And maybe there’s a way to put consulting inside this research frame also? Ben Pieratt’s live pre-brand experiments are intriguing as as a new model of funding work and working in public.
One unresolved tension here is how to mix individual backers with institutional backers. Andy covered his first year’s expenses via a grant from Emergent Ventures for example. This might be a strong argument for a more sophisticated platform than Substack to run the subscriptions through - ideally you’d like some nice way to combine individual back... See more
We’re beginning to see individual creators bundling together (e.g. the everything bundle), and there are examples of companies that are at least partially audience-funded (e.g. are.na’s investment campaign).