Plus, a letter can be friendly-ish, but also distant; it can command and liberate, or inspire and comfort, sometimes at once. Letters avoid the personality-less alternatives—of pure, anonymous instruction and pure, anodyne aspiration—toward which cookbooks might track, the way newsletters can provide relief from the worst tendencies of YouTube... See more
A dream hire for me would be a hyper social, hyper considerate relationship manager (with great taste) who could actually form bonds with influencers and know their birthdays and communicate and do thoughtful things outside of campaigns, when we’re asking them for something in return. It seems like relationship management is the most important... See more
Independent internet-native creators leverage the internet’s frictionless content creation and distribution, but they’re still trapped by traditional business models like subscriptions and advertising.
A subscription model is based on the promise of the production of future gated content. A publication or creator is paid to continue production, not... See more
What's also interesting here is the mental model shift: People typically mint for a combination of patronage and profit—they want to support creators and the work they want to see more of in the world, and minting has traditionally been a way to do that, with provenance to prove it. However, there's also the desire to potentially profit from being... See more
Food in America is an almost six trillion dollar industry, so it’s no surprise that some of the best food writing takes us deep into the world of business. But here too food writers are bringing something special to the table, another way of peering behind the curtain.
What is tradition to a generation that has been born with access to everything all at once? GenZ is known to have the lowest of brand loyalty when compared against older generations, so it’s no surprise to see them reject what feels conventional, and treat ingredients in the same way they’ve broken the fashion... See more
For creative people this hits especially hard as social media’s invention of “personal brands,” “influencers,” and the “Creator Economy” turned the few remaining aspects of life that hadn’t yet been marketized into the last ways we could make a living without working for somebody else. Gradually and then suddenly creative people found themselves... See more
While platforms that depend on ads must harvest attention any way they can, platforms that depend on people’s willingness to pay have to generate trust and value.
Directly charging creates high expectations from our customers and in aspiring to meet those expectations, we are held accountable to deliver a product that you... See more