April 8, 2026 • 43 mins
TBPN started with a simple premise: what if the tech world got the ESPN treatment? Eighteen months later, it is a profitable independent media company — until last week, when OpenAI acquired it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Oz sits down with Emily Sundberg, author of the daily business newsletter Feed Me and frequent TBPN guest, to unpack what the deal actually means. They get into why OpenAI went shopping for a media company in the first place, what independence is really worth when a nine-figure offer lands in your inbox, and what this deal reveals about the strange new economy of attention. They also get into how Emily Sundberg built Feed Me into a thriving independent business — and why she's in no rush to follow TBPN out the door.
Additional Reading:
- You cannot compete with people who are having more fun than you.
- Processing my San Francisco trip. - by Emily Sundberg
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to text Stuff. I'm O's Vloscian. Something big is happening.
But I'm not talking about the turning point where AI
can now create its own self improving systems. I'm talking
about the realization by AI companies that having a voice
in the wider human culture has become existentially important. Last week,
Open Ai acquired TBPN, a daily podcast about tech and
(00:37):
business news, for a price reported in the low hundreds
of billions of dollars. And I can't think of anyone
that a place to break down this story with today
than our guest Emily Sunberg. Her newsletter feed Me, is
one of the buzziest independent media companies out there. She
has a sixth sense for what makes media and culture
take and she's been a regular on TVPN. In fact,
(00:58):
last year she called it the only media business I'm
jealous of, Emily. Welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
No, thank you for coming on. I've been a fan
for a while. And before we get to TPPN, tell
us about feed Me. How did it come about? Where's
the name come from? What do you be?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I write a daily newsletter on substack called feed Me.
It's a business and culture newsletter that is heavily written
through the lens of New York City. I started writing
on substack in twenty twenty, so I've been on there
for a while, and I actually started writing it while
I was working at Meta and it was short horror
fiction stories inspired by my newsfeed, So the name was
(01:37):
sort of inspired by that, like the Little Shop of
Horrors monster flower that said feed me, but I was
spending so much time. I was actually living in at
an ex boyfriend's parents house in Beverly Hills at the time,
and I was just like glued to my phone and
thinking about like worst case scenarios all the time. And
in around twenty twenty two, I pivoted it to the
(02:01):
current version of feed Me that you read today. So yeah,
I've been having a blast building this world out on substack.
I'm happy that I started writing on there when I did.
And it's half or maybe like a third original reporting
and then another two thirds is like sort of rounding
(02:22):
up the most interesting stories of the day and sort
of giving my take on.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It, which I see as a service to my readers.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, it's interesting that the name feed me came from,
like the horror of the algorithmic feed Yeah, but obviously
feed me also has some connotations of nourishment.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
And today's incarnation of feed me is a digital product
for the real world, right. It's very much about stuff happening,
places to go, people to meet.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And the logo is this command sign from the Apple
keyboard sort of turned into an oraboris kind of like
an eight bit treatment. So it has this idea of
like playing snake on your phone and being attached to
your keyboard. But then it also has this feeling of
like me feeding my audience, my audience feeding me back
(03:06):
tips and just like this sort of eternal attachment to
the screens.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
How did things end a METSA?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, I got laid off.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I was part of their first round of layoffs during COVID,
and it made total sense. I don't think my team
did that much that was really changing the world there,
but I really liked my job there. And then I
was consulting for a few companies afterwards. I think my
last consulting project before I did feed me full time
with Shopify, and I loved the team there as well.
(03:35):
And then I got to a point where I said,
if I ever am making more from subscriptions on my
newsletter than my freelance projects, then I'll give it a
shot full time, and that happened in early twenty twenty four,
so I've been doing that for around two years now,
a little bit over two years.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
So what I mean, you come from within the tech industry,
which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I don't really come from one industry. And my first
job after graduating, I went to a state school in
New York City called fit which is a fashion school,
but it's really a trade school. I was in their
business school there, and I worked at Yahoo while I
was in college, but I also worked at NBC, so
I was always tech and media adjacent. And then my
first job after school was at New York Magazine, so
(04:17):
I was in a legacy media brand, but I was
working in social media, so I immediately made relationships at Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
all of these places that really wanted to invest in
their relationships with media. So I had the benefit of
being around some of the brightest and most seasoned journalists
(04:40):
in New York City. But also I got to sort
of carve out this new way of looking at this
whole industry by always having to know about what was
the latest way of using these tech tools that were
really a distribution platform for the magazines. And then after
New York Magazine, I spent a little bit of time
in like the VC backed CpG world.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
You made a documentary.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I made a documentary. I don't know if you've seen it.
It's about fifteen minutes long. If any of you want
to watch it, it's free to watch on Vimeo. But
it's about the oldest privately owned island in the United States,
which is off of East Hampton or off of like
amagainstt in the Hampton.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I'm from Long.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Island, Godden's Island, right, It's.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Called Gardner's Island.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And yeah, I want to make another movie this year,
and I already have my idea, so I just need
to find the time now which I had then, and
now I have, you know, like the money and the
audience which I didn't have then.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So we'll see which works out better.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
That's interesting I think the future of film maybe like
people influencers have their own audiences, essentially becoming film studios, right,
because you can a you can drive people to the
box office, but also you can find ways to do
creative financing.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
For the We see that a lot with a twenty
four right, Like they bring in voices like Charlie XCX
to write, or they bring in like some of these
younger people. Like one of the new movies that they
have coming out, I think it's called like back Room,
and it was it's made by like a nineteen year
old who made these I want to say it was
like it was like Reddity style videos that he would
(06:10):
make of like he generated them all on his computer
of like that of rooms, like imagine going into like
a white basement and then making a horror movie out
of it. But they made like a feature length film
out of it which comes out in a few weeks.
So I think that there will be a lot more
like tapping internet stars and internet talent to make films
as opposed to you know, looking at kids that are
(06:30):
coming out of NYU or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
People talk about the power law in venture capital, right
like you know, whatever it is one percent or ten
percent of the companies again venture capital outperform in a
huge way and return the funds, and you know, the
companies that are in that cohort to tract the best talent,
et cetera, et cetera. There's almost like a hyper power
law for being a content creator right today, like the
rewards between Like everyone is a content creator, but there's
(06:55):
a vanishingly small set of content creators at the top
of whom they TVPN guys suddenly are and you are,
and so how like how does that happen?
Speaker 3 (07:05):
It depends on the specific person. I think everybody has
their own lure, like with John and Jordie something that
I don't feel like I compared to them in many ways.
But one thing that I think we have in common
is like a really rich resume of a lot of
different jobs that they were both founders before they got
into this. I met John before TVPN. I was writing
(07:28):
a story for GQ about the rise in nicotine pat
usage and he has a company called Lucy.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So when I got on the phone with him to
talk to him as.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
A source for that story, it was like him the
Zin team, Tucker Carlson, like the way that he got
excited and told this story about nicotine as a new
tropic and he nerds out so hard on whatever he's
talking about. And he was also creating videos by himself
on YouTube at the time, but he was it was
(07:58):
just like, he's the kind of person that no matter
what he was going to do, he was going to
win because he has this energy and passion for life
and for people. That was very clear to me at
the time. So eventually, when TVPN started, which was maybe
a few months after that story came out, it was like, Oh,
of course this guy's going to double down on making
(08:19):
stuff online. He's already made two great physical products. He
also made Soilent, which was a rock star, you know,
meal replacement brand. So like it's it's like all these
little things you can try to put together an exact
match on why people succeed, or you can look at
like some of the patterns between them, and a lot
of it does come down to like spirit I think,
(08:41):
or if you want to call that, like luck or like,
I don't know, just personality. I think that is a
part of it too. And that's also what we're seeing
with this TVPN story, is this idea of like fun
is coming up a lot more than I think.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
It has in big exits over the.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Past, you know, five years.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, I said, it's really hard to compete with people
who are having more fun than you, because that's something
that you can't manufacture. It's like you're either having it
or you're not. And that's what makes these guys so
easy to watch, whether you care about Palenteer or not.
The way that they've set up the show and the
production style and their jokes and their bits, it's like
(09:23):
pretty engaging to watch in the same way. But even
if you don't care about the Super Bowl, if you
turn on Sports Center or some of these other great
talk shows, you're probably becoming pretty enamored with the hosts
and the way that they're delivering information to you.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
So when did you find out about the deal?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
So this is a funny story. Are we are recording
this on Water Street Downtown? I was a few blocks
over at Delmonico's and I took a very rare martini
lunch meeting and just one.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yes, just one.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And it's crazy what can happen in the span of
one lunch meeting. My phone was away and I checked
it around dessert, and I had so many texts I
thought somebody died. Newspaper owners, social media creators, people who
work in tech reply guys, family members, everybody was texting
me about this TVPN news. I don't work for TVPN
(10:17):
I've thrown a great party with them, I've been on
the show a few times.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I will probably be on the show again. They are
great friends of mine.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But it was really funny to see all of these
texts as I'm walking out of my lovely Friday lunch,
the Ladies Lunch special at Del Monico's, and people were
in awe from all industries.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I mean, I had no answers for them. I didn't
know this was happening.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So my first reaction was obviously to text John and
Jordi and Dylan their President and congratulate them. And then
my second question was hoping that one of them would
do an interview for me feed Me this week. Dylan
their President said yes, thank god. And then the third thing,
I just kind of started chatting with all these people
and trying to get a temperature check of what was
shocking them. Was it the number? Was it that that's
(11:04):
who they sold to? Was it that they sold at all?
Some people were like, we didn't even know about this
show until you know, like you started writing about them,
then you know there's this other.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Big cohort who has no idea who the hell these.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Guys are, Which is extraordinary because I think they do.
Let's say, the journal said like fifty thousand viewers per
piece of content, which is kind of a big number
in the age of digital content, but also like compared
to like mister Beasts or you know, Alix Cooper or whatever,
it's not a big number.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Or even like a New York Magazine video on Instagram
or something like yeah, yeah, they're a New York Times
video show.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, what I mean, what questions did you have that?
What are you going to ask in the interview?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Well, the way that feed Me does our interviews is
that paid readers get to ask the subjects anything they want.
It's like a paid reader feature, So we basically say
in the chat, like, hey, Dylan from TVPN is doing
a guest lecture next week.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That's what we call them.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You can write all your questions in the in the
feed Me chat if you're a paid reader, and he'll
answer as man as he can.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
And they ranged from.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Like I saw somebody said like is it casual stoke
and what's the besting period? And you were let you.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Go, Yeah, go ask away, babe, We'll get the answers here.
So yeah, people were asking specifics of the deal. People
were asking about how Dylan went from being a page
at NBC to being the president of TVPN. People were
asking about, you know, obviously what their journalistic riggor is
going to be while working at the biggest AI company
(12:28):
in the world. So that'll be interesting to see how
he answers all of those I what surprised me. I
think seeing that number in the ft that it was
in the low hundreds of millions obviously surprised me. And
then after a few minutes, I was like, Yeah, sure,
that's what that's the world now, Like, that's that's the
crazy world we live in.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Now.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
You hear about influencers who get paid one hundred thousand
dollars for on Instagram story, Like, yeah, it's shocking the
first time you hear it, and then it's like, Okay,
that's that's how these guys are playing now.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
When you said last summer that is the only media
company that you're jealous of, What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's like what I meant.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I was just like, whoa they have access to like
these really talented people that want to work for them
really badly, and they have the willingness to be like
come into our world and help us build this magnificent show.
I got to go to their studio last summer in
LA and what they're first of all, I like, am
(13:27):
picked up by a nineteen year old kid in a
may Back and he opens the back seat for me.
I'm like, this is crazy. This is so much theater
that's going around this whole thing. I think that I'm
just like I think at the time, I felt like
really envious of this speed at which they blew up.
I think sometimes I'm a little jealous that, like men
(13:49):
can build things like that and it doesn't go really
haywire in like they like they haven't really gotten much
hate or like.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Snark do you get do you get will hate and
snow Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I'm four months clean off Reddit.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I couldn't tell you, but my my my comment section
is Paywald, like most of myself is Paywald's. Like there's
not really that many areas where you could do that
besides maybe at like another launch at the other side
of the city or group text whatever. But I get
jealous of that sometimes, like because the part, the ugly
part of the job is like that you're sort of
(14:26):
anybody can talk about what you're doing all the time,
but then I got to know them better and I
was like, no, I just love you guys, and I
really respect what you're doing and you work really hard,
and I'm not jealous because we're doing different things.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Was it originally call the Technology Brothers podcast and then
it became a technology business podcast? Is that right?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well do you know why they changed the name?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Probably to formalize it a bit.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
There is something interesting about the I mean I think
one of them said they wanted to reclaim the reclaim
the tech bar Monica, Yeah, which is kind of like
one of the third wave feminism might reclaim all tags
like hag and bitch and stuff. The guys are reclaiming
type brothers.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I mean I think people that probably have their audience
caught on and the other half probably are still saying
the Technology Brothers.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, but it is, but you're right. And the wider
ecosystem of technology podcasters, I mean there's them Dwarkesh, that's
lex Freedom and like it is a very like male
dominated for sure dominated gang.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you know, I mean, whether do they whisper to
you where there are other like people circling has come
out completely out of the blue. Do you have any idea.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
You're gonna have to hop in and ask a questionscribers
get in there.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
No, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I haven't gotten on the phone with them. I've talked
to Dylan, their president, that's it. But John and Doherty
I texted them and congratulate. I have no idea. Like
that's kind of the benefit of them having a small company.
It's really hard for anything to leave.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah. Yeah, I found it interesting that the open Ai
exec who led on the deal basically said they're going
to keep doing the podcast, but they're also going to
advise us I open Ai on marketing and how to
communicate a message. I found that very interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, I did too.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
It says a lot about where their heads are at
as a company in terms of like the tone and
voice that they're using, which feels very different than like
the Anthropic sort of messaging and and style of marketing.
Right Like, I think the only, maybe the only like
big public media partnership that Anthropic did was with Airmail
(16:31):
last summer, right Like, that was such a different direction.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Okay, and that then the new sponsors of William's Formula
won this season as well. True but I mean, yes,
it's about like it's essentially more of a like a
think with prestige, like it's.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Story deeper roots.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah, I'm curious how much time they will have to
advise on marketing. It's a lot of time that they're
they're spending on air each day, and I'm curious if
that will also cut down because that is a lot.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Three hours a day. Yeah, you know, if I if
I I've also worn a fair number of hats as
you have, which also included working in marketing for a while. Yeah,
and then I have to say I like TVPN and
and with all due respect, I'm not sure that those
are the voices that a company like open ai needs
(17:21):
in order to communicate its message beyond Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Well, their audience isn't even that big, Like I don't.
It makes me wonder, like you did you just did?
They just need a better way to communicate to like
those whatever thousand appreciators satter, Yeah, like drill in harder
what they're working on. Yeah, I'm curious how that will
play out, Like does that mean that they're gonna have
(17:46):
a hand in their Super Bowl commercials or is it
like copy direction on their website or is.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
It more executive position internships.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah, executive position, more internal stuff. I'm curious. Yeah, it's
a very twenty twenty six story.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It really is. Yeah, it really is. I mean twenty
twenty six. The first three months of this year, there
was TVPN to Open Ai. Do you know Riley Waltz's
the tech jester. So Riley Wats was like, a I know,
it's a good name. He was like a prankster in
San Francisco. His most recent prank prank is not really
quite the right word, but he made like a Gmail
(18:23):
looking product but where you could search Jeffrey Epstein's emails.
So's they had all these like kind of interesting interventions
in the culture.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Mischievous jester energy coming out of st like Donald Bowt.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, who you met?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Who I met? Who's great?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
But anyway, before we get to that, he got it,
So he got Riley Wats got acquired by Open Ai
as well molt Book, which was a social network for
like ai bots, which was like there were some questions
about whether the human prompts were in fact creating all
of the chaos. Acquired by Meta like this has been
an incredible like war for essentially for Hype in the
last three months between his companies, and it's kind of
(18:59):
it's just extraordinary to observe, Like it makes me wonder
like we always is in more of a pubble than
people think, like what's going on right now, because.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
This has made me think that more than like five
months ago, you know, And you sort of feel it
when you're in the city, like everyone is sort of
frothing to get proximity to the Anthropic offices or the open.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
AI offices or the Google offices.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Like it's kind of like that is what is dominating
that the the weather even in the city like just
feels like that has all the control in the city.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Well, you made it to the Anthropic office. I did.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I did for a few hours. Yeah. I went to
San Francisco in January.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I was writing a lot about AI and SF last year,
and I was like, I have to go there, like
I need to spend some time there for a few
days and like meet some of my readers out there.
Substax Analytics aren't awesome, but I can tell that my
second biggest audience is California State, and I hadn't really
spent a lot of time in sef so I went
out there for a week through party with my readers,
(20:07):
went to the Anthropic office, met Donald Boat, saw all
the insane AI billboards.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Who is Donald Boat? Just in case for the benefit,
He's like a shit poster.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
He's this very tall, handsome man whose sort of whole
bit is to get free stuff and money out of
people online. He's like done a lot of tweeting with
Nikita from Twitter is that his name? I think so yeah,
and a lot of other tech founders to like basically
get them to send him money or objects through like
(20:39):
gesturing online. But he's also a great artist.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I commissioned a few drawings from him and they're in
my apartment now. I don't know. He's young.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
He's really young, so I'm curious how his whole online
personality will shake out, and like real life personality too.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Which is also important. But I had a good time there.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It's just like the feel of the cash flow of
AI throughout the city is like totally palpable and like
every room you go into.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I thought your reporting rore in San Francisco was interesting
because you kind of you both were clearly captivated by
the energy of the place. But then you wrote about
walking around Pacific Heights. Many of the houses looked empty
as private police drove in loops up and up and
down the hills, protecting nobody from everybody else.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, in that way, it reminded me a little bit
of Beverly Hills during COVID when I started writing my stories,
which is just like empty houses protected by these privately
funded police. Yeah, a lot of like wealth feels very
vapid to me in that way.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And with all due respect to the Open Air Marketing team,
I don't know that the TVPN acquisition is going to
help with that problem that all these companies.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
So either Yeah, I mean I have this like obsession
with like the emptiness that comes with wealth, and that
was even in my documentary, which is about a private
island that is like beautiful and nobody lives there.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
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(23:29):
The link is in the podcast episode description box. The
TVPN guys are based in La Yes, but how do
they and their story relate to what's going on in
San Francisco right now? What is this acquisition which many
people when they saw it wondered if it was an
April Full's Day joke, say about what's happening in San
Francisco and Silicon Valley right now? What is the fundamental dynamic?
(23:53):
It reveals well.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Like I think that you could probably agree that open
ai wasn't shopping for a news organized. They happened to
buy one, whether you want to call it like a
capital and news organization or a lowercase media company. But
they have a really incredible distribution platform right now. And
(24:16):
I think with the amount of noise on the news
feed every day and the amount of different apps that
were pivoting between, like if open ai can hold the
attention of the TVPN audience, that is valuable to them,
and it might have been difficult for them to figure
out what that like an alternative was. Again, I don't
know how quickly this came together. I don't know if
TVPN was shopping themselves around or if open Ai was like,
(24:40):
we need a solution here that this like AI war
is heating up. What is our battle plan going to be?
And this was one of the options. Yeah, don't you agree? Like,
I don't think their marketing or brand team was like,
let's start a newsroom.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Like no, for sure, and I think Simonton was also
an investor in Soiland, right, Yeah, so there's a ten
year history. I don't know how much that paid into
this or not, how much this was a Sam decision
or how much of it was a Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
But they have background, You're right, like they have a
history together.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I mean looking back. Obviously in the nineties first Internet boom,
Microsoft partnered with NBC on MSNBC. Then in the mid
two thousands, all of these take billionaires took their fortunes,
whether it was Jeff Bezos and Washing and Post, Mark
Benioff and Time Marene power jobs in the Atlantic to
buy legacy media organizations and try and bring them into
(25:32):
the new world, which I think has worked in the
case of the Atlantic, probably not in the case the
other two publications. And now with saying it's kind of
it's both very shocking and new, but also kind of
an old story, right, which is like, I guess the
relationship between power, capital and influence, which are themes of yours.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I think the new thing here is that this show
is eighteen months old. Yeah, this is insane, right, and
none of I mean neither of the hosts went to
journalism school. I don't know, maybe some of their interns did,
or I'm sure some of their like you know, Dylan
came from the world of news, and I think some
of their production team did too. But that is the like, whoa,
(26:08):
you can really just do anything in a sp or whatever.
In the world of a SPP. You can just be
somebody overnight.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, you're right, because Microsoft were essentially wanted I guess
they wanted NBC. They want a cable distribution, and they
wanted the brand of NBC and in Washington Post Time
and Atlantic case. That was really about, like I guess,
distribution and prestige, which in a way this is about.
But this is the this is the center of the
locus of prestige. Couldn't be more different, had changed more
(26:37):
in the last ten years, right.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
And of course it makes you wonder, like, Okay, is
that is it just going to be the two guys
every day? Are they going to start creating like satellite
shows and other topics now that they know the formula?
Now are we going to start seeing other sort of
like late night and cooking shows and whatever?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Like?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Is that is that just going to be? Like is
everybody who's spin their wheels in New York? Is it
pointless because open eye can just create whatever they want
now or something which I don't think is what's going
to happen, by the way.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
But I don't know because you talked about and you'll
post on LinkedIn about this a the booking strategy and
be the rolodex, which are like I think we saw
it was the aesthetic of the show, right, and then
you talked about those two things. But what is the
like if there were a formula to distill like what
is it?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
I mean, it's partially what we were talking about a
few minutes ago, which is like, you've had a lot
of interesting jobs, right, You've you've probably kept in touch,
like we met you and I met through a college
acquaintance of yours. Like that is the key to so
much in the world. It's like these you could do
whatever you want online and have as many LinkedIn connections
as you want. But like it does come back to
(27:44):
their production formula and their booking strategy is so much
based on like the people that they hang out with
and the people that they've met over the course of
their career and keeping in touch with them and something
that I've noticed about them is like they are really
encouraging kind people and like good friends, and that can
go a long way. And then there's also this part
(28:04):
of the whole thing, which is like some of these
founders or investors or writers that don't normally go on
podcasts because they don't know what direction it's going to
go in, have been excited to go on TVPN because
they know that they're not necessarily going to be like
roasted or grilled or Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Do you think this story relates? I sent you a
Vanessa Friedman story from New York Times about like the
fashion tech kind of love affair happening right now with
Bezos on the board of the met Gala and Mark
Zuckerberg sitting front row at Trader.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
And do you think that he's going to go to
the macala?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Zuckerberg? But I have no idea. What do you think?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
I did a poll in my newsletter a few weeks
ago and people said yes. And I told Shane at
Pollymarket that he should throw out on Polly Market. I
think he will. I think that was the move of
him sitting next to Anna at Fashion Week.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We'll see, And you went to fits.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
You mentioned that I did, but I didn't study fashion,
but I was around a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I think there's a parallel between the tech overlords getting
passion profession and the TVP and story or.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Like it's so I don't I mean listen, like Apple's
done a good job of like partnering with Aramez for
the watch and you say with the little phone sleeve thingy,
I think Apple's probably done it best out of everyone.
It's a hard game to play to Like, I don't know.
I just think that technology isn't fashionable. It's just I
(29:30):
think the best piece of wearable that ever existed with
probably the iPod shovel, like the little clip on the
device that was cool. I think everybody just wants to
be cool. It's all a race to be cool, right,
Like that was a big part of the Open Ai
TVPN deal. To me, they're cool because they don't try
(29:50):
that hard. Where when you see like a fake version
of TVPN or like a competitor live show, like it
either breaks, it isn't as cool.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
They're trying too hard. They don't know their shit.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And I think that at the end of the day,
there's this whole other conversation going on right now about
like taste and manufacturing taste. It's really hard to like
do that if you're not actually like getting a life
outside of all.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Taste is the new mote, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Think it always has been.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I think it was, and like the fashion industry has
known that, and media in New York they've known that too.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
But the fashion is really very very careful about product licensing.
For example, like ray band forever, forever more I think
will be meta ray ban, Yeah, and like that may
be okay for the time being, but and be dright
that meta ray bands are selling well, but as Meta's
brand with the social media trials, et cetera, et cetera,
gets dragged like well then well ray ban one day,
(30:48):
wake up and think we lost what made us us?
And of course I have to ask you the same
question about TVPM. There was a New Yorker profile of
them last year where you were quoted, actually, but they
also quoted Jim Kramer and they asked you, Cramer, like
what is it about these guys? Like why have they
got it? And he said they're not owned.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I think I don't know what that low one hundred
million dollar number was. I think that it's probably it
was probably really hard to.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Say no to ye.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
And you know, I don't know if you can have
two twenty twenty five's in a row, like from the
advertising side of their business, Like, I don't know if
you get to I don't I'm making this up, Like
I don't know if you get a three million dollar
ramp check and then you get it again the next year.
So I want to start by saying that. But yeah,
you're right, like they're not independent anymore. And I think
(31:42):
about that all the time with my own business, Like
if feed me was to sell or get I don't
have any outside investors, so I don't have anybody to
answer to. I could wake up tomorrow and decide not
to send anything. I could wake up tomorrow internal lights
off and be like, I'm out. That was a really
fun internet project.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
But yeah, they just signed themselves up for.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Working for a long time, and of course some sort
of filter in which they have to they like in
the background.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's always like there's a boss.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
You know, there's a boss in this different mouths to feed. Yeah,
you're not just feeding audience mouths anymore, and that that
you know, what does that mean? You have been mentioned
in two places in light of this deal. One, Mike
Isaac from The New York Times tweeted, I think this
sets a price floor for Dwarkesh Friedman, Sunburg, et cetera,
(32:36):
while other tech CEOs start to get jealous at their
favorite show belongs to Sambleman. Peter Kafka wrote something similar
where he basically said, legacy media companies wish they could
buy afford to buy feed me, but the only types
of companies that can the tech companies. That mean, it's
interesting feeling to be in this moment being compared to
(32:57):
this multi hundred dollars, multi hundred million all acquisition, but
also with the Mike Isaac list, I mean Lex Friedman,
which is deep, deep tech intro interviews with people dwakesh
the same, like the most inside baseball tech podcasts of
all time, and then you like, that's an interesting list.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yeah, we definitely don't all cover the same content. It's
surprising to see that sometimes. But I guess something that
you can say is that I figured out like the
newsletter game pretty well. So no, I don't write about
the same things that they write about every day, dabble
in and out, but there is this big player in
(33:33):
the world of distribution called Substack, and I've I've worked
really closely with them to build a big audience that
is super engaged, and it's I, you know, like I
probably have a bigger audience than TVPN, but it's a
different audience and it's not like the most elite. We
(33:54):
have some crossover, but it's not like this really powerful,
plugged in tech audience. It's like New York City and
my business grew without me like noticing that this happened.
Like I wasn't aware that that was happening. In the
minds of Peter Kofa and Mike Isaac, I didn't. I
like them a lot, and I've talked to them and
(34:15):
i've you know, I know that they respect my work.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But that's just two people's opinions.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I don't know if everybody in New York or everybody
in media would agree with that, but I do.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
There are days where I.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Wake up and I'm like, I didn't notice how big
this thing was getting because I just wake up every
day and I put out the letter and I do
it again, and I do it again and again and again,
and that's just my life. But I'm really proud of it,
and I'm honored. I'm flattered that they're putting me next
to those names, and I think that all those guys
do really good work.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Where do you see it going for you?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
This is where I've worked really hard the last few
years to get so, like, I'm just happy to be
in this spot right now. I told you I want
to make another movie. I am ideating on a documentary
about fish tanks. I have a theory that, like the
Bloomberg Offices might be the second biggest aquarium in New
York City besides the New York Aquarium.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I used to work there were they they were pretty big.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
They're pretty big, so I need to look into that.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
And then it's sort of gotten me into this idea
of like all these fish tanks in New York City,
from you know, knicks players houses to doctors' offices to
like bars in South Brooklyn that have been there for
thirty years. Are people doing it because they look cool?
Are they playing God? Why does Zuk have all these
cows in Hawaii? Is that playing God? Is that just
(35:33):
like because he likes beef. I've just been thinking about
like maintaining little edens.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So if I make the movie. It'll be it'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
So maintaining eats is a great topic. Is also obviously
Elon's sort of family compound in Texas. Yeah, you know
that is, and I guess the whole l like Martian
Colonial Fantasy, is a little bit about creating.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Creating life forms of all species.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Well that was a very elegant deflection, but I do
have to ask you again if you have oh where
I'm going?
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, yeah, So I have the daily newsletter, which is great,
and then my restaurant. I have a restaurant critic who
works for me named Jason, and he has a podcast
that we just signed for season two with a new
production company. I could see myself maybe trying to make
another podcast or two this year. I don't think I'll
host one, but I'd be really happy to make them
(36:33):
for other people. And I think that there's a big
opportunity in the event's business, based on the parties and
events that I've thrown so far, from like ten person
dinners with our friend Paul and Andrew Sorkin and Dark
Blastsberg and like these really interesting rooms of people to
like two hundred person blowouts, I think that there's something
that's probably in between the ten person dinner and a
(36:57):
deal book that is more younger business forward. So it's
just I'm kind of an island. I don't have much
of a team right now, so I'm trying to be
really strategic and transparently. I don't really love managing, so
I'm trying to be really strategic about like who I
bring on, what is the most pressing thing, while also
(37:20):
remaining creatively fulfilled in like making docs or whatever on
the side, creative writing. But I really it's like a
really nice, lean business right now, Like I am driving
a ton of traffic. I have like a really nice
advertising side to my business, which is I wouldn't say half,
maybe like a little bit less than half my business
right now, which I'm really enjoying. And then I still
(37:41):
get to like live a nice, somewhat anonymous life in
New York City, which I don't know if, like Lex
Friedman could.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Say, can you imagine a world whe where met to
cool you up and say, sorry, we laid you off
in twenty twenty two, but now we're ready to buy feed.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Me, I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
I don't think that I would need like I don't
think that I I would do that. It would I
would need to like really get agreement that Zuck would
let me go to the farm, like have an involvement
in the movie, and then maybe we could.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Talk if we did this interview again in ten years time,
like what would you what do you have like to
achieve it?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Feed me, Well, I hope I'm not writing like Downtown
Gossip in ten years. I really do.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
I hope that I'm able to like make some other
I think there's a real opportunity with identifying great voices
and like publishing their work and creating this really wonderful community,
Like I'm sitting here with you right now, and dozens
of my readers are talking to each other and making connections, and.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I have felt really fulfilled by that.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Part of the business, like making the world a little
bit smaller through this online newsletter, slash forum, slash chat.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Are you also working on your online dating platform?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I have vibe coded.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I guess you could say I've used Lovable to build
some maybe you'd call them like apps, like little websites
that live off of feed me. One is a job
board that has been around for almost a year now,
and that's become really great real estate for advertisers. And
it's just like a free to use job board where
you can post jobs and other people can submit jobs.
(39:19):
But the one key that differentiates it from other places
that I have to prove each job, so you know
that if you're going on there, it's like an Emily
approved job. So it's kind of cool. And everybody from
substack actually posted a job on there this morning, or
like government agencies, like everybody posts jobs on there, so
you know it's all from the feed me community. And
then there was this other site that I made on
(39:40):
February thirteenth, and I launched it on February fourteenth, and
it was it was like a dating site where feed
Me readers could post a classified and then other feed
Me readers could reach out to people who posted on there.
But I only left it up for a week and
then I took it down.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
But it was fun.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
It was like fun to build and see it got
like two hundred posts. So something different and alternative to
the shitty dating apps that you are being sold by
Hinge or Riya or whatever, where you know, at least
you share interests and you're willing to give it a shot,
and maybe you are you want to meet somebody else
in that community. So yeah, I think that that is
(40:17):
like an aspect of my audience too, that could be
interesting to play with.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I'm basically meeting then needs beyond them, need to know
what's going on and to feel connected actually to do stuff,
whether it's find of job, will meet people that you
could really create this whole because of tools like Lovable
and because of technology. Frankly, you can create your own
real ecosystem for this audience. Yeah, in the medium term.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah, And we know that there are newspapers that are
making more money from games than like their core product,
or as much money from games as their core product.
So it is kind of fun to think about not
even these as like a monetization tool, but an extra
offering to like the subscription to feed me.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
You know embody, thank you. Final question for you, what
do you think is the most interesting question story or
person in tech right now?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
God, the question that you want answered, you.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Know, like I am to just stay on theme, I
would love to know what the decision making process was
for John and Jeordie when they were thinking about this,
because they are in early days of their career, they're
so young. I would love to know what was going
(41:28):
through their heads. And I bet somebody could make a
great movie about it or something, you know, like what
a decision to make?
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Right? Could you imagine?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I mean it's a bit like the Evans Spiegel decision
that he didn't make right, Like do you take the
billion dollars from Mark Zuckerberg but always be living on
the meta platform or do you hold firm? And I
mean these guys, like I think everyone doubts that this
moment can last forever. Right, So if you have an
opportunity like this, even if takes away some of your
ability to be independent, and do you love? Can you
(42:01):
imagine in two years time when let's say there's been
a financial crisis and the you know, there's no more
crazy venture funding for everything at AI companies want to do,
and you have like or maybe double the audience. You
have one hundred for an audience one hundred and fty thousand.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, I wonder who is going to get the first
profile of them? Or if you'll just be like, peace,
we did all of our press last year. You got
it like there's nothing new here besides you know, besides
a huge acquisition.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, this is really maybe the future we'll see. Thank
you for having me.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Thank you so much. That's great fun for tech Stuff.
I'm as Volosi in. This episode was produced by Eliza
Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me
(42:57):
Julian Nutter and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Could Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle
Murdoch wrote out theme song. Please do rate and review
the show wherever you listen, and reach out to us
at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com
Welcome to text Stuff. I'm O's Vloscian. Something big is happening.
But I'm not talking about the turning point where AI
can now create its own self improving systems. I'm talking
about the realization by AI companies that having a voice
in the wider human culture has become existentially important. Last week,
Open Ai acquired TBPN, a daily podcast about tech and
(00:37):
business news, for a price reported in the low hundreds
of billions of dollars. And I can't think of anyone
that a place to break down this story with today
than our guest Emily Sunberg. Her newsletter feed Me, is
one of the buzziest independent media companies out there. She
has a sixth sense for what makes media and culture
take and she's been a regular on TVPN. In fact,
(00:58):
last year she called it the only media business I'm
jealous of, Emily. Welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
No, thank you for coming on. I've been a fan
for a while. And before we get to TPPN, tell
us about feed Me. How did it come about? Where's
the name come from? What do you be?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I write a daily newsletter on substack called feed Me.
It's a business and culture newsletter that is heavily written
through the lens of New York City. I started writing
on substack in twenty twenty, so I've been on there
for a while, and I actually started writing it while
I was working at Meta and it was short horror
fiction stories inspired by my newsfeed, So the name was
(01:37):
sort of inspired by that, like the Little Shop of
Horrors monster flower that said feed me, but I was
spending so much time. I was actually living in at
an ex boyfriend's parents house in Beverly Hills at the time,
and I was just like glued to my phone and
thinking about like worst case scenarios all the time. And
in around twenty twenty two, I pivoted it to the
(02:01):
current version of feed Me that you read today. So yeah,
I've been having a blast building this world out on substack.
I'm happy that I started writing on there when I did.
And it's half or maybe like a third original reporting
and then another two thirds is like sort of rounding
(02:22):
up the most interesting stories of the day and sort
of giving my take on.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It, which I see as a service to my readers.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, it's interesting that the name feed me came from,
like the horror of the algorithmic feed Yeah, but obviously
feed me also has some connotations of nourishment.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
And today's incarnation of feed me is a digital product
for the real world, right. It's very much about stuff happening,
places to go, people to meet.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And the logo is this command sign from the Apple
keyboard sort of turned into an oraboris kind of like
an eight bit treatment. So it has this idea of
like playing snake on your phone and being attached to
your keyboard. But then it also has this feeling of
like me feeding my audience, my audience feeding me back
(03:06):
tips and just like this sort of eternal attachment to
the screens.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
How did things end a METSA?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, I got laid off.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I was part of their first round of layoffs during COVID,
and it made total sense. I don't think my team
did that much that was really changing the world there,
but I really liked my job there. And then I
was consulting for a few companies afterwards. I think my
last consulting project before I did feed me full time
with Shopify, and I loved the team there as well.
(03:35):
And then I got to a point where I said,
if I ever am making more from subscriptions on my
newsletter than my freelance projects, then I'll give it a
shot full time, and that happened in early twenty twenty four,
so I've been doing that for around two years now,
a little bit over two years.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
So what I mean, you come from within the tech industry,
which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I don't really come from one industry. And my first
job after graduating, I went to a state school in
New York City called fit which is a fashion school,
but it's really a trade school. I was in their
business school there, and I worked at Yahoo while I
was in college, but I also worked at NBC, so
I was always tech and media adjacent. And then my
first job after school was at New York Magazine, so
(04:17):
I was in a legacy media brand, but I was
working in social media, so I immediately made relationships at Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
all of these places that really wanted to invest in
their relationships with media. So I had the benefit of
being around some of the brightest and most seasoned journalists
(04:40):
in New York City. But also I got to sort
of carve out this new way of looking at this
whole industry by always having to know about what was
the latest way of using these tech tools that were
really a distribution platform for the magazines. And then after
New York Magazine, I spent a little bit of time
in like the VC backed CpG world.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
You made a documentary.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I made a documentary. I don't know if you've seen it.
It's about fifteen minutes long. If any of you want
to watch it, it's free to watch on Vimeo. But
it's about the oldest privately owned island in the United States,
which is off of East Hampton or off of like
amagainstt in the Hampton.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I'm from Long.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Island, Godden's Island, right, It's.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Called Gardner's Island.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And yeah, I want to make another movie this year,
and I already have my idea, so I just need
to find the time now which I had then, and
now I have, you know, like the money and the
audience which I didn't have then.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So we'll see which works out better.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
That's interesting I think the future of film maybe like
people influencers have their own audiences, essentially becoming film studios, right,
because you can a you can drive people to the
box office, but also you can find ways to do
creative financing.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
For the We see that a lot with a twenty
four right, Like they bring in voices like Charlie XCX
to write, or they bring in like some of these
younger people. Like one of the new movies that they
have coming out, I think it's called like back Room,
and it was it's made by like a nineteen year
old who made these I want to say it was
like it was like Reddity style videos that he would
(06:10):
make of like he generated them all on his computer
of like that of rooms, like imagine going into like
a white basement and then making a horror movie out
of it. But they made like a feature length film
out of it which comes out in a few weeks.
So I think that there will be a lot more
like tapping internet stars and internet talent to make films
as opposed to you know, looking at kids that are
(06:30):
coming out of NYU or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
People talk about the power law in venture capital, right
like you know, whatever it is one percent or ten
percent of the companies again venture capital outperform in a
huge way and return the funds, and you know, the
companies that are in that cohort to tract the best talent,
et cetera, et cetera. There's almost like a hyper power
law for being a content creator right today, like the
rewards between Like everyone is a content creator, but there's
(06:55):
a vanishingly small set of content creators at the top
of whom they TVPN guys suddenly are and you are,
and so how like how does that happen?
Speaker 3 (07:05):
It depends on the specific person. I think everybody has
their own lure, like with John and Jordie something that
I don't feel like I compared to them in many ways.
But one thing that I think we have in common
is like a really rich resume of a lot of
different jobs that they were both founders before they got
into this. I met John before TVPN. I was writing
(07:28):
a story for GQ about the rise in nicotine pat
usage and he has a company called Lucy.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So when I got on the phone with him to
talk to him as.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
A source for that story, it was like him the
Zin team, Tucker Carlson, like the way that he got
excited and told this story about nicotine as a new
tropic and he nerds out so hard on whatever he's
talking about. And he was also creating videos by himself
on YouTube at the time, but he was it was
(07:58):
just like, he's the kind of person that no matter
what he was going to do, he was going to
win because he has this energy and passion for life
and for people. That was very clear to me at
the time. So eventually, when TVPN started, which was maybe
a few months after that story came out, it was like, Oh,
of course this guy's going to double down on making
(08:19):
stuff online. He's already made two great physical products. He
also made Soilent, which was a rock star, you know,
meal replacement brand. So like it's it's like all these
little things you can try to put together an exact
match on why people succeed, or you can look at
like some of the patterns between them, and a lot
of it does come down to like spirit I think,
(08:41):
or if you want to call that, like luck or like,
I don't know, just personality. I think that is a
part of it too. And that's also what we're seeing
with this TVPN story, is this idea of like fun
is coming up a lot more than I think.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
It has in big exits over the.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Past, you know, five years.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, I said, it's really hard to compete with people
who are having more fun than you, because that's something
that you can't manufacture. It's like you're either having it
or you're not. And that's what makes these guys so
easy to watch, whether you care about Palenteer or not.
The way that they've set up the show and the
production style and their jokes and their bits, it's like
(09:23):
pretty engaging to watch in the same way. But even
if you don't care about the Super Bowl, if you
turn on Sports Center or some of these other great
talk shows, you're probably becoming pretty enamored with the hosts
and the way that they're delivering information to you.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
So when did you find out about the deal?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
So this is a funny story. Are we are recording
this on Water Street Downtown? I was a few blocks
over at Delmonico's and I took a very rare martini
lunch meeting and just one.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yes, just one.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And it's crazy what can happen in the span of
one lunch meeting. My phone was away and I checked
it around dessert, and I had so many texts I
thought somebody died. Newspaper owners, social media creators, people who
work in tech reply guys, family members, everybody was texting
me about this TVPN news. I don't work for TVPN
(10:17):
I've thrown a great party with them, I've been on
the show a few times.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I will probably be on the show again. They are
great friends of mine.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But it was really funny to see all of these
texts as I'm walking out of my lovely Friday lunch,
the Ladies Lunch special at Del Monico's, and people were
in awe from all industries.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I mean, I had no answers for them. I didn't
know this was happening.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So my first reaction was obviously to text John and
Jordi and Dylan their President and congratulate them. And then
my second question was hoping that one of them would
do an interview for me feed Me this week. Dylan
their President said yes, thank god. And then the third thing,
I just kind of started chatting with all these people
and trying to get a temperature check of what was
shocking them. Was it the number? Was it that that's
(11:04):
who they sold to? Was it that they sold at all?
Some people were like, we didn't even know about this
show until you know, like you started writing about them,
then you know there's this other.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Big cohort who has no idea who the hell these.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Guys are, Which is extraordinary because I think they do.
Let's say, the journal said like fifty thousand viewers per
piece of content, which is kind of a big number
in the age of digital content, but also like compared
to like mister Beasts or you know, Alix Cooper or whatever,
it's not a big number.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Or even like a New York Magazine video on Instagram
or something like yeah, yeah, they're a New York Times
video show.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, what I mean, what questions did you have that?
What are you going to ask in the interview?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Well, the way that feed Me does our interviews is
that paid readers get to ask the subjects anything they want.
It's like a paid reader feature, So we basically say
in the chat, like, hey, Dylan from TVPN is doing
a guest lecture next week.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That's what we call them.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You can write all your questions in the in the
feed Me chat if you're a paid reader, and he'll
answer as man as he can.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
And they ranged from.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Like I saw somebody said like is it casual stoke
and what's the besting period? And you were let you.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Go, Yeah, go ask away, babe, We'll get the answers here.
So yeah, people were asking specifics of the deal. People
were asking about how Dylan went from being a page
at NBC to being the president of TVPN. People were
asking about, you know, obviously what their journalistic riggor is
going to be while working at the biggest AI company
(12:28):
in the world. So that'll be interesting to see how
he answers all of those I what surprised me. I
think seeing that number in the ft that it was
in the low hundreds of millions obviously surprised me. And
then after a few minutes, I was like, Yeah, sure,
that's what that's the world now, Like, that's that's the
crazy world we live in.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Now.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
You hear about influencers who get paid one hundred thousand
dollars for on Instagram story, Like, yeah, it's shocking the
first time you hear it, and then it's like, Okay,
that's that's how these guys are playing now.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
When you said last summer that is the only media
company that you're jealous of, What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's like what I meant.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I was just like, whoa they have access to like
these really talented people that want to work for them
really badly, and they have the willingness to be like
come into our world and help us build this magnificent show.
I got to go to their studio last summer in
LA and what they're first of all, I like, am
(13:27):
picked up by a nineteen year old kid in a
may Back and he opens the back seat for me.
I'm like, this is crazy. This is so much theater
that's going around this whole thing. I think that I'm
just like I think at the time, I felt like
really envious of this speed at which they blew up.
I think sometimes I'm a little jealous that, like men
(13:49):
can build things like that and it doesn't go really
haywire in like they like they haven't really gotten much
hate or like.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Snark do you get do you get will hate and
snow Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I'm four months clean off Reddit.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I couldn't tell you, but my my my comment section
is Paywald, like most of myself is Paywald's. Like there's
not really that many areas where you could do that
besides maybe at like another launch at the other side
of the city or group text whatever. But I get
jealous of that sometimes, like because the part, the ugly
part of the job is like that you're sort of
(14:26):
anybody can talk about what you're doing all the time,
but then I got to know them better and I
was like, no, I just love you guys, and I
really respect what you're doing and you work really hard,
and I'm not jealous because we're doing different things.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Was it originally call the Technology Brothers podcast and then
it became a technology business podcast? Is that right?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well do you know why they changed the name?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Probably to formalize it a bit.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
There is something interesting about the I mean I think
one of them said they wanted to reclaim the reclaim
the tech bar Monica, Yeah, which is kind of like
one of the third wave feminism might reclaim all tags
like hag and bitch and stuff. The guys are reclaiming
type brothers.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I mean I think people that probably have their audience
caught on and the other half probably are still saying
the Technology Brothers.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, but it is, but you're right. And the wider
ecosystem of technology podcasters, I mean there's them Dwarkesh, that's
lex Freedom and like it is a very like male
dominated for sure dominated gang.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you know, I mean, whether do they whisper to
you where there are other like people circling has come
out completely out of the blue. Do you have any idea.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
You're gonna have to hop in and ask a questionscribers
get in there.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
No, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I haven't gotten on the phone with them. I've talked
to Dylan, their president, that's it. But John and Doherty
I texted them and congratulate. I have no idea. Like
that's kind of the benefit of them having a small company.
It's really hard for anything to leave.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah. Yeah, I found it interesting that the open Ai
exec who led on the deal basically said they're going
to keep doing the podcast, but they're also going to
advise us I open Ai on marketing and how to
communicate a message. I found that very interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, I did too.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
It says a lot about where their heads are at
as a company in terms of like the tone and
voice that they're using, which feels very different than like
the Anthropic sort of messaging and and style of marketing.
Right Like, I think the only, maybe the only like
big public media partnership that Anthropic did was with Airmail
(16:31):
last summer, right Like, that was such a different direction.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Okay, and that then the new sponsors of William's Formula
won this season as well. True but I mean, yes,
it's about like it's essentially more of a like a
think with prestige, like it's.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Story deeper roots.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah, I'm curious how much time they will have to
advise on marketing. It's a lot of time that they're
they're spending on air each day, and I'm curious if
that will also cut down because that is a lot.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Three hours a day. Yeah, you know, if I if
I I've also worn a fair number of hats as
you have, which also included working in marketing for a while. Yeah,
and then I have to say I like TVPN and
and with all due respect, I'm not sure that those
are the voices that a company like open ai needs
(17:21):
in order to communicate its message beyond Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Well, their audience isn't even that big, Like I don't.
It makes me wonder, like you did you just did?
They just need a better way to communicate to like
those whatever thousand appreciators satter, Yeah, like drill in harder
what they're working on. Yeah, I'm curious how that will
play out, Like does that mean that they're gonna have
(17:46):
a hand in their Super Bowl commercials or is it
like copy direction on their website or is.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
It more executive position internships.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah, executive position, more internal stuff. I'm curious. Yeah, it's
a very twenty twenty six story.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It really is. Yeah, it really is. I mean twenty
twenty six. The first three months of this year, there
was TVPN to Open Ai. Do you know Riley Waltz's
the tech jester. So Riley Wats was like, a I know,
it's a good name. He was like a prankster in
San Francisco. His most recent prank prank is not really
quite the right word, but he made like a Gmail
(18:23):
looking product but where you could search Jeffrey Epstein's emails.
So's they had all these like kind of interesting interventions
in the culture.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Mischievous jester energy coming out of st like Donald Bowt.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, who you met?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Who I met? Who's great?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
But anyway, before we get to that, he got it,
So he got Riley Wats got acquired by Open Ai
as well molt Book, which was a social network for
like ai bots, which was like there were some questions
about whether the human prompts were in fact creating all
of the chaos. Acquired by Meta like this has been
an incredible like war for essentially for Hype in the
last three months between his companies, and it's kind of
(18:59):
it's just extraordinary to observe, Like it makes me wonder
like we always is in more of a pubble than
people think, like what's going on right now, because.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
This has made me think that more than like five
months ago, you know, And you sort of feel it
when you're in the city, like everyone is sort of
frothing to get proximity to the Anthropic offices or the open.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
AI offices or the Google offices.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Like it's kind of like that is what is dominating
that the the weather even in the city like just
feels like that has all the control in the city.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Well, you made it to the Anthropic office. I did.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I did for a few hours. Yeah. I went to
San Francisco in January.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I was writing a lot about AI and SF last year,
and I was like, I have to go there, like
I need to spend some time there for a few
days and like meet some of my readers out there.
Substax Analytics aren't awesome, but I can tell that my
second biggest audience is California State, and I hadn't really
spent a lot of time in sef so I went
out there for a week through party with my readers,
(20:07):
went to the Anthropic office, met Donald Boat, saw all
the insane AI billboards.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Who is Donald Boat? Just in case for the benefit,
He's like a shit poster.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
He's this very tall, handsome man whose sort of whole
bit is to get free stuff and money out of
people online. He's like done a lot of tweeting with
Nikita from Twitter is that his name? I think so yeah,
and a lot of other tech founders to like basically
get them to send him money or objects through like
(20:39):
gesturing online. But he's also a great artist.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I commissioned a few drawings from him and they're in
my apartment now. I don't know. He's young.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
He's really young, so I'm curious how his whole online
personality will shake out, and like real life personality too.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Which is also important. But I had a good time there.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It's just like the feel of the cash flow of
AI throughout the city is like totally palpable and like
every room you go into.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I thought your reporting rore in San Francisco was interesting
because you kind of you both were clearly captivated by
the energy of the place. But then you wrote about
walking around Pacific Heights. Many of the houses looked empty
as private police drove in loops up and up and
down the hills, protecting nobody from everybody else.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, in that way, it reminded me a little bit
of Beverly Hills during COVID when I started writing my stories,
which is just like empty houses protected by these privately
funded police. Yeah, a lot of like wealth feels very
vapid to me in that way.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And with all due respect to the Open Air Marketing team,
I don't know that the TVPN acquisition is going to
help with that problem that all these companies.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
So either Yeah, I mean I have this like obsession
with like the emptiness that comes with wealth, and that
was even in my documentary, which is about a private
island that is like beautiful and nobody lives there.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Off the break, Will Mark Zuckerberg make it to the
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this show about protecting your data, especially in the age
(22:28):
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(23:29):
The link is in the podcast episode description box. The
TVPN guys are based in La Yes, but how do
they and their story relate to what's going on in
San Francisco right now? What is this acquisition which many
people when they saw it wondered if it was an
April Full's Day joke, say about what's happening in San
Francisco and Silicon Valley right now? What is the fundamental dynamic?
(23:53):
It reveals well.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Like I think that you could probably agree that open
ai wasn't shopping for a news organized. They happened to
buy one, whether you want to call it like a
capital and news organization or a lowercase media company. But
they have a really incredible distribution platform right now. And
(24:16):
I think with the amount of noise on the news
feed every day and the amount of different apps that
were pivoting between, like if open ai can hold the
attention of the TVPN audience, that is valuable to them,
and it might have been difficult for them to figure
out what that like an alternative was. Again, I don't
know how quickly this came together. I don't know if
TVPN was shopping themselves around or if open Ai was like,
(24:40):
we need a solution here that this like AI war
is heating up. What is our battle plan going to be?
And this was one of the options. Yeah, don't you agree? Like,
I don't think their marketing or brand team was like,
let's start a newsroom.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Like no, for sure, and I think Simonton was also
an investor in Soiland, right, Yeah, so there's a ten
year history. I don't know how much that paid into
this or not, how much this was a Sam decision
or how much of it was a Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
But they have background, You're right, like they have a
history together.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I mean looking back. Obviously in the nineties first Internet boom,
Microsoft partnered with NBC on MSNBC. Then in the mid
two thousands, all of these take billionaires took their fortunes,
whether it was Jeff Bezos and Washing and Post, Mark
Benioff and Time Marene power jobs in the Atlantic to
buy legacy media organizations and try and bring them into
(25:32):
the new world, which I think has worked in the
case of the Atlantic, probably not in the case the
other two publications. And now with saying it's kind of
it's both very shocking and new, but also kind of
an old story, right, which is like, I guess the
relationship between power, capital and influence, which are themes of yours.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I think the new thing here is that this show
is eighteen months old. Yeah, this is insane, right, and
none of I mean neither of the hosts went to
journalism school. I don't know, maybe some of their interns did,
or I'm sure some of their like you know, Dylan
came from the world of news, and I think some
of their production team did too. But that is the like, whoa,
(26:08):
you can really just do anything in a sp or whatever.
In the world of a SPP. You can just be
somebody overnight.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, you're right, because Microsoft were essentially wanted I guess
they wanted NBC. They want a cable distribution, and they
wanted the brand of NBC and in Washington Post Time
and Atlantic case. That was really about, like I guess,
distribution and prestige, which in a way this is about.
But this is the this is the center of the
locus of prestige. Couldn't be more different, had changed more
(26:37):
in the last ten years, right.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
And of course it makes you wonder, like, Okay, is
that is it just going to be the two guys
every day? Are they going to start creating like satellite
shows and other topics now that they know the formula?
Now are we going to start seeing other sort of
like late night and cooking shows and whatever?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Like?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Is that is that just going to be? Like is
everybody who's spin their wheels in New York? Is it
pointless because open eye can just create whatever they want
now or something which I don't think is what's going
to happen, by the way.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
But I don't know because you talked about and you'll
post on LinkedIn about this a the booking strategy and
be the rolodex, which are like I think we saw
it was the aesthetic of the show, right, and then
you talked about those two things. But what is the
like if there were a formula to distill like what
is it?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
I mean, it's partially what we were talking about a
few minutes ago, which is like, you've had a lot
of interesting jobs, right, You've you've probably kept in touch,
like we met you and I met through a college
acquaintance of yours. Like that is the key to so
much in the world. It's like these you could do
whatever you want online and have as many LinkedIn connections
as you want. But like it does come back to
(27:44):
their production formula and their booking strategy is so much
based on like the people that they hang out with
and the people that they've met over the course of
their career and keeping in touch with them and something
that I've noticed about them is like they are really
encouraging kind people and like good friends, and that can
go a long way. And then there's also this part
(28:04):
of the whole thing, which is like some of these
founders or investors or writers that don't normally go on
podcasts because they don't know what direction it's going to
go in, have been excited to go on TVPN because
they know that they're not necessarily going to be like
roasted or grilled or Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Do you think this story relates? I sent you a
Vanessa Friedman story from New York Times about like the
fashion tech kind of love affair happening right now with
Bezos on the board of the met Gala and Mark
Zuckerberg sitting front row at Trader.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
And do you think that he's going to go to
the macala?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Zuckerberg? But I have no idea. What do you think?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
I did a poll in my newsletter a few weeks
ago and people said yes. And I told Shane at
Pollymarket that he should throw out on Polly Market. I
think he will. I think that was the move of
him sitting next to Anna at Fashion Week.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We'll see, And you went to fits.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
You mentioned that I did, but I didn't study fashion,
but I was around a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I think there's a parallel between the tech overlords getting
passion profession and the TVP and story or.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Like it's so I don't I mean listen, like Apple's
done a good job of like partnering with Aramez for
the watch and you say with the little phone sleeve thingy,
I think Apple's probably done it best out of everyone.
It's a hard game to play to Like, I don't know.
I just think that technology isn't fashionable. It's just I
(29:30):
think the best piece of wearable that ever existed with
probably the iPod shovel, like the little clip on the
device that was cool. I think everybody just wants to
be cool. It's all a race to be cool, right,
Like that was a big part of the Open Ai
TVPN deal. To me, they're cool because they don't try
(29:50):
that hard. Where when you see like a fake version
of TVPN or like a competitor live show, like it
either breaks, it isn't as cool.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
They're trying too hard. They don't know their shit.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And I think that at the end of the day,
there's this whole other conversation going on right now about
like taste and manufacturing taste. It's really hard to like
do that if you're not actually like getting a life
outside of all.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Taste is the new mote, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Think it always has been.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I think it was, and like the fashion industry has
known that, and media in New York they've known that too.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
But the fashion is really very very careful about product licensing.
For example, like ray band forever, forever more I think
will be meta ray ban, Yeah, and like that may
be okay for the time being, but and be dright
that meta ray bands are selling well, but as Meta's
brand with the social media trials, et cetera, et cetera,
gets dragged like well then well ray ban one day,
(30:48):
wake up and think we lost what made us us?
And of course I have to ask you the same
question about TVPM. There was a New Yorker profile of
them last year where you were quoted, actually, but they
also quoted Jim Kramer and they asked you, Cramer, like
what is it about these guys? Like why have they
got it? And he said they're not owned.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I think I don't know what that low one hundred
million dollar number was. I think that it's probably it
was probably really hard to.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Say no to ye.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
And you know, I don't know if you can have
two twenty twenty five's in a row, like from the
advertising side of their business, Like, I don't know if
you get to I don't I'm making this up, Like
I don't know if you get a three million dollar
ramp check and then you get it again the next year.
So I want to start by saying that. But yeah,
you're right, like they're not independent anymore. And I think
(31:42):
about that all the time with my own business, Like
if feed me was to sell or get I don't
have any outside investors, so I don't have anybody to
answer to. I could wake up tomorrow and decide not
to send anything. I could wake up tomorrow internal lights
off and be like, I'm out. That was a really
fun internet project.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
But yeah, they just signed themselves up for.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Working for a long time, and of course some sort
of filter in which they have to they like in
the background.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's always like there's a boss.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
You know, there's a boss in this different mouths to feed. Yeah,
you're not just feeding audience mouths anymore, and that that
you know, what does that mean? You have been mentioned
in two places in light of this deal. One, Mike
Isaac from The New York Times tweeted, I think this
sets a price floor for Dwarkesh Friedman, Sunburg, et cetera,
(32:36):
while other tech CEOs start to get jealous at their
favorite show belongs to Sambleman. Peter Kafka wrote something similar
where he basically said, legacy media companies wish they could
buy afford to buy feed me, but the only types
of companies that can the tech companies. That mean, it's
interesting feeling to be in this moment being compared to
(32:57):
this multi hundred dollars, multi hundred million all acquisition, but
also with the Mike Isaac list, I mean Lex Friedman,
which is deep, deep tech intro interviews with people dwakesh
the same, like the most inside baseball tech podcasts of
all time, and then you like, that's an interesting list.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yeah, we definitely don't all cover the same content. It's
surprising to see that sometimes. But I guess something that
you can say is that I figured out like the
newsletter game pretty well. So no, I don't write about
the same things that they write about every day, dabble
in and out, but there is this big player in
(33:33):
the world of distribution called Substack, and I've I've worked
really closely with them to build a big audience that
is super engaged, and it's I, you know, like I
probably have a bigger audience than TVPN, but it's a
different audience and it's not like the most elite. We
(33:54):
have some crossover, but it's not like this really powerful,
plugged in tech audience. It's like New York City and
my business grew without me like noticing that this happened.
Like I wasn't aware that that was happening. In the
minds of Peter Kofa and Mike Isaac, I didn't. I
like them a lot, and I've talked to them and
(34:15):
i've you know, I know that they respect my work.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But that's just two people's opinions.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I don't know if everybody in New York or everybody
in media would agree with that, but I do.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
There are days where I.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Wake up and I'm like, I didn't notice how big
this thing was getting because I just wake up every
day and I put out the letter and I do
it again, and I do it again and again and again,
and that's just my life. But I'm really proud of it,
and I'm honored. I'm flattered that they're putting me next
to those names, and I think that all those guys
do really good work.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Where do you see it going for you?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
This is where I've worked really hard the last few
years to get so, like, I'm just happy to be
in this spot right now. I told you I want
to make another movie. I am ideating on a documentary
about fish tanks. I have a theory that, like the
Bloomberg Offices might be the second biggest aquarium in New
York City besides the New York Aquarium.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I used to work there were they they were pretty big.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
They're pretty big, so I need to look into that.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
And then it's sort of gotten me into this idea
of like all these fish tanks in New York City,
from you know, knicks players houses to doctors' offices to
like bars in South Brooklyn that have been there for
thirty years. Are people doing it because they look cool?
Are they playing God? Why does Zuk have all these
cows in Hawaii? Is that playing God? Is that just
(35:33):
like because he likes beef. I've just been thinking about
like maintaining little edens.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So if I make the movie. It'll be it'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
So maintaining eats is a great topic. Is also obviously
Elon's sort of family compound in Texas. Yeah, you know
that is, and I guess the whole l like Martian
Colonial Fantasy, is a little bit about creating.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Creating life forms of all species.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Well that was a very elegant deflection, but I do
have to ask you again if you have oh where
I'm going?
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, yeah, So I have the daily newsletter, which is great,
and then my restaurant. I have a restaurant critic who
works for me named Jason, and he has a podcast
that we just signed for season two with a new
production company. I could see myself maybe trying to make
another podcast or two this year. I don't think I'll
host one, but I'd be really happy to make them
(36:33):
for other people. And I think that there's a big
opportunity in the event's business, based on the parties and
events that I've thrown so far, from like ten person
dinners with our friend Paul and Andrew Sorkin and Dark
Blastsberg and like these really interesting rooms of people to
like two hundred person blowouts, I think that there's something
that's probably in between the ten person dinner and a
(36:57):
deal book that is more younger business forward. So it's
just I'm kind of an island. I don't have much
of a team right now, so I'm trying to be
really strategic and transparently. I don't really love managing, so
I'm trying to be really strategic about like who I
bring on, what is the most pressing thing, while also
(37:20):
remaining creatively fulfilled in like making docs or whatever on
the side, creative writing. But I really it's like a
really nice, lean business right now, Like I am driving
a ton of traffic. I have like a really nice
advertising side to my business, which is I wouldn't say half,
maybe like a little bit less than half my business
right now, which I'm really enjoying. And then I still
(37:41):
get to like live a nice, somewhat anonymous life in
New York City, which I don't know if, like Lex
Friedman could.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Say, can you imagine a world whe where met to
cool you up and say, sorry, we laid you off
in twenty twenty two, but now we're ready to buy feed.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Me, I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
I don't think that I would need like I don't
think that I I would do that. It would I
would need to like really get agreement that Zuck would
let me go to the farm, like have an involvement
in the movie, and then maybe we could.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Talk if we did this interview again in ten years time,
like what would you what do you have like to
achieve it?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Feed me, Well, I hope I'm not writing like Downtown
Gossip in ten years. I really do.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
I hope that I'm able to like make some other
I think there's a real opportunity with identifying great voices
and like publishing their work and creating this really wonderful community,
Like I'm sitting here with you right now, and dozens
of my readers are talking to each other and making connections, and.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I have felt really fulfilled by that.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Part of the business, like making the world a little
bit smaller through this online newsletter, slash forum, slash chat.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Are you also working on your online dating platform?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I have vibe coded.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I guess you could say I've used Lovable to build
some maybe you'd call them like apps, like little websites
that live off of feed me. One is a job
board that has been around for almost a year now,
and that's become really great real estate for advertisers. And
it's just like a free to use job board where
you can post jobs and other people can submit jobs.
(39:19):
But the one key that differentiates it from other places
that I have to prove each job, so you know
that if you're going on there, it's like an Emily
approved job. So it's kind of cool. And everybody from
substack actually posted a job on there this morning, or
like government agencies, like everybody posts jobs on there, so
you know it's all from the feed me community. And
then there was this other site that I made on
(39:40):
February thirteenth, and I launched it on February fourteenth, and
it was it was like a dating site where feed
Me readers could post a classified and then other feed
Me readers could reach out to people who posted on there.
But I only left it up for a week and
then I took it down.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
But it was fun.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
It was like fun to build and see it got
like two hundred posts. So something different and alternative to
the shitty dating apps that you are being sold by
Hinge or Riya or whatever, where you know, at least
you share interests and you're willing to give it a shot,
and maybe you are you want to meet somebody else
in that community. So yeah, I think that that is
(40:17):
like an aspect of my audience too, that could be
interesting to play with.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I'm basically meeting then needs beyond them, need to know
what's going on and to feel connected actually to do stuff,
whether it's find of job, will meet people that you
could really create this whole because of tools like Lovable
and because of technology. Frankly, you can create your own
real ecosystem for this audience. Yeah, in the medium term.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah, And we know that there are newspapers that are
making more money from games than like their core product,
or as much money from games as their core product.
So it is kind of fun to think about not
even these as like a monetization tool, but an extra
offering to like the subscription to feed me.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
You know embody, thank you. Final question for you, what
do you think is the most interesting question story or
person in tech right now?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
God, the question that you want answered, you.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Know, like I am to just stay on theme, I
would love to know what the decision making process was
for John and Jeordie when they were thinking about this,
because they are in early days of their career, they're
so young. I would love to know what was going
(41:28):
through their heads. And I bet somebody could make a
great movie about it or something, you know, like what
a decision to make?
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Right? Could you imagine?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I mean it's a bit like the Evans Spiegel decision
that he didn't make right, Like do you take the
billion dollars from Mark Zuckerberg but always be living on
the meta platform or do you hold firm? And I
mean these guys, like I think everyone doubts that this
moment can last forever. Right, So if you have an
opportunity like this, even if takes away some of your
ability to be independent, and do you love? Can you
(42:01):
imagine in two years time when let's say there's been
a financial crisis and the you know, there's no more
crazy venture funding for everything at AI companies want to do,
and you have like or maybe double the audience. You
have one hundred for an audience one hundred and fty thousand.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, I wonder who is going to get the first
profile of them? Or if you'll just be like, peace,
we did all of our press last year. You got
it like there's nothing new here besides you know, besides
a huge acquisition.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, this is really maybe the future we'll see. Thank
you for having me.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Thank you so much. That's great fun for tech Stuff.
I'm as Volosi in. This episode was produced by Eliza
Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me
(42:57):
Julian Nutter and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Could Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle
Murdoch wrote out theme song. Please do rate and review
the show wherever you listen, and reach out to us
at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com
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Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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