Itay Dreyfus

There’s an activity that the Barrel partners have been doing for a while: reaching out to a couple of contacts per week. These have typically been former clients, industry acquaintances, other agency operators, investor types, old friends and classmates, etc. It’s been a practice we’ve kept up weekly since 2017.

I have some great memories of talking about “investing in things that doesn’t change”

The site feels like a chaotic newsroom with the cutting room floor exposed. I think that’s part of the excitement — and good design.

One mistake I often used to make at Justin.tv was offering a potpourri of business models (virtual goods, product placement, chat ads, contests, etc..). I was embarrassed to say Justin.tv would monetize with advertising when clearly that was the only answer. Own the simple business model.

Online, we need to make the big feel smaller, in the right ways. The challenge to start small from something that is currently controlled by Facebook and Google, is very hard. But people are doing it. Look at The Correspondent, or Open Culture, or Brain Pickings, or thousands of other small projects that have good communities around them. We need... See more