355: Jarrod Dicker on The Rise of Individual Creators

Jarrod Dicker is the Vice President of Commercial at The Washington Post, where he oversees strategy, engineering, product operations, technology and R&D. In this conversation, we discuss newsletters, streaming music, individual creators growing bigger than media companies, bundling and unbundling, and audience as the core unit of value. =============================== Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. =============================== The Helium Hotspot is a new product that enables the people, not the telcos, to own and operate a wireless network in their city for Internet of Things devices. You can literally earn crypto for helping to build the network and providing connectivity to Internet of Things devices sending small bits of data. Join the movement and get your Helium Hotspot today with $50 off using the code POMP at helium.com. =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Jared Dicker is the Vice President of Commercial at The Washington Post, where he oversees strategy, engineering, product operations, technology and R&D. In this conversation, we discuss newsletters, streaming music, individual creators growing bigger than media companies, bundling and unbundling, and audience as the core unit of value. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jared, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is Crypto.com. They've got an awesome URL and even better products. It's an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, or invest crypto all from one place. You can join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app.

• 0:56Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:40Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:20Anthony Pompliano?

  So, go to helium.com, H-E-L-I-U-M.com, and use the code POMP to get your Helium Hotspot today. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. Alright, let's get into this episode with Jared. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys, bang, bang. He's back. Jared, what's up, man? Thanks for doing this again.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  What's up? Thanks, Pomp. Great to be back.

• 3:23Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So for people who didn't listen to the first time we did this, maybe give us kind of a quick two minutes on your background and then you've got an update. You're back at the Washington Post.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we spoke, it was probably like almost a year and a half, two years ago. I was the CEO of Poet, which was a decentralized media technology, every buzzword you could think of company, but really focused on what blockchain can do for news and media, which I'm still very, very bullish on. Happy to dive deep on that and kind of talk through where Poet's at, but also other companies and kind of what they're focusing on there. But really trying to get to the bottom of a thing that I'm still hyper focused on, which is like, what's the value of content, right? We're in these creator-led societies. Our attention is constantly being given to all these different platforms where creators are producing, but like, what is that value and what are the business models built around

• 4:17Speaker 02

  that value? So yeah, the last time we spoke, I was CEO of Poet. I left and returned to the Washington Post where I oversee the entire commercial business. So really focused on how we make money at the Post, how we drive all of our revenue arms, subscriptions, advertising. I oversee R and D. So what new businesses, products, technologies. We could build, which we could then create new businesses out of, which we've done twice. One is called Arc Publishing, which is a software as a service arm for content creators and content management systems that we've licensed to now like 1300 sites globally. And the second and most recent is Zeus Technology, which is kind of the revenue side of that framework.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  So really trying to think about how media companies, particularly news journalism media companies, can compete with the behemoths like Facebook and Google when it comes to revenue and how we can build software that they can license, tie themselves together and kind of bring on a more sustainable approach to, you know, their, their business.

• 5:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I think part of what is so interesting and I love following you on Twitter because you just, it's obvious, are constantly thinking about this and you just nailed a key piece, which is you're not just thinking about it from the content, right? Like what are creators going to do next? What platforms are they going to and all that? You're also thinking of how do these platforms make money, whether the Facebooks and the Googles and Twitters of the world, all the way down to the actual media companies and then even further down to the content creators themselves and kind of full stack, like how does money flow? And where does value accrue? In reading all the things you've been putting out, there's two key themes that you've been talking about. I think the first one, and only because you wrote about it first, we'll start there, which is,

• 6:05Anthony Pompliano?

  media companies are going to become similar to these music labels. And so maybe talk a little bit about like, what does that mean and kind of elaborate in what you wrote on?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really, it's really interesting to think about all the complexities in kind of the content creation world and the media world that seems so, so, so like, like, like, I guess the term is complex, like it seems like there's so much going on, all these different roles, all these different companies doing all these different things. And, and when you really kind of back up and boil it down, it ends up being very simple, right? And, and I started kind of diving into this notion that what is the role of a media company? Right? I think roles of media companies at least decades ago, when Everything was owned by that media company was a lot, right? They own the distribution, they own the relationship with the customers. They literally own the value of their product.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Like an advertiser would call in the eighties. You know, the person leading revenue at CBS and say, hey, how much for a 30 second spot? And they basically like make up a number and they'd be like, all right, we're in, right? There was like no kind of free market to then kind of set what the cost and structures would be. And media companies had a lot of power, right? Revenue power, relationship power, distribution power. And of course, they were like the medium that people were getting information. There weren't all these options. And everyone knows what happened when the platforms kind of came about. But all of that somewhat became very distributed. And now we're entering into worlds of like things being decentralized. But that gatekeeper mentality is really no longer the business value or the business proposition.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  So what do media companies like, what are media companies now, right? If, if, if the consumer is everywhere else and there's not really a direct relationship outside of subscription products. And if they're not delivering the content and if they're not managing the relationships with advertisers and driving that revenue. What is the positive to being a media company? Which is kind of the, the, the perspective that I tried to take. And that really is kind of this notion of managers of talent, right? Like there is a ton of value when I speak to creators for creating under the umbrella of a larger brand. I think that there's a huge, that there's a huge belief. I won't say like this, but like, like his belief, but there is a huge belief that every creator wants to be independent. And that's really not the case when you talk to a lot of them.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  There's a ton of value, especially in news media to write for the Washington Post, the New York Times. It gives reputation, it gives access and enables you to have a book deal and grow your audience. And then eventually you decide to do what you want to do after that. But there is tremendous value there. But media companies were never really set up for that from a business perspective, right? They were essentially employing writers, employing creators to create content under an umbrella. And the revenue models was advertising on that content and subscribing to that content. And if you blew up a creator's reputation, they would often leave and go somewhere else and build their own business. If their reputation wasn't great enough, then they were a subpar kind of creator. And there really was no formula that incentivized these creators to essentially like build for the brand

• 9:11Speaker 02

  in a way that benefits both them and the brand. So the media label, or sorry, the media company has record label ideas kind of like, well, if media companies know how to manage talent, how to distribute talent, how to work across the entire kind of media ecosystem, how to drive revenue from it, then if I'm an independent creator, and if I'm set up with options, which is basically like, could I go and create on my own, yes, there's benefit of being independent and owning my IP, but now all of a sudden, I'm my own manager, I'm my own distributor, I have to figure all this shit out that I have no idea what to do there. Or, right, if the economics makes sense, I could go to a media company, they handle all of these things for me, and it starts to kind of change the game. Now, media companies aren't there yet. Like, that's

• 9:56Speaker 02

  the one thing that I kind of like lay out there, but that, to be crystal clear, they don't realize that they need to be this yet. And I'm pushing it hard, and I think it's like becoming very, very obvious when you start to unravel it, but media companies need to rethink a lot of things if they do become labels. Like, one of which is, what's the relationship with the creator? It's not just, hey, your salary, come create content. It's, what's the relationship with joint IP? If we create something and you leave the company, then what are the royalties tied to this sort of relationship? How does the media company get incentivized to allow like Pomp to go and do his own thing even off their platform, because there's mutual benefits there? And same for, you know, Pomp to go and do things that then drive back to the media company. So the economics are still

• 10:40Speaker 02

  being worked out, but in a very, in a very rash way of saying it, I don't like, I firmly believe that media companies don't figure that out, like how to cultivate talent, how to recruit talent, how to build business models out of maintaining it, like really, really looking at writers and designers and editors and everything that allows that process to flow as actual artists and build models according to that, then I think more and more artists are going to go somewhere else where that's going to be accommodated, which you're seeing, right? You're seeing Substack, you're seeing a lot of platforms starting to take that role, where they were just distributors, and now they're saying, well, look, we could become media companies as well. So it's really kind of coming to a head right now.

• 11:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels to me like there's two separate trends that are happening and you're trying to pull them back together, right? And those trends are the mainstream media organizations are losing, and I put losing it in kind of air quotes because it's how you perceive it, but they're losing trust with the public. They're losing individual creators that previously wanted to work for them go off and on their own. In some cases, some are losing revenue, others are gaining revenue, so that one's a little bit more up in the air. And even at some point, you're seeing organizations lose readership on certain platforms. So you may see somewhere that you were super successful on Facebook, now all of a sudden that's getting taken away, that type of stuff, right? And so it's not all doom and gloom, right?

• 12:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Obviously, you see things like the New York Times, right? Those numbers get published and they're at all time highs in terms of subscribers and things like that. But I think generally as a sector that there's some struggles or obstacles. Then the other trend you see is people leaving as the individual creator. And what's interesting to me is historically, people have thought about the journalist as a kind of a subsidiary of the media company. Now you're seeing that break away, and it's not just journalists though, right? You're seeing everyone from an entrepreneur to an investor to a journalist, like anyone who basically can do analysis or share an opinion about something, the tools are now in place.

• 12:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So you get, you know, the Substacks, you can literally do audio, video and written content all by yourself and do it pretty successful, right? And so what I think you're trying to figure out is like, how do you take those two trends and actually align the value proposition? So that the creators want to work with the organizations, the organizations get value in the short and long term from working with the creators? Is that kind of a fair assumption?

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, so much to unpack there, but definitely, right? I think, I think the, the example of the New York Times is very interesting, right? I think they, they were one of the first, at least legacy media companies that I've started to.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  See, trying to take an approach that does put kind of the talent front and center. Like, there was an article in Nieman Labs a few months ago that says, for the first time, the morning newsletter is not going to be called like New York Times Morning, like the New York Times Morning Newsletter, but it's going to actually have the author's name on it because they're looking to build a brand around that. You see Taylor Lorenz and Corey Seika and Ben Smith and big talent that can easily go and create their own brands and build their own businesses going there, right? And I think that that is a very interesting trend to look at because it's kind of an acknowledgement from the New York Times of basically saying like, yes, like, we are a media company, like, there is value attributed to our brand, that is why people subscribe,

• 14:05Speaker 02

  that is why advertisers advertise against us, but we do also understand that we need to evolve as a business. So as the future of news starts to figure out like what that looks like and what a Netflix and news could look like and what the value of content looks like, then all of a sudden, they start to think about their role of recruiting and bringing that talent there versus that talent going elsewhere. But I do, I mean, I'm, I'm very bullish on the independent creator space. Like, I like, that's basically why I've been so involved in thinking through this and somewhat trying to like poke holes in it by trying to figure out, okay, if, if we see this trend happening, and it is happening, right? Like, someone said to me the other day, um, yeah, it kind of seems like this would have happened, like, this was supposed to happen a decade ago, and now they're saying

• 14:50Speaker 02

  that it's going to happen again, but is it actually happening? And, and I think that's a narrow vision because you look at YouTube, you look at TikTok, you look at these media networks that are distributors for these creators, and the top creators aren't the New York Times, Vox Media, Washington Post. It's these independent creators that have figured out how to build their business within this sort of new ecosystem without that legacy debt, right? Like, that legacy, in fact, does kill the dream. Those legacy operations do inhibit you from being able to like, understand how the media industry is evolving. And As far as I'm concerned, that's already happened on these new platforms, right? And I tweeted something out this morning, which is really, which is like very obvious too.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  But like, I think that it starts to spark an interesting conversation. It's always been a conversation of like publishers versus the platforms, right? Like media companies versus the platforms. How much should media companies give the platforms? Should platforms be paying media companies? And I think the entire time platforms knew that they are, that, that they had already become the media companies. Right? They were already the place that both the New York Times and both an individual creator was going to go to, to create content. And media companies wanted to believe that they're competing, competing and competing, but they're really not. Right? And now media companies have become creators. Now, if they're 900 person newsroom creators, that's great. But they're the equivalent of a creator creating on TikTok as an independent creator is creating on TikTok.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  So what kind of that convergence to your point, what that allows us to start to think about is what are the new businesses and companies that are going to be built that help create like comfort and confidence for creators? I think that's obvious in the media company sector, like they basically do that already. They just need to figure out how to make themselves more attractive so that creators still want to stay there and come there. But then there's this whole other space, right? What you saw with like Substack announcing legal coverage and conversations around health insurance and conversations around like a collective, like what the Substack people have that type house group where they all kind of come together and support each other.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  That in itself is going to evolve into businesses and opportunities that are going to compete directly with all of these media companies. And now it's kind of a race to figure out who becomes the next like supportive media company business model that enables these creators to go and kind of like the fastest race there. So it is a convergence, but it's also a competition.

• 17:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And so let's talk about the media companies specifically, right? So if you're a media company today, historically, your promise to a creator has been, "Come here, I'll give you the safety net of a salary. You know what you're going to get paid." And there's probably some brand kind of promise or brand backing you. So give you some version of legitimacy, whether you needed it or not. There's some built-in audience, and we're hoping that you'll help us grow that more. But there's already this built-in audience associated with our brand. You get health insurance and legal defense, kind of all these other elements. And then on top of all of that, you also are going to be, have your work kind of bundled with a bunch of other people who either write about related topics or maybe even unrelated topics. But together, we're going to put forward a product.

• 18:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And then we'll go do all the ad sales and basically worry about the monetization. Right? And so that, for a long time, was like a pretty good deal, right? If you wanted to create content, like, why not go do that? Now, I think your argument is like, "That's got to shift." And so talk to me about what in that offering do they not need to offer anymore? And then what are the things that they actually do need to offer that previously wasn't part of the deal?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, so one thing that you highlight is that, and that I think is often overlooked in the media space, is that media companies are bundles. Like you just mentioned, there's like, The Post has a thousand journalists, right? There's, there's a ton of writers running on a ton of beats and a ton of sections. There's kind of this desire that's often brought up on Twitter, which is like, "We just want one new subscription that we then get access to The Times and The Journal and The Post." But then you're, when you peel it back, you're like, "They're all competing bundles." Right? In their, in their own companies and in their own thinking, they're trying to expand coverage and essentially be like a Netflix or, you know, enough of a bundle of content that you are going to go there and want to subscribe and get everything that you need.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  I think traditionally, like, you're right, media companies did provide that support. There's a lot of value in the opportunity to build your brand there, right? The legitimacy of having that brand, the access. I think something that's often not discussed enough is this idea of breaking news, right? Like, when you think about the kind of life cycle of content right now, you have breaking news, and then you have, like, curation commentary, then aggregation, then shit just goes and flips in the ether and hopefully pops back up again. But without that breaking news, that, like, chain, like, doesn't work well. And a lot of breaking news is happening at these media companies, right? Because if you're covering something in politics, you're covering something in sports, you

• 19:56Speaker 02

  know, having it come from, like, breaking from an ESPN versus breaking from, like, a random independent writer, a lot of, a lot of, like, people will want to break news with those larger corporations, with those larger, kind of, holding companies. So, so it really is still a critical part of the life cycle for creators. It is still attractive because you have that overhead, you have that reputation to build your brand. I've spoken to a lot of friends who have gotten furloughed or laid off right now in media because that is happening, like, more and more and more often. And I've asked them about starting up their own independent companies, and they said, "Look, I would take health insurance over going independent any day," which, of course, is a preference.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Not everyone feels that way, but there is kind of this mixed sentiment of this assumption of, do these creators and writers actually want to be entrepreneurs, right? Or are they happy creating and, you know, working for the larger company to build that reputation and not want to handle the rest? To answer your question, like, what needs to be created, right, is kind of that other approach now, right? Which is, creators do want to become entrepreneurs, right? They believe that they are bringing IP and bringing unique value to the brand. And to do that, then the economics need to change. So, to give you an example, right now, I forgot the name of the podcast, but there was a podcast created for BuzzFeed.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  And now the creators want to kind of renegotiate IP and license management and rights because it's their name on the podcast and you know, they kind of built the audience and built the brand under the BuzzFeed umbrella. But because of that, the economics are set up, it doesn't make sense, right? BuzzFeed probably said, hey, look, we'll pay you a salary, we'll take you on, we'll pay for the entire show. You know how much production costs and time costs. They, they, they, they eat all of that. And that is in exchange for the creators to be able to create this content that they could then monetize together. You're kind of seeing this desire now where creators, maybe they didn't realize how things were set up. Maybe

• 22:02Speaker 02

  they didn't understand the business side as well. And now they're educating themselves more to them saying, look, like this IP is tremendously valuable, right? And I want to be able to like own this, especially like whether I work here, whether I not, or whether I work here, whether I don't, and so forth. So I think the biggest things that like media companies need to shed is this notion that like our biggest value is our umbrella brands. I think that's not the case. I think that's like tremendously valuable for creators to come there and want to work there. But the whole emphasis really needs to be on how do you make these creators' job better? How do you give them more independence? How do you give them more value so that you essentially represent them as an agency wherever they're

• 22:45Speaker 02

  creating, whether that's TikTok, whether that's Facebook, whether that's audio and so forth. On the flip side, it's also rethinking about what those economics look like. So if I'm going to join a media company, right now, it would be I take a salary, I get health insurance, I have overhead coverage, but maybe it changes to, hey, look, I don't want a salary, or I want 20% salary, but I want 50% of all the IP that I'm creating. I want to be able to own that IP for 25 years, right? If that's licensed or syndicated to networks and so forth. And those companies, I think you'll see really start to like make the biggest significant changes. And I think companies like in new media like BuzzFeed and Vox do already think like that. I think traditional media is where it's going to become a bit more.

• 23:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so obviously, a lot of this is you've got old kind of legacy media, not old in a negative connotation, just they've been around for a long time, right? And it's an advantage.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  They're like 200 years old.

• 23:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and by the way, and it's an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on what you're talking about. But the other thing you've got changing is the types of creators. And so you wrote a piece all about this like Renaissance creator. Talk a little bit about what is a Renaissance creator and kind of elaborate on what that exactly means for for kind of the creator industry.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so um, a lot of the kind of software and and products that are being built today is really around this idea of creator independence, right? And when you think about what that like, like who that typical creator is,

• 24:20Speaker 02

  it's usually this idea of it's someone who works for a media company who's built a big audience and is very critical for driving that media company's business. And now is going to branch out and create their own kind of company and business on their own. But there's also this flip thing happening right now, which I'm actually curious how you bucket yourself, honestly, which is basically entrepreneurial minds, people that have maybe built their own businesses or that have built businesses within media companies and are now saying, I'm a creator, right? So it's not like your background's journalism, right? You created a blog, you're a designer, right? And that's your pathway to becoming an independent creator. And that's why this trend of what's happening on TikTok and Substack is is beneficial for you, but it's actually the inverse, right?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  It's people who have maybe had like more of a business mind, have built businesses, have expertise there that are now entering the arena and saying, we're independent creators too. We're going to create on topics and they're learning in parallel, which is like amazing, right? You have people with journalist backgrounds or creator backgrounds who have left these companies who are now jumping in and can easily create and understand that flow. But now they have to figure out, how do I build a business? What do I charge? Who do I work with? How do I distribute? And then on the flip side, you have these entrepreneurs coming in or these business heads coming in, basically saying, I know how to build a business, I know distribution, I know how to do all those economics, but like I need to figure out like, how do I write? How do I pace, right? Where do I create? So like, how do I do a podcast?

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And that's kind of this notion of the Renaissance creator, which is We've created an environment with these platforms, which is like awesome. Like I'm hyper obsessed with it and you know, I feel like everywhere you look, people are talking about these things. But it's that anybody now can really enter the arena to create their own brands, to create their own media company. You do not have to have any particular background. In fact, the weirder the background or the most unconventional that step up, the more successful you will likely be. Cause you'll have something to say, it'll be different, it'll be relatable to people who are also thinking in that scope. And there's so many things that kind of fall into that bucket as I dove into this idea of like, what does that typical creator look like in this new kind of Renaissance era?

• 26:34Speaker 02

  And, and, and, and how do they enter the playing field? And there's all these different analogies that come about, like one of which is this idea of newsletters. Everyone has a newsletter, everyone's like, it's a bubble or, or it's the future, right? There's like all of these strong feelings on the other side of it. But when newsletter is really allowed is like this low barrier to entry for anyone to be able to say, okay, I have something to say. I'm going to create it and I'm going to put it out there. And it's become something that's very interesting because the relationship is one to one. You can kind of go at it's low production value. It's like the written word, literally, you don't have to produce video, you don't have to produce audio. Like you're just putting thoughts and content out there. And it's essentially like in an, like in an analogy to the music industry, like if you are an artist, right?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  And you create a mixtape, you don't have to go into the studio, you don't have to be signed by a label, you don't have to do all these things. If you're talented, you just go and as you go, you have an interesting path to really becoming like a celebrity, right? When you're a mixtape creator or a newsletter creator, your audience is coming along for the ride. They're paying, they're essentially investing in you. Like I can't tell you how many Substacks I subscribe to that I won't unsubscribe because I have such a strong relationship with that creator and I want them to succeed. Even if I don't like the content, I'll stomach the bill because I want them to succeed. I don't feel that relationship with these larger media companies or holding companies, right? So it's just a whole different approach to like that business and how it grows. And this notion of like now being able to build that and leverage that.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Right? So in this notion of like Renaissance creator, anyone could step in, anyone could be a media company, anyone could build a media business. You now have in like the old worlds, like five years ago, where you had a separate strategy for Facebook and YouTube. Or not separate strategy, but separate audiences for like Facebook, YouTube, Substack, audio. Now you're like, how do I port that stuff over? Which again, I feel like I'm talking to someone who does this in real time. So hopefully it relates to you. But like everything that these newsletter writer, like, like everything you built on Twitter, you can now port over to a newsletter. You start to create that newsletter audience, you can now port that over elsewhere and you're not just kind of a unique entity per platform.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  All the platforms are now working for you and pushing you forward. So there's, there's like a ton of different kind of angles that we could take there. Like that were kind of like dug in on in the piece, but it really is this idea that before, right? If you wanted to join a media company or be a creator, whether that's in news or, you know, in publishing or in broadcast. There was a very like obvious way to get there and it was limiting for most. Now it's basically limiting to none and it's hyper competitive and it's opened up this notion of a free market where you're not just getting a salary to create for a brand, you essentially are getting the value attributed to you of the output of the work that you're actually doing.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  If you could build a business, you can make a ton of money. If you understand how to flex and maneuver, you could do this all on your own. You don't need that overhead. So the options are there and it's just kind of inverted the entire funnel of what this media economy looks like.

• 29:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When I read the piece, the part that was most interesting to me is you break down, historically, people think of creators as creators first. And then they may be able to figure out how to monetize that. What all of these platforms have done though, is they've allowed entrepreneurs, whether they're venture funded, you know, kind of tech types founders or just entrepreneurial in nature to now start to build these content businesses, right? It's almost like the, the, the cost of starting one of these businesses has drastically been driven down by the Substacks, by the YouTube, by the podcasting platforms. Very similar to what we saw, let's say with server costs, right? There was an explosion of startups that happened because simply now you could spin up AWS rather than have to go buy a server and set it up.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that to me is interesting because what you get is a blurring of the line, right? Is somebody who, you know, let's take away all of our investing activity, everything. If you just look at the things that I've done on the content side, is it that you're an entrepreneur? Or is it that you're a creator? And what's the difference, right? And you can kind of go down, whether it's the Substack list or other platforms. And you start to actually look at the skill set that's necessary is very different than the skill set of, hey, just go work inside the media company, right? And so I think that that's the other piece of this where everyone's like, oh, all the, all the journalists are going to leave the media organizations. Like, ah, there's a lot of people who actually are not entrepreneurial at all. Like they're scared, right? They just want to like stay where they are, safe, get a salary and they're perfectly happy.

• 31:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Or it's not a bad thing, like they're happy doing that. But then there is a subset of people and the question is how big is that subset? That want to go do this. And I think that's kind of what you're hitting at here is are those people creators that were doing it already? And now building a business? Or were they business people who now are seeing an opportunity and they're coming in and creating? With any kind of content?

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, it's so right on, right? I think, I think everybody, a lot of people are saying like, okay, when you go and become your own, you know, creator business, you go and create a Substack, you go and create, you know, a brand on TikTok. That now you get to just focus on doing what you do best, creating. And it's the opposite. It's like when you decide to go and do that, you're actually assuming the business of your entire self. You're basically saying, yes, I'm going to create, but I am now choosing and willingly going to take on all of this work in order to help build my brand, my business, and really try to figure out entrepreneurially, how we go there. And that's a totally different skill set.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  I think that's why right now, some of like the earliest people in this space, especially like in that Substack crew, but even newsletter creators like Web Smith that have done it outside, they're here to stay, right? I think everyone Who's kind of in at this moment has really figured out what they need to do in order to kind of like support their own business, how to kind of manage certain times, how to focus on distribution and really be able to see what's next. The next, but that also on top of that, I think that's also an acknowledgement that we probably have 1% of the creators that are like interested and willing to like leave and do it because of that.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  That need for them to be able to own it all, right? That's a particular person that can really do that. This next phase of like creator economy, passion economy, whatever you want to call it. There's so much focus and people that I'm talking about that are people that I'm talking to and people that are investing in the space around that notion of comforting confidence, right? So if you know that right now it takes a particular creator who really understands not just how to build audience and create, but also manage a business. Then how do you start to attract the millions and millions and millions of other people who would be willing to come over and do this? If they weren't so nervous about health insurance, if they weren't so nervous about getting sued in libel, if they weren't so

• 33:33Speaker 02

  nervous about the fact that they don't have an editor or don't have a designer or don't have a newsroom support. And what's incredible is that is not going to be a catalyst for people to not come over. That's actually going to be a catalyst for builders to build those products and build those sort of networks and marketplaces and support. In order to recognize that that pool is a ton of people that would be willing and interested to come over if those things are built. So that's really like the next phase of what's happening here. I think phase one was, okay, can creators go out and do this on their own? And are there enough tools for them to be able to actually create and put content out there? Now it's okay, how do we build things that help support that business? Which kind of goes full circle to the emphasis of media companies at record labels.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  It's not really a choice. I think if they, if they don't figure out how to structure their companies in order to focus on creators and build for creators to manage that sort of talent and delivery, then. These companies are going to be built outside of them and things are just going to run. Right. So it's kind of no longer a choice, but more so starting to kind of make that transition and make that approach. But one more thing that's really interesting on top of that, though, is like, and I talk about this in Renaissance Creator, is that newsletters kind of had the same effect as streaming in a very weird way. Right. Like, the music industry was kind of dead when Napster came out. And Napster didn't come out because people wanted free music, right?

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Napster was basically developed because no one could stand the UX of the music experience. No one wanted to buy a $20 CD, you know, at whatever your local record store was for a single track. Nobody liked like how bulky and kind of the cost structure and everything around that experience. To the point where like Sean Parker and Co. built Napster to basically say, okay, we're going to build an experience that consumers actually want when it comes to listening to music. And what came out of that, right, via Spotify, was that not only did people stop stealing music, but now they're paying for it, right? Because it's an experience they like, it's a relationship they like. There's a ton of arguments that could be thrown at me, which I get all the time on Twitter, which is like, is it better for the artist? Separate conversation. But for the consumer, right?

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Napster and streaming really kind of broke through and built a better business for music than it was when it was totally broken down via the Napster era. Newsletters are kind of the same, right? Like, we're forgetting now because of all the media growth, that two or three years ago, you had an ad blocker on, right? You didn't want to go to a site and read content and see ads and you chose to turn that blocker on. You would bypass paywalls constantly, right? Like, you like mainly, like, maybe you wouldn't even go and see that content or you'd type the URL into Google and you'd circumvent it. You did not want to pay for content. And you didn't not want to pay for content because you didn't believe content was valuable. You just didn't like that experience. Right? And what newsletters have done in a very weird way is really broker that one to one

• 36:26Speaker 02

  relationship again, right? And there's like weird synergies. It's like I get, say, I get your newsletter in my inbox. There's nothing stopping me from forwarding your newsletter to 10, 11. I mean, there's tracking and stuff, but there's ways to go about it. But nobody does that, right? Nobody does that because there's a relationship with the creator. They like the way that it's being delivered to them. They like the experience. There's a value exchange and they know what they're paying for and they think that that's valuable and they're getting that back. So it's kind of changed, like the newsletter ecosystem has kind of also changed the way that the broader media ecosystem really thinks about the value of content because of that. And I kind of believe that it was like less severe,

• 37:07Speaker 02

  but the Napster moment was kind of ad blocking paywalls. Users are fed up with that way of navigation content. Here comes newsletters or independent creators that are building a new relationship value exchange. And now all of a sudden, people are like, oh yeah, content is valuable and I do like this. And media companies are starting to adjust the way that they operate in order to accommodate that UX. And it's kind of a similar sort of slope that I think is just really, really, really badass today. It's interesting.

• 37:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels like as this is occurring, the newsletter, you, you, you mentioned it earlier, right? And exactly what I did, which was go build on Twitter first, then you can pull them to newsletter, then you gotta go to a platform by platform. But the newsletter specifically is kind of the most censorship resistant thing that we have currently, right? I get to send something direct into your inbox. You've opted into receiving that thing. Yes, there is the ability for, let's say Gmail to kind of filter and put you into spam. And you know, it's, it's not perfect, but more so than let's say the algorithms when it comes to social media or anything like that. It is the most one to one authentic thing that we have. And does it feels like That's the way we're trending. So there's gonna be more people who want more of that.

• 38:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And whether that goes to other platforms, whether there's platforms built specifically for this. It's just the idea of like removing the middleman, right? And I wrote today about this idea of like, within a media organization today, what we basically, or inside of an industry, what we basically have is we've got three types of content creators. You've got journalists, which actually practice like the art of journalism. So it's unbiased, no opinion, all fact-checked, you know, kind of all the things that we that we associate with journalism. You then have a category that I call bloggers. And I clearly say like, I don't think of that as a negative connotation. It's just, these are people who have a different process for publishing than journalists do. And it's usually more opinion-based. And then then you've got what I call market participants.

• 39:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So in the finance world, these are all the investors and people who are creating content, but they're actively practicing, you know, the craft. And my point was like, those three things are actually all valuable for different pieces. But what I wonder is that middle group, the bloggers, right? There's not as much downside risk for when they create content. So you've got, let's say, investors where they're actively putting money to work. And if they're wrong, the market goes against them and they lose money, right? So there's some risk to kind of how you think about things and intellectual rigor that goes into this as you make. Cause there's money on the line. Journalism, it feels like there's almost this community of people that fact-check each other. Meaning that, you know, if you're a journalist and I'm a journalist and you write something and it's factually inaccurate,

• 39:50Anthony Pompliano?

  there's somebody else that is gonna just, you know, absolutely light you up and be like, no dude, you got it wrong, right? And so there's kind of this like, you know, eat what you kill, but you better be accurate, you know, community of journalism. That middle group, what I still don't understand yet, right, is The thing that I labeled as blogger feels like they're not held to the journalistic standards. They also don't have skin in the game. And so it's just this constant regurgitating of my opinion, my opinion, my opinion. And what I am wondering is like, is that the ideal group to go and leave and become these creators, right? And also the market participants. You get two of the three groups are the prime suspects to go leave, but the journalists end up staying because they actually are the ones that need the most infrastructure,

• 40:34Anthony Pompliano?

  right? They're the ones who need the editors, the fact checkers, the legal defense, all that kind of stuff. And maybe just talk through, you know, you can use those through labels or think of it differently, but like, who inside of a traditional media organization is most likely to leave? And is it just, are you entrepreneurial or are you not? Or is it actually the type of content you create can really hint at whether you're likely to leave or not?

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's so, it's so interesting that you say that because one, I realize that a lot of, a lot of people don't understand the separation between news and opinion within a traditional news organization, like how severe it actually is. So news and opinion literally sit on different floors within the building. They're, they have different editors. The way that the business is managed, the way that conversations aren't had between one another, because news can't be influenced by opinion, and opinion shouldn't be influenced by news. So they literally operate separately. However, the way the business models work is it essentially is the same, right? It's the same subscription unless you break them out, but across the entire media company, advertising is still across, you know, particular

• 41:40Speaker 02

  audiences. So even though there's so much work being done to separate it, the business still treats it the same. So thus, people often bucket things in the same. And you see this all the time, right? Like on Twitter, if somebody posts something, even if it's an opinion from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, it's very hard for the casual reader to understand what's an opinion, what's not. And then you have conversations, well, this is fake news, or why are they writing about this? And traditional media companies will say like, well, it's opinion and it's not news and people should know, but they don't know, right? And it's been hundreds of years of trying to educate how these things operate and the nuances of it. But readers still don't understand. And it drive, and it just causes a lot of like conversations and differentiations

• 42:25Speaker 02

  when it comes to like, How it should exist and how it should exist further. You hit it on the head. I think opinion writers within media companies are the ones that are most likely to go independent. I think you've already seen it with Andrew Sullivan from New York Media who left. There's like rumblings of a few recent New York Times journalists who have left on the opinion side to go over to a Substack. But I think traditionally, when you think about what opinion writers do and how they create and how they build audiences, there's a natural progression for them to build kind of media companies or voices on their own. There are also a lot of interesting things. Opinions drive a ton of subscriptions for traditional media companies, right?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  So like, even though on the news side, right, it's very unbiased, it's indifferent, right, with how that's reported, a lot of people subscribe because of, you know, the opinion writers within a news organization. In fact, a lot of them subscribe to particular writers, which is pretty, you know, well, sorry, they don't subscribe to particular writers, they subscribe because of particular writers, which is a huge bull case for a Substack if they're betting, like banking on the fact that they could get a writer to leave and that will bring a massive amount of audience. I think like those assumptions are very accurate. So I do think that that's the case. I think that people who would consider leaving media companies, I think the opinion side

• 43:51Speaker 02

  is kind of the most obvious, like, early on because, exactly what you said, the fact-checking, the, like, even though fact-checking and research and those things are important, needing edit, needing design, etc., like, isn't as critical as it is from the news side. They already have their own audiences and have oftentimes built a lot of their own reputation on the platform. So a lot of the opinion writers are kind of building their own kind of chorus on Twitter and on YouTube and so forth, and they kind of have that audience to move aside. That third category that you mentioned, market, what did you call them? Market participants. Yeah, market participants, I think is like... Why I'm also so bullish on the creator economy?

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Because it's essentially saying like, we're going to recognize new talent and bring that new talent up and build fame out of them. Right? So we look at kind of the idea of like Renaissance creator and how people kind of get to this and build their own brand. There's people that already create content under big brands that are highly reputable, that can move that over, whether that's news or whether that's opinion. There's people that are starting up and building that on a particular network and then porting that over. But then I think there's people that you'll start having conversations with, like within your own communities. Like, like a big thing with Substack right now that I'm hearing a lot of writers talk about is like, there's a great, like, it's currently set up in a great way for them to communicate directly with their audience, to deliver content, right?

• 45:18Speaker 02

  To put that in their inbox and, you know, have a direct conversation. They could reply directly to that writer. But what's that next iteration of connecting community to one another? Like, I'm a member of X, like, I subscribe to X writer, I then want to engage with other people within that community. The tools to do that aren't really there. And I think that that's going to start to surface, that third bucket, which is market participants, where we're going to start to be pulling out creators from communities of existing, like, independent creator media platforms that are then going to start to be building things on their own. And you'll start to see, like, in a similar way to what's happened with people growing followers on Twitter because of, like, certain point of views, to people becoming creators on YouTube. You'll see that within the written space.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  So it won't just be limited to, like, I worked at a media company, or I'm a business entrepreneur that has done something that has already built an audience and came here. I think we'll start to see new creators cultivated out of that community and out of those conversations, which nailed that third bucket, which I think is like, right on in very early days.

• 46:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and the part to me that is so fascinating is, take the most extreme example. So take a Joe Rogan, right? Which it seems like everybody and their mom at some point has tried to cancel Joe Rogan and, you know, from the mainstream media. And frankly, some of it's because they got nothing better to do, some of it's because he said things that they disagree with, you know, whatever the reasoning is. But when you break it down, he has a bigger audience than they have. And that, and to me, like, that is like, whoa, hold on, time out a second. You're telling me that the individual creator has built a bigger business and a bigger audience than many of the people that work at these big brands? And so- It almost feels like there's going to be this switch in mentality from, oh, if I stay at this

• 47:04Anthony Pompliano?

  one organization, I'm going to be able to reach X number of people. But if I leave and I execute correctly, I can reach X times five, right? And I can't actually reach a bigger number of people. And that would, you know, traditionally lead to more revenue, but I do it all as an individual creator rather than trying to do it here under this brand. So maybe talk a little bit about like, what happens in a world where the individual creators are actually bigger than the media?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So this is like something that's really interesting. That kind of goes to what we were saying earlier, which is like, media companies have always thought that they're competing with platforms, but they're not, right? I think, I think platforms are the kind of bridges and tunnels of how all creators deliver their content or, you know, their products throughout, throughout the web ecosystem. I think media companies are actually competing with creators, right? And, and that's kind of their role now. And you'll see that media companies will have the opportunity to bring more creators on and start to accumulate that audience. But because of how things are set up right now, like my independent audience, right, as a writer, maybe

• 48:14Speaker 02

  that I build on Twitter, isn't necessarily associated with the umbrella brand because there's no incentive to do so, right? So the larger incentive right now, exactly to your point is, I'm getting so big that if I get so big, I should just branch out and build my own business because the economics for me to stay aren't as, you know, great as the economics for me to leave. So one, like, one thing to hit on, which you were saying, which I think is very true, is media companies are creators, right? And if, if, if platforms are leveling the playing ground for a Joe Rogan, or, you know, a Vox Media, or a Barstool Sports, then they're all competing on the same playing field, then they need to think about how they could strengthen their

• 48:55Speaker 02

  own individual company or their own individual brand to compete against that. I think if any lifestyle company, right, doesn't think that they're competing directly with Joe Rogan, Their way off, right? And in fact, they should be looking at that, right? People, people could hate Barstool all they want and things that are coming out of there. But you look at how that business has diversified. You look at how they create talent, how they build individual brands out of their talent, how they think about license and IP and things that, you know, traditional organizations don't think about. They've diversified themselves way more, right? Than any traditional company has, which is usually built off the idea of like subscriptions and advertising. Right? So it's really this, this, this acknowledgement that independent creators

• 49:40Speaker 02

  have the opportunity to grow a bigger audience and grow a bigger brand than that of umbrella companies. And if that is the case, how do you set up your company in order to attract those creators there? And the answer may be, it eventually becomes impossible, right? There may be so much work happening within like the platform space where we're building so many tools and so many like, like business opportunities and operational support that individual creators are the media companies and they're just sharing tools. What's really interesting to, to kind of highlight, to kind of bring this back to some of the work happening at WaPo too, is that when we like about eight, eight, nine years ago at the Washington Post, we really started to think about how we could expand our businesses beyond just like what's happening on the washingtonpost.com

• 50:25Speaker 02

  and what was a very obvious one, one being owned by Jeff Bezos. We had to figure out how we actually become a technology company because everyone expected us to become a technology company. But two, it was like, where can we actually expand, right? And we're like, we're a media company, we create content, we're trusted, we distribute that content. But all the tools that we use to do that are outside tools. We license them, we work with companies, whether it's content management system, workflow management system, so forth. So we said, okay, let's invest in building that, right? And let's build something better than we have today that we could use for the post to make the post strong. That has then translated to us now powering like 1300 sites across the world. A lot of publishers like the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News and so forth. But the, the crazy thing is that

• 51:12Speaker 02

  You started to see a shift with these media companies because they were so financially lucrative and growing over the past two decades. They decided to bring everything in-house. They're like, okay, we create content, but we're going to be a technology company. So we're going to build the content management system and have all this in-house. What we've seen when we built ARC is now these media companies are like, we're not technology companies. We can't compete. It doesn't make sense. We're going to license it and we're going to focus on creating. Now with Zeus, which is our next kind of business, which is focused on revenue for media companies. It's a similar thing, just like these media companies said, we're not technology companies. We're not going to staff that anymore. We're going to license it. We're now seeing that on the revenue side. These media companies are like, we're not ad tech companies.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  We're not really consumer marketing companies. We staff it, but we're not as good as other places. We're going to license that so then we can reallocate resources elsewhere. So you're starting to see like a centralized approach to technology, a centralized approach to revenue, which goes to like the final prediction, which is a media company eventually, whether you're one person or whether you're a 300-person newsroom, is probably going to be a ratio of 99 to one, like 99 creator, right? Whether you're a 300-person creator room or one creator room and 1% software. You're not going to have your own sales team. You're not going to have your own engineering team. You're not going to have all these things that you now manage as fixed cost overhead. You're going to license that because it's not your identity.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  But that really accelerates this whole entire notion of Joe Rogan being a media company. Jamel Hill is a great example. She worked for ESPN. All of that happened. She now creates and delivers and is getting paid by like 10 different media companies and platforms, like as her own brand. That is where everyone will go. So like what we're seeing right now is these larger media companies will start to like divest in different areas that don't make sense for them and focus more on content creation. These independent creators don't have the legacy debt. They could start thinking about how they could focus on growing audience and leveraging the tools that are out there and being able to build on that. And we'll see them meet in the middle on like a very, very, very level playing.

• 53:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels also like all you're getting is you're getting the unbundling by getting all the creators out from the media organization, but then you're getting rebundling, right? Which is basically Joe Rogan has somebody who helps with ad sales. So he has somebody who helps him with the production, right? On Substack, we're seeing bundling of newsletters together. They're also providing the legal assistance, right? Which is exactly what a media company would do. And so maybe talk through a little bit like, are we just recreating the world with different tools and platforms? Or is there something that ends up actually being different in kind of where we're going?

• 53:58Speaker 02

  I think, um, I think that's, I think it's our responsibility to not, um, to, I, I think it's our responsibility to not renovate the business model and to actually build a new foundation. I think that if, like, it's always the case that business models drive product strategy, right? If you're not making money, then you're not going to do it. And if we go through a unbundling, rebundling, and the models are still the same, which is where advertising against content, right? People are subscribing to bundle subscriptions,

• 54:39Speaker 02

  and there's nothing else that evolves out of that, then maybe we have the opportunity to recalibrate our businesses, build a more lean setup so that margins and profits could be somewhat better. But then we could end up in the same place. What I'm seeing, and what's most exciting, is that we're actually not relying on those traditional models. I think there are many extremes, like Substack believing that advertising is not a good model, I think is like crazy. I'm not going to push them on that. Like, if they're building that, they understand their business, like, they could continue doing that. But we are entering a world where advertising is completely changing, third-party cookies are going away, it's all about context and content. And like, Substack is literally a breeding ground for

• 55:21Speaker 02

  that, and could actually become like the next Facebook, or FBX, like what that was for the web. Substack could kind of do that for this iteration of the web. They wanted to go that route. So really kind of testing and thinking through new models. I think bringing back old ideas like the idea of like the wire service, I think is like something that we've lost, which is really interesting, which is you creator, create content. Um, yes, there's like licensing deals, but how do we start to create new mechanics around the idea of well, if this content is used or licensed by others or repurposed, what are different financial incentives and models that we could build around that? I think that's very untapped, right? You look at the music industry and you look at um, the idea of like, I create a song, I get paid

• 56:06Speaker 02

  like for streams or royalties or things tied to that in in kind of our concentration business that doesn't really exist, right? Like you create content, it's out there and then it's kind of on the go, right? Maybe you license it once, but this idea of like long tail business benefits really don't exist, which I think could start to exist. So I think in order for us not to reinvent the wheel, which is why the art, I mean, again, I'm biased, I wrote the articles, but why they're, but why they're so hot right now is because one, media companies are realizing that their traditional business models aren't working, that advertising is owned by Facebook and Google. That is the truth. Um, and they'll continue to grow that pie and they have so much investment

• 56:48Speaker 02

  uh, like in building the next phase of that publishers, it's very hard for publishers to compete there. So publishers need to think about like, what is our new role and new role being, you know, focused on talent, focused on building new revenue models and distribution models for that talent starts to become a real business, right? And a new arena that they get to move into and build off of. On the other side of it, it's really trying to think about like, how do we not renovate these old business models or renovate this old house and actually build this new house, right? And build this new business models and really start to kind of focus on what can be done there. And um, and like, you're kind of seeing that, right? You're seeing that happen without revenue tied to it. Like, I love the idea of type house. What type house tells me is that all of these writers are coming together because there's all of these services that they need and want to share and work on.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Um, which to me is a business, right? People should be focused on building those businesses. Um, health insurance, right? And and libel are so traditional. Held and you know, you need to be an employer for a company. So how do you start to separate the idea of like ten ninety nine workers and give benefits to those sort of workers so that it's not just to your point unbundling, rebundling, but also saying, okay, now you want all these benefits. You now have to be an employee of Substack if you're a writer. These writers are going to say, no, that's not why we joined in the first place. Right. So there needs to be new models bred out of that, or else you do risk kind of running into the same thing. But everything that I see um right now is is is going in that right direction is kind of saying,

• 58:13Speaker 02

  how do we blow this shit up and you know, figure out how to actually create something that's focused both on the creator? And then that next iteration is going to be like the consumer, right? And we're in a very tight spot right now to figure that out.

• 58:25Anthony Pompliano?

  One thing you mentioned earlier, if we go deeper on this monetization theme is uh this idea of like licensing the content. And so for people that don't know today, uh somebody inside of a media organization creates content. They go ahead and um it's published on that platform. They get paid a salary and for the most part, that's how it works. Uh in terms of moving forward, is there a world where uh these media organizations say to somebody, hey, we'll do a revenue share? So if you have an email that makes X, you know, million dollars, you get a piece of it. Or your articles, the ads we sell against it, we'll keep track of for you specifically and give you a a cut on a percentage basis. Um and then as part of a a second part of that question, talk about this licensing idea of like after I leave,

• 59:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I can still maybe have a royalty stream uh from from the actual content.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So so there is, there is a ton of attribution to individual creators within these larger media companies. Or, you know, we'll call them holding companies because we're trying to uh tie them as close to possible as the music industry. Um, there is, there, there, there are stats, there is data looked at that individual writers drive certain business, right? So whether that's um who's driving the most subscriptions, who's driving the most traffic, um that data is available. Now, that data isn't necessarily something that is used from a business perspective or set up from a business perspective.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  But I think that it starts to become a uh opportunity to be leveraged when you are kind of trying to court or attract more creators. So really being able to think through um. All right, if you work here, this is what you drive. And there are certain tiers of that. Now, the one thing that I'd say is something that constantly is brought up to me as I push out these ideas is like, there are those layers in the middle that are often unaccounted for, right? Like, we know the byline writer, and that byline writer, yes, is definitely the dominant force to that content being engaged with or shared or viewed. But those layers in between editor, designer, right, are oftentimes not considered within that within that value chain, but they're critical, right?

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  So one thing to really think about as kind of working through those models is really thinking about how you start to expose that value as well. So you start to really attribute all these different things. On an inverse look, what's really interesting is like, and I've kind of brought, I brought this up in the poet days, and we talk about it all the time at the post, and the Tog is working on a project with Adobe. That's a blockchain project, I think, sponsored by IBM Garage. But really about the exposure of the effort in that work, right? Like, there, there's this notion of like, you work in a company, you're driving all these benefits, and that's recognizable, and how does that look? And how does licensing and setup and those things look? But also on the other side, it's like, as a reader, I want to read content, and I will trust this content or engage with this content more

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  if you start to expose that same data to me, right? Like, was this fact-checked? Who's the writer of this? What links are, you know, tied to it? What's the provenance of that information? Yes, this is sourced, but who was the source? There's a couple of different ways to do that, that both drive and kind of deliver both of those models. When it comes to the licensing thing of people leaving afterwards, I think that's the most interesting thing for a lot of companies to start thinking and talking about. And I do know a couple of media companies today that are already kind of thinking about this, which is this idea that traditionally... It was a risk for media companies to like make celebrities out of their writers, right? Because they're salary employees, they're creating under the umbrella. So the

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  whole goal and focus always is like to put the brand first and to push the brand forward. That's what you sign up for, absolutely. But if you started kind of, if, if, if a creator starts to fly away, right? Which now think about how easy that is with Twitter, every other platform, you could like go viral and you could be gone. Thirty years ago, it was like you get to pick up the phone to call someone and tell them they had a great article, right? Like it just never happened. But media companies were essentially incentivized to like not let that creator reputation fly and not make them famous. And you could look at actual examples like Politico, when Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman, Maggie Haberman now writes for The Times, and Ben Smith now writes for The Times, who is formerly editor

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  in chief of BuzzFeed, they blew up at Politico and they left, right? And, and like Politico was left there and they went off and continued to build their brands. There needs to be that incentive for media companies to allow that now. Because one, it benefits the media company like and their brand. If that creator blows up, creates content, builds a huge audience, that reflects on the brands, right? But the brand's concern that that creator's just gonna leave is all tied to the incentive models, right? It's all tied to the fact that like, you're not giving them an incentive to stay, right? If there is shared equity, if there is more like, like a revenue opportunity, or some sort of ownership opportunity, or

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  you can leave, right? To the example that you said, you can leave and you still own 20% of the IP. So you are incentivized to like go and create and even when you leave, that value IP still remains. There's another radical idea that I'd love to put out there, which is basically like, Can media companies or like you definitely see this in the venture space, right? But in media companies, it doesn't happen. If I'm an up and coming creator, um, maybe a media company wants to invest in me as a brand. Right? Like we talk about like tokenizing the individual and I you I could talk to about this because you'll get it, but some people are like, what the, what's that? But like this idea that, okay, like you're an up and coming creator on my platform. I'm going to invest in you.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  I own 10% of you as a brand. You go do whatever you want. That's going to help build your brand because the financial returns make sense to me. So like these mechanisms need to change. It's gonna happen. I think it has to happen or else, you know, independent creators, as they grow up and there's more and more and more opportunity for them to get famous, for them to drive value, drive popularity, they will leave unless those incentives remain intact. Now, I think news is a like, like news is unique because news is very contingent on the brand, but that's a micro, but that's a micro topic on a way more macro trend that will need to work out. So lots to unpack there.

• 1:04:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, and I think that you're, you're nailing it in the sense of if you align the incentives correctly, then a lot of things can change. But right now it's one side of this relationship is extracting way more value than the other. And that's almost causing like a pendulum, right? Like the pendulum swung in the favor of the media companies. Now there's tools and services that are coming out that are allowing the pendulum to swing back in the power of the creators. But actually we should find somewhere in between, right? Somewhere, somewhere in the middle of that where it's a win-win for both parties will kind of find harmony or equilibrium in the market rather than just allowing, you know, every five to 10 years, the pendulum to swing back and forth. It, it kind of just feels like, you know, you never get to a steady state of a win-win type of relationship.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, somebody said this morning that like the middle class of publishing is gone, like there's no middle class in publishing that you're either. Like one of these independent creators that's building on the platforms, or you're one of these larger holding companies. And I basically said, it's kind of the opposite. Like, if you looked at it in the inverse, where like, everyone is kind of working on either side back towards the middle. Like, sure, the middle class is like gone, but everyone's trying to work back towards that. You have these media companies who in who over invested in so many things outside of their business, whether that's tech, business, like investment, venture, like things that weren't tied to their content or their main value proposition, which where which they're now trying to divest

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  in order to have a better kind of fixed cost structure so that they could be a profitable media company. And then you have these independents that are basically saying, what's the minimal kind of like add-ons I need to put in order to be a successful company so that I'm not over bloated and I don't lose focus? And they're actually coming back towards the middle. And that's exactly right on. I think what happens is everyone on this even playing field. Now, I don't know, like, people are like, is the next phase for a lot of these independent creators for media companies to acquire them? And like, Web Smith said that, you know, there's been a couple of conversations happening that like, he hasn't entertained, but he's been approached. And then that starts to open up this notion of like,

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  what is that value of the independent creator? Like, you would assume that a media company would want to acquire them because of their audience. But you think, like what I said earlier, that relationship of like me with that creator as a as a subscriber, going along for the ride, feeling like they're a part of it and growing it. There's a huge argument to be made that their relationship with the subscriber is like 10x the relationship of a larger company with the subscriber. Thus, is their value 10x? Is it like something that they should never sell? There's like all these different things that'll kind of factor and come to play, but it's all happening.

• 1:07:37Anthony Pompliano?

  The last thing I want to talk about is this idea of the creators actually using their audience, not for just monetizing in the way that you or I would think about monetizing content, but actually being the top of the funnel and really the potential customer base for building businesses. And in the most extreme examples, we've seen Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Kanye West kind of do this. They are creators, but I think mainly we think of them as celebrities that have audience and then they were able to monetize it by building a business. One, do you think that's going to happen with the independent creators? And two, have you seen anything there that suggests like that might actually be underway?

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, people, I mean, people have gotten mad at me for saying that I think like, at least in the early days of like this creator movement, that you kind of have to be famous, at least with Substack. I felt that you really had to already have a pre-existing audience or a pre-existing following in order to port over. I got slammed on, people were pissed that I said that. And there was like two examples that people gave me, of people who actually built brands on like Substack from the ground up. But I do, I do think that this idea of, I mean, look, audience, audience is probably the hardest, most underappreciated work that needs to happen for these independent creators, right? It's something that we constantly

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  overlook. When we talk about leaving media companies, we're like totally disregarding the fact that these media companies allow them to build audience, right? When we talk about all the work that needs to be done, like creating content every day and figuring out what CMS to use, you forget about the fact that all of this work has to be done in order to accrue and build that audience. So I think that, I think that as these creators find their platform of choice and delivery, it really is kind of contingent on or most beneficial for them to be able to have another platform where that audience is built to then port over. I think that there are kind of extremes outside, but.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  The goal, the goal too, right? Like you, you use the word famous and I do, I do think that that's the goal too. Right? I think the goal for these creators, um, as they start to kind of build their brand and move over between different platforms and come grow, kind of grow their influence is in fact to become famous. Because as you do become famous, then you are able to then easily port over it and go on to new platforms, go on and build new businesses and be able to extend that. You can't imagine a world, right? And like, there was an article in the journal about this, like that, that, like the top musicians aren't making music. Like they're like 90% of their business is being made from other shit. Like if they're creating like a beverage company or, you know, they, they, they have a new network or, you know, they're doing things through like investments.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  And you can imagine that a similar approach will probably be taken for these independent creators, especially like the writers on Substack. It's like, okay, they're making money through writing and building audience now, but eventually they'll grow fame and celebrity and popularity to the point where now they'll be able to leverage that. Not have to do that for their business, be able to do that to your point to like build more audience or just for fun. And allow all that work that they've done to then be pivoted and moved over to doing other things, whether that's, you know, being on a network or doing television or broadcast or being able to extend that kind of like a Jamel Harris type approach. Like, I think like, that should be the goal. It shouldn't be, I'm going to create a newsletter. I'm going to have, you know, a single channel, my career.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  It's that, oh, I'm using this in order to get to that next thing. And that's very rare and weird for journalism because that's just never been the case. But again, it's happening and I think we'll see similar kind of behaviors and transitions there as we've seen with every other inch.

• 1:11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It's fascinating to me because, uh, I think that it all comes back to the idea that audience is the new currency. And if you have audience, you're able to push them between platforms, you're able to monetize them, you're able to do all kinds of things. But audience is kind of that, that powerful thing. And that ultimately to your point leads to, you know, who owns the audience, right? So, um, you know, if a no name journalist and not no name in a negative sense, but just that they're unknown, uh, joins a media publication, they build a massive Twitter following and then they leave. Right? Was it the individual or the publication that, that created that? Now today, I think default always is, and I personally believe it should be in the hands of the creator. Uh, but, but I think that. That is a whole nother strategy that we will see. We will literally see people who want to be individual creators,

• 1:12:02Anthony Pompliano?

  but they'll go join somewhere, use that brand as a launching pad. You know, probably the best example that we've seen so far is Pat McAfee left the NFL, joined Barstool, was there for, you know, a decent amount of time, realized, wait, I can do this exact same thing myself. Went and now he's got, I believe, the largest YouTube show in terms of sports audience.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you look at that, you're like, okay, like, here's a dude who just left, walked out of the NFL, learned, built, you know, kind of an audience with Barstool and then left, did it for himself. And I think he just signed like a big multimillion dollar contract with DraftKings.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's such a big point that like, it's really interesting that you say that, right? Cause I think, I think the, the, the common thinking is that you don't want to work at a media company because you want to own that audience, right? Like when you, like early Substack conversations were like, when you're creating for a publisher, they own your IP, they own that audience, come over here, you own that IP, you own that audience, which is true. But then on the inverse to your point, if you don't have an audience, right? The audience literally isn't just who's reading you on that publisher. Your audience now becomes your Twitter following or any platform following. So you leverage that media company in order to build that following, then in fact, you are actually owning and accruing your audience there and porting that over.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  I think that that's the biggest thing though, is like, the future media businesses are all about interoperability. It's really about being able to build audiences places and port them over. Again, you know this probably better than most people. And, and, and, and creators are going to be kind of focusing on those things where, and connecting those platforms and connecting channels and connecting content when they know that that portability could exist. Things that don't allow for that sort of portability or that kind of brand building or reputation building, I think are going to start to become like very, very, very uninteresting or disinteresting for a lot of these creators.

• 1:13:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's a fascinating world. What's the one thing that you're looking for in the future as we wrap up? In terms of this specific trend or this specific like milestone to happen where you will say, hey, that, that's big.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, um, I think.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  I think there's a couple of things. One is, I think the more, the more creators that start to come over outside of kind of like an opinion vertical that are focused on like news, right? Or things really focused on like breaking news investigative journalism and work there. That is really expensive and it's like really hard and needs a brand umbrella and reputation. And I think when you start seeing that happen, you can really start to understand like how this is actually going to break apart. I think right now what's very clear is there are a lot of, exactly to your point, like opinion writers who could go and create their own brands, but news is still news and you trust the news to be there. I think when you start to see those trends move over, then things could become a little interesting.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  I do, I do wanna see how, how platforms like Substack or you know, other kind of, or like Ghost or MailChimp start to build on top of that comfort competence level. Like that to me is my passion economy thesis, like how I think about, you know, investing, how I think about products being built. It's all around this idea of like enabling that creator comfort and competence. And once those things start to pick up, I think we'll start to see gradually other things move over and it'll start to kind of like boom up and move. There's like this idea of membership, which I think this, this which, which we didn't hit on,

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  but it's a big point. The idea of subscriptions is very transactional and old, right? It's kind of like, I pay you to get content and it's like, like I give you the ticket, you give me the goods, I'm out. Membership is really like about status identity. It's like Amazon Prime, I have two day shipping, I have Whole Foods discounts, it's my identity, it's my status, I need that. These independent creators are building similar things, right? Like, like Web Smith has Polymathic, you can join to be a part of that community, you engage on that particular community, there's like monthly webinars, there's a lot of... People are doing like, like, community-only conversations. You could have like one-to-one interviews.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Like, it goes way beyond access and into these benefits. And as those things start to build, that's going to pose a real threat to, you know, traditional media companies or any businesses that are just focused on subscription. When it's like, well, I'm paying you and all I get is this content. I'm paying this creator and I'm getting 50 things a month, right? And I'm really kind of part of this community and it like essentially becomes my identity. The last thing to put on my crypto hat, which I'm begging for, is like this ownership economy, right? So, so like, how do you start to be able to build a platform where your audience, right, like your loyal audience, the ones who follow you, the ones who engage, are actually equitable, like in you as a brand, right?

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  Instead of, instead of creators getting like paid through transactional subscriptions or by media companies, what does it look like when the community itself starts to like engage with the creators on a level where they then have a stake in the IP, they then have a stake in your success? Very crypto-thinking, but like been hammering that for a bit and waiting and waiting and waiting for that to start to move. And people are thinking that way, right? And it's, that's where I think things start to become really interesting because it's like, I believe in you as a creator, so much so that I have equity in you as a creator. You create this content, there's benefits for me. But then if you as a creator end up getting bought, like you, Joe Rogan, get this deal or go somewhere else, then there starts to become returns to that community. And that really kind of like sparks a new economy.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  That's really weird, but really exciting.

• 1:17:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, and we're already seeing it in some form or fashion with like the Lambda School ISAs, where I think sharing agreements, things like that. Now, that's a very specific use case with kind of capped risk for both the individual and for Lambda. And so I think that's kind of a test the waters, dip your toe type thing. But to your point, is there a world where a creator in the future says, hey, I'm basically going to put myself on Kickstarter, right? You're going to give me some money upfront, I'm going to go create awesome content. And every dollar I make, you're going to get, you know, as a community, 20 cents of. And I'm going to do this and I commit to doing it for the next five years, right? Or, you know, whatever it is. You could see people very, very much saying, yeah, this is worth it. And then if all of a sudden, uh, kind of your share in the creator is tradable.

• 1:18:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So, hey, we thought that, you know, they were going to make a hundred K a year, but actually they're making 250. I've been able to pull out all the value I want out of this. Now I can actually sell the, uh, the share of the token at a higher price. I mean, you could see this whole thing.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it creates, it like creates an entirely new world that I think is, I think it's something people have been asking for and people want. Like you see these, this like, I kind of said this earlier, like I feel, I feel even with newsletter subscriptions that I pay for, that it's less about me paying for that content because I need that content, even though I wouldn't subscribe if it wasn't valuable. But it's more so, I feel like I am investing in that creator, knowing that they, they need this money in order to continue creating the content I like and building the community I like. If there's an option to say, okay, you could pay $10 a month for this newsletter, or you could pay $20 a month, right?

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  And you accrue point 05% of like holdings of this, that like of this company. Then maybe I would do that because my kind of intent to subscribing in the first place is to invest in this creator and believe that this creator is kind of going places. So, yeah.

• 1:19:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. It makes a, makes a ton of sense. Where, um, where can people find you on the internet and where do we want to send them?

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'm at Jared Dicker on Twitter. That's where I've been spending way too much time lately. So shoot me a note there. I get back to everybody. So would love to chat.

• 1:20:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You are, uh, one of my favorite follows because I feel like you're willing to, uh, to say the things that, uh, are one likely to happen, but two, maybe unpopular, uh, or, or people don't understand. So please keep going because, uh, you, you make me think all the time when you tweet stuff. But I appreciate you coming on and we're going to have to do, we'll do round three again at some point in the future.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Thanks for having me. It's a blast.