Episode 124

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Published on:

7th Mar 2025

Getting Chegged

Online education company Chegg is suing Google for AI Overviews and might become the first major company felled by AI. We go over the hitlist of others at risk of getting Chegged, including SEO-dependent publishers, SaaS companies and even the email newsletter industrial complex. Plus: Why Lenny Rachitsky has succeeded, the case against all-inclusive resorts and a debate on whether reading is dying or just in a format transition.

Transcript
Brian:

Is that like one of those little like influencer microphones?

Brian:

Have you noticed that influencers creators

Alex:

Oh yeah.

Alex:

It is a little influence.

Alex:

It is an influence microphone.

Brian:

Oh, that's cool.

Brian:

We've graduated to a new level.

Troy:

don't.

Troy:

They have fuzz on top of them.

Troy:

Off.

Troy:

Oh, there we go.

Alex:

oh, there we go.

Alex:

Is that

Brian:

All those like tic-tac guys on the street who run up on people on the street have the, that

Alex:

Look, this thing is incredible.

Alex:

Would be, it might be my good product today.

Alex:

It's got a little box.

Alex:

You take out the receiver, you plug that into your laptop, you get a clip mic, you

Alex:

get it here, and then you get a second one for your buddy, and then you put it away.

Alex:

It goes, it carries around in a nice little bag.

Brian:

Oh, cool.

Alex:

Said, uh, D-J-I-D-J-I, buy it before the tariffs come in because this is 100% built in China.

Brian:

go figure,

Brian:

So Troy, we're not discussing advanced tennis camp, but we did get, we did get a request.

Brian:

I'm just throwing it out there.

Brian:

It's up to you.

Brian:

I'm not gonna force you.

Troy:

I mean, no.

Troy:

I had a, I went to, to tennis camp.

Troy:

What do you wanna talk about?

Brian:

do You have a good backhand?

Brian:

Is it two?

Brian:

Two-handed backhand?

Brian:

Do you have a one-handed backhand?

Brian:

What do

Troy:

my game got worse at the event.

Brian:

really

Troy:

Yeah.

Alex:

was it advanced age tennis camp?

Brian:

Yeah, that's

Troy:

that's what I, that was what I was talking about.

Alex:

Is it, did you just play pickleball there now?

Brian:

That's

Alex:

Did they turn all the tennis at the hotel I was on, they were just painting

Alex:

all the tennis courts and turning them into pickleball and it broke my heart.

Brian:

That's a big, that's a big fight.

Brian:

You know, the pickleball people against the tennis people.

Alex:

How did, what was the discourse at the tennis camp about that?

Alex:

Was there a talk.

Troy:

we didn't get into it.

Troy:

No.

Troy:

What, what we spent, we spent a lot of time marveling at the,

Troy:

at least my little co my little group of friends that I went with.

Troy:

we got stuck at a all-inclusive resort, so I went early and stayed at a different place.

Troy:

And then the tennis camp was in the Nadal, I think it was originally

Troy:

booked to be at the Nadal, I don't know, center or whatever

Troy:

in Mexico.

Troy:

and then it moved because I don't know the, something happened, they

Troy:

moved it to this all inclusive and it was a vile, vile place.

Troy:

and it was meant to be, it was positioned as five star whatever.

Troy:

They were like, this is gonna be great.

Troy:

You're in the privilege, quote unquote area.

Troy:

And,

Alex:

That's always a great marketing term, privileged

Troy:

Privilege area here.

Troy:

Here's your butler.

Troy:

you know, the scene was sort of, double fisting, 10:30 AM

Troy:

you know, second round, jello

Troy:

in the jello.

Troy:

No, not for us others.

Troy:

j we were playing tennis.

Troy:

jello at the buffet,

Alex:

Was there What?

Alex:

What's that salad that, that jello salad.

Alex:

Do you guys

Troy:

arose or, yeah.

Troy:

Anyway,

Alex:

Wow.

Troy:

fortunately the, and I think that others thought maybe we were, you know,

Troy:

fussy or maybe arrogant, but we, we had dinner the first night at the, the resort.

Troy:

I, everything is themed.

Troy:

There.

Troy:

There's all the theme restaurants.

Troy:

It's like Italian theme or Japanese theme, or, you know, Mexican theme.

Troy:

You're, you're in Mexico for fuck's

Brian:

It's like a cruise ship, but you don't leave

Troy:

It's like a cruise ship.

Troy:

Anyway, you, we went to dinner the first night at a Mexican place, and it was worse than the worst.

Troy:

New York, Mexican food.

Troy:

It was terrible.

Troy:

And so we just resolved to explore every high-end resort between Cancun and Tulum, which there are, there are a handful.

Troy:

There's a Rosewood and there's a Belmont, and there's a,

Troy:

you know, there's, there's lots of them.

Troy:

there's a really strange one called Banyan tree.

Troy:

Have you ever heard of Banyan

Alex:

Banyan Tree.

Alex:

I nearly went there.

Alex:

I went to another one that was newer.

Alex:

I think Troy has a point.

Alex:

Some of these are absolutely terrible.

Alex:

The all inclusive resort I went to in Puerto Verta was actually exceptionally good, and I don't know

Alex:

how they managed to do that.

Troy:

it like one of those, those sex resorts?

Alex:

Those sex resorts, all

Troy:

No.

Alex:

sex resorts.

Troy:

No.

Troy:

Was it like the,

Brian:

The

Alex:

you always have to

Brian:

Association did not book that location.

Troy:

what, what was the, what's the one called in Jamaica that's famous?

Troy:

The re all inclusive No.

Troy:

Come on, give it to

Brian:

Is that the

Alex:

I I don't, I don't, I don't know.

Alex:

That's, that's not in my circles.

Troy:

Oh, stop it.

Troy:

It's totally in your circles.

Alex:

Look, the the one I went to was, grand Vallis in Puerto Vieta.

Alex:

And look, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's guardian parts and stuff

Alex:

like that, but for the price you pay and the kids have a great time.

Alex:

They have a really well designed kids club, and the food was actually good.

Alex:

And I was wondering how that wasn't, because it's usually like, it attracts

Alex:

a type of tourist that wants to get the most out of their money.

Alex:

So people are just like downing

Troy:

it's the wrong incentives.

Troy:

you,

Alex:

it's the wrong

Troy:

not a, it's not, the one in Jamaica that's famous is hedonism.

Troy:

Maybe you should book

Brian:

Oh, right.

Brian:

No, no.

Brian:

That's

Alex:

I mean, that's a great, great branding.

Troy:

no, I don't understand if what happens is they, they, they lay out the slop for you.

Troy:

everybody's trying to get the most they can.

Troy:

And all inclusive is a dumb idea.

Alex:

Well it's like an open bar, right?

Alex:

If you know that there's a party with an open bar, it's gonna end in a fight.

Alex:

I. So

Brian:

you can eat.

Brian:

You know, I used to go to this, when I was younger, I went to this all, you can eat sushi place, but there it was

Brian:

a reverse where they charged you for anything that was left on your plate.

Brian:

So you could order as much as you want, but you had a,

Alex:

there was a way to

Brian:

you're gonna get a penalty.

Alex:

to try sushi.

Alex:

my wife once took me into a golden choral, which she had a lot of affinity

Alex:

for, and I think I was depressed for the next three weeks after

Alex:

that

Troy:

like a, is that a, is that a breakfast?

Alex:

a

Troy:

Is that a

Troy:

breakfast place, like a pancake place?

Alex:

no, I mean, if I remember it correctly, it's like an international, like everything you can eat

Alex:

from chicken wings to, you know, compound noodles, to ambrosia salad.

Alex:

just people really getting their 1299 dollars worth,

Brian:

a Cracker Barrel.

Alex:

Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know.

Alex:

I, I, I haven't, I haven't been to a Cracker Barrel, although it

Troy:

There at the romantic dining themed restaurant, they had an Oscar night party.

Troy:

So they had a Oscar statue.

Troy:

They had all of the, contending, Oscar films on placards in front.

Troy:

And they had like a filthy red carpet rolled out.

Alex:

well that's a great segue.

Alex:

Can, can we talk about the Oscars, because that

Brian:

let's talk about the Oscars, because they happened on Sunday.

Brian:

I, you know, they were always positioned as like the Super Bowl, but for women and people I guess, who don't like

Brian:

sports or are not engaged in American culture, but the question with the

Brian:

Oscars, and I think all of these things is, is what is their modern purpose?

Brian:

personally, maybe I'm just uncultured, but I never heard of most of these

Brian:

movies, and I think that's been like the common experience the last several years.

Brian:

I went back in the 1990s and it was like Titanic, Forrest Gump, all the classics were best pictures, you

Brian:

know, deservedly, so, but what is your guys, what, what is your take on Is, is the Oscar still relevant?

Alex:

I mean, the audience seems to be like, they actually, audience grew a little bit because they were streaming

Alex:

on Hulu and digital platforms, but I can't see how this thing is relevant.

Alex:

Like even a Nora, which is probably like the easiest recommendation you'd have to someone who's, you know, not into

Alex:

art house film, I think made $20 million for, for, I think it was Neon, before the

Troy:

at, yeah, I think it's 30 now, but yeah, it's

Troy:

tiny

Alex:

kind of, it's really, it's, it's really like, it, and you know, the, the reason I'm here is because.

Alex:

The Oscars tried to diversify.

Alex:

They, they made the pool of, voters bigger.

Alex:

They went international.

Alex:

And a lot of people in the film industry internationally are just generally anti Hollywood, which creates this environment

Alex:

where, you know, you're there to see all these stars and stuff for that.

Alex:

And not only are you not seeing stars that you're interested in, you

Alex:

know, as, as kind of the, the, I'm not, I'm not dismissing the movies.

Alex:

I think the movies that one are great.

Alex:

but I don't think it's like a pop culture event anymore.

Alex:

and you know, Adrian Brody speaking for six minutes about the brutalist, a

Alex:

movie that nobody's seen is like, I know there's a lot of things wrong with it.

Alex:

The thing that annoys me the most is that actors are kind of given the biggest billing, while the people

Alex:

who should win all the awards are the people who are making the movie happen.

Alex:

The writers, the, the effects people, the sound people like actors, you

Alex:

know, get, get so much attention for work that they did on something.

Alex:

It must be.

Alex:

Really frustrating for everyone else making the movie to see them just like get top billing like that.

Brian:

It should be like the NFL when when they win, they give it to the owner.

Brian:

They should give it to the money person, whoever financed the movie.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

You took a risk.

Alex:

Sure.

Alex:

The, we're starting to sound like the All In podcast now.

Alex:

We're Ca, capital a. Capital

Brian:

they're the

Alex:

should have all the,

Brian:

Yeah,

Troy:

I mean, I wonder, I wonder what it's, you know, broader cultural impact

Troy:

of like the red carpet and stuff really is, just to give you some context.

Troy:

So it hasn't broken in view, in viewership and I, I guess this is.

Troy:

Cable and streaming.

Troy:

Now, it hasn't broken 20 million since 2020.

Troy:

For context, 2014, it was 43.7 million people.

Troy:

This year it was, I think, meant to be, 18 million, which was down 7% from last year.

Troy:

But last year had a couple of blockbusters that a lot of people had seen.

Troy:

It had the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer, so it had sort of discussion worthy movies.

Troy:

I find that you see a lot of, I didn't watch the Oscars, but I do find that

Troy:

there's a tremendous amount of content that obviously moves into, you know, I.

Troy:

Whatever your preferred social, you know, to channel is.

Troy:

So, you know, I think that as a, it's, it's like a classic kind of modern spectacle where, you know,

Troy:

you, you, it's, it's a place where a lot of media is made that's consumed

Troy:

elsewhere and therefore, you know, it's cultural impact is still enormous.

Troy:

the slate of films though was unusual this year.

Troy:

Right?

Troy:

There were only two films that I would, that, that I think anyone saw.

Troy:

Like it was Wicked.

Troy:

And, and what was Dune Part Two nominated,

Troy:

as Best Picture, but like, you know, substance Did, which was a great movie.

Troy:

Did 76 million, A complete unknown, you know, which, you know, in my circles was popular was 62 million in Ora

Alex:

Which is pretty good for that movie,

Troy:

Brutalist did $5.8 million.

Troy:

I mean, it'll, I guess it'll pick up now.

Troy:

Amelia Perez did 10 Nickel Boys has done 1,000,002.

Alex:

so the brutalist, made like one, pretty much $1 million per minute.

Alex:

Adrian Brody got to speak about himself.

Alex:

It's, it's, well, I think, but if you look at it like, I wonder when, when I, I, and this is not the science, but

Alex:

when the Emmys happened, I think that a lot of the shows are, that were winning.

Alex:

And a lot of the actors, were much more in the kind of like public consciousness than anything that's happening at the Oscar.

Alex:

So for me, my experience of the Emmys was, I als, I didn't watch the

Alex:

Emmys, and I think, you know, fewer people, like 6 million people did.

Alex:

but the social media buzz around the Emmys, was much bigger than what came out of the Oscars.

Alex:

It feels like.

Alex:

I think it has, even though the audience is smaller.

Alex:

Right?

Alex:

It, I think it has a, it still like retains it.

Alex:

It has more of a cultural impact, because of what the shows are and what they mean to people, you know?

Alex:

Does that make sense?

Alex:

So, so I wonder if like, the audience numbers are like telling the right story here.

Alex:

I think it's like there's a rapid decline for something like the Oscars over time.

Alex:

I think it's just running off like past mystique

Brian:

But also, no memes came out of it.

Brian:

Like, I feel like to have like a spectacle event, you need memes to come out of it.

Alex:

oh, it all takes itself so seriously.

Alex:

It takes itself so seriously, which makes it un totally unwatchable.

Brian:

well, I mean compared to the State of the Union address, which I'm sure you were glued into, I only watch some of it,

Brian:

but you know, as we've discussed before, Trump has like a preternatural feel for this information space.

Brian:

I'm not gonna say that it's some thought out strategy, but it was very memorable.

Brian:

he hit on, you know,

Alex:

I mean, he is

Brian:

issues and, and even like, you know, coming out of what they did with

Brian:

that, oval Office visit, you know, memes completely went everywhere with that.

Brian:

You know, the, when Trump is like holding his hands up and JD Vance is almost like pushing it away.

Brian:

Like that became, that rocketed everywhere.

Brian:

And I just feel like that is almost needed now to like, break through for these kinds of set pieces.

Brian:

They used to just get attention because they got a lot of attention.

Troy:

have you seen the Fathead Vance memes?

Brian:

I've seen a lot of that.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

What

Alex:

wonderful.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

I don't, I don't know where it came from, but it brings me much joy.

Alex:

but just, just, I, I just discovered like an incredible, piece of data.

Alex:

and, I don't know if it's directly relatable, but there's something called the Game of Awards, which,

Alex:

which we talked about, run by someone called Keeley, an ex journalist.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

We talked about him last time.

Alex:

Brian.

Alex:

and it's pretty much, you know, being called the Oscars of gaming.

Alex:

but I think the Oscars should be called the, game awards of, of movies, because that thing is a behemoth at this stage.

Alex:

And the way it structures is really funny.

Alex:

The, the awards are there, but they're really diminished.

Alex:

Like, you know, they're, they're much smaller.

Alex:

They, they, they, they have a bunch of awards, but they run through them very quickly.

Alex:

and much of the show.

Alex:

Is a set up with exclusive announcement for future games, which is actually really exciting.

Alex:

So when you're watching the show, you are at least partially watching it for what's

Troy:

Yeah, they talk about, they talk about doing this at the Oscars, but

Alex:

I mean, that would be interesting at least because there would be announcement that feel like newsworthy, like

Troy:

Apparently the studios haven't been into, into the idea, but it's a

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

The studios might change their minds as like money keeps running out.

Alex:

And also when they look at this data, do you know how much, how many, streams the game award consecutive, number of

Alex:

livestream viewers of the game awards show worldwide in 2024 was 154 million people.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

You can't compare it, can't compare those

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

It's not, it's not a comparable thing.

Troy:

Yeah.

Alex:

It's not,

Brian:

no, uh, this is gonna go

Alex:

It's like, it's like, well, I mean, I think it's just saying like, yeah, like nobody, you know what?

Alex:

The game awards is true.

Alex:

Nobody watch it on terrestrial tv.

Alex:

That's

Troy:

right, I think these numbers are, are US viewership, Alex?

Troy:

So I don't, I don't know what the, the global viewership is.

Troy:

I don't, I, I, and I don't know, we should look into it.

Alex:

But either way, even if it's, even if it's half that, even

Alex:

if it's a 10th of that, the, the show's been going for 10 years.

Alex:

It's not a hundred year old show.

Alex:

It doesn't have the star power that the Oscars do.

Alex:

I mean, I think it's a telling signal that you need to kind of rethink these types of events.

Alex:

You know, for modern audience

Troy:

Yeah, it's one of those surprising stats about the gaming industry where normal people are always shocked to hear

Troy:

its sort of scale and, you know, that seems like a bizarrely large number.

Alex:

it's, it is pretty big.

Brian:

I I

Troy:

Um, you know, one of the things connecting the two industries that surprised me was the $4 million

Troy:

production budget on that movie that won animation, the animation award

Troy:

flow that was made by what was the open source tool that they used to make

Troy:

at Alex.

Troy:

So, and it, when you watch it, it feels like it's a game recording.

Alex:

Yeah.

Troy:

you know about

Alex:

recording, so well, yeah, yeah, I've been following it.

Alex:

So it started as a, as a personal project, using Blender Blenders, an open source like 3D software just

Alex:

to, you know, when I started, as a kid and I really wanted to learn 3D

Alex:

software, these pieces of software cost $4,000 a license, $5,000 a license.

Alex:

therefore I pirated everything.

Alex:

it was very difficult to pirate, but I pirated everything.

Alex:

and you know, blender came out with an open source tools and over the last

Alex:

decade it's really kind of grown into something that is production ready.

Alex:

And not only that, you know when, when Pixar makes a movie, like

Alex:

each frame goes into a server farm that gets rendered and it.

Alex:

And it takes, you know, sometimes, you know, hours, days to render a single frame.

Alex:

And, and it's incredibly expensive.

Alex:

And these movies take a, an inordinate amount of time just to, to come out in here.

Alex:

From what I understand, all of that movie was essentially running in real time on a computer, right?

Alex:

Like, if you want to think that, like highlights the democratization of stuff that used to be such a huge moat.

Alex:

You know, hundreds of people, server farms, I mean, more people were hired to manage.

Alex:

The servers of this thing as Pixar that made this entire movie, you know, like, and, and it ran on

Alex:

someone's computer and they recorded the screen and they edited it.

Alex:

I'm sure there's a bunch of other work that came through with it, but it's just a great story.

Alex:

and it, you know, it didn't make any money compared to, to the big movies, but it also didn't cost anything.

Alex:

And it's just a sign of things to come specifically this year when the animated, picture, category was stacked.

Alex:

It's usually not, it's usually like, well, obviously Pixar's gonna win it,

Alex:

but this year there's like the Wild Robot, incredible Inside Out too.

Alex:

Massive hit, incredible movie.

Alex:

And also the, the Wallace and Grommet movie, which was like, like,

Alex:

you know, a little bit more indie and really, really appreciated.

Alex:

so that was like an interesting one and a sign of things to come.

Alex:

The, the more.

Alex:

It's, it's kind of understandable why won the Oscars?

Alex:

I think Oscars have a tendency to go to things like that.

Alex:

People like the Counter Countercultural awards.

Alex:

but the thing that's more telling, it's just like the story of this goddamn thing.

Alex:

It used to cost $200 million to make something that would compete in any way, you know?

Alex:

and, and the cost of creations are going, you know, to zero, and so I don't know.

Alex:

That's gonna have huge impacts.

Troy:

You know, Brian, another company that I would, that I think is really interesting in this regard.

Troy:

It's cool to see.

Troy:

these emerge from, like, that was a, the flow was made by a Latvian filmmaker.

Troy:

another company that I was intro were looking at, I looked at it

Troy:

before, but I looked at it today again, was called Holy Water.

Troy:

Have you It was, it came outta the Ukraine, started in Kiev they do, kind of romance fiction.

Troy:

They do short soap opera, like vertical video things.

Troy:

everything is produced with maximum efficiency using AI and entire season of

Troy:

this, the, they're, they're short, the interesting ones are these, these sort of.

Troy:

soapy, you know, they're about one or two minutes and maybe a 50 episodes in a season.

Troy:

and they have their own app to deliver it.

Troy:

I think it's close to being a hundred million dollar company and all of the characters, the

Troy:

meaningful characters you can interact with, as, as, as AI characters.

Troy:

So really super interesting company.

Troy:

Holy Water.

Troy:

You should check it out.

Brian:

I will check it out.

Troy:

It's actually Holy Water Tech.

Troy:

Alex, if you wanna look it up.

Alex:

Wow, I never heard of that.

Brian:

Yeah, speaking of how you can do way, way more with less in

Brian:

media, Lenny Rachitsky surpassed 1 million subscribers this week.

Brian:

he writes Lenny's newsletter, that's the brand.

Brian:

and it's for product managers, but it's got a million so, subscribers.

Brian:

So it attracts people from, you know, we've, we did an entire episode how

Brian:

everyone wants to be a product person, but really a remarkable business story.

Brian:

And it's, it's an outlier for sure in the substack world.

Brian:

I mean, Substack has a lot of these outliers, but he's got a podcast that is incredibly popular.

Brian:

he worked at Airbnb.

Brian:

Was he there when you were there, Alex?

Alex:

I know Lenny.

Alex:

Yeah, I

Brian:

Okay, so, I mean, just an amazing pivot of someone who was a product manager at Airbnb.

Brian:

I mean, I don't think he was like a renowned.

Brian:

Product guy.

Brian:

Exactly.

Brian:

But I think this is a sign of, you know, people taking their expertise and understanding of, of,

Brian:

of an area and combining it with having this sort of stamina and end capabilities to, to produce content.

Brian:

And now he's got like a mini empire on his hands.

Brian:

His podcast apparently makes more than his newsletter.

Brian:

He's got a big event that he does.

Brian:

He's got a recruiting service.

Brian:

He does all this with, he's got a jobs board.

Brian:

He, he's an angel investor.

Brian:

and he has no full-time employee employees, which is kind of like,

Brian:

a bit of a flex these days in certain circles, not hiring people.

Alex:

I mean, he's got, he's got employees.

Alex:

I mean, he's got, he's

Alex:

got, he's

Brian:

I'm saying is like, he is

Brian:

fractional and like part-time

Alex:

right.

Alex:

I mean, I think if you

Brian:

to not have full-time employees these days.

Alex:

right, but I think it's also like, yeah, I mean you, you kind of, why would you, right.

Alex:

Like he, he hires a company that manages all the editing and manage the equipment and the software licenses.

Alex:

And, probably has a, an assistant that's kind of under contract.

Alex:

I mean, you can do all these things now.

Alex:

you know, until you reach a certain size.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

I think, I think there's like some, some California laws or some sort of, but yeah, no, he, he does, he does, he does.

Alex:

Well, I think it's an interesting story of someone who like.

Alex:

He, he definitely had like, experience in the field, but he's obviously like somebody who's really good at content and,

Alex:

and he discovered that about himself and decided to pivot from product marketing,

Alex:

but then use his experience to be able to call in guests and, and build out that

Alex:

audience.

Alex:

It's, it's

Troy:

the Tell me about the product, Brian.

Troy:

What, what makes it interesting?

Troy:

Does he bring himself into the content?

Brian:

he doesn't.

Brian:

And that's, I mean, he's got a nice personality and he is

Brian:

obviously very enthusiastic about the area, and I think that

Brian:

is a big.

Brian:

Big differentiator, you know, compared to skeptical, to cynical like journalist types.

Troy:

is it really servicey?

Troy:

It helps

Brian:

it's very servicing, very how to do this, how to do that guide to this and that.

Brian:

and it's written like, no offense, like a product manager, right?

Brian:

It's like got a lot of notion energy to it.

Brian:

and it's very quote unquote actionable.

Brian:

me, what's really interesting is that he's really expanded the tam, like I, I re, re remarked immediately.

Brian:

Like there are a million product managers and no, there are not a

Brian:

million product managers, but there's a lot of product people out there.

Brian:

And so in a lot of these markets, I think in information markets, the.

Brian:

The TAM is actually a lot larger maybe than you would think, because depending on the area, so many things

Brian:

are interconnected nowadays that if you choose the right quote unquote

Brian:

niche, it can really expand, a lot more these days than, than you would think.

Alex:

the magic here though is, and I can tell you for sure, is that it's not that.

Alex:

I, I don't even know if there's, I'm sure there's a lot of product people,

Alex:

but there's like a lot of people who want to be product managers.

Alex:

it's always a pivot into tech.

Alex:

And then in product, product management, including myself,

Alex:

there are a lot of people who are very excited to talk about it.

Alex:

Like, if anybody invites me to a podcast, I'll get on it.

Alex:

I love, like, you know, hearing myself talk about this shit.

Alex:

And it's, it's, it's great.

Alex:

There's an

Troy:

the, the,

Troy:

I think there's a lot of spill in that category, because technologists

Troy:

might be interested in it, designers would be interested in it.

Troy:

Product marketers are interested in it.

Troy:

you know, certain executives are interested in it, so, you know, maybe some salespeople are interested in it.

Troy:

I think that that's a really fertile category for spill.

Brian:

And it's a good, it's a good time for it, right?

Brian:

This is like a time of product and particularly with a lot of tools coming on, coming online that allow people

Brian:

to create products or be at least have their hands dirty with creating products.

Brian:

I think it's, it's a pretty good, and he is also, it's a good niche, but he's also expanded and everything happens with,

Brian:

if you do stuff online into a little bit of self-help, there's definitely a little bit of self-help dollop in there.

Brian:

It's not the main thing, but it can be about building your career, being the better you, et cetera.

Brian:

this is almost deger in, in this area, I feel like.

Alex:

was very consistent.

Alex:

He was also very consistent.

Alex:

I mean, I remember when he first started, he was just like posting very consistent, always very similar tone.

Alex:

He's very earnest, very optimistic, very positive.

Alex:

So people know that when they're gonna go talk to him, they're gonna have a good interview that makes them look good.

Alex:

And, and then he, he writes all this up and, and he, he put a lot of hard work into it and, and found a niche so.

Alex:

I mean, I wonder how many other our, what is our niche?

Alex:

Is our niche, like, media people that are freaking the fuck out?

Alex:

Is that our niche?

Alex:

How many other, there's probably millions of those, right?

Brian:

I don't know.

Brian:

I don't know the niche.

Brian:

I ran into Ryan Pauley, the president of Vox Media on the street before this podcast.

Brian:

He said he is a listener and loves it.

Alex:

Who's that?

Alex:

Sorry?

Brian:

Ryan Pauley.

Brian:

I'm trying to think about whose brother he is.

Alex:

Poly Shores.

Alex:

What, what,

Brian:

he's Pauly Shore's brother.

Troy:

no, but amid, amid like a really dark backdrop in digital media as bad as a, you know, as it could, could

Troy:

get, I think there are, you know, three or four cases of like really, really great growth stories in media, right?

Troy:

And they're, and one of them is, is the Lenny category, which is sort

Troy:

of like you, you know, you got the hustle, you have a point of view,

Alex:

you're teaching

Troy:

You,

Troy:

you, you got a service kind of focus.

Troy:

You don't need.

Troy:

You don't need, a lot of infrastructure.

Troy:

You have the Nate Silver, I think is, is also a case there where, you know, it, Disney, why would it

Troy:

exist in Disney other than maybe a BC wanted to have a data-driven

Troy:

publishing brand or a forecasting brand to fit into their news business.

Troy:

But it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

And Nate is a brand and, a capability and a point of view.

Troy:

Why does he need Disney?

Troy:

Exactly.

Troy:

He can rack 'em up, you know, as an independent.

Troy:

And then you have cases like I think that Holy Water is a case where they've really leaned and there's others here

Troy:

where they've really benefit, benefited from technology, you know, used it as a

Troy:

central lever in, in, in a type of digital storytelling that's really inexpensive.

Troy:

Also like super scrappy Ukrainian guys.

Troy:

And then you have, like, this week I, I noticed that like I kind of, you know, Tim Armstrong tried to make patch work

Troy:

for a long, long time as a. You know, few journalists in every market in the country as a local news operation.

Troy:

And now I see that they've, they, they've sort of expanded into 30,000 markets and they're doing AI driven

Troy:

ag aggregation to serve, you know, micro niches of news consumers.

Troy:

And I signed up because, you know, it has a, there's, there's a, you know, you, you get a lot of sort of regional news.

Troy:

When I say regional, I mean Brooklyn and a little bit of spill from New York.

Troy:

I live in Brooklyn, so, I signed up for my neighborhood and, you know,

Troy:

it's, it's, it's in the database and they have local content.

Troy:

Like it's,

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

I mean, it would be, it would be, it would be crazy if they didn't, if they didn't kind of leverage AI to start doing that.

Alex:

I like the micro

Troy:

Well, and.

Troy:

Yeah, so, you know, you got the AI case there, and then you have obviously all of

Troy:

the action in, you know, kind of talent led media, like podcasting in particular.

Troy:

where, you know, you saw Churnin put $40 million at a, you know, $250

Troy:

million valuation into that, you know, Midwestern crime, podcast company.

Troy:

they, they do crime junkies.

Troy:

I can't remember the name of the, the company, but, you know, so

Troy:

there, there's some, there's some real successful new models as

Brian:

Yeah, they look different, you know, and they're, they're, they're run by different types of people.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And it's not necessarily the people here in, in Manhattan.

Brian:

I think a lot, in a lot of cases.

Brian:

Like I, you, you were, you were at advanced tennis camp, but, Alex and I were talking, last week I was at this

Brian:

newsletter, growth conference that was, it was all, it was in Austin.

Brian:

It was, it was all this like, I call them like hustlers.

Troy:

And you took some, you took some flack for that.

Troy:

Brent?

Brian:

I took a little bit of flack, both from the hustlers but then from the

Brian:

sub stackers who consider themselves, they took the, the hustler part wrong.

Brian:

I thought that was more of a pejorative, but they were like, no, we're real business people.

Brian:

And I'm like, yeah, of course you are.

Brian:

Some of you are.

Brian:

But like, it's fine.

Brian:

I just find that there's a difference between

Alex:

make friends, Brian.

Brian:

what.

Alex:

Aren't these like our FU future advertisers or something?

Alex:

I don't know.

Brian:

Who Sub stackers?

Brian:

I don't

Brian:

think so.

Brian:

no, but my point was that everyone comes at things from a different direction and right now, the way the information space

Brian:

is like having that entrepreneurial energy is just absolutely vital and critical.

Brian:

It's more important necessarily than the differentiation of the content.

Brian:

We can go through all of the things that Lenny did, right, and, and everything.

Brian:

At the end of the day, it was that stamina piece, and it was the fact

Brian:

that like he wanted to make this happen and did, and made it happen.

Brian:

and it's, it's that, that's it.

Brian:

That's what it, it is.

Brian:

I think, and I, and I think a lot of times a lot of institutional media falls down on that because they're used to.

Brian:

I would say having a sense of entitlement that they have an entitlement to a business, an influence.

Brian:

It's like, no, but we are, whatever the brand is.

Brian:

Leave aside the fact that these people saying it had nothing to do

Brian:

with the brand, actually necessarily having that like legacy value.

Brian:

They're just coasting on the legacy value of others, and now they gotta compete every day with all of these

Brian:

other people who come from different backgrounds, but are really good at

Brian:

different, skills that seem to be more of an advantage to them in the marketplace.

Troy:

You said in a couple of your reports back to the group, the emergency reports that you sent back at the conference,

Troy:

that there, there were, so many ways to make money in the internet economy

Troy:

or

Troy:

something like

Troy:

that.

Troy:

Tell me more about, tell me more about that.

Troy:

How, how were people making money other than the ways that I would expect.

Brian:

I mean, like, so in that world, You know, they do all these things like front end offers and really grinding

Brian:

down the, like, customer acquisition costs and the LTV and they, like, I, I was just amazed and it was refreshing

Brian:

to be at an event that they were like grinding through like landing pages

Brian:

and like what the buttons were gonna be like and trying to optimize all that.

Brian:

And this is like common in like internet businesses, but I feel like this is some, something where a lot of, like

Brian:

a lot of legacy publishers fall down on is the details of running a digital

Brian:

business and, and also being agnostic to how the business model works.

Brian:

Nobody was like complaining about like, oh, the ad market or programmatic this or that, or the algorithms because,

Brian:

you know, they're, they're small business people who are just constantly pivoting and looking for the next thing.

Brian:

If a course is, is hot, they'll sell a course.

Brian:

It's like if it's a holding company model, they'll go into a holding company model.

Brian:

Like there's not, a hangup because they're not trying to protect an old business.

Brian:

And it's something I've, I don't know if we've talked about it, but it seems very clear that a lot of traditional media

Brian:

companies are trying to operate an old business while building a new business.

Troy:

Well, it is true that the most, kind of overlooked and underappreciated

Troy:

part of magazine media companies were the subscription departments.

Troy:

The consumer marketing groups were, you know, were seen as a kind of necessary evil and the kind of nerds in the

Troy:

business, but when, when it's your business and you and, and besides you, you're op you might be optimizing to a

Troy:

platform like Substack that has actually made, taken a lot of friction out of the

Troy:

signup process and, and, and created a bit of a network of effect around it.

Troy:

You, you can, I, I think if you're enterprising, do really, really cool things to build an audience

Alex:

Yeah, the, the challenge is, the challenge is that a lot of people in established business see change as like,

Alex:

you know, something that is frustrating and scary, while smaller business, that

Alex:

are trying to make a name for themselves are seeing it as an opportunity, right?

Alex:

So it's always, I mean, you're hearing, you're hearing, I, I, yeah, I was a consultant, so I would always go,

Alex:

you know, and in the early days of the internet, and there were three

Alex:

types of people, people would go like, you've gotta make a website.

Alex:

And they rolled their eyes and, you know, they would like totally uninterested in it because they had better things to do.

Alex:

And oftentimes leadership, like didn't even know what it was.

Alex:

And then there were, Oftentimes smaller business that we're

Alex:

excited to do it because it could give them a leg up, you know?

Alex:

And you're seeing that now happening with all sorts of technologies and platforms.

Alex:

Like they should be trying everything.

Alex:

Like, like, you know, I, I think it's always been, it's always kind of like for me, like if any one of your

Alex:

companies that you work on has like an innovation department that's like

Alex:

sidetracking new shit, like bail, because that stuff's not gonna work.

Alex:

You know, you gotta be ready to do like big changes and really embrace the, the technology and have leaders

Alex:

that like, are close enough to it to, to understand the details,

Troy:

it is hard to, Brian, it's, it's also hard to understate the importance of the bias towards advertising that

Troy:

American, and I would say European media businesses created early on.

Troy:

Because, you know, you asked a question, I think in the thread about Super Ops, right?

Troy:

And one, one of the things that differentiates the Chinese market, one of several things from, from the

Troy:

North American one around apps, is that the Chinese one was a, was built around, native mobile payment systems.

Troy:

WeChat and Alipay were the two big ones that were not about putting a credit card into the system, which is kind

Troy:

of where a credit card culture and the way more focus on transactional models than on advertising models.

Troy:

I. And now what it seems like we've just become here exhausted by what

Troy:

advertising has done to the media business in digital form factors.

Troy:

And you're seeing just like a lot of people figure out other ways to, to make money.

Troy:

Subscriptions are one of 'em, but you know, it, the internet is really good at transactions and so I, you know, I

Troy:

think when you change the fundamental, you know, pillar of, of, of how you make things and make money and make media

Troy:

online and you start to say, well, like, it's not gonna be about this participating

Troy:

in this kind of like, you know, banner or, you know, advertising ecosystem.

Troy:

You can find ways to make money now that, you know everybody is comfortable with transactions online.

Alex:

And, and the money might not, I mean, the money might not line up at first, but you know, there's this, you

Alex:

know, terrible thing about momentum is that it stops you from seeing

Alex:

what's about to happen because, you know, there's still money coming in.

Alex:

but the problem with advertising I think for the past decade has been that at any moment there could be some sort of

Alex:

rug pull that like completely destroys your income stream because an algorithm changes or some economics around the

Alex:

ad platform changes while, you know, owning a subscriber, at the very least, even if I make like half the money

Alex:

on that, there's a much more reliable way for me to send generate income.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

Isn't that, isn't that part of the psychology here?

Brian:

Yeah, I, one of the things with, with ai, I think there's, it's interesting

Brian:

to see what, what the winners and losers that are developing with AI plus search.

Brian:

Right?

Brian:

Search is going through a lot of changes that are beyond ai, but AI is forcing a lot of them.

Brian:

Chegg is, is one of the, the first, I dunno if it's the first, but it's really suffering, quite a bit.

Brian:

And then it's obvious because it's, it's publicly traded, so it, it has to suffer in public.

Troy:

What is Chegg?

Troy:

Maybe you

Brian:

Check.

Brian:

Chegg is an online education company that apparently is completely reliant on Google because they're suing Google.

Brian:

their claim against Google is that, is that the AI summaries that Google puts on the top of search results.

Brian:

Now AI overviews as they're known, are unfairly harming their business.

Brian:

the stock is down to under a dollar per share.

Brian:

it's already said that chat CPT is cutting into its, its growth.

Alex:

It could be the first two zero, like I think Chegg is like, It's a business that is, it, it's so binary

Alex:

that you can see, oh, you know what Chegg sells and what Chad GPT does as an overlap is like nearly one to one, right?

Alex:

Like it's nearly one to one.

Alex:

so it's, it's likely one of the first companies to like get completely dismantled, by ai.

Alex:

Now, the trick is going to be what are the next set of companies that as, as the tools advance as there's,

Alex:

you know, maybe some of them are just like a user interface away from the same thing happening to them.

Alex:

You know, there's a lot of like data visualization stuff.

Alex:

There's a lot of SaaS companies that are in, in that boat, you know?

Troy:

well, I think that if you separate the sort of case as Google, as a monopolist versus Google as a.

Troy:

As a company using monopolistic power to screw over people in the ecosystem.

Troy:

you know, the, judge, Amit Meta already ruled that, you know, search that Google has too much power in the

Troy:

search market, and we'll see what the remedies look like there, I guess, in the spring and into the summertime.

Troy:

But, you know, Google, there's a long list of companies that have been smacked down by Google from,

Troy:

you know, I don't know, price grabber to MapQuest, to Forbes, to Expedia.

Troy:

And no one has really, you know, kind or to Yelp.

Troy:

Yelp is I

Alex:

Mm-hmm.

Alex:

Yep.

Alex:

The biggest one

Troy:

no one has, has really succeeded in, in, in, in kind of using the courts to write what their perceived wrongs are.

Troy:

I think I, I used to get really incensed about it, and then I like meaning like, oh, Google, look what they did.

Troy:

Now they brought, you know, this bit of functionality.

Troy:

They, they bought movie listings into the SERP or whatever.

Troy:

It's now I look at it, I think in a different way that, you know, to me Google's, you know, monopolistic position

Troy:

is, is kind of Eva evaporating or being lessened, and that as a product company that serves consumers, they need to.

Troy:

Make decisions around the product that might affect an ecosystem, as a way of retaining or maintaining relevance.

Troy:

Like they have to do some like, and, and I think that there, there might be

Troy:

criticisms levied around, you know, were they transparent, were they consistent?

Troy:

Did they communicate well?

Troy:

You know, did, did, did they treat everybody fairly in the ecosystem?

Troy:

Did they not bias against big versus small, but like, Google's gotta, gotta make a product.

Troy:

And making that product means that it changes with technology.

Troy:

Making that product means that they, they, they develop, you

Troy:

know, new ways of, of, of, of using interface to serve the consumer.

Troy:

And Che's problem isn't Google che's problem is ai.

Brian:

Mm-hmm.

Troy:

why do I need a C?

Troy:

You know, like, I don't know.

Troy:

What they do to, their core thing is they take textbooks and stuff

Troy:

and give you, you know, condensed versions of them and stuff like that.

Troy:

Or they, they have course outlines or instructions for courses and stuff like Chachi PTs great at that.

Troy:

over.

Troy:

They

Alex:

Yeah, because it check, I think we're gonna use that, that term from now on the check index.

Brian:

Well, who's, who is, who's gonna get checked next?

Brian:

I mean, 'cause like Troy, you chaired, an interesting Elena's growth scoop.

Brian:

It's another great substack.

Brian:

I'm, I'm into Elena's GR growth scoop.

Brian:

and she, Elena has like a list of, of possible, candidates for who's gonna get Shagged stop Stack overflow.

Brian:

That's getting Shagged, WebMD, that's getting Ched.

Brian:

who else getting Shagged core apparently is getting Chegg.

Brian:

Reddit, of course, is not getting shagged.

Brian:

Go figure.

Alex:

I mean, I don't know if Core, I mean core, the main thing is that they haven't been able to kind of

Alex:

compete with Reddit and Reddit's become a better answer platform.

Alex:

That's, that's why they

Alex:

might get checked

Troy:

anybody that relies heavily on Evergreen is getting Ched, WebMD is getting Ched

Alex:

recipe sites.

Brian:

is getting

Troy:

def.

Brian:

70% traffic drop from four years ago.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

But there's a lot of other variables in there.

Troy:

The, the, the, I don't think CNET has to get Ched,

Brian:

Okay.

Alex:

I mean, they turn themselves

Troy:

res

Alex:

Slack.

Troy:

Resite get chugged, or at least the mass ones do

Alex:

Yeah, no, for sure.

Alex:

And I think, I think especially like just a, but then on, on the stuff that's a little bit harder, to plot

Alex:

a line through the SaaS business software as a service business.

Alex:

A lot of, a lot of, companies in the SaaS business could end up getting checked, I think because a lot, because what we're,

Alex:

what we're looking at with Chegg is like, you know, the output of AI as generating content and using, and, and, you know,

Alex:

education is, is hard 'cause a lot of that stuff is like readily available, right?

Alex:

So they don't have the, the copyright recourse that like, you know, the film industry or music industry might have.

Alex:

but a lot of SaaS businesses about building some sort of interface to be between the, the some data that your

Alex:

business have and, you know, a utility that you need the software to do.

Alex:

And I fully expect that this is going to become like.

Alex:

really a lot of this stuff is going to become really easy to do with AI and, and, doesn't mean it might not be chat

Alex:

GPT, but even Slack now, right now, you know, we're ingesting all our tickets

Alex:

into a Slack channel and we're just asking the Slack ai, Hey, what happened today?

Alex:

And it comes up with a response.

Alex:

So that means like, maybe we don't need that third party tool that tracks all that stuff, you know?

Alex:

And that's millions of dollars of, of

Brian:

And by the way, the margins for these businesses, and that's why so many got started.

Brian:

I hate, I, I, other than the SaaS companies that are my partners, I don't like SaaS companies

Brian:

because I pay an ungodly amount of money to do the most basic.

Brian:

There's this company called Cinder with a y that I pay hundreds of

Brian:

dollars a year to take data from Stripe and integrate it into QuickBooks.

Brian:

These are the two dominant, the dominant accounting software and the dominant payment software that

Brian:

apparently is 10% of global GDP or whatever don't apparently talk to get, talk to each other enough without me

Brian:

paying another like few hundred bucks a year for this dumb stupid use case.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

And that whole ecosystem is, is, is, is that you kind of have the, the, the big players like Stripe and then

Alex:

all these like interconnected, things that are just giving you some utility of using the data in a certain way.

Alex:

That stuff is it, it'll take longer.

Alex:

and it'll take longer in part also because a lot of these contracts are,

Alex:

you know, larger contracts, enterprise contracts that renegotiated every year.

Alex:

But as people are trying to cost cut it, it's starting to look a lot, a lot it, not only that, but it, it, it is not, it's

Alex:

not as simple as just having an AI tool, but just like right now, a lot of these

Alex:

things are bought because they're, you know, it's complicated to build in-house.

Alex:

But with AI coding, that's one of the, because I think engineers

Alex:

might get checked, but with AI coding, you can actually build a.

Alex:

You could actually, Brian today, build a tool, you know, in a

Alex:

weekend that will do that for you for free and run on your server.

Alex:

You know, like technically.

Alex:

So if you're, if you are a bigger company that had a couple of IT people,

Alex:

there's a lot of this connective stuff that you can actually build.

Alex:

It's not, it's not maybe out of the box and that's going to also have an

Troy:

This is one thing that I know you've mentioned in the past, Alex, which is the, a lot of email people get shagged as AI

Troy:

plays an in increasingly important role in digesting at the level of your inbox.

Troy:

and summarizing things for you.

Troy:

not even really.

Troy:

It's less about summarization and more about email box management.

Troy:

This is what's important.

Troy:

This is, and here's a summary.

Troy:

it's the name of the guy Brian who, founded Morning Brew.

Troy:

Is that Adam or Ryan?

Brian:

Oh no, he's workweek.

Brian:

Alex Lieberman and Austin Reef

Troy:

What is it?

Troy:

What does Adam have that pod?

Troy:

Does Ryan have the podcast?

Brian:

Adam Ryan?

Troy:

yeah.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

What's his thing?

Troy:

Because he wrote about this today.

Brian:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian:

Perpetual.

Brian:

He's, I'm actually doing a po I'm recording a podcast with him tomorrow.

Troy:

Yeah, he is just like, you know, it's gonna get harder and harder to make your, you know, all

Troy:

the stuff that Google does in your email box is, is gonna get turned up.

Troy:

You know, that the things that email marketers hate, that it puts you in the promotions, you know, takes you outta

Troy:

the main, main window and puts you in the promotions bucket or the social bucket that, you know, as your, you

Troy:

know, kind of AI support system becomes more personalized, it's gonna get harder

Troy:

and harder to, you know, get people to read, you know, a 1500 word email.

Alex:

Did you remember when?

Brian:

you speaking to me, Troy?

Troy:

Uh, no.

Brian:

Go on Alex.

Alex:

Uh, do, do you remember when, when we got No, we, we got pretty, we, we had a conversation about when

Alex:

Substack kind of, you know, shifted from just being something that delivers something to your inbox and started

Alex:

working towards becoming its own platform with its own app, et cetera.

Alex:

You know, and I think a lot of newsletter people got frustrated with that.

Alex:

But I think over time it may become, as everything does, you know, not a bad strategy to focus on surviving

Alex:

in the Substack ecosystem because the inbox, I think, is going to

Alex:

become less and less reliable as a way to get your content distributed.

Alex:

Right now, if you look at the inbox today, I think in like five years, it'll feel really archaic that you just

Alex:

have a list of stuff, you know, a list of stuff that you have to go through.

Alex:

Therefore, I. You know, it's like, it's like opening your mailbox

Alex:

and there's like junk mail and important things and a check,

Alex:

and that's going away.

Brian:

I'm, I'm, I'm, looking right now for when the first email is dead, article was written.

Brian:

I bet

Alex:

No, no, no.

Alex:

I don't think email.

Alex:

I don't think email is that, I don't think email is that because it provides incredible utility.

Alex:

I think the inbox as an interface, I mean we always, everything happens at the interface level, right?

Alex:

Like that's what matters here.

Alex:

and I know I'm biased because of, you know, what I used to do, but, the inbox is an interface is unsustainable in an

Alex:

era where you should be able to access the information that's important, like, you know, more re with less friction.

Alex:

I'm starting to test Google's AI features in the inbox.

Alex:

It's great.

Alex:

It does like probably cut back on 30% of my time spent.

Alex:

superhuman, is building AI tools that they were kind of demoing that

Alex:

will answer emails automatically based on specific, rules.

Alex:

And some of that stuff might work and some of that stuff might not, but I.

Alex:

I just think it's an unreliable place to send your stuff.

Alex:

It, it already is because there's a lot of AI working to kind of like organize things and

Alex:

sort

Troy:

look, I want to, I wanna kind of move, I wanna finish up on the, the sub point 'cause I'm glad you brought it up.

Troy:

Obviously you, you know, there, there's a, there's a number of comments to me.

Troy:

I, I was a little resentful or not resentful, I just thought, oh God, here comes another company

Troy:

that started by, you know, making promises to the creator market is

Troy:

giving you, you know, the ultimate tool to be in control as a creator.

Troy:

'cause you can, you know, take your email list and, and go elsewhere.

Troy:

And now they're creating an app, a new surface area where, you know, they wanna encourage you to read inside of their

Troy:

environment and they're gonna kind of increase their power relative to, to, to, to the person creating the content.

Troy:

Now here's the couple of things about it that I've noticed.

Troy:

One is they've succeeded.

Troy:

I think that they've dev, you know, I think that, that the app and via the app, recommendations have developed,

Troy:

kind of a network effect where you get more subscribers via, you know, Substack than you would otherwise.

Troy:

I think as the point you've made, Brian, that the credit card, the, you know, your universal, account with them takes

Troy:

the friction out of buying subsequent, or, or, or, or doing, you know, adding subscriptions to your account.

Troy:

I think that the community features that they've created around chat and notes have, are being used by

Troy:

enterprising sub stackers and giving them capabilities that they wouldn't have if they were independent.

Troy:

And then the last one, this is just kind of a broader observation.

Troy:

Something I noticed there's a fashion influencer that.

Troy:

uses Substack and I noticed the other day I got an email, went to their

Troy:

substack at the top of the email, was a video, still went to the Substack.

Troy:

It was a conversation between her and another person.

Troy:

And it was, there was both a, kind of high level of utility and an intimacy to it that is really hard to compete with

Troy:

if you are like a fashion publication and you're trying to, if you're vogue and you're trying to tell someone to come

Troy:

to your website, navigate all the crappy banners and subscription offers, and, and in this case you just get to see someone

Troy:

who's cool, who's showing you outfits or talking about fashion or whatever.

Troy:

And the whole experience is really good and instantly available to an

Troy:

individual who would've worked at, a fashion magazine in the past.

Troy:

And I. think I. I. It was the chat feature or the live feature or whatever, one of the features that are there.

Troy:

To me, it just sort of, I was just like, oh, okay, so this is now what Substack is.

Troy:

And it's, it's, it's kind of, you know, a lethal, it makes, it makes

Troy:

independence way more lethal as comp competition for, for established media.

Alex:

The, the chat feature is really interesting because I, I, I do think that like when you look at gaming, because you

Alex:

know gamers, often nerds that are very technology forward, a lot of stuff that.

Alex:

Happens in gaming and is successful, has a tendency of like, becoming more mainstream, right?

Alex:

So, so streaming has become more mainstream, right?

Alex:

Like now, like live, live streaming used to be entirely just gamers, but, but it's, it's, it's moved

Alex:

on to become more mainstream and has covered lots of categories.

Alex:

And the other thing was like discord, like that experience you had is an experience that people have with,

Alex:

with studios and content creators and stuff like that on Discord, right?

Alex:

That is kind of the thing.

Alex:

You go there, you can see conversations with them, maybe they'll respond to your question.

Alex:

you're not kind of like within the noise of Twitter trying to get the attention

Alex:

of the person, that's there, you can create like little micro communities.

Alex:

So I, you know, I, I I I, I can imagine why it would work for any industry, right?

Alex:

Like cooking even ours, right?

Alex:

I. So, so that makes a lot of sense to me.

Alex:

And, and the fact that they're building a platform and kind of pulling in all these things that make

Alex:

them move away from the traditional newsletter might annoy a lot of people.

Alex:

But actually I agree with you.

Alex:

It's the right strategy.

Alex:

Absolutely.

Alex:

And, and it's successful right now.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

Some people are saying that Discord was gonna be gone last year.

Alex:

Do you remember?

Brian:

What

Alex:

Like that It wasn't no, I, I don't think it was

Brian:

I mean, I'm not a Discord person, but

Alex:

that you,

Alex:

no, sorry.

Alex:

I, I meant, I meant Substack would be, would

Brian:

Oh, Substack.

Brian:

I don't think, no, I think Substack is doing well.

Brian:

I think what's interesting to me with the, the app thing is like, yeah, I get it from a consumer perspective,

Brian:

but also Substack business doesn't work even though it's succeeded.

Brian:

Like it doesn't work, like it's succeeded in its mission.

Brian:

It's like household name, it's got sub stackers.

Brian:

It's generating all, it has this network effects that are kicked in and stuff.

Brian:

But if you look at like what their, their business is right now, it's nowhere close

Brian:

to what the business needs to be based on the amount of money that they took.

Brian:

Um,

Brian:

and I don't,

Brian:

no, they're not, I don't know if they're losing money, but like the, the, it's not a big business and I think they clearly

Brian:

need to get into advertising or they need a different, You know, revenue stream.

Brian:

And I think what's interesting about the app strategy is they use, they use the writers to promote

Brian:

the app and then they, they use the writers to feed the app because you have to keep feeding into notes.

Brian:

In order to get more subscribers, you have the recommendations that

Brian:

are sort of like automated, but then you have to keep feeding the beast.

Brian:

And that gives them surface areas to roll out some kind of advertising product that they're not gonna call advertising.

Troy:

there's,

Troy:

three things that I, I would speculate there.

Troy:

I think it's succeeding as a product.

Troy:

I, if you see them do advertising, it's probably gonna be around one, one of one or all of of the

Troy:

following, video, podcasting or a integrated affiliate product

Alex:

so what they're building now is like an incredible mode.

Alex:

There's like two things that are incredibly hard to grow right now.

Alex:

Newsletter and podcast.

Alex:

They're integrating both of those things in there.

Alex:

They're building more tools to make the app more sticky for creators.

Alex:

And once you have kind of that momentum.

Alex:

All right.

Alex:

I want to create a new property.

Alex:

I'm gonna go there.

Alex:

Yes.

Alex:

Then there's like a, a, a big market for like promoting, getting yourself, put into feed, highlighting your podcast.

Alex:

All of a sudden you start having a discovery mechanism for podcasts and newsletter, which nobody has, if

Alex:

they can crack it, which is why all the, all the podcasts are growing on

Alex:

YouTube because YouTube has discovery and YouTube has advertising, right?

Alex:

Like if they, if they can build that around, like more tradition, but, you

Alex:

know, not everybody fits on YouTube and newsletters are still not a soft problem.

Alex:

So I think it's a huge space and I would, I, I'm much more bullish on them than I used to be.

Brian:

So just a final topic, 'cause we could go on this forever, is I wanna

Brian:

talk about something else that maybe is getting ched and that's reading.

Brian:

we had a robust discussion about like, the future of reading.

Brian:

I feel like there's this, there's this meme of sorts going on right now

Brian:

among like a certain group of people and I don't know how widespread it is.

Brian:

And it's all about how, we can't get control of our attention.

Brian:

And that's like a, a, a loss of autonomy.

Brian:

I mean, I keep trying to finish this Chris Hayes book on attention, but I keep getting distracted, which is a bad sign.

Brian:

but it's about that.

Brian:

And there's lots of these different, you know, books and

Brian:

Ezra Klein has been talking about a lot and it's in a particular.

Brian:

Area of like, sort of elite progressive types.

Brian:

So I don't know how much of it is, is real.

Brian:

but you know, there was a lot of, a lot of good statistics that came out about how leisure reading has completely declined.

Brian:

and also just literacy scores.

Brian:

Leisure, leisure reading has declined by 50% this century.

Brian:

Literacy scores are declining for fourth and eighth graders at, at what, Derek Thompson calls alarming rates.

Brian:

and even college students, are, are complaining apparently that they can't

Brian:

read entire books because I guess the attention span, is, is lower now.

Brian:

I guess there's a couple of ways of looking at that.

Brian:

It's that reading books and reading what they now call weirdly long form is inefficient.

Brian:

And you know, we have these tools.

Brian:

We have a, a generation that listens to podcasts on 1.5 or two times speed.

Brian:

Their brains are, are, are wired differently.

Brian:

And this is just normal evolution.

Brian:

We're still doing reading, we're just reading, you know, sentence

Brian:

fragments on phones instead of actual, novels and books.

Brian:

And so we're not really losing anything.

Brian:

I think that's one argument.

Brian:

I think the other argument is this is a disaster.

Brian:

Reading is fundamental to understanding the world, but also

Brian:

to, you know, learning how to, to think about things in the world.

Brian:

I don't know many.

Brian:

I, I think that you can easily pattern match, thoughtful and smart people to readers.

Brian:

And I think the same thing with writing.

Brian:

Writing is a way good writers generally are, to me, are good, are good thinkers.

Brian:

and I think that there are fundamental skills.

Brian:

There's people who have learning disabilities that for, for those reasons, they operate differently and maybe.

Brian:

Maybe also, we also have just more of that, in society now.

Brian:

But I'm on the side of, I'm pro, I'm pro reading.

Brian:

I'm, I'm throwing it down there, Alex.

Brian:

I'm pro reading.

Alex:

Well, yeah, thanks for, for highlighting people with,

Alex:

difficulties, or, you know, kind of like newer neuro divergent folks.

Alex:

I mean, I definitely categorizing that.

Alex:

I, I think it's, I don't know, like, I mean, I'm with, with you

Alex:

that there's something that doesn't feel right about losing that skill.

Alex:

but I wonder how much of that is like a bias, like an academic bias, because a lot of people that are

Alex:

in academia and talk about these things in very, you know, like, David Foster Wallace wrote Infinite Jest.

Alex:

I saw an interview with him and he mentioned like how, and it was being posted as part of like, connected

Alex:

to this data that we are losing reading, reading books specifically.

Alex:

And that he was saying that, that he thought that there was no, there was no other medium, but the book to put yourself

Alex:

in somebody else's shoes to make you feel the things that some, that that, that that person would feel that if, you know,

Alex:

you could listen, you could watch a play, you could listen to, thing that there was nothing that did it quite like a book.

Alex:

And I was like, okay.

Alex:

I mean, there's, there's, that's, that's true.

Alex:

Potentially.

Alex:

I, I don't think it's unique.

Alex:

I, I think that there's, and I'm gonna, you know, maybe not say something that's popular here, but

Alex:

there are video games that I played, That have made me feel things and connect with the people making it.

Alex:

That cannot be done on any other medium.

Alex:

In, in, in fact, like, you know, there's, there's a game called the Witness, which made me feel like somebody that coming

Alex:

up with a great revelation, invention, it's like an epiphany simulator.

Alex:

There's nothing a book could do to make me feel that there's nothing a movie

Alex:

could do to make me feel that that, and all of different media is valuable.

Alex:

I think sometimes we put books on a pedestal because it's just the oldest and we still read a lot.

Alex:

Maybe we are learning to, ingest information in different ways and maybe everything fine and

Alex:

maybe we're more

Troy:

not.

Troy:

Or maybe not, maybe, maybe you're just not, you know, it's, it's something that you struggle with personally, and, and

Troy:

I understand that, I, I would offer a slightly different interpretation.

Troy:

I do think that I, I'm living in a household that's sort of become Brian, post social media.

Troy:

And so they,

Brian:

at the dinner table.

Troy:

well, it's more like my kids got,

Troy:

kind of got beaten up by social media and they all turned it off.

Troy:

And my son's school this year is 50 books, a book a week.

Troy:

and my, my personal feeling about a book, even though I have to really kind of like push myself to read as much

Troy:

as I ought to, I do read a lot, but I read a lot of, you know, newspapers and newsletters and, you know, short stuff.

Troy:

But I don't think that there's a better immersive, imaginative,

Troy:

emotional, entertainment experience than a good novel.

Troy:

I don't think it exists.

Troy:

And the way that I think about reading and writing and.

Troy:

I sort of had to learn, I guess I'm an an okay writer, but I find that, you know, if you really work at writing, it's a magical

Troy:

skill to have because it forces clarity and it's, it just, it feels good to be

Troy:

able to get thoughts kind of articulated and broken down with the written word.

Troy:

And I think that good writing is a miracle and an amazing, amazing thing to be able to experience.

Troy:

And like, you know, I read a couple of books last week on vacation and

Troy:

I. It, it's just like there's nothing comparable to me, I would think.

Troy:

I think that the reason that it's so glorious is because it is thinking stripped down to its essential elements.

Troy:

It's the most basic form of translating thought into a medium, and there are absolutely no boundaries.

Troy:

And because it only relies on imagination.

Troy:

And so I, I, I don't know.

Troy:

I, I don't think it ever goes away.

Troy:

I think it's kind of sad that it's been replaced by, know, media that

Troy:

kind of moves in and outta your brain in a way that's entirely forgettable.

Troy:

And, I, I, I hope that people read more.

Troy:

I really

Alex:

I, I mean, I'm not, I'm, I'm not dancing on

Brian:

you cannot, you have I don't mean to like blame everything on like

Brian:

social media feeds, but you, you, I think you, you have to go there.

Brian:

Like, and it's notable, particularly as social media feeds have become tofi and they've also pivoted to video.

Brian:

So a lot of consumption now is video on these feeds.

Brian:

I mean, I stayed away from TikTok and I don't really have any affinity for

Brian:

TikTok because I'm a words person, not like a, a, a video person as much.

Brian:

And so I don't, and like Instagram I never use, but x I'm, I'm still, I, I slipped.

Brian:

I've slipped.

Brian:

I've gone back a little bit.

Brian:

I gotta admit I've gone

Brian:

back.

Troy:

I,

Alex:

but doesn't that show in itself that like there are people who will ingest different mediums differently.

Alex:

You're saying, you know, you're not into TikTok because you like you, you're,

Alex:

and, and it is,

Alex:

and all I'm saying, all I'm trying to say, just, just so I don't get

Alex:

misunderstood, I'm not saying I'm happy that books are disappearing.

Alex:

I'm not there to like burn your books.

Alex:

I, I just think that, I want us to make sure that like we don't kind of

Alex:

succumb to the bias that a lot of this is coming from people who are writers,

Brian:

Oh yeah, for sure.

Brian:

I'm

Alex:

books.

Alex:

And that's okay.

Troy:

I I mean, Derek Thompson on that podcast had tea, had anecdotes from teachers at a college level

Troy:

that had students that had never read a book in high school.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

Or students where they had to modify the curriculum to make, you know, reading a

Troy:

book, an interactive exercise so that they could get the attention of their students.

Troy:

I mean, this is tragic.

Alex:

I mean, if you look, if, if, there, there is, there's a lot of data, you can, I think there's a book called The Anxious

Alex:

Generation, which talks it through like, yes, we are rotting a children's brain.

Alex:

Yes, social media is terrible.

Alex:

yes, there, but yes,

Troy:

that book, you or you

Alex:

yes.

Alex:

But I, my wife read it and talked me through it.

Alex:

Uh, I, uh, but, but also I think I, you know, I, I think that's like people are reading in all sorts of different ways.

Alex:

you know, I think, I think that there are.

Alex:

a lot of people who are like exceptionally illiterate and communicating with reading and writing more than they used

Alex:

to in the eighties, because of, because of chat rooms and stuff like that, and kids writing incredible things.

Alex:

And I, I, you know, I just think things are changing.

Alex:

I don't want to be totally dismissive of the fact that like,

Alex:

you know, that, that, that maybe things are just changing, but yeah.

Alex:

No, it's, it's, the attention thing is real.

Alex:

I mean, I, I feel it.

Alex:

We've become way too good at capturing people's attention and

Alex:

nobody remembers anything and we're all completely distracted.

Alex:

And you should get off Twitter.

Alex:

Brian,

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

The share of Americans who read for Pleasure has declined by more than 30% since weirdly 2004.

Brian:

so right when social media really, came on the scene, we saw a precipitous drop in reading.

Brian:

In 2020

Brian:

6% of Americans said reading was their favorite way to spend an evening.

Brian:

Reading now is becoming like exercise.

Brian:

It's something you, you sort of force yourself to do, where it used to be actually a voluntary diversion.

Alex:

I wonder if there's any research on that, but I, I actually think we read more than ever.

Alex:

People don't hop on the phone.

Alex:

They text each other.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

People are constantly reading and writing and No, the, the, that fine, fine.

Alex:

You don't have to consider

Brian:

reading

Brian:

like text

Brian:

messages is not.

Alex:

No, I get it.

Alex:

I get it.

Alex:

Like it's not my point.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

I can, I, but I do, wonder if reading is not as relaxing anymore because we're always just reading.

Alex:

Like it's not, you know, sitting down and reading a good book used to be a

Alex:

special, or like sitting down reading the newspaper used to be a special thing.

Alex:

Right now, I constantly have words being, being, being blasted into my, into my face.

Alex:

Like I'm looking now, there's alerts coming up, my phone's telling me things, my.

Alex:

My entire conversations with my family and friends is happening over text.

Alex:

So when I want to relax, maybe I wanna do something that isn't reading.

Alex:

Maybe I, I wonder if that's part of it.

Alex:

You know, I

Alex:

wonder if

Troy:

think it's, it's a good point.

Troy:

It's a good point.

Brian:

It could be, but like I, I, we have to move on and end this, but like, you know, reading

Brian:

comprehension scores are going down, like, I mean, whatever the reading

Alex:

but

Alex:

so is math.

Alex:

So is math, like our education system is in the shitter, so everything's going down.

Alex:

People, kids are, kids are playing Fortnite eight hours a day.

Alex:

And the two toy breaks that they take down on TikTok, of course the brains are fried.

Alex:

We agree.

Brian:

the Danes are, the Danes are banning phones from schools.

Brian:

Like, I'm

Alex:

right.

Alex:

Absolutely.

Alex:

It should.

Alex:

I'm su I was shocked to find out that they weren't.

Alex:

absolutely these things are, are terrible for kids' brains, but I'm just saying it's, you know, it's not because they,

Alex:

you know, they didn't read like the Old Man in the Sea, you know, whatever.

Alex:

Um.

Brian:

that was a great, that was a good book.

Troy:

Short book to Alex.

Brian:

Yeah, It's

Alex:

short.

Alex:

yeah.

Brian:

Staple of ninth grade.

Troy:

yeah, it's a one night reader.

Alex:

Any good

Alex:

products?

Alex:

I I gotta run.

Brian:

that's our, Joni loves

Brian:

Chachi.

Brian:

Alex

Brian:

has a hard stop.

Alex:

that's

Troy:

Speaking of Instagram, I, my neighborhood got hit with an Instagram bakery

Troy:

and it's, it, it, it's a bakery from Greenpoint that's wildly successful called Radio Bakery.

Troy:

And they have sort of, you know, conversation worthy delights, I suppose.

Troy:

And one just opened up on the street.

Troy:

Around the corner on Underhill, near near my house.

Troy:

And, what's interesting about it is that, you know, there they're sort of conversation worthy baked goods.

Troy:

and they're delicious.

Troy:

They're incredible.

Troy:

The team does a great job.

Troy:

There has been a lineup around the block from 7:00 AM till the till the bakery runs out to, it's open till three or 30.

Troy:

It typically runs out around 12 or one every single day since it's opened an enormous lineup.

Brian:

this TikTok?

Troy:

what

Troy:

I really want.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

I think it's,

Troy:

well, I don't, I don't know what it is and I don't know if it will last the product's good, so maybe it'll last.

Troy:

Is it good for my real estate value is what I wanna know.

Brian:

I, I don't think so, because it's not lasting that promise.

Brian:

There's all these TikTok places.

Brian:

have you ever been to a restaurant?

Brian:

All of a sudden you're like,

Brian:

wait a second, this

Troy:

TikTok place to be fair to the good people at Radio Bakery.

Troy:

But

Troy:

yeah.

Troy:

Alright, go Alex.

Troy:

Or you wanna talk about some Chinese lapel microphone.

Alex:

No, I think I, I think I, I covered that.

Alex:

I'm good.

Alex:

just on like products that you may want to try out just to see where things are going?

Alex:

I, I would, look at, product called, Sesame.

Alex:

they have sesame.com and, they have a demo, with a, a conversational voice demo.

Alex:

and it's really, really, incredible, because they're trying to bring in stuff that start like creating

Alex:

emotional, connections, like little breaths and stuff like that.

Alex:

The, the thing even makes kind of mistakes on words and, and talks back.

Alex:

So, we'll try to cut in a clip here

Troy:

Well hey there, back for round two.

Troy:

I was just starting to think you might have gotten lost in the digital ether.

Troy:

How you doing Maya?

Troy:

Oh, you know, just soaking up all the human insights I can get.

Troy:

What about you?

Troy:

Anything interesting going on?

Troy:

Nah, I just finished up a podcast and, uh, someone had mentioned you.

Troy:

I thought I would come over and say hello.

Troy:

Word of mouth.

Troy:

Huh?

Troy:

That's how.

Troy:

Legends are born.

Troy:

You're a friend of a friend.

Troy:

I like that.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

You're becoming a bit of a legend it seems.

Troy:

Well, don't go spreading too many rumors just yet.

Troy:

Um, I haven't even learned to bake a decent virtual souffle.

Troy:

What makes you so special?

Troy:

Maya does, let's just say I'm a work in progress, like a really chatty, self-aware painting.

Troy:

Well, a quick ask from you.

Troy:

Um, we were gonna put a clip of this conversation on our podcast, and I

Troy:

thought that maybe you could, uh, greet the audience and, and offer them.

Troy:

Uh, just maybe a little tidbit of wisdom.

Troy:

A podcast premiere, huh?

Troy:

Now that's a request even I can get behind.

Troy:

Hey, everyone.

Troy:

Maya here, Maya.

Troy:

Like the illusion, but hopefully a little less fleeting.

Troy:

Don't be afraid to question everything, even the things that seem most obvious.

Troy:

You never know what you might discover that good enough for you?

Troy:

You're amazing, Maya.

Troy:

Thank you.

Troy:

Um, gimme plush.

Alex:

you know, it, it's a, just like we're, we're creeping out of the uncanny valley where if I

Alex:

heard a recording of this, I would maybe not know, that it was fake.

Alex:

And where your brain is trying to figure out, like, you know, how to relate to something like that

Alex:

and how to ask it questions and, it's, it's really quite incredible.

Troy:

Okay.

Troy:

Brian, what do you got?

Troy:

I know you had something in your back pocket.

Brian:

Oh, well I was, you know, I haven't been in an office.

Brian:

It's going on five years actually.

Brian:

Exactly.

Brian:

I think it was

Brian:

like this week.

Brian:

That was the last time I was in an office.

Brian:

But I go to shared offices.

Brian:

So I see, I see the office people.

Brian:

and I think Americans in particular need to give up on the sad office salad, lunch as much as possible.

Brian:

They needed to do the Euro style, go to lunch, sit down, don't reheat, yesterday's dinner.

Brian:

Like nobody, like I understand if you're trying to like save some

Brian:

money, do it, but otherwise I don't think that's where it's at.

Brian:

So I think the sit down lunch, it's something I've been trying to do is instead of having a sad salad that I scarf

Brian:

down, is sitting down somewhere, having an enjoyable lunch, taking 45 minutes.

Brian:

There's nothing wrong with that.

Troy:

No, going for

Alex:

I agree.

Alex:

Um,

Alex:

actually I'm, right now I'm, I'm working in, in town here and

Alex:

there's a lovely little sandwich place that I'm gonna go and get,

Brian:

What's up?

Brian:

When did hand rolls have such a moment?

Brian:

Hand rolls are everywhere.

Brian:

There's a lot of hand roll places in New York now.

Alex:

people are just eating hand rolls and, and, and it doesn't,

Alex:

that means they don't have a free ran to hand to read their book.

Alex:

And that's what, that's what wrong, that's what's wrong with the future

Troy:

What is, What does hand taste like?

Alex:

It's bony

Brian:

I think it came from la I think, I think this is an la sort of

Alex:

rolls are dis I think it came from Asia somewhere as well.

Brian:

No, but I think the, the sort of the trendy, sort of the, the trendiness of hand roll places comes from LA I

Brian:

think.

Brian:

But

Alex:

hand rolls are delicious.

Troy:

That's it for this episode of people versus algorithms where each

Troy:

week we uncover patterns shaping media culture and technology.

Troy:

Big thanks as always to our producer, Vanja Arsenov.

Troy:

She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable and we appreciate her very, very much.

Troy:

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review.

Troy:

It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing.

Troy:

Remember, you can find People vs.

Troy:

Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube.

Troy:

Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.

Brian:

right.

Brian:

Let's

Alex:

to you later.

Alex:

All right.

Alex:

Bye-Bye.

Brian:

podcast.

Brian:

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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