Episode 100

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Published on:

13th Sep 2024

100th Episode with Emily Sundberg

This week we’re joined by Emily Sundberg and celebrate our 100th episode, talking about classic topics like X vs Threads and is Silence the best product.

Transcript
Troy Young:

When did you join a rockabilly band?

Alex Schleifer:

Oh,

Troy Young:

No, Alex.

Alex Schleifer:

why?

Brian Morrissey:

because he's wearing flannel?

Troy Young:

Well, it's his hair, he's got it all greased back.

Troy Young:

Ha

Alex Schleifer:

did you, join a single lesbians book club?

Brian Morrissey:

Sorry about the cat,

Troy Young:

gotcha.

Brian Morrissey:

welcome to People vs.

Brian Morrissey:

Algorithms.

Brian Morrissey:

this is a very special 100th video.

Brian Morrissey:

I think it's a 100th episode.

Brian Morrissey:

as always, I'm joined by Troy Young, Alex Schleifer.

Brian Morrissey:

are we doing video for this?

Brian Morrissey:

This is our first video?

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

so apologies to everyone if you're watching this on video.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm just kidding.

Brian Morrissey:

We're, we're fine.

Brian Morrissey:

but yo, it's been a hundred, it's been a hundred episodes.

Brian Morrissey:

Who would've, who would've thought?

Brian Morrissey:

Who would've thought?

Brian Morrissey:

what's been your favorite part of it, Troy?

Troy Young:

Hm.

Troy Young:

That's a good question.

Troy Young:

Nothing, really.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

Thanks.

Brian Morrissey:

Thanks.

Alex Schleifer:

It's this type of great content and banter that has made this last 400 years, 100 episodes.

Alex Schleifer:

It feels like 100 years.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed thinking through a lot of things with you guys and like having the different perspectives and particularly the organic nature of, of Alex joining the podcast when he was like sort of on the periphery of

Troy Young:

Well, it, is a lesson.

Troy Young:

If there's a lesson, it's a lesson in tolerance, for sure.

Brian Morrissey:

Yes, we're all learning tolerance, very imperfectly.

Troy Young:

learning, we're learning that other people have needs.

Troy Young:

We're learning tolerance.

Troy Young:

We're learning that there's, there's a, for every X, there's a threads.

Troy Young:

For every, center right person, there's a mad liberal.

Troy Young:

And, and everything in between.

Troy Young:

And we try to be tolerant of, of one another.

Troy Young:

And sometimes it heats up in the threads.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, so I want to, I want to talk about threads.

Brian Morrissey:

I want to talk about X.

Brian Morrissey:

We are going to be joined, by, by Emily Sundberg, from feed me.

Brian Morrissey:

And, we're, I want to also talk about something I wrote about today, which kind of relates a little bit, I think with, with Emily, which was using, I, I stole this from a conversation we had very briefly yesterday, Troy.

Brian Morrissey:

So thank you for that.

Brian Morrissey:

about.

Troy Young:

at least you're consistent.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, the All In Summit.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, look, this is what, this is what, journalism trains you to do is, to be psychopathic and to steal things from other people, is to talk a little bit about, the All In Summit and then also Acquired.

Brian Morrissey:

We didn't talk about that.

Brian Morrissey:

That was my original edition because Acquired just had 6, 000 people turned out at the, whatever, the Chase Center in San Francisco to watch a podcast recording with Mark Zuckerberg, Who continues, by the way, to be completely dripped out.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just a remarkable, remarkable turnaround, as far as his fashion goes.

Brian Morrissey:

and I think that it really speaks to a lot of the changes going on in media, but we have to start with the debate, right?

Brian Morrissey:

and not in the politics stuff, but I was, so I was watching the debate.

Brian Morrissey:

We were, We were, I guess, texting about it a little bit and I was like, yeah, this is like actually pretty good.

Brian Morrissey:

I was kind of tame.

Brian Morrissey:

And then, Kamala Harris, baited, Donald Trump and next we were talking about pet executions and I was thinking to myself, most people sitting at home, I believe are like, what the hell is this all about?

Brian Morrissey:

And I unfortunately knew exactly.

Brian Morrissey:

What was going on because, I unfortunately still use Twitter slash X too much and, all these stories about supposedly Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, have been bouncing around there.

Brian Morrissey:

And then all of a sudden it broke through the wall into the sort of regular world.

Brian Morrissey:

when that happened, like, Most

Troy Young:

it, it it had escaped X before,

Troy Young:

I think so, I

Troy Young:

think so.

Troy Young:

It's like one of the,

Alex Schleifer:

had never heard of that.

Alex Schleifer:

I

Troy Young:

it's like one of those things like the NyQuil chicken, Like, it, it makes it into the daily, the curiosity section of the daily

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, but 75 plus percent of people watching that debate

Brian Morrissey:

had to have zero idea what the hell

Alex Schleifer:

think you guys, you guys forget what, like, people that don't use Twitter, like think about every day and it's none of the, none of the shit that happens on Twitter, honestly.

Alex Schleifer:

Like I, I think nobody I talked to had ever heard of that.

Troy Young:

Would you rather eat a cat, a cat or a dog?

Alex Schleifer:

it.

Alex Schleifer:

I, I'm not getting into that.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm just, I, it's whatever is available.

Alex Schleifer:

I think

Troy Young:

No, but Alex, you've eaten, you've eaten like hardcore cat food.

Troy Young:

Game before,

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm not, I, I,

Troy Young:

You've been, no, but he's in, you've been like, like Island stuff, like donkey,

Alex Schleifer:

matter

Brian Morrissey:

Oh my god, this is, this is more anti immigrant,

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, no, like, Troy oh, that's how it bleeds out of Twitter, Troy, via you, bringing, like, that trash into a reputable podcast like ours.

Alex Schleifer:

We're never gonna be, like, at the Chase Center talking to Zuckerberg if you keep going.

Alex Schleifer:

no, I don't think I actually feel, I feel like, if it weren't for politicians, I would lose.

Alex Schleifer:

And the media types being completely addicted to Twitter, nobody would hear about it.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, so I'm, I'm nearly want to tell all of you all, because I know we have lots of media types here, but just stop, like, nobody cares.

Alex Schleifer:

Okay.

Alex Schleifer:

It's like, it's like, you know, talking to some kids, about, when 4chan was out and there were always kids that would bring up all the stuff that they would discover on 4chan.

Alex Schleifer:

and, they wouldn't.

Alex Schleifer:

Shut up about it.

Alex Schleifer:

Back in my day, it was like whatever was on the latest thing on IRC chat or whatever, and it feels like that's what's happened.

Alex Schleifer:

That's the new media landscape.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just a bunch of people addicted to Twitter, wanting to talk about the, about it all the time.

Brian Morrissey:

But I think that it's, it's, it's, It's a little bit indicative of we have so many of these different little pockets and niches now that there isn't like, there isn't a thing that everyone is talking about at the same time anyway.

Alex Schleifer:

but the Twitter noise feels like pretty like Twitter ish.

Alex Schleifer:

Like it's like, it's as if everybody's tapped into a news source, and they say, well, I actually stayed there for the straight news, but it does mean I have to listen to whatever Alex Jones has to say.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, that's what Twitter feels like.

Alex Schleifer:

Just turn it off.

Alex Schleifer:

Everyone,

Troy Young:

should not, you

Alex Schleifer:

turn it you heard about people

Troy Young:

Oh,

Brian Morrissey:

I would have Alex Jones on

Troy Young:

I think if people want to turn it off, that's fine.

Troy Young:

I, but I think that you should probably at the same time, turn off threads and because it's, it's more

Troy Young:

grading.

Troy Young:

I think it's.

Troy Young:

I know because you put a stupid port on a telephone and a bunch of losers talk like liked it.

Brian Morrissey:

so well, to catch the, the listeners up, dear listeners, Alex has become a threads fluencer on the side, which is a twist that none of us saw coming.

Brian Morrissey:

but Alex, tell us your experience as our, our, our

Troy Young:

I I just want to say for the record.

Troy Young:

I'm really happy that it's it's releasing alex's endorphins or dopamines rather It's great.

Troy Young:

I'm very happy for you

Brian Morrissey:

you seem jealous.

Brian Morrissey:

You seem jealous, Troy.

Troy Young:

Go on there brian.

Troy Young:

You won't be jealous

Alex Schleifer:

Well, let me, I think maybe you get the algorithm that you kind of, nurture, my, my doubling down on threads was to test out, we're going to start releasing a game and, and, and, and video games have a long tail of like marketing, I don't know what, you know, the opposite of a long tail is, but there's a lot of pre marketing that you need to do, and we were looking at Twitter.

Alex Schleifer:

And I have a, substantial like 7, 000 following on Twitter.

Alex Schleifer:

And even when I post about design now, you'll get people engaging with it, but you'll have a lot of trolls in the comment, not a lot of engaging conversations.

Alex Schleifer:

The feed seems to be kind of a mess.

Alex Schleifer:

so I thought, okay, let's, let's see what happens on threads.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's just, let me just post things that I want to post.

Alex Schleifer:

And I think their algorithm is just very good.

Alex Schleifer:

And at times you'll get a lot of comments that feel like conversations.

Alex Schleifer:

So threads to me feels a lot more like Reddit in a way that like the best side of Reddit in a way that you'll get into a conversation with people, whether it's like asking questions or.

Alex Schleifer:

having fun.

Alex Schleifer:

And yes, I did a, a post.

Alex Schleifer:

I have like, over 500, 000 views on that thing.

Alex Schleifer:

It's doing well.

Alex Schleifer:

But the main thing that I'm finding out is that the ROIs, if you have, if you're running a business where you have to be.

Alex Schleifer:

on social, like people say, I think like threads and Instagram.

Alex Schleifer:

but you know, but comparing threads to Twitter, it's much more, you get much more ROI.

Alex Schleifer:

I think you guys are still stuck in this like loop of just having to be there in the dirt.

Alex Schleifer:

And it's not particularly useful.

Alex Schleifer:

It's not particularly, I

Troy Young:

I

Alex Schleifer:

anyone say, I haven't heard anyone say, Hey, Twitter is still a substantial part of my business or that it's, that it's growing in any way.

Alex Schleifer:

Twitter.

Alex Schleifer:

It's going down.

Alex Schleifer:

The only reason we see a tweet is because the media is addicted to it and the politicians are addicted to it.

Alex Schleifer:

Once that addiction is broken, that thing is no longer useful.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, but that that that tells me that that Twitter is going to be here forever, right?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, because that look when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, what, where did he go?

Brian Morrissey:

Did he go to the New York Times?

Brian Morrissey:

Did he send out a press release?

Alex Schleifer:

When Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, who did, where did she go?

Alex Schleifer:

She went to Instagram.

Alex Schleifer:

She didn't go to fucking Twitter.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, but that's, you know, that's, yeah, that's true.

Brian Morrissey:

But,

Alex Schleifer:

Like, it doesn't, here's the thing, like, just, like, I never talk about media bias because, I find that, but there's a media biases if Most of these people will post something to Twitter, Threads, X, all at the same time using a tool that just blasts it out everywhere.

Alex Schleifer:

But people will use the tweet because that's just it.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just like a reflex and they think like, oh my friends, oh my media friends are in it.

Alex Schleifer:

I am in it constantly, therefore the rest of the world's got to be in it.

Alex Schleifer:

And that's why nobody else heard about the cats and dogs being eaten, guys.

Alex Schleifer:

That's how I broke through.

Alex Schleifer:

Anyway, I'll stop now.

Alex Schleifer:

I like Threads.

Alex Schleifer:

It's a good product.

Brian Morrissey:

this is point counterpoint.

Troy Young:

I think a lot more people knew about the dogs and cats than you think and I think that Alex has a hard time separating his disdain for Elon Musk from the platform.

Troy Young:

Um,

Alex Schleifer:

him once.

Alex Schleifer:

That's not true.

Troy Young:

but you can't, it doesn't matter whether you mentioned him or

Alex Schleifer:

Really?

Alex Schleifer:

Because if I post something with 7, 000 followers on Twitter,

Troy Young:

the point already.

Troy Young:

I got

Alex Schleifer:

no, but I mean, that is not, that has nothing to do with Elon Musk that has to do with my

Troy Young:

apparently people in that environment don't like what you're saying and it's not, it's not resonating.

Troy Young:

So

Troy Young:

maybe you should change your

Brian Morrissey:

But wait, is this an algorithmic thing?

Brian Morrissey:

Because, like, I find, I, I used to post to Twitter all the time.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I got a lot of followers from original Twitter, and I rarely ever post.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I never found

Troy Young:

It's not true.

Troy Young:

You posted yesterday.

Brian Morrissey:

I know, but I'm just saying, like, I, I used to, like, post, like, probably, like, ten times a day, like, back in the day, but I don't, it's not, like, a big traffic driver.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm not getting a lot of,

Troy Young:

but your, your relationship is not, it's exactly, it's consumption.

Troy Young:

It's not

Alex Schleifer:

but, but what are you complaining about?

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I think I have like my own data to prove to myself that Twitter is not a great product where I should be spending my time.

Alex Schleifer:

And also I believe after.

Alex Schleifer:

seeing his behavior, that Elon Musk is a despicable human being.

Alex Schleifer:

These two things overlapping

Troy Young:

Of course it is.

Troy Young:

His hate for Twitter is

Alex Schleifer:

that is, that is, that is ridiculous.

Alex Schleifer:

That is ridiculous.

Alex Schleifer:

That is ridiculous.

Alex Schleifer:

That is ridiculous.

Alex Schleifer:

As a lot of things I hate more, there's a lot of things I hate using more than Twitter that have nothing to do with Elon Musk.

Alex Schleifer:

Let me remind everyone.

Alex Schleifer:

I use like Starlink right now to have this call.

Alex Schleifer:

I drive a Tesla and I have the batteries.

Alex Schleifer:

It's like.

Alex Schleifer:

Give me a break.

Alex Schleifer:

That is,

Troy Young:

those are harder to get rid

Alex Schleifer:

but that is like, that is like a light kind of argument, like where everything, Oh, well, you, you just saying this because you're woke or you hate Elon Musk or whatever.

Alex Schleifer:

Elon Musk is despicable.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't like him.

Alex Schleifer:

I also think the product of Twitter is terrible now.

Alex Schleifer:

It looks uglier.

Alex Schleifer:

It doesn't work for me and Any time I spend of it doesn't bring me anything, and I think everybody else that's stuck to it is addicted or, held captive by the huge audience that they might have gathered over time.

Alex Schleifer:

But if they actually look into the numbers, I'm pretty sure it doesn't really pay off.

Brian Morrissey:

I do think it has become more addictive, weirdly.

Brian Morrissey:

I find that I like it less, but I find that I'm compelled more, because the algorithm has gotten a lot better, I believe.

Brian Morrissey:

And not in a good way.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, in my view.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, it's not going in a positive direction.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, I, maybe I clicked once on a fight video.

Brian Morrissey:

I have no idea.

Brian Morrissey:

Maybe it was an accident, but I really don't need all these, like, videos of people, like, beating each other up.

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, I don't see those.

Alex Schleifer:

That's wild.

Brian Morrissey:

They're not on threads.

Brian Morrissey:

They're on Twitter.

Brian Morrissey:

Someone, someone who gets into a fight in an

Alex Schleifer:

mean, I'm sure you can, Troy, I'm sure you can find all the trash you like on threads too.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just, You

Troy Young:

I don't, I don't, I don't think I'm getting, I don't think we're getting the same thing, but I, you know what?

Troy Young:

I'm not, I don't have a super strong opinion about this, but I go to threat.

Troy Young:

I go to Twitter.

Troy Young:

Occasionally, I think what irks me though is, yeah, it's the, it's the statement about what threads means.

Troy Young:

And, and, that, that's, I think what, what grates me a bit,

Alex Schleifer:

But is that what I came with?

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I, I just,

Troy Young:

oh, well, there's what you're come with

Alex Schleifer:

after using it for two months and you're saying, well, you just hate Elon and really should still be using X.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm like, no, there's

Troy Young:

no I, I don't care what you use, but you do hate Elon, for sure.

Alex Schleifer:

But is that a problem that I hate Elon?

Troy Young:

it's not my problem.

Troy Young:

No, it's,

Troy Young:

it's,

Alex Schleifer:

mean, hate is a strong word.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't find him particularly.

Troy Young:

I thought he did really well on the all in, uh, summit.

Troy Young:

Interview really well.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

it was actually kind of endearing.

Alex Schleifer:

do we just gauge people from whatever they did last?

Alex Schleifer:

Because that sounds really great.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I want to actually use that, it's a great segue, Troy, to talk a little bit about All in.

Brian Morrissey:

Something I wrote about, today, which is, you know, this All in Summit that went on.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know how many people, I, I haven't seen anything that they, they released.

Brian Morrissey:

But, if it wasn't sold out, it was close.

Brian Morrissey:

I just looked at the, the photos posted.

Brian Morrissey:

and they were charging 7, 500.

Brian Morrissey:

And, One of the things that I thought of, I was talking with someone who had, I wouldn't have expected, but she, she had been like going to, to this, to the summit, that was in Los Angeles is, they had an amazing.

Brian Morrissey:

Like lineup, right?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, they had J.

Brian Morrissey:

D.

Brian Morrissey:

Vance was there.

Brian Morrissey:

Look,

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, wow.

Alex Schleifer:

I missed that.

Brian Morrissey:

they had Elon Musk, Sergey Brin.

Brian Morrissey:

Is he good enough, Alex?

Brian Morrissey:

He's pretty good, right?

Brian Morrissey:

The Waymo CEO, Kirsten Sinema.

Brian Morrissey:

anyway, it was, to me, what it said to me was that this is something Noteworthy, like, because this is like, this is an event that is more influential than probably any event that any of the legacy technology or business publications are putting on.

Brian Morrissey:

This is, this felt to me like it would be like the new, say, code conference or something from a previous era.

Brian Morrissey:

And that's a real shift.

Brian Morrissey:

I think.

Brian Morrissey:

Troy?

Troy Young:

I think that you're, the notion that media companies and brands are still being built is right.

Troy Young:

I think that.

Troy Young:

I don't know what the attendance, how big the, the, the attendance was, but it's 7, 500 tickets.

Troy Young:

So it's not cheap.

Troy Young:

It's hard to, I mean, obviously they've built a brand that people want to be part of.

Troy Young:

And, so I'm sure the pod numbers are, are, are enormous.

Troy Young:

Their numbers are enormous on, on YouTube and, clearly it's activating an audience.

Troy Young:

So, it's a very valuable media brand and it's what, a couple of years old.

Troy Young:

and, and so the path, I just think that what's different now is we used to think of a, a series of steps to build a media, a media brand in the digital age.

Troy Young:

it typically started with a website and I'm, and I'm publishing to a page or.

Troy Young:

I guess publishing a video or something to, to YouTube, but more likely publishing a page.

Troy Young:

And that's irrelevant.

Troy Young:

I don't even know.

Troy Young:

Does all even have a website?

Troy Young:

it, it, it's a, it's a brand that was built on podcasting and there's, there's a handful of those now.

Troy Young:

these companies find different ways or these, people and companies find different ways of, monetizing them and they're, and they're different rules.

Troy Young:

You wrote about those rules in your newsletter today, Brian, I subscribed today, by the way,

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, good.

Brian Morrissey:

Thank you.

Brian Morrissey:

I saw that.

Brian Morrissey:

20 bucks.

Brian Morrissey:

Wait, so you're not going all in on the

Troy Young:

I can't, I can't commit.

Troy Young:

Cause I,

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, that's good.

Brian Morrissey:

I'd like

Brian Morrissey:

That'll get me out of bed.

Troy Young:

I mean, it's a recurring 20.

Brian Morrissey:

No, I know.

Brian Morrissey:

I plan on making more off of you in the first year than if you had taken the annual.

Brian Morrissey:

So I appreciate that.

Troy Young:

what does it say about media?

Troy Young:

Emily's going to come on the podcast, Emily Sundberg, and She's pursuing a, a, a, like a, a kind of new path as well.

Troy Young:

And I think has, lots of influence and subscribers and, we'll see what she does next.

Troy Young:

But there's, I guess the good news, if you, if you love media and you want to build a media businesses, there's ways to, there's ways to do it.

Troy Young:

It's there's, it's a vital industry and it's not going anywhere.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

And I acquired is the other one that this week, I think it was just yesterday.

Brian Morrissey:

They, they had 6, 000 people at Chase Center to, to watch that Zuckerberg interview.

Brian Morrissey:

they really exploded, which is interesting because it's like the, it's kind of like in, in some ways, like Lex Friedman reminds me of this and that, like, think about the least viral type of content, right.

Brian Morrissey:

these super long podcast interviews, and they do case studies.

Brian Morrissey:

And they've only released, I think, six or seven episodes this year.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, they put a ton of work into the research behind this.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm, my personal favorite is this.

Brian Morrissey:

If anyone hasn't listened to it, I really recommend it.

Brian Morrissey:

The one they did on Starbucks with Howard Schultz was, was fascinating.

Brian Morrissey:

A lot of people love the Costco one, but,

Troy Young:

yeah.

Troy Young:

but what are some of the characteristics?

Troy Young:

I mean, these people, the conversations are very different.

Troy Young:

They're not, quote unquote, journalistic and in their spirit, the practitioners tend not to be journalists.

Troy Young:

I think, they're more, people have accomplished something else in their lives and are now, Applying or, using the, availability of tools to have to make content for people, but they're not of the sort of journalistic tradition.

Troy Young:

They're the monetization is different.

Troy Young:

The path to getting maybe the, the, potential for a, a, a media brand that's disconnected from a personality is, is, I think, one of the complexities of these businesses because they're sort of deeply deeply connected to the people underneath of them.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

They're not, institutional brands.

Troy Young:

but it's just a different, it's a really different time.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Alex, what is your take?

Alex Schleifer:

look, because I live in Silicon Valley.

Alex Schleifer:

My consumption of these types of interviews is pretty low because I've heard a lot of this stuff before and I find more and more that these, Especially these founder stories are kind of.

Alex Schleifer:

they're so embellished, and, and they've been told so many times,

Troy Young:

What do you mean these founders stories?

Alex Schleifer:

well, you know, these founding stories have come.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, a lot

Brian Morrissey:

box one

Alex Schleifer:

is, is a lot of this, a

Brian Morrissey:

I could stand to not hear that one more.

Alex Schleifer:

a lot of this is like, you know, people trying to, Sell insight into how these people got rich and there's a big appetite for that.

Alex Schleifer:

you know when we interviewed chris chris kimball, he said You know like When you make a magazine, you're kind of, you have to build it on the promise of improving something about people.

Alex Schleifer:

People want to improve themselves.

Alex Schleifer:

And how, what a better way to improve themselves to see how Zuckerberg or Brian Chesky or whatever got luck, got rich.

Alex Schleifer:

When in fact, you know, luck and perseverance and kind of abilities and all these types of things like got into play and life is way more complicated and there were ups and downs, etc.

Alex Schleifer:

So when you hear these stories.

Alex Schleifer:

the acquired guys are really compelling and the interviews are compelling.

Alex Schleifer:

but that stuff works because I think people are being sold that, you know, it's the new version of the kind of self help, self help book, these podcasts.

Alex Schleifer:

They're just much easier to consume.

Alex Schleifer:

Like you used to have, you know, every year you used to have like a dozen self help

Alex Schleifer:

books that would teach you, how to relate with people or

Troy Young:

what are you talking about right now?

Troy Young:

I don't know what you're talking

Alex Schleifer:

I'm talking about like kind of this ecosystem.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm

Troy Young:

Are you talking about All in?

Troy Young:

Are you

Alex Schleifer:

In, I'm talking about the Lex Freedman podcast.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm talking about all this kind of ecosystem of long form.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's sit down and discuss these things, which people who are usually quite wealthy and powerful.

Alex Schleifer:

and, and for me, this is like, I've been thinking about, I think these podcasts are kind of just a new version of the self help book.

Alex Schleifer:

Like you don't really hear, you remember when, there were like, self help gurus that were coming out with like one Three books every year.

Alex Schleifer:

and that would make the new cycles now that's been replaced with, let's just get somebody that, that got rich, in front of a mic and talk to them for two hours, and I think that that's, that's absolutely fine.

Alex Schleifer:

I just, don't consume that stuff all that much.

Alex Schleifer:

but that's why you see these events also bringing in these audiences.

Alex Schleifer:

People are hungry to find out, how to make money.

Brian Morrissey:

Emily's here.

Brian Morrissey:

We were just talking about, the all in summit and

Brian Morrissey:

the, what was the other one?

Brian Morrissey:

The acquired.

Brian Morrissey:

Did you see acquired?

Brian Morrissey:

They had like 6, 000 people show up.

Emily Sundberg:

Zuck's big, big t shirt.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

he made it himself.

Alex Schleifer:

What do you think of Zack's look lately?

Alex Schleifer:

It's hard, I can't, I'm not

Emily Sundberg:

I think it.

Emily Sundberg:

was really intentional to rebrand.

Emily Sundberg:

I think it's working also.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, there's value to people thinking you're cool.

Troy Young:

wait, someone thinks he's cool?

Emily Sundberg:

yeah,

Emily Sundberg:

I

Brian Morrissey:

That's

Brian Morrissey:

shocking.

Brian Morrissey:

It's really shocking

Alex Schleifer:

000 people went to see him, this thing looked like it was a, a Taylor Swift concert.

Troy Young:

I

Troy Young:

liked him better when he had the Roman emperor haircut.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, I feel like guys can kind of oscillate in like the weeks between haircuts.

Emily Sundberg:

That can like come in and out.

Emily Sundberg:

But, The big t shirts are like a look right now.

Emily Sundberg:

So he's kind of like playing into trends I liked the chain

Brian Morrissey:

You like the chain?

Emily Sundberg:

I did.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah

Alex Schleifer:

mean he also got, he

Brian Morrissey:

Who is his stylist?

Brian Morrissey:

Is it known who his stylist is?

Emily Sundberg:

I think that he got a whole new pr team at like for meta

Troy Young:

do you actually think that someone came in and said, we got to get rid of the hoodie

Brian Morrissey:

oh my god,

Troy Young:

need, we need to update the look and maybe you could wear a chain outside of your

Troy Young:

t shirt?

Emily Sundberg:

I don't think anybody told him that I think that he probably was like I want to switch things up and I think that Founders are more and more Outward facing at a lot of these brands, right?

Emily Sundberg:

Like we saw that for a while with like the girl bosses in the early 2010s that they were these public facing Evangelists of their their own products, but I think it's happening more and more with companies that you wouldn't necessarily expect it.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's that shift from institutions to individuals.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like happening all through different levels.

Brian Morrissey:

It's not just media.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, that's part of

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you I

Emily Sundberg:

agree with you and it's an interesting strategy because it can work really well to just be The

Troy Young:

I think it's different with him.

Troy Young:

I think he said, what the fuck am I doing?

Troy Young:

I've literally overcome all of these challenges.

Troy Young:

I'm one of the richest people in the world.

Troy Young:

I own the most influential kind of modern forms of media.

Troy Young:

And why am I sitting back again?

Troy Young:

Like, why am I hiding from people in a hoodie?

Troy Young:

Like, fuck that.

Troy Young:

I'm going to come out, and I'm going to be bold, and I'm going to like, I'm going to like, surf behind boats, and hold up an American flag, and I'm going to be like, baller.

Emily Sundberg:

So you think he felt like he was hiding?

Troy Young:

oh, I think there was a time when he definitely felt under siege.

Troy Young:

For sure.

Alex Schleifer:

that's different to hiding though.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't think he was, I mean, he,

Alex Schleifer:

he, he, he always put himself at the full, I mean, maybe it's because I live here.

Alex Schleifer:

Zuckerberg was always at the front of Facebook.

Alex Schleifer:

It was always known he would be the one doing the interviews, et cetera.

Brian Morrissey:

mean, his original business card said, I'm the CEO, bitch.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Emily Sundberg:

I think it was more just like, he's like,

Troy Young:

I think it had something to do with the MMA stuff, and just being ripped, and being kind of,

Emily Sundberg:

he probably had more time to focus on himself and his, his coolness.

Emily Sundberg:

And there's something about the tone of the internet has changed a bit and maybe his interaction with the memes and everything.

Emily Sundberg:

He was like, you know what, people can handle this.

Alex Schleifer:

And then he hired incredible people to

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

Oh,

Alex Schleifer:

You

Brian Morrissey:

how would you rank his makeover to say, Jeff Bezos?

Alex Schleifer:

are you asking

Alex Schleifer:

You're

Brian Morrissey:

Emily.

Brian Morrissey:

you wanna take, you wanna take that one?

Brian Morrissey:

Which one, which one is, uh, preferable?

Emily Sundberg:

man, like, I say like, I'd rather, I'd rather like, go on an upward slope than do a 180.

Alex Schleifer:

Do you think Bezos met with his PR team and he says, I want the, I want to look like a divorced dad.

Brian Morrissey:

I know what a midlife crisis looks

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, that's not a PR team, that's a doctor.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

that, that

Alex Schleifer:

physically.

Troy Young:

I

Troy Young:

think that Bezos, again, like I finished doing all that.

Troy Young:

I'm wildly rich.

Troy Young:

It's time to get jacked.

Troy Young:

They put a couple needles in him.

Troy Young:

I think he's having a time of his life.

Troy Young:

I watched this great Jeff Bezos video yesterday.

Troy Young:

there's a great, YouTube series called everyday astronaut where they, this guy who's like nerdy kind of fan boy guy goes out and like hangs out with Elon and he tours him through SpaceX.

Troy Young:

And he did it with.

Troy Young:

In two episodes with Jeff Bezos in the last couple of weeks.

Troy Young:

And, they just walk around this incredible mind blowing bananas facility that was financed entirely by Jeff Bezos.

Troy Young:

There's no, there's no outside capital in it.

Troy Young:

It's like Blue Origin is his thing.

Troy Young:

It's, it's, it's, it's sort of of a class of YouTube videos that are like boys and their toys.

Troy Young:

And, he's got the biggest toys.

Troy Young:

He built a rocket factory.

Troy Young:

And he's.

Troy Young:

He can't believe how cool his life is right now.

Troy Young:

And, and he looks pretty, The boat.

Troy Young:

school.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

I would rank them, from best to worst, sort of, morphine is Zuckerberg.

Brian Morrissey:

It's not ridiculous.

Brian Morrissey:

Like you said, Emily, then I would go to Bezos cause he is having, yeah, he is having a good time and he did move to Miami.

Brian Morrissey:

and then

Brian Morrissey:

a distant third is Elon.

Brian Morrissey:

I think

Troy Young:

but Elon's let it like physically he's let he's slid a bit, right?

Troy Young:

Like he,

Alex Schleifer:

think everywhere else.

Alex Schleifer:

He's really on the up and up.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

so Emily, on that note, I feel like since the last time you came on here, like Feed Me has like hit like a new level.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, that was, I think it was February.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

It's

Brian Morrissey:

maybe it was because we need to chart it with like when you came on the

Alex Schleifer:

That's the PVA

Emily Sundberg:

I owe you guys a lot.

Brian Morrissey:

Let's get some advisory shares.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

yeah, it's grown a lot.

Emily Sundberg:

It, I think it has been for the past year, like last fall, my numbers started really

Troy Young:

Do you think people know, know what it is?

Troy Young:

What is it, first of all?

Emily Sundberg:

Feed me.

Emily Sundberg:

Okay.

Emily Sundberg:

So if you're, if you're listening to this and you don't know who I am, I write, a daily newsletter on Substack and it has.

Emily Sundberg:

Become quite big.

Emily Sundberg:

It's sort of like a cross section between, your group chat and Gawker and, the wall street journal.

Emily Sundberg:

it's like one of the top business newsletters on sub stack and it's, it's been really, really fun.

Emily Sundberg:

It's the best job I've ever had, but it's a one person machine right now.

Brian Morrissey:

It, by the way, it's the number seven I see on the business

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, it's the number seven, top grossing one in the business category, which is fun.

Troy Young:

but like who?

Troy Young:

Who's the, who's the audience who really

Emily Sundberg:

everybody from like the bartender down the block to Marc Andreessen, subscribe.

Emily Sundberg:

it's, it's fun.

Emily Sundberg:

It's like a really wide range.

Emily Sundberg:

So I would say LPs at At VCs, like who want their portfolio companies to be in it, but also girls who work on marketing teams in Chicago, who want to walk into their weekly meetings, a little bit more prepared about what's going on in New York.

Emily Sundberg:

Specifically.

Emily Sundberg:

I'd say it's a lot of consumer news.

Emily Sundberg:

there's some cool interviews.

Emily Sundberg:

I've kind of broken down the benefits of my paid readers that they get to.

Emily Sundberg:

Help me do the interviews with these interesting people that I bring in.

Emily Sundberg:

I've interviewed, like David Ulovich from Andreessen.

Emily Sundberg:

I've interviewed, like a friend of mine who got into Harvard business school this year and like those get the same amount of engagement, which is really interesting.

Emily Sundberg:

So I think what people are really paying for is.

Emily Sundberg:

The way that I specifically curate the letter but also the access that I have so if something breaks at 7 a.

Emily Sundberg:

m By 8 a.

Emily Sundberg:

m.

Emily Sundberg:

I can probably get in touch with somebody that I know Who was part of whatever that news item is?

Emily Sundberg:

and I would say I owe that to the amount of jobs I've had and the amount of work that I've done like since I was in college I've just had a lot of like I worked at meta But I also worked at new york magazine and I was at both those places for a decent amount of time And I had pretty scrappy roles where I had to talk to a lot of people so this is like a cool Outcome of how I spent my 20s.

Alex Schleifer:

did you start out targeting a specific audience, or were you always

Emily Sundberg:

No, basically what happened was I was working at Metta and I heard that they were going to do layoffs.

Emily Sundberg:

And I said, I'm not going to live off of severance.

Emily Sundberg:

I need to have something to do.

Emily Sundberg:

And I saw that Substack was sort of becoming popular.

Emily Sundberg:

I knew a few friends who had newsletters, but they weren't really doing it as a business.

Emily Sundberg:

And before, they announced what the layoffs were going to be, I started a newsletter.

Emily Sundberg:

I knew that I wanted to monetize it.

Emily Sundberg:

I saw an opportunity there.

Emily Sundberg:

And the opportunity was based off of how a lot of my.

Emily Sundberg:

Different group chats.

Emily Sundberg:

We're discussing gossipy workplace news in like the wake of COVID.

Brian Morrissey:

So when you think of it almost like a group chat, cause I think of like,

Emily Sundberg:

hate that term because it's being

Emily Sundberg:

used as a marketing thing by millennials really strongly, but I think it has, it's like super, it's super community driven news, like from it's feed me as kind of taken on a new term because a lot of the tips I get are from my readers and it's like this.

Emily Sundberg:

thing, which is fun.

Emily Sundberg:

but to answer

Troy Young:

but it's more than that, Emily.

Troy Young:

I love it because it's more than that.

Troy Young:

You know this.

Emily Sundberg:

else is it?

Troy Young:

Well, it's, it's you.

Troy Young:

And I like you.

Troy Young:

So that's what's cool about it is it's, it's a little spicy.

Troy Young:

It's a weird, unconventional intersection of like Wall Street, bro stuff.

Troy Young:

And like, it's provocative.

Troy Young:

And, kind of definitely a New York view on the world from someone who's fighting to not be a Long Islander.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm not fighting to not be a Long Islander, but I think where I grew up definitely

Troy Young:

For sure it does.

Emily Sundberg:

quite a bit.

Emily Sundberg:

like my dad's a teacher.

Emily Sundberg:

My mom's an artist.

Emily Sundberg:

I went to school in New York city when I was 17.

Emily Sundberg:

And, um, I love shelter Island love going out East for sure.

Emily Sundberg:

But.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, to answer your question, did I know what I wanted to write about?

Emily Sundberg:

I was writing for New York Magazine a bit at the time that I started the newsletter about like cultural phenomenons and the, and the business behind them or like the, the business implications of them.

Emily Sundberg:

So this sort of just allowed me to, write about it every day.

Troy Young:

But you put yourself out there from the first

Troy Young:

issue,

Troy Young:

right?

Troy Young:

You put yourself out there in the like, this is your newsletter, your voice, your face.

Troy Young:

And so it was, it was really personal from the get go.

Brian Morrissey:

which I want to talk about because like, how do you, we, we talked about this the last time and I want to know if your thinking has changed or it's progressed at all, because ultimately you have to figure out.

Brian Morrissey:

Anyone has to figure out in these things is, is it feed me Emily or is it feed me like with Emily?

Brian Morrissey:

You know what I mean?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, is this a creator?

Emily Sundberg:

the goal is to be like feed me edited by Emily and have different voices come in.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't think I'm an expert at everything.

Emily Sundberg:

and I'm kind of, at the point where I have enough experts who are really great writers, like in my friend, friend group, network group.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, I can't even say office.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't have a fucking office.

Emily Sundberg:

Like this is my office.

Emily Sundberg:

Nobody's here.

Emily Sundberg:

but I have people who I want to bring on to be regular contributors.

Emily Sundberg:

Which I'm excited about I think I described it recently to Troy as like baby puck and he was like fuck that it's just pucks competitor so I think that's exciting

Brian Morrissey:

but do you want to grow?

Brian Morrissey:

Do you know what you want it to do?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, do you want to, I mean, cause it's, it's, you've like succeeded, you've broken through, right?

Brian Morrissey:

So like, it's like a great dilemma to have of which direction you go,

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, I want to be a great little I'm gonna stop saying little it just feels small compared to so many of the legacy media companies that I have worked for I wanted to be a media company and then hopefully eventually I can have time to make another movie or do like an audio project and sort of treat it as this studio to do other things.

Emily Sundberg:

That's probably what's going to end up happening.

Emily Sundberg:

yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, it's interesting how it resonates.

Brian Morrissey:

I was doing a call earlier with a guy who's in total b2b media.

Brian Morrissey:

he's in Chicago and he brought it up like randomly.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I was like, Oh, my God,

Emily Sundberg:

in what context?

Brian Morrissey:

a little bit.

Brian Morrissey:

about like about, the sort of media properties that he's really into.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm always asking, what are you, what are you into right now?

Brian Morrissey:

What do you see out there?

Brian Morrissey:

That's like really interesting.

Brian Morrissey:

So like, I think that's, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

It's, it's, it's a,

Troy Young:

Brian, it made me think about the discussion we were having before Emily came on, because It's maybe to look at the modern phenomenon of media brand creation or media business creation.

Troy Young:

I've watched you.

Troy Young:

It hasn't been that long.

Troy Young:

and I think quite early, people thought this product in its mix of community news, long form, short form curation and the sort of Venn diagrams that your content approach, people liked it right away and it grew really quickly.

Troy Young:

And now.

Troy Young:

Without any concern for, monetization, although you did have subs, like paid subs from, from early on and something like Substack could make that really easy.

Troy Young:

But now like the world's your oyster, right?

Troy Young:

Like you can, you can do an audio project and get big audience to it.

Troy Young:

you have the credibility to have different types of conversations with people that want to give you money to make a documentary or do it yourself.

Troy Young:

so the, the idea that it's a kind of modern media studio is, is like a really cool thing.

Troy Young:

And the reason that we bring this up is because there's been so much talk in the last few years about media dying.

Troy Young:

And it's, it's just like, not, that's just not the case.

Troy Young:

Like

Emily Sundberg:

I think some media is dying.

Emily Sundberg:

I think, you know, and

Troy Young:

But that always happens, right?

Emily Sundberg:

definitely.

Emily Sundberg:

I think people Need to not think that you can turn everything that's dying, like you can't bring everything that's dying back to life, but you can do something else with it.

Emily Sundberg:

So I was talking to a friend of mine who's an editor at a big women's magazine earlier this week.

Emily Sundberg:

And I don't think you can save those but what I would do if I was there and the lights were still on Would be to go back and mine some eight like some ip from old issues And sell that and make some money off of it and like try to do something while you're there.

Emily Sundberg:

You can't turn around certain you you can like bring in a sexy new editor and throw some parties and like have some fun advertising, but Magazines have just changed.

Emily Sundberg:

So what can you do while you're there to make the most of it is like Make a docuseries sell it to netflix for whatever fifty thousand a hundred thousand bucks publish a book with like some old issues.

Emily Sundberg:

Like I don't think anybody's gonna save bon appetit I don't think anybody's gonna save like teen vogue Like I think that that's really hard to do but you can make the most of it while you're there and then on on like the other You The other side of what we're talking about, it's like media is not dead.

Emily Sundberg:

Look at what Alex Cooper just did.

Emily Sundberg:

That was like an insane media deal.

Emily Sundberg:

It doesn't look the same way as some massive New York times, Google partnership or something, but that's still a media deal.

Emily Sundberg:

And she's, she was under 30 when she did that.

Emily Sundberg:

What was it?

Emily Sundberg:

120 million.

Emily Sundberg:

Who knows if it will work, but she got the deal.

Emily Sundberg:

She got the headline.

Emily Sundberg:

She was talking all year in these interviews about how she was trying to do a deal that big people doubted her.

Emily Sundberg:

And then she did it.

Emily Sundberg:

So

Troy Young:

deals.

Troy Young:

Amazing.

Alex Schleifer:

Can you run me through that deal?

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know what

Troy Young:

Well, it's just someone buying your podcast, like a platform

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

She doesn't, for those who don't know, I don't know if anyone does, But she does call her daddy.

Brian Morrissey:

How would you describe that podcast?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, it started as part of

Emily Sundberg:

started as started at barstool as like the hot sorority girl podcast about like, Blow jobs and getting drunk and dating.

Emily Sundberg:

And then now she's kind of shifting it into more of like a Barbara Walters interview situation.

Emily Sundberg:

But what she did was she created a media company called Unwell, and then she's a bunch of other people under that media company and what some of them do really well, and some of them are clearly not doing well, but her media company, Unwell got a deal with Sirius.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

So she has different properties.

Brian Morrissey:

They're almost like endorsed brands.

Emily Sundberg:

He built Like, a mini barstool and what they will eventually do is like spin out live shows from there, make money from that, create probably like a canned alcohol drink, make money from that merch, make money from that.

Emily Sundberg:

And it's, there's a ton of these deals happening right now.

Emily Sundberg:

I spoke to somebody this week who's doing a version of that with a really.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm sure it's going to be announced soon, but like with a really big consumer brand We all know they're basically creating like a new platform for Wellness podcasts.

Emily Sundberg:

I spoke to somebody else this week trying to do like barstool for girls It's like a lot of it's it's like there's a gold rush happening in these content studios where they're trying to incubate a bunch of talent to eventually Sell a bunch of stuff.

Emily Sundberg:

Kind of like what Disney did in the late nineties with like the Disney channel.

Emily Sundberg:

Like you create all these superstars to sell you a bunch of stuff.

Troy Young:

podcasts are just so good.

Troy Young:

And

Troy Young:

the economics of these modern kind of streamlined personally anchored media brands is truly like, Brian, it's just worth pointing out that like big publications fight to sell monthly subs at 10 bucks, but you can write two sub stacks a week and charge me 20.

Troy Young:

the, the creator economics are so good, particularly in things like podcasts outside of

Brian Morrissey:

yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

There is a power law.

Brian Morrissey:

Let's be real.

Brian Morrissey:

Like for, for every feed me, there's, there's like 10, 000, like ones

Alex Schleifer:

yeah,

Troy Young:

Sure.

Troy Young:

But there's always power laws in talent based,

Alex Schleifer:

But it's also like both podcasts and newsletters are actually, it's hard to predict the growth and it's hard to build a plan around it.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's say it's a, it's they're not businesses that, you can invest X amount into and then gain that much audience, right.

Alex Schleifer:

They're actually hard

Emily Sundberg:

Especially ifou're starting from scratch and you're

Emily Sundberg:

not like bringing an existing audience over.

Emily Sundberg:

I also think that we don't necessarily always address the implications for the creators, which is like.

Emily Sundberg:

If they become stars really quickly, there's like privacy things.

Emily Sundberg:

If they don't make it, then they have to deal with the fact that they have like this failed audio video, whatever project, like there's a talent management piece that's somehow missing with a lot of these things.

Emily Sundberg:

Like with Alex Cooper's portfolio, for example, some are doing really well, and you can tell some are really, really struggling.

Emily Sundberg:

And then, yeah, something I'm fascinated by with a lot of her talent is like, once you get boyfriend, a boyfriend and like sober up, you're not as interesting.

Emily Sundberg:

And then you kind of like plateau also, which is the same thing as like housewives.

Emily Sundberg:

Right?

Emily Sundberg:

Like,

Troy Young:

That's why I'm trying to get drunk and get a boyfriend.

Emily Sundberg:

yeah, do it, do it.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm sure you could create some incredible content.

Troy Young:

but, but, but but you asked Chris, Chris Black from how, how long gone about, Brian knows Chris, I think, about the line between, or the difference between influencer and celebrity, or famous person in your interview today.

Troy Young:

How do you think about that?

Emily Sundberg:

think everybody has a little bit of celebrity, like loading bar.

Emily Sundberg:

If you have an Instagram account.

Emily Sundberg:

Or Twitter, then you have some amount of influence.

Emily Sundberg:

so I, I think it's like a spectrum, like everyone's on it a little bit.

Emily Sundberg:

The second that you create a job where you are somehow public facing.

Brian Morrissey:

How do you think about, I don't want to use the word personal brand, but I don't know what else to use it.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, how do you think about the leverage that your own personal brand.

Brian Morrissey:

gives to, to feed me with the reality is when these things become bigger, they become more complicated and they get like, if you're like well known, like at a certain level when you get to some level and it be, there's more unpleasant aspects

Emily Sundberg:

I'm struggling with that right now.

Emily Sundberg:

I was at dinner with, my boyfriend a few weeks ago and I was like getting upset about something.

Emily Sundberg:

And there was a woman sitting next to us the whole dinner.

Emily Sundberg:

And at the end, she said.

Emily Sundberg:

I love feed me so much and I wanted to be like you don't pay for that like you don't pay for what all that stuff you just

Emily Sundberg:

heard.

Troy Young:

awful.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah or like the other day I told somebody in the bathroom at a restaurant that I really liked her bag and then in the morning she dm'd me and was like I meant to say I read your letter so it's like somebody knows you but they're not and even just now on the subway somebody was like I love feed me and I like So I'm struggling with that a little bit.

Emily Sundberg:

because,

Brian Morrissey:

put your face on every issue though.

Emily Sundberg:

but I've stopped recently.

Emily Sundberg:

Like I'm pulling back a little bit.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

I do put my face on every issue and I forget that like, just

Emily Sundberg:

cause I don't.

Brian Morrissey:

of people are reading.

Emily Sundberg:

Well, yeah, yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't really talk about my life though.

Emily Sundberg:

So it's like this funny thing.

Emily Sundberg:

Cause I do think that that strategy helped me get to where I am, but just because they got me my first, whatever number of.

Emily Sundberg:

of.

Emily Sundberg:

readers doesn't mean that I need to use the same strategy to get double that number.

Emily Sundberg:

I think Like as I hire more people and I I build out the team then I can pull back from it a little bit.

Brian Morrissey:

How much time do you spend on like the business?

Brian Morrissey:

Cause I mean, I think one of the great things about Substack is it allows, individuals to focus fully on, I mean, you write every day, right.

Brian Morrissey:

And you, you're, you're spending, I would guess the majority, overwhelming majority of your time on the actual content and the difficulty of a lot, if you're going to have a different model, and I know it myself, is you're spending majority of your time on, on other stuff.

Brian Morrissey:

but how do you think about, first of all, like how much you want to do to build the business?

Brian Morrissey:

Because I mean, I think a lot of people would, would, probably a lot of people offer you advice, or like bring in an operator or something of that nature.

Brian Morrissey:

How do you

Emily Sundberg:

That's the number one piece of advice I get I mean i'm constantly thinking about the business of it Is the first time i've had something so precious that is working so well based purely off of 90 percent off of instinct.

Emily Sundberg:

but as far as like, when you, when you guys say operator, cause you and Troy both say that, like, what do you mean?

Brian Morrissey:

Well, people use this vague term, and I think they usually use it to people who come from the journalistic or content side, like they're like sounding out the word.

Brian Morrissey:

So I don't like, like it personally, because I find it, I find it off putting because it's like, oh, no, no, don't worry.

Brian Morrissey:

You're a words person.

Brian Morrissey:

This involves numbers

Brian Morrissey:

and all this thing.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, wait a second.

Brian Morrissey:

I've gotten this far.

Brian Morrissey:

Why are you telling me just because you used to like sling ads

Alex Schleifer:

Well, Brian, I would say that you probably need an operator.

Alex Schleifer:

We've had scheduling issues,

Alex Schleifer:

so

Brian Morrissey:

that's, different.

Brian Morrissey:

That's, oh, is that an operator?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, an

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, okay.

Brian Morrissey:

Then that, that's the

Alex Schleifer:

Sure.

Alex Schleifer:

Sure.

Alex Schleifer:

Operator operator is meant to take everything that they kind of creative, force behind the business doesn't want to do honestly.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, so it's up to you to define an operator, but it's like, It could be

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, I mean, I think in the ideal, like, defining operator is exactly this.

Brian Morrissey:

What are the areas that you're doing where you bring no particular, like, leverage to and that, like, you get no, you get no joy out of whatsoever.

Brian Morrissey:

You're always going to do shit that you don't want to do.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, nobody loves to go into QuickBooks, but you, you got to,

Alex Schleifer:

Not if you're in founder mode.

Brian Morrissey:

Founder mode.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

But you know, I think that is the best that I think sometimes it's used by saying, particularly to creative people or content people, however you want to call it, that, Oh, this business stuff is very complicated.

Brian Morrissey:

You need to bring in someone.

Brian Morrissey:

So you can focus on just

Brian Morrissey:

just

Emily Sundberg:

See, luckily the people close to me are like, this business stuff isn't that complicated.

Emily Sundberg:

You

Emily Sundberg:

can figure this out, like keep this thing lean.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

Like take go see your accountant.

Emily Sundberg:

Sorry It takes like an hour to go uptown see your account go see your accountant show up like know what's happening with your money

Brian Morrissey:

You see

Brian Morrissey:

your accountant in person.

Emily Sundberg:

i've started to

Brian Morrissey:

Wow.

Emily Sundberg:

it's kind of fun going

Emily Sundberg:

uptown and like going into the big park avenue office and

Troy Young:

Her business is doing better than

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Mine's in Las Vegas.

Brian Morrissey:

We just do zoom.

Emily Sundberg:

probably should have somebody in las vegas, but i have bob on I'm park avenue.

Emily Sundberg:

but like I sell my own ads.

Emily Sundberg:

I negotiate my own ad deals.

Emily Sundberg:

I take meetings with brands all the time I host events I have calls with the subset.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm really close with the sub stack team So like if there's an issue with anything like there was something with my stripe account yesterday.

Emily Sundberg:

They're on it like that like It's I have a good Understanding of my business.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't want to do this forever.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't want to have to be like running around You Doing everything in and out all the time.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't, I I've had to do, there's been a strong learning curve to this whole thing, even like learning that a subscription business files taxes differently, that was a cool thing to learn.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't know if a standard accountant would have clocked that.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, I've been like, wait, wait, wait, can we pause this for a second?

Emily Sundberg:

Like you need to be doing things differently.

Emily Sundberg:

This is great that we have, have realized that.

Emily Sundberg:

But I need help.

Emily Sundberg:

Like I, I do need help.

Troy Young:

Well, you need to stop doing a lot of that shit in my opinion, but we've already had that discussion.

Troy Young:

I want to do something.

Troy Young:

Let's give back to Emily you guys because you know, and I think it would be fun if we could all just manifest what feed me could become.

Troy Young:

You

Brian Morrissey:

Oh yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Unsolicited advice.

Brian Morrissey:

Men are great at this.

Troy Young:

yeah, and we could do it.

Troy Young:

We could do it and just think about how great her business could be in like five years.

Troy Young:

So we could just kind of channel that in a, in a, in a little monologue.

Brian Morrissey:

already great.

Brian Morrissey:

Can I like, I disagree with the premise.

Brian Morrissey:

It doesn't have to, you can keep a great business as it is if you want.

Emily Sundberg:

I need to get rid of typos.

Emily Sundberg:

I

Alex Schleifer:

Do you

Alex Schleifer:

though?

Emily Sundberg:

stay away.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

I need to get rid of

Emily Sundberg:

typos because I've started getting

Brian Morrissey:

No, that's authentic.

Brian Morrissey:

That's,

Emily Sundberg:

unsolicited advice.

Emily Sundberg:

Do you need an editor?

Emily Sundberg:

I need to do more original reporting.

Emily Sundberg:

I think I need to raise my prices.

Emily Sundberg:

Cause I have the lowest cost of subscription in the top 20 letters in my category.

Emily Sundberg:

Which is crazy.

Emily Sundberg:

It's 30 cents a newsletter.

Troy Young:

That's a good one.

Troy Young:

Is that going to be retroactive?

Troy Young:

Cause I'm a subscriber

Troy Young:

or

Emily Sundberg:

You guys will be locked in at your current

Troy Young:

what will be grandfathered in?

Troy Young:

Okay, good.

Troy Young:

yeah, I don't know.

Troy Young:

I think it's interesting.

Troy Young:

I like to think of feed me as something really amazing in five years.

Troy Young:

I like to think about it as being more visual, as being like a kind of media, like a media brand that's seen, that's admired for its broad ranging creative output.

Troy Young:

And meaning like, beyond, the newsletter just kind of is the foundation, but it's a place that is commenting on this great intersection of business and culture from a very new vantage point.

Troy Young:

But it's doing that with, not just words, but with all the mediums.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, how do you think of in person because I, what I noticed is like, cause I, to me, the, the test of, of a lot of these media brands is, can you attract like

Brian Morrissey:

these, these high value, hard to reach area, segments, but then can you get them to take some kind of action and, you're behind a paywall, just like everything is behind a paywall, just about, and I just see like, the amount of interaction that you can get online is, is really impressive, honestly.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

And how do you, or do you want to, because I think it's a major opportunity, to translate that into, an in person.

Brian Morrissey:

Will people, I would suspect a lot of people, will show up to Feed Me,

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, so I have a few different parts of that.

Emily Sundberg:

few different answers to that.

Emily Sundberg:

I've thrown parties with like 200, 300 people, which is really fun.

Emily Sundberg:

I had like, I've done everything from 10 person dinners to 30 person book clubs that are sponsored.

Emily Sundberg:

By Warby Parker to like 300 person free parties at my friend's nightclub in the city all under the feed me umbrella, which is really fun.

Emily Sundberg:

And I think part of the reason that it works because my audience is almost 5050 men.

Emily Sundberg:

Women.

Emily Sundberg:

I have a decent amount of demographic or yeah, demographics on them just based off of manual.

Emily Sundberg:

Surveys that I've done because Substack doesn't offer that much information about that stuff so I can sort of take the temperature of like who will be where I knew that I had Maybe around 100 readers that spent time out east on Long Island So I threw a party in Montauk a few weekends ago and maybe 50 people showed up and it was great It was awesome, but I knew that because i'm constantly polling people in my chats and then as far as like taking action, I have a lot of data about that from ads.

Emily Sundberg:

I have a lot of data about like what people will buy from surveys that I've done with them.

Emily Sundberg:

I can track affiliate links that I've posted before for different items.

Emily Sundberg:

So I know that if I suggest a 5 item or a 500 item, like people take my suggestions.

Brian Morrissey:

you get a thousand people to show up somewhere, do you think?

Troy Young:

would you ever consider creating a dating service?

Troy Young:

Thank you.

Emily Sundberg:

I can't do that.

Troy Young:

You guys don't like my ideas today.

Brian Morrissey:

Dating

Emily Sundberg:

well, like the dating thing, it's like, I've thrown parties and people have

Emily Sundberg:

gone home and hooked up.

Emily Sundberg:

that's like,

Troy Young:

well, what else do you want?

Troy Young:

I

Brian Morrissey:

Young people are off dating apps.

Brian Morrissey:

I read this somewhere.

Brian Morrissey:

I saw it on

Troy Young:

Yeah, but

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, just make, uh

Troy Young:

I think a new one.

Brian Morrissey:

running

Emily Sundberg:

something wrong with dating right now, but I think it's more of a communication issue.

Emily Sundberg:

People are really scared to talk.

Emily Sundberg:

And There's something wrong with like the young men, I think.

Brian Morrissey:

too many video games.

Emily Sundberg:

something, scared, like a lot of scared energy.

Emily Sundberg:

but I think people in New York City are the luckiest people in the world when it comes to dating, so I don't know what's going on exactly.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

men have been like particularly impacted by a lot of the content that, you know, that that's that's coming out made specifically for men.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

It's not all very good.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it, I think there's a lot of advice for young men from like on one spectrum to Scott Galloway's, which is, you know One side of it all the way to kind of the, the, the darkest side of that whole

Alex Schleifer:

thing and I

Emily Sundberg:

yeah, there's like the Andrew Tate of it all, and like,

Emily Sundberg:

there's something a little broken there.

Brian Morrissey:

One more question.

Brian Morrissey:

Do you, do you think of this as like a brand or a media brand?

Brian Morrissey:

You know what I mean?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, because you mentioned like, being able to, cause there's a lot of different paths you

Emily Sundberg:

What what tell me an example of a brand that would maybe also be second guessing if their brand or media brand.

Brian Morrissey:

I think going back like a while, like something like Goop, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, Goop was originally like, was, was a newsletter, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And it's more of It's more of a brand now.

Brian Morrissey:

I think of like, and so you can go in a lot of different directions and it can be part of like a media brand, but how do you think about like making products or using the brand for things that are not just ads and subs and events?

Emily Sundberg:

Physical product is so hard.

Emily Sundberg:

It's such a big investment like.

Emily Sundberg:

The group stuff isn't working.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't think that they had experts in the room and I don't think I think Gwyneth probably should have brought in a CEO.

Troy Young:

she tried, she tried that.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, it's sad because I actually think that there's a huge blank spot in wellness and like owning that space and it's probably like somebody on Substack is probably going to own it.

Emily Sundberg:

Like spinning out products is not, I don't, I've worked for like enough consumer brands to the magic of that has really been taken away for me.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, I think I can probably scale this thing without making physical products.

Emily Sundberg:

Like I'll make cool merch.

Emily Sundberg:

Maybe I'll make some money from it.

Emily Sundberg:

But,

Brian Morrissey:

But it's a media business that you look at it as,

Emily Sundberg:

yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

cause I mean, some people, the, the current thing is these like hold coast, you know, this kind of thing.

Brian Morrissey:

A lot of it, and it's like, okay, well, we're going to use one of these businesses that can produce nice cashflow, right?

Brian Morrissey:

But are, are, it's either an agency business or like a media business, but you want to, you want to use that cashflow then for different purposes that are in areas that are frankly better made better valuations

Troy Young:

Are you still thinking of doing the rebooting Hart's Seltzer?

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, that's basically what I'm getting at.

Brian Morrissey:

Summer 2025.

Emily Sundberg:

are you going to do that?

Brian Morrissey:

I'm just kidding.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm not doing that at all.

Brian Morrissey:

No, I'm just going to do webinars.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, I think like.

Emily Sundberg:

There's a problem with the consumer space where people who aren't actually, like most new brands aren't good.

Emily Sundberg:

So I, I'm not a specialist.

Emily Sundberg:

I have no problems that haven't been solved by like everything I need.

Emily Sundberg:

I have, there's nothing, I don't need to put out any other more stuff into the world.

Emily Sundberg:

Physical stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

Thank you.

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

this is not advice, but I think that I've seen way too many businesses, especially in media, start out in media with a sense that, media wasn't a good enough space to exist in, so that was always just a starting point to build something bigger and better, right?

Alex Schleifer:

and this ability to focus on one thing, or, or just focus and, and, and just build a successful business without kind of having too many distractions.

Alex Schleifer:

Because the problem is like the way of working, the rhythm of a media business is different than the rhythm of a product business, right?

Alex Schleifer:

So you kind of have to start thinking.

Alex Schleifer:

It's not just like adding another newsletter or YouTube channel, all that stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

That's a

Alex Schleifer:

similar rhythm, right?

Alex Schleifer:

the second you start kind of veering too far away from your core business, the more your core business suffers, I think, especially if you want to keep it lean.

Troy Young:

it was really a symptom of, vanishing monetization and media looking for a different way to, to capitalize on your influence.

Troy Young:

That's where it all started.

Troy Young:

So, you know, what is, what is

Alex Schleifer:

But it proved out not to be the right path, right?

Troy Young:

I would say that it's, there's more cases of failure than there is success.

Alex Schleifer:

my hypothesis around that stuff is that.

Alex Schleifer:

And look, we, we've, even when I was at Airbnb, we tried to do things that didn't feel like they flowed with a natural rhythm of being a tech company.

Alex Schleifer:

and those were much harder than any startup than, than any focused startup would, would, would find, because I think like you, you got to kind of lean into your rhythm as much as possible.

Alex Schleifer:

And I even worry about live events for that because.

Alex Schleifer:

all of a sudden you're dealing with a whole lot of different things, like I, you know, if I, in those shoes, that sounds like really complicated, even, even though your webinar is Brian, you know,

Brian Morrissey:

They're not complicated.

Brian Morrissey:

Live events are,

Alex Schleifer:

just, it's essentially this, it's essentially this, but people, like, I'd be paying you for it, right?

Brian Morrissey:

broadly.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, I'd rather attach myself to a brand that exists that wants to give me money to activate something in a better way for them than they can do themselves or like guarantee that like

Emily Sundberg:

the right people are going to be in the room and push their products for them.

Emily Sundberg:

then

Emily Sundberg:

then get into the product game.

Emily Sundberg:

And listen, like there's a few celebrities that have spun out products that have done really well, like Clooney killed it.

Emily Sundberg:

There's like celebrity beauty brands that have done really well, right?

Emily Sundberg:

Like Skims, Kim Kardashian crushed it.

Emily Sundberg:

But, they've also created a lot of waste.

Emily Sundberg:

And you are dealing with like a totally different trend cycle.

Emily Sundberg:

And I don't know.

Emily Sundberg:

I just don't see myself doing that.

Brian Morrissey:

Which path are you most like partial to then, do you think?

Brian Morrissey:

We talked about a few.

Emily Sundberg:

I mean, listen, like the newsletter space is still growing, so I don't even think I need to be like, okay, done with this yet.

Emily Sundberg:

This is still such a, I have plenty of friends who have no idea what sub stack is still.

Emily Sundberg:

So, there's a big opportunity on that platform.

Emily Sundberg:

That's been so rewarding to me.

Emily Sundberg:

Extremely annoying.

Emily Sundberg:

I have my own problems with sub stack, but it's working really, really well.

Emily Sundberg:

I've made a movie before.

Emily Sundberg:

I can do that again.

Emily Sundberg:

I get more joy out of the creative process than fast cash or else I probably wouldn't be doing this or I'd be doing it in a really different way.

Emily Sundberg:

I like making things.

Emily Sundberg:

I like connecting with people.

Emily Sundberg:

I like telling stories more than anything.

Emily Sundberg:

so if I can make my dream podcast with a, a sponsor on it, that helps me make it happen.

Emily Sundberg:

That's probably going to make me happier than like, Selling a million pens that become like the it pen and having to like promote that like

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

it's landfill.

Alex Schleifer:

Do

Alex Schleifer:

you,

Emily Sundberg:

I'm

Alex Schleifer:

Because a lot of our listeners might be interested in this.

Alex Schleifer:

For anyone starting a new, a newsletter from the ground up today, did you have a playbook, any, anything that, any advice that you have?

Alex Schleifer:

Like, how do you, because it feels like a little bit of a black box of, of how you would promote that, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Today.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, let me ask you this, just like, how long did it take you to get like five, to, to get like a, say a thousand subscribers?

Brian Morrissey:

Did you start

Brian Morrissey:

with that or?

Emily Sundberg:

gonna tell you right now.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm gonna pull up my dashboard and

Alex Schleifer:

Nice.

Alex Schleifer:

We're looking at data.

Brian Morrissey:

I love the dashboard.

Troy Young:

But I bet, and while you're doing that, that, your friends and ex colleagues, come to you all the time and ask you if they should be doing the same thing as

Emily Sundberg:

It took me a month to get my first thousand and then it's like total fucking hockey stick like it's crazy

Brian Morrissey:

See, I think that's unusual.

Alex Schleifer:

Was that a, was there

Emily Sundberg:

It is unusual.

Emily Sundberg:

That's why you're talking to me.

Emily Sundberg:

But like part of it is like I was born me And like, I had my work experiences and like, that's the funny thing.

Emily Sundberg:

Like everyone, the number one thing I get asked is how do I do this?

Emily Sundberg:

And it like starts with it with kind of like what Troy said.

Emily Sundberg:

It's like be born to my parents on long Island.

Emily Sundberg:

Go to my high school, go to my state school, work at the jobs that I did.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, it was a whole life that went into it.

Emily Sundberg:

I think there are things I could tell you, which are like.

Emily Sundberg:

Surround yourself with smart people, grow your contacts list, keep really great connections along the way, learn how to write, be out in public and list like eavesdrop, take in stories.

Emily Sundberg:

Like the biggest part of it was like being in New York city, being around different groups of people, have an innate interest in business, which meant growing up in proximity to people who had more than me, which made it an interesting topic to me, like, It's not formulaic in the same way as a, there was no business plan.

Emily Sundberg:

It was, I'm going to start talking and see who's interested, and then I'm going to keep doing that every single day and write to an audience of zero and hope that eventually people started sending this around,

Alex Schleifer:

this is why I find the first kind of two to four weeks really interesting and why I find these founder stories often not interesting because there's so many things stacked on top of each other that have been successful happen, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Some of them are luck, some of them are genetics.

Alex Schleifer:

Some of them are, like where you were, the amount of hard work, your passion, et cetera.

Alex Schleifer:

But, but just very, very tactically, those first two weeks, you decide that you're going to start writing this thing.

Alex Schleifer:

Did you decide on a frequency?

Alex Schleifer:

Did you say, I'm going to

Emily Sundberg:

I knew from day?

Emily Sundberg:

one, I wanted it to be daily.

Emily Sundberg:

And I knew from day one that I wanted to try to make money from it.

Emily Sundberg:

The one thing that I'll say to you is that I started it in October and then in January of 2022, I wrote a story for New York magazine about the idea of Shopee shops, which was like a big retail story that kind of exploded.

Emily Sundberg:

I don't know if you guys read it, but basically it was about this billion dollar software that is.

Emily Sundberg:

Replacing trade shows and it's a wholesale software that was causing all retail across the country to look the same immediately and why every store you went to from like a hotel lobby gift shop to your wine store to your local like whatever are selling the same tinned fish and olive oil and whatever so basically that story hit on a point of like Tech people loved it.

Emily Sundberg:

Consumers loved it.

Emily Sundberg:

People who worked in the CPG space loved it.

Emily Sundberg:

And I think that was the, that was like a big, Moment where my people wanted to read more of that kind of story and then they, they saw my newsletter after that.

Emily Sundberg:

So, I think that was another thing, like, writing a story that was number 1 on New York magazine for like, 3 or 4 days.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

And I, and I think this type of, if, if you have access to it, it seems to me that like that newsletters and podcast require that type of audience capture that comes from appearing on somebody else's property, right?

Alex Schleifer:

You kind of hop around, you try to kind of get, get some of that reach in right.

Alex Schleifer:

put something out of consequence and then you can get people in.

Alex Schleifer:

Because it's really hard to, to promote either a podcast or a newsletter, it feels like.

Brian Morrissey:

are a lot easier than Pug.

Alex Schleifer:

Podcasts are a mess,

Brian Morrissey:

One final question, at least that I have.

Brian Morrissey:

Why do you stay on Substack?

Emily Sundberg:

Because it's working.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

It's working.

Emily Sundberg:

The discovery feature's on it.

Emily Sundberg:

Aren't the same as as far as I know beehive and ghost and other stuff like I have a lot of frustrations with it.

Emily Sundberg:

I've written extensively about my frustrations with Substack and the way that it's changing but it continues to work and people just continue to discover me through it.

Alex Schleifer:

much of your growth do you kind of assign to their discovery systems?

Emily Sundberg:

I can tell you that it's like I think it's Half of my

Emily Sundberg:

readers are from

Emily Sundberg:

recommendations

Brian Morrissey:

But that's free.

Brian Morrissey:

How many of those convert to paid?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I, I think after

Brian Morrissey:

they don't show that and that's my whole thing with sub stack with the

Brian Morrissey:

recommendations and I, there's a reason they don't show that.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

I also, for a while I, I was being told that writing for that, like using that most people read on app.

Emily Sundberg:

And then I looked the other day and I was like, no, 8 percent of my readers read on the app.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, so, but

Emily Sundberg:

those things drive me crazy too.

Emily Sundberg:

Those drive me crazy, but it's still just like,

Emily Sundberg:

it's working.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

so they're being valuable as a platform for you, not outside of the

Brian Morrissey:

percent valuable because the money becomes pretty big once you start

Emily Sundberg:

I know, I know that I can't, I can't do too many life changes at once.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm

Emily Sundberg:

just one person.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, fair enough.

Brian Morrissey:

Should we do good product you want to stay for

Brian Morrissey:

good product,

Troy Young:

It's a bit of a weird one this week.

Troy Young:

I think I'll do a weird one.

Brian Morrissey:

It's always weird.

Alex Schleifer:

is it a

Brian Morrissey:

is completely normal.

Troy Young:

the way to good product.

Troy Young:

I have to I found that the Apple event so cringy.

Troy Young:

I can't even watch that crap anymore.

Troy Young:

Alex.

Troy Young:

I'm sorry.

Troy Young:

It's like, it's so sanitized and the way the people present and, I mean, really big picture is they said all the same things about AI as they said last time.

Troy Young:

And then they put a camera button

Alex Schleifer:

mean, it's definitely, it's definitely a big shift after, probably spending seven hours on Twitter.

Troy Young:

No, it's the eye people.

Troy Young:

It's the eye people presenting.

Troy Young:

They bug me.

Troy Young:

don't like them.

Troy Young:

I don't like the way they do their little, this is

Troy Young:

our perfect world.

Alex Schleifer:

I like the way they present California because I live here and it's a beautiful place and I like that they jumped around.

Alex Schleifer:

The one thing I will say about the Apple event, it was very telling.

Alex Schleifer:

There's three things if you want to take away from them.

Alex Schleifer:

One, people are totally bored and uninterested about these AI features which are not even coming out.

Alex Schleifer:

Like that's been, a general sense and, and it feels like a big bubble unless, unless there's massive adoption.

Alex Schleifer:

Two, they didn't raise the prices of the iPhones, even though inflation means that, these are probably the cheapest iPhones.

Alex Schleifer:

And that is probably because they're pivoting very heavily into, like, being primarily, funded by services.

Alex Schleifer:

and I think in their services, I think health is going to be a big deal.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, We, we didn't talk about it, but like the fact that AirPods can now be professional grade hearing aids is just like a massive

Troy Young:

Well, you know how much hearing aids are Alex?

Troy Young:

They're 5, 000.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

The, the Apple put a screen in front of our faces and now they want to take over your ears.

Brian Morrissey:

is Apple a cool brand anymore?

Brian Morrissey:

Emily, do you think, like, are they

Brian Morrissey:

cool?

Alex Schleifer:

it is very cool, Brian.

Alex Schleifer:

I

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg:

I think.

Emily Sundberg:

like for people who work in any tech or design adjacent field, it's still the North star.

Alex Schleifer:

Do you know the same way Twitter is really important because all the media people are addicted to it?

Alex Schleifer:

Apple is important because all the creative people create on Apple and therefore have that Apple bias.

Alex Schleifer:

So anything cool you see was built on an Apple device.

Troy Young:

Hey, but what about, what do you guys think of me getting that new Pixel 9 foldable phone?

Troy Young:

If I came out to Coffee M and I

Emily Sundberg:

The Chinese one, the like three panel,

Brian Morrissey:

very on brand.

Brian Morrissey:

That's what

Alex Schleifer:

I think it would be on brand.

Alex Schleifer:

I think in this stage you're going, like, kind of leaning slightly into conspiracy theories, spending a lot of time on social media and retreating.

Alex Schleifer:

it's your, it's

Troy Young:

I'm also turning into a gay bear.

Emily Sundberg:

but

Emily Sundberg:

then your texts turn green and that sort of like,

Brian Morrissey:

So that's still uncool, the

Alex Schleifer:

that is a, that is worth, that green bubble is worth billions to Apple.

Alex Schleifer:

it is.

Troy Young:

But, but I'm actually thinking that the green bubble's cool now.

Alex Schleifer:

No.

Alex Schleifer:

No.

Troy Young:

I, you guys are,

Alex Schleifer:

Troy, Troy, you have to, like, understand.

Alex Schleifer:

You don't, your sense of culture.

Alex Schleifer:

I think You gotta

Alex Schleifer:

reset.

Alex Schleifer:

You gotta

Troy Young:

Alex, Alex, I understand the sort of cultural significance of the blue bubble.

Troy Young:

I'm on the, I'm on the other edge of cool culture, right?

Troy Young:

Like this,

Troy Young:

I'm not,

Alex Schleifer:

You're just not cool.

Troy Young:

I'm not cool.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm going to ask another cool question.

Brian Morrissey:

It's a Malaysian guy asking someone younger I have this theory and I hope it's true.

Brian Morrissey:

that being extremely online is on its way to becoming extremely uncool.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah, you're so right.

Emily Sundberg:

I mean that.

Emily Sundberg:

Okay.

Emily Sundberg:

I think that COVID was a tipping point and I live in New York.

Emily Sundberg:

So my perspective on this is super based on New York, but there's, I think like nightlife and being out and being off of your phone is like a, it's a status signal.

Emily Sundberg:

It's like to

Emily Sundberg:

be able to be like, I'm outside.

Emily Sundberg:

I haven't looked at my phone.

Emily Sundberg:

I'm sorry.

Emily Sundberg:

Like, I didn't get back to you.

Emily Sundberg:

Like I don't check it's, it shows like it's status as a signal for sure.

Emily Sundberg:

It's

Emily Sundberg:

not

Troy Young:

do that and green bubbles, awesome.

Emily Sundberg:

yeah, I think you're totally, or at least pretending like you're not tethered to

Emily Sundberg:

it all, like the, the less tethered you can be, it shows a certain amount of luxury, honestly.

Brian Morrissey:

And restraint is kind of cool in some ways, because you don't like you're not drinking as much and or at all.

Brian Morrissey:

And I don't know, I just think that there's something that seems to be changing with technology, like rolling every single aspect of life where it's like, you're on like, like social media all day, like,

Emily Sundberg:

yeah, yeah,

Emily Sundberg:

no, I

Emily Sundberg:

think, I think that that's

Troy Young:

That feels right.

Troy Young:

That feels right.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm pretty sure

Troy Young:

Nice.

Troy Young:

Nice one, Brian.

Troy Young:

Okay, well, well, I haven't done the product

Troy Young:

yet

Troy Young:

because,

Troy Young:

and, and, I think it actually, it, it hasn't yet.

Troy Young:

That's true.

Troy Young:

Alex.

Troy Young:

I think it fits with your, this concept.

Troy Young:

the difference between us and ai, us as humans, flesh, right?

Troy Young:

Is that we don't need inputs.

Troy Young:

I mean, our bodies are input machines, right?

Troy Young:

So

Alex Schleifer:

We're all input and output.

Alex Schleifer:

What are you talking about?

Alex Schleifer:

We put stuff into ourselves and it comes out.

Troy Young:

Yeah, but we're

Troy Young:

sentient, right?

Troy Young:

We absorb things.

Troy Young:

It goes

Troy Young:

on around.

Troy Young:

That's the act of living

Troy Young:

Alex.

Troy Young:

And one thing that I noticed lately.

Troy Young:

So my good product this week is silence.

Troy Young:

And.

Alex Schleifer:

Jesus.

Brian Morrissey:

You

Brian Morrissey:

weren't exaggerating

Troy Young:

No,

Troy Young:

not at all.

Troy Young:

I'm not exaggerating

Alex Schleifer:

wait.

Alex Schleifer:

So you, it's funny that you would do that when you have a massive fan blowing over your head,

Troy Young:

when I'm walking in Brooklyn or wherever I am, I, I always think I can use this time very effectively and I'll listen to podcasts and I'll like, be able to, use the time wisely and know what's going on and all that.

Troy Young:

And then lately I've just not been doing anything.

Troy Young:

I just walk and I find that I get way better.

Troy Young:

Like it's way better.

Emily Sundberg:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Like

Troy Young:

I'm just, I just have way more.

Troy Young:

Insight and new ideas.

Troy Young:

And I'm thinking about the things that I process all the time.

Troy Young:

And so today is an ode to silence.

Brian Morrissey:

this is like raw dogging walks.

Brian Morrissey:

Basically

Alex Schleifer:

like

Alex Schleifer:

the, the, the

Troy Young:

dogging walks.

Troy Young:

I

Emily Sundberg:

at the moment it's

Emily Sundberg:

uncomfortable, but the effects are good.

Troy Young:

yeah, you see, it's resonating

Alex Schleifer:

I, I actually, Troy.

Alex Schleifer:

I will, agree with that.

Alex Schleifer:

I lost my AirPods for a week and I have been less anxious.

Alex Schleifer:

much more like in the moment, and I've had better.

Alex Schleifer:

Kind of clear thoughts since then.

Troy Young:

Yeah, I think that's why the AirPods announcement got me a little bit.

Troy Young:

It's because when I have them, I use them a lot.

Troy Young:

I find I walk into stores.

Troy Young:

I turn on, I block out all the noise around me and I live in my little bubble and now the next generation of AirPods are going to help me when I'm elderly and they're going to, they're going to be an accessory that I never

Alex Schleifer:

Hey, I know.

Alex Schleifer:

I imagine how many hours of Elon Musk interviews going to be listening to them,

Alex Schleifer:

that's kind of

Brian Morrissey:

when I worked in an office, it drove me nuts.

Brian Morrissey:

The, the, when people would walk around the office with the, the, the AirPods in all day, but that was a long time ago.

Alex Schleifer:

it socially acceptable now to walk around with your AirPods and talk to someone, I'm asking Emily.

Alex Schleifer:

We, we have no idea.

Emily Sundberg:

100%.

Emily Sundberg:

I didn't have them until like two weeks ago.

Emily Sundberg:

I was always like wired, wired headphones.

Emily Sundberg:

but people walk around talking all the time.

Emily Sundberg:

It's super weird.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Troy Young:

Yeah, so, so you guys are coming around to the silence as good product?

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I think for once you're just like detour, has been useful.

Brian Morrissey:

This is your pivot to Buddhism.

Brian Morrissey:

I like it, Troy.

Troy Young:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

Alright, Emily, thank you so

Emily Sundberg:

thank you.

Emily Sundberg:

Sorry I was

Brian Morrissey:

it.

Alex Schleifer:

Really appreciate it.

Alex Schleifer:

Thank

Alex Schleifer:

you.

Brian Morrissey:

you.

Brian Morrissey:

Emily.

Brian Morrissey:

Bye

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, that was great.

Brian Morrissey:

great hundredth episode.

Brian Morrissey:

Alex has a hard stop.

Brian Morrissey:

It's gonna be our spin off podcast.

Alex Schleifer:

Hard stop.

Alex Schleifer:

We need a third podcast.

Alex Schleifer:

We can do this.

Alex Schleifer:

Also, we need to start making money.

Alex Schleifer:

This, this,

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, yeah, that'd be a next, a podcast that we can

Alex Schleifer:

Exactly.

Alex Schleifer:

You know what we should do?

Alex Schleifer:

We should try to make money and make it a segment on the show where we talk about making money.

Brian Morrissey:

I think Troy is reticent to do it because he's worried we're not gonna make money.

Brian Morrissey:

I have a lot of confidence that we're gonna

Alex Schleifer:

Well, Troy is scared to do it because he's afraid of failure.

Alex Schleifer:

But if we just, we do it, we turn it into content.

Alex Schleifer:

Right, Troy?

Troy Young:

up with you guys

Brian Morrissey:

Let's make money.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, you just told me I didn't like Twitter because I liked Elon and I'm not, you know,

Troy Young:

I said the opposite.

Troy Young:

I said, cause you hate Elon.

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, because I hate

Troy Young:

Yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

Do you want to make money on this?

Alex Schleifer:

Shall we start?

Alex Schleifer:

Shall

Alex Schleifer:

we start doing it?

Alex Schleifer:

No, I do.

Alex Schleifer:

I do.

Alex Schleifer:

We outnumber you,

Brian Morrissey:

I'm talking 20 25 deals with many of my valued partners, so.

Alex Schleifer:

I'll do ads.

Alex Schleifer:

I'll read ads.

Alex Schleifer:

I'll shill for this

Alex Schleifer:

Happy 100th episode, guys.

Alex Schleifer:

I am, I am very happy and very proud of us for getting it here.

Alex Schleifer:

This is a lot, this is an achievement.

Brian Morrissey:

this is

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, and I do enjoy our chats.

Brian Morrissey:

Yes, I do

Alex Schleifer:

you both.

Brian Morrissey:

Thank you.

Brian Morrissey:

bye.

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About the Podcast

People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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