and hundreds or thousands of customers is all the engineering in one place, and that places taiwan, and that has g local risk. And from tmc perspective, I think that's just a reality. You can't really hedge against that.

And so if anything, yes, there billion these fbs in the us, I think large for potato reasons. And sure do that if the year the time his government feels that's what needs to be done to keep the us. On board, keep us happy, build a couple in japan because japan is a future ally.

But I think you do have to sort of double on in taiwan and rather dies that nothing happens. I don't think it's a hedge ble risk, the china risk. The other risk is the boor's loser running out. I mean, uv has another five, six years and then it's not super clear what's after that.

How can you get smaller than one? Then you just have one .

anoma ter viability to other but .

isn't not like two molecules wide or two two Adams.

It's very small ite, but it's ridiculous. So obviously, I would imagine the arresting heavily in they were doing this like advanced packaging, like multiple chips on the chip. Let sort of approach AMD is doing that.

Intel's doing that and getting really good at that stuff is going to be super important. But I actually one thing I do like about this japan investment is training edge. I think there are antimetric fabs, which is really where china is making a lot of progress because there's no real economic reason to build.

Try fabs. The ideas you build up once it's long is appreciated. You're making money, cheap chips out of that fab. But maybe there's something in the drawing edge.

More things need chips and they don't know the lead edge.

That's right. The economics of that are very difficult. I think the really is that's why china is in the gap with that.

They can really make economically. You don't just jump to the reading edge, you have to sort of build your way up. And so china has a motivation and an economic rational.

And why are the chips, the third manufacturing, go right into products that are already made in china. And so they're filling in that gap. You know that something that would be beneficial, but at the dates and see is taiwan, and that's the biggest risk.

okay. Last one, amazon David, I did seven hours of amazon 点 com and then a big A W S episode and are I mean alli's my big takeaway was IT is day two。 And day two is about becoming a profitable company where the big sell story of tomorrow is realized today.

And you got ta lean into that. And that means lots of changes and how they organize, how they innovate and what markets they choose to enter. And i'm so curious for your take on, is amazon a date to company? And then the same question, if you were to become C E, O.

what would you do? I think there's an analogy to, like, real life when you're Young, you like, I never become an old vogue, like those old people, and then you get old like me. And the people around you that are trying to still be Young are just kind of pathetic.

And actually being old is kind of great. My kids are fairly independent. They can take care themselves. I can go out with friends. Obviously have more means that I did when I was Younger.

And i'm a big advocate of just in general, living in the present and embracing who you are and where you are your live stage. And I think that's good personally, and I think you're spot on that also true from a copy perspective. You can't be a start up forever.

And it's bad to IT. I wrote about from day two to one day or something about amazon when bases certain like we asserted control few years ago. I know you do one day delivery and there's been too much time spent trying to squeak our suppliers for profits and margins.

And now we need to get back to this. And in retrospect, that was the seed of amazon's kind disastrous last few years, which was the drama tics overinvested gx network. The cost structure got completely out of control, the over hired, and it's probably a good example. And maybe he was a precursor of what we saw jeff basis personally, a sort of losing track of where you are in life and what actually makes sense and trying to be Young forever. So I agree with you broadly with that bit about amazon.

Do you think that a place to A W S two? Or is that different?

Realistically, the chAllenge for A W S is, number one, what's going to happen with the will dry up and start formation and easy money in that space, a lot of which winter amazon there, a sort of the default ice for startups. Number two, meo microsoft bread and button has been look, you've been working us for a long time. We're going to package IT at like somebody you're not just paying for on promise.

Windows IT also includes asia credits. And going to be you contribute that to our numbers and now you can sort of move piece over and will help you do IT what I think is exactly what they should do. It's been a very small strategy, but I think that the issue in any market is what, like me, all initial easy stuff is like there's lot of having fruit, but then the largest part of the market is still the part of the market that sort of always been there and is especially fast moving.

And microsoft just really cleaned up in that market where the known entity we can help you move over. And I think from amazon building up the support capabilities and rationalizing their offerings, I think this weird because amazon benefits. They have so many features, right? AWS is the microwave word of qual providers that the abyss lute, absurd number of features and the interface is pretty terrible.

But every single customer is completely dependent on one of those features. If that features not there, they get go away. And that actually is up being their votes.

We are researching the episode. We are talking to long time A B S veterans to sort of understand the mental framework, to talk about them today. And that became very clear that A W S doesn't deprecate features game on, kill stuff, kill a fie phone, kill local delivery for food.

They could all kinds of stuff that an A W S land if a customer is depending on something. Aw is long term enterprise value is determined by customers believing that amazon will continue to support them forever. They don't deprecate services even when those services end up flipping upside down on the human economics. And they have to like maintain a costly service that they never figured out how to optimize.

right? And every time a customer does something customer raw s is locking, right? I mean, everyone fanatic zed about this world where you don't like every time he comes up, whether be containers are you have these, the IBM is like talking about doing this and a quite right hat.

We're going to make IT so you can be cloud agnostic, right? And then IT just turns out that, well, quite a asic, but this one little piece of me really Better. That's sorry, right? And then you wake up and you know, of course, I want to a passports be called diagnostic passports are not moving off enough us and I can promise you that.

And so yes, it's the microsoft. A lot of old xi people is expected to consider like the different cultures between seats and csco. Seattle just is a platform town like microsoft, who was the originator. Microwaves always been the best platform administrator.

All that backwards compatible that you want to make fun up from a user perspective is essential to building this foundation that people trust and that locks them in and they're happy to be locked in because they don't want to go change in anyway, right? And amazon doesn't obvious microbes is doing that with azure. And the silk valley companies are is very, very bad that right? Like no one trust google, right? No one trust facebook.

Sill valley is much more consumer focused, even the SaaS companies. Those are consumer ized enterprise technology. The whole idea is or you never need to pay for an upgrade. We're upgrading the back and all ourself.

But that means like they will remove stuff because it's one thing to remove A P I that uh, peace of software depends on verses removing a feature that you may are annoy but it's not actually breaking like what they Operate on. And it's just pretty interesting to see those differences, which I do think there's S A geographic aspect to IT. I mean, geography is what save microsoft because when microsoft was in the dumps, if they were in silk valley, all their best town would have left him not to work further.

companies. But all their best talent had kids that families they didn't want to work for amazon. Those people are many dix. And so they say that microsoft were visible, they beat and they wrote sarky blog post about the company. But then when nadella came in and refocus the company, they had this foundation of talent that the hp s of the world, the ahoo s of the world, had long since lost.

Well then this has been awesome. Thank you for joining us and celebrating the almost ten year anniversary of the text. Try with us what is the easiest path for everyone who right now is listening to this in a variety of podcast player to get spotify over cas and apple pocket. What is the easiest way for them to opt into the trajectory universe?

What I mean, you go to the re, you clicking the podcast on the side and debate ribe. I mean, it's fine. You like the how is the bottles work, right?

Do you just go sec read and how were you in? Well, you go direct will put a link in the show notes yeah yeah yes we use the show of link, two doors, one thousand, two doors a year. You not only get your Cherry, but you also get the update.

You get cheery interviews. We can talk about interviews. That's actually been interesting. Evolution of surrey.

yeah, your primary source. Now what's going on?

Well, that was a chAllenge, right? I started out. I had no access. I didn't know anyone. And in some respects, I miss those days.

I still remember the first time I had a company very angry at me in colony. And I was twitter actually, because I had teased out their results that their direct response prom was fAiling. This was like, years ago, and they got super mad in in my next update. I like, well, this is possible.

This I kind of like walk to back a little bit and the next score came out and they're like, yeah, we're going to, I don't think, took right down, but there was a big thing and they like it's not working out and I was totally right and I was so mad that I kind of walk to back a little bit. But i'm glad IT happened because when I start out, no one care. No one paid in the attention.

Now people care and want to pay attention. And so I went, I was right on that one. Is that sort of gave me courage going forward? But when that is interesting about feedback from companies, is everyone like from C O O down or VP down, they always push back.

And there, I know you got this wrong, you understand IT. I never get pushed back from cees. Even what i'm wrong and what i've come to realize is cees are surrounded by people telling them what they want to hear, that their incentives right.

The reason why the VP is attacking me because he's worried i'm GTA make the VP was bad and from the C. E. O, right? That's the concern.

Where's the CEO s, like there are so thirsty. Any sort of feedback that's outside of that rotten and central structure that just inherent any corporation. So so as they know, they have more information that I do.

They're aware that there's things that I don't know, but the great photo have some of the different point of view. And so over time, I transfer having no access, saving total access, right? I can reach out to basic anyone.

And just for people who have. And let's just go through the lineup you ve had this year, mark occa ber gone. You've had jenson from a video. You've i've tried to think of some of your early big ones, you're rich button non from sale, and I think he credit to deal with. You convince us to start .

buying houses. You convened in the open door. So is trying to figure out like what do I do with this access?

I didn't want to become a reporter, and I thought you was just important me personally, from my own pride that mistakes or mistakes, i'm not getting fed them from someone else. And so what I ended up going with was interviews and part. This was a product bit I had.

Now you could listen your podcast if I interview is a good reason to try the product out to get IT. So there a product angle, but also I like my hole take is i'm not exclusive. I don't have exclusive information.

What i'm selling is my personal analysis. And so if I talking to A C E O, I don't want the sense to be bands, just parenting what A C E O says. So if CEO wants to talk to me, IT has be on the record and it's going to be the full transcript and the full interviews is going to available to my describers.

And I want my subscribers of all the same information I do. And so when I write, it's me, it's coming out of my brain. It's sort unique to me.

And I think this worked out pretty well. It's a change like instead of be writing four days a week and based in three days a week, post in interview is not just CEO. I think actually often the Better reviews are with like other analysts are people in different spaces.

This also solved the how do I cover startups because part of not being a reporter and being independent is public companies have to disclose a lot of data in. And the other earnings calls, they have presentations and things of those lines with a start of you don't have access to very much of that and you don't know how much is bullying small comments is not. So now I am doing like interviewing founders where I say up front, look, this is completely subjective.

I'm not going to verify what they say. I'm not going to say it's their chance to tell their story what their business going to be, X, Y, Z. And so that's a way to sort of cover that space given the limitations in the way decry Operates.

And so that's one of the products. It's not a standalone thing, which I think is Better. It's still part of techy I thought about should be a standard product.

But I think there's an aspect of I don't want there to ever be any sense that, that's a driver of my bottom wine. I want to be able to say that I think the metaverse is by a bad idea. This really tRicky, right? I mean, though bar ca berg one, obviously it's a huge git. I think that his interviews with me are unbiased, but I think our light years Better than he .

does anywhere else. You and nei, I had the best interviews with him of .

this whole last so right? He thinks where's he thinks a lot of other journalists aren't. But what's the line between that and being like you favor facebook because that's not the case. All one a dos descriptions.

I always make them free to be clear, like no one's gna have to pay to get access to that because you should have a teachery because you want to remove ccr berg. That's not a reason. But then I was really annoying because facebook, that bad earnings call, they're socked with doubt.

And I like I really a eric article about why this reactions unwarned actually find. It's got you like three weeks after I just had this like a regos. It's give you a relatively article, but that's like where you build up your reputation over years, right? And sometimes you can't always be the posting.

Sometimes you do withdraw me writing metal myth was a withdraw on my reputation. Yes, IT didn't look great that I just gone interview with mark scherr and I wrote a positive article, a true an positive article about meta three weeks later. But I hope i've built up enough sort of credibility with my audience over the last nine years that they believe that, no, that I would have written article with or without that interview.

You're also unabashed about your incentives. You're like, look, everyone, my incentives are to have as many people subscribed for as long as possible. My instead of is not. I think i'm gonna mark sucker, berg's best friend. So i'm really hoping that he invites me on his pj and we get to .

hang out yeah it's top because like is that i'm super positive on meet as advertising product because that's a line of my passion. So i've do find this okba once the most chAllenging just because I generally have a continue opinion about meta overall and it's generally positive. So i'm super worry about that.

I also feel I get more interesting stuff out of him than most other interviewers. So I wanna do that is sure it's a father, my cap to interview, but I definitely don't want that to ever be perceived as the realize interviews don't drive subscriptions. And so I do IT because again, I want to push the tech product. People use my pod gas product and then it's a different kind of work. As you guys know, preparing for interviews is a lot of work is also different than the cereal writing an article for.

sir, we could not be writers.

Yeah, you can't stay the same forever. You can't be like to start up forever, right? I can't be the guy on the outside forever, which I was when I started like with my chip on my shoulder.

And i'm just some dude in taiwan giving his opinions about apple that worked for me and i'm not that person anymore and I would be sort of dishonest percent that I am. The reality is I probably have the best access of anyone in tech. I can literally contact basically anyone and good access to them. And it's more honest to my product and what I do to lean into that, I think, than to pretend that is not the case.

alright? So listeners click the link and the showing tes go experiences the tratement ory cinematic universe touches a guy in taiwan, giving his opinion on coming. Hopefully with that, have to have enter this episode, come hang out in the slack with thirteen thousand other smart, kind, clever, curious members of the acquired community, acquired dot F M.

Slash slack gets some sweet acquired merch. We now officially have life. The A C Q T. We've got market size on constrained with the original A W S logo.

Do a collab with ban on, uh, acquired strategical t shirt for the march store. Oh.

that's a good point. I have a strategy t shirt. I always worry IT for recording this episode. I also have a framed aggregation theory. I don't want a fan boy in front of band, but on my desk I have a framed aggregation theory illustration, so I don't know. Check out benchmark store two.

I'll put a link to that in the shower notes, but the other great acquired merged that dropped a couple of weeks ago is the benchmark tea that in the benchmark style, of course, there is always room at the top. If you want to listen the acquired L P show and get more acquired crammed in before the holiday season, got some good stuff, search acquired L P show in the podcast player of your choice. And with that listeners, we hope you have. A wonderful holiday season. I believe we stop one more episode .

coming after this, and we've got some special how to acquire present everybody.

Yes, here with that listeners.

i'll see you next time.

See next time. Easy you, busy you, easy you who got the true.