Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - 10 Years of Stratechery: Best and Worst Takes, Creating on the Internet, AI as a Threat, and Memories of Day 1

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Celebrating 10 years of Stratechery as a subscription business with 10 questions about analysis, creating on the Internet, what's coming with AI, and what it was like on day 1.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? Doing okay, Andrew. How are you? I'm good. I'm in a festive mood here and we're kicking things off tonight with an announcement of something that we first announced back in February. Stratory is raising subscription prices beginning on Monday. The new prices will be $15 a month or a discounted rate for annual subscriptions, $150 a year. Ben, do you have anything to add? No, sorry for the delay, although not that anyone feels bad about that. Yeah. I think I've mentioned this, but it's a pro consumer podcast. It's the only second second price raise ever in 10 years. The last one was on a different software platform. I forgot we had to build the capability to do it on fastboard. But,

but yes, it's coming. And I think the framing on this is AI in particular, like I'm excited to keep going and keep doing more. And that's the context of doing this. Not looking to wrap up or ramp down or just do podcasts. It's sort of a recommitment from me to keep writing as well. And so I think it's ultimately, hopefully a win-win for everyone. But if you want a bigger win and you're a monthly subscriber, you can switch to an annual plan.

And at $120, you have to money to do it. Yeah, 96 hours and counting. That's right. It's like this is the only, way you ever get a quote unquote discount from chastectory. I never do sales. I will never lower my price. This is your one chance to feel like you're getting went over on me. So there you go. There you go. Take advantage and we'll link the more extended February announcement in the show notes for anyone who'd like to hear more. But I am very excited to keep it all rolling here.

And we're going to start the episode today by reading something you wrote on Tuesday. Anniversaries are strange, you wrote. No one but those involved have any reason to even know they exist, which makes them easy to skip. For example, last year, I mostly ignored the 10-year anniversary of starting Stratereckery because I was more eager to write about chat GPT getting a computer. That leaves today, April 16th, as my last chance to mark a 10 anniversary. 10 years ago, Stratory added a subscription option, making this my full-time job. Ben, happy anniversary to you. I was not familiar with the concept of a tin anniversary.

So thank you for educating me. I went to look it up because I needed a way to sort of like complete that sentence and make a reference. And I was really disappointed that it was just tin. Like I feel good about this sort of 10 year thing. I don't usually want to write about myself and things like that. But I did want to market it. I think it's a meaningful benchmark.

And so I'm like, you know, what is it? Is it like, is it silver? Is it like platinum? No, it's 10. Keep writing. The spin that's on it is, yeah, something about being durable and enduring or something on those lines. It's like, okay, I guess I'll go for that. I can't wait to the Diamond Jubilee episode of Sharp Tech decades into the future.

Diamond is 75, I think. I think we got a waste to go for that. Yeah, we're going to get there. Don't you worry. Yes, I read that. And it was from your article, MK. B. PhDs for everything, which I strongly encouraged the entire audience to go read if they haven't already. I really enjoyed it.

But I was prepping the show and I pasted it into the outline. And I was like, oh, God, that article was so great. Was there a typo in the first paragraph? Tin anniversary? That can't possibly be a thing. That's so depressing. But here we are. The tin anniversary.

The alternative was it's tin anniversary or aluminum anniversary. I'm like, just a lot of bad options to be totally honest. That's why we're going to keep grinding into the future to get some better options. We got to get to a better medal. Yeah, that's the goal at this point. Yes. Well, to celebrate the occasion here, I have put together a little 10-year questionnaire for you. We're going to put you in the hot seat and we'll see where the questionnaire takes us. But question number one comes from our co-worker Dumman, C-O, as far as I'm concerned, of Stratory Enterprises. is he wrote in and said, as you look back,

what take of yours has aged the best and what has aged the worst? So which side of that equation would you like to start with? I mean, there's a lot of ways to look at this, like on a micro or sort of macro sense. I think about it probably in terms of the big tech companies because that's what I write about the most and most sort of associated with. And this is a bit where actually I think the 10 year, it's 10 years since the subscription option.

It's actually 11 years of Chicherey as a whole. And in my first, you know, I started out ready Chichari well at Microsoft. And I left Microsoft at June 30th, 2013. And I could now write about Microsoft. So I wrote like the next week, like three articles about it pointing out just how the company was completely thinking about itself wrong. It was too centered on Windows. It didn't understand the nature of its power previously. And the fact, it could be a very important.

vertical and horizontal company because it was a monopoly. And this whole thing they were doing about focusing on devices and making the windows the center of everything. And then Steve Balmer reorganizes the company. We're going to be a functional organization like Apple. It was such a fundamental misunderstanding of the company that I wrote a series of articles laying out like, you know, this is insane. I wrote an article about the difference between a functional organization and divisional organization. And I wrote an article called services, not devices, that basically said Microsoft needs to think of itself.

completely differently. This is first and foremost a horizontal company whose greatest value proposition to companies is solving all your problems. Now, they might solve them in a mediocre fashion, but they sort of like take care of everything and they commoditize things around that. That, you know, and laying out, this is how Microsoft, they need to put Office 65 at the center. They need to lean into Azure and make it more sort of general purpose, not just sort of about Windows sort of things. And that is basically exactly what Satinaidel did over the last 10 years. I would say he followed my strategy to a T. Now, I am not going to take credit for that. I like to think I wrote it because it was obvious, right? But it's certainly, I would say, my writing about Microsoft and

documenting both saying what they should do and then documenting what they have done and how they've approached it is probably pretty fairly flawless. And that's probably a function that I worked there, right? Like I understood at a deep level, the cultural issues they face, the incentive challenges that they face, the organizational issues that they faced. But by virtue of writing as an outsider, and having been someone that I looked at tech for a very long time, and the way that I sort of think, I could also then draw a very clear line from where they were to where they needed to go. And so I've always, you know, it's very funny because I obviously had stock options at Microsoft as, you know, when I was there, which I had to give up when I left. That's too bad.

I just are worth a lot of money today. No, it was $40 to stock when I was there. I don't know what this is. It's a lot more than that. We're in the 400s these days. So I think that one turned out pretty well. Silver would obviously be Facebook. Facebook, I think it's a similar thing I can draw a line to my life experiences, not having grown up in Silicon Valley, not having been in tech most of my career, having been from small town Wisconsin, having been in Taiwan, having seen the degree to which Facebook penetrated and was appealing to actual normal people in a way that I think technology is consistently missed again and again and again.

And just being like generally bullish on Facebook's options has been a tremendous winning bet and differentiator all the way along. And this is the gift that keeps on giving. Like people gave into the Microsoft narrative at some point. I got to write meta myths 18 months ago when their stock was also, that's a 10-bager also. Or no, not a 10-baker, 5x. I think they're at $90. Now they're at $400 or $500. Just saying, no, they're fine.

You don't actually understand this company's relative position in the market. People just look at them. They still have my space in their head. It's absolutely bizarre. And so again, I think these were two relatively easy calls. But I do think one thing that has differentiated checkery has been understanding and writing about advertising, which no one does, despite the fact that it's the most important business model in tech. I think I mentioned on this podcast, my early advertising writing was actually pretty poor. But I was actually writing about it.

And then I learned more and I understood it better and better. And I think all my writing about ATT, understanding Facebook and the relative, what was actually going on there, defending Facebook at a time when that was, I got, you know, that was probably the most,

I got the most extreme. Oh, you just want Mark Zuckerberg on your podcast, blah, blah, accusations of, but I mean, I think that the,

now everyone is like, yeah, ATT is kind of unfair. That actually might not have been a good thing. Well, there was that. And then also, meta myths. I remember when you wrote that, the quarterly earnings, people were really freaking out

at how much money they were spending on the metaverse and VR, and that was driving a lot of the skepticism of meta. But I remember just pouring over the numbers before we recorded a podcast about it. And the amount of revenue that they are generating every quarter was so absurd and made the losses on the metaverse and reality labs and everything look relatively inconsequential. And so it was kind of a tail wagging the dog situation in terms of the overall meta narrative at that point. Wasn't just meta myths though. Like metameths was in many respects a rewrite of an article I wrote in 2018 called Facebook Lenses, where there was the previously the largest single day drop in like absolute value before meta did it was Facebook itself in 2018.

and it was the same thing. Facebook has been the gift that keeps on giving for me, right? At some point, I'm going to get screwed when they actually do hit a wall and they're in trouble. But, like, honestly, just believing in Facebook, which again, I do credit my life experiences. I think I understand Facebook's appeal in place in people's lives in a way that people in Silicon Valley and the media don't. It's been, like I said, a gift that keeps on giving. I mentioned the advertising point about not really understanding and rocking it, even though I was writing about it, which in itself, again, was a huge differentiator for me.

By far, my most absurd article in retrospect was peak Google, which was basically saying, I wasn't saying that Google was done, just that they weren't going to be particularly relevant anymore. And that was like, their stock was like a tenth of what it was today. Just a, and that one makes me mad because I actually think that was around the time that Google's relevance was fading in terms of like their culture just sort of like the malaise that we talk about today. That was about when it was happening.

they were losing their vigor, but I didn't appreciate my own writing about the power of aggregators, about the power of mobile and its penetration. And they could literally do nothing for a decade other than just insert more and more ads into the SERP, the Search Engine Landing results page,

and just up into the right constantly. Yeah. I also, I didn't properly sort of talk about YouTube in that article. It was one of those articles that in an ethereal sort of sense, I think I was tapping into something about Google reaching a different stage. But that stage was independent of its monetization capability.

And that's just a – and so it's an embarrassing article to sort of have in your archives. But it is what it is. It's one of the worst ones. Yeah. No. I was curious what you would go with for worst. Oh, there's Clubhouse. That is another, like, brutal one.

Oh, Clubhouse is great. Oh, no. So there's two more as long as we're making for those. So the clubbust one just that was so stupid. I way over indexed on my own experience. It was definitely a pandemic thing. No, just, it was just bad. The other one was WeWork.

And we work because that was more a function of getting too cute. I was very skeptical of it, but I wanted to sort of be the counterintuitive. Like you're thinking about this in a different way, analogizing it to sort of Amazon sort of thing, this idea of fixed assets, you know, and leverage them broadly. I was too cute.

for school in a certain respect. And it came across as more positive than I actually felt. And, um, and that, that one, just that was rough. Uh, just in a lot of cases, you as a we work guy. I wasn't really a we work guy. That's why it's, that one's infuriating because I was, I just wanted to zag and, like, present the zag argument. And I put in there, like, I'm not really zagging.

I actually would never invest in this in a million years, but I over did it, tried to get too cute. And that was truly terrible. Okay. Well, all right. So I have a couple answers from our two years working together. I would say in terms of takes that have aged the worst, it's not even just you, but everyone in tech got into tech because they love technology. And so VR is like this ultimate unicorn technology.

So whether it's the quest or the metaverse or the vision. Pro, there's far too much indulgence and not enough people asking the VP of common sense question, which is do normal people actually want this? And time and time again, there's been a lot of indifference at some of those products. And so that would be the one where I continue to push back every time there's some sort of new innovation in that space. Normal people don't actually care is generally the reaction. Do you have any thoughts before I get to a best take. Well, there's, I mean, there's the take. I think it was from Bill Gates or whatever it is that we overestimate what will happen in two years and underestimate that will happen in 10 or

something along those lines. And I would say, I've had no expectations for what it's worth that we're all going to be in VR glasses tomorrow or next year. This, like, from my perspective, we're talking about sort of a 10 year sort of timeline. The thing is, for your point of view, I think it's legitimate to question the 10-year timeline as well, right? So, yeah, to the extent, like, oh, we need a VP of Metaverse. We joked about this sort of like last episode. No, that's ridiculous. We're talking about a fundamental new experience and new way to experience technology.

That's not like a smartphone where it's just a better phone that you're already carrying. We're talking about fundamentally changing the way people work. And that is going to be a long process. And I remain optimistic about sort of the possibilities here. But I recognize and appreciate your pushback on these possibilities may literally never materialize. That's definitely possible. But I would just excuse myself from the camp of, no, this is going to happen right now. And I think there's a bit where, you know, like the whole meta renaming thing.

And that was part of meta miss. I put it in there. It's like it doesn't matter. Like their core business is still really good. This capital investment is actually not going towards the metaverse. It's going towards machine warning and buying up all these GVs. that were super cheap at the time. Pretty good call there by Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah. And so I would both grant you. That's a fair point. But I think you're lumping me in a bit unfairly with some of the most overt of angels. But that said, we may come back in 10 years and nothing never really happened. In which case you can absolutely, you can, I will throw myself in front of the Andrew train.

Well, that's the thing. Every time I voice a little skepticism, you hit me with a, oh, from the guy who doesn't even like AirPods, doesn't even have AirPods? This is what people were saying about the internet in the 90s, right? They're like, this is all ridiculous. And it was ridiculous. And maybe I need to extend more than 10 years. But like 20 years on, basically everything that people were talking about the 90s came true.

It just took a long time. And by the way, this is skepticism that should be applied to AI as well. You know, there's a bit, the more profound the change, the longer it may take. Again, I think I'm repeating myself from last episode. But, you know, and so I think the pushback is absolutely fair and valid. And yes, technologists and systemitizers will jump to the end state too quickly and not appreciate all the things between here and there. Particularly when there's elegant technology, just the fact that it exists is proof of its success as opposed to utility for normal people who don't care about technology. I mean, it's funny because like I succeeded by being in the opposite camp as far as like Facebook goes, right?

Understanding the actual normal person point of view. So I think this is a, it's a very fair point. Okay, so one take that aged the best. There was like a three podcast arc around Sydney the chatbot that was so much fun. Because for me, as your friend, it gave me a window into what it was like when you first fell in love with technology. And the unbridled enthusiasm of those first couple of days was just fun to experience secondhand. And then Microsoft instantly pulled the plug. And it became sort of a profound commentary on corporate risk aversion as a long-term threat to AI providing breakthrough experiences.

And if you just go back and revisit those couple of episodes, it's a nice little mini chapter that predicts a lot of what has ensued across AI over the last year or so. And I think it holds up pretty well. And I also just smile every time I remember how insane Sydney, the chatbot, made you. for a couple days there. Oh, Sydney. Oh, Sydney. We'll always have Sydney. No, it's, I mean, you're right.

It was a profound experience. Like, just the, the sense of, so one of the reasons I'm enthusiastic about VR is that sense of presence that you, like, if you, once you experience it, you get it. You're like, okay, there's a huge valley between here and there. But there is a world where this is so much better. It's so much better. This like we're looking at each other in a 2D screen and it sucks once you've what you've experienced the real thing. I think you look great. Right? Well, thank you. Yeah. I was doing a presentation for for Kellogg those my NBA, two bunch of NBA students this morning. So I put on a put on a button down shirt here. Nice. But I like sweating my rear end off. It's terrible. Great business look for the 10 anniversary show.

The 10 anniversary. Sydney, you know, it's a similar thing. It's like the this. the sense of, it's like a sense of presence. Like you're talking to something to something real. And despite the limitations of having to go through a chat interface and all these sorts of things. And yeah, it's sad and concerning the extent which that is denied. And, you know, we'll see what happens sort of in the long run. But this is the whole AI issue, right? Like we have, we need this scale, but the companies of the scale are.

just so conservative and hidebound that we're not going to actually achieve the wonder that that's possible. Yeah, exactly. In the short term, it has a real gating function. So we'll see when that gate is removed or the restrictor plate is removed somewhere along the way, perhaps by the open source. Time will tell. But we spent too much time on question number one. I worked in some questions from listeners in response to your article this week. Question number two is from Stephen. I read Ben's article this week and then followed his link to the end of average and notice that almost all the people he mentioned in that piece have now moved on. The paragraph reads, Nate Silver's 538 is one of a growing number of personality-driven sites and blogs, including Ezra Klein and Vox, Andrew Sullivan and his eponymous blog, and Silver's colleague at ESPN, Bill Simmons of Grantland. All three are successful because of the internet, their readers, including myself, you wrote, love them, and what's not to like? So then Stephen continues and says, 538 basically shut down.

Vox isn't really Vox anymore. Andrew Sullivan and Bill Simmons are no longer at their blogs, but many of them are on substack or substack-like platforms. Was the issue that 538 and Vox weren't really structured correctly for the internet? They had a whole bunch of staff and not enough of the humans benefiting from AI driving the ship, so to speak. I'd love to hear thoughts from you and Andrew. So, Ben, what are your thoughts?

Well, this is actually a great point into the what you got right and what you got wrong question as well. There's an article I wrote called popping the publishers publishing bubble that basically said this entire structure of the way, because we all knew newspapers were due. They were actually light manufacturing businesses that relied on geographic monopolies. Once the geographic monopoly went a lot, went a lot of the printing presses, the delivery trucks, those were all dead weight that actually made it even possible to succeed. all the way they produced content was unsuitable for being a destination site a must read sort of thing. They were about volume, not about quality. And so they were all screwed. But what about all the digital publishers that grew up, the Voxes, the 538s, the BuzzFeeds, that were digital first.

And my point in there was they're all screwed too. Because of this shift in if what matters is attention is demand, all the advertising is going to the aggregators. It's going because they understand the users. It's a much better place to be. This idea that you can just be a portion of user attention and be anything meaningful is doomed. So they're actually just as screwed as the traditional publishers. That was a great call. And I'm like, if you want, if you need to, you need to connect directly with customers and you need

to monetize directly. You have to have a much larger average revenue per user, which means subscriptions, not ads. That's going to be successful. It was also a bad call that I'm like, I try. to, like, I didn't want to be all doom and gloom. So like, well, you, like, how could you do it otherwise? And I held BuzzFeed up as, well, they're figuring all these other things. They're doing branded deals.

They're doing all these into social media. And what they're doing is they're taking one piece of content and spreading it everywhere and getting leverage that way. And I think BuzzFeed was the most innovative on that front and also failed. So, like, I wasn't harsh enough. Yeah, I didn't. I held that up as it as like, you definitely. couldn't be in the middle. I'm like, you have to go all the way to one side and highly monetize your end users. Or if go all the way to the other and treat your content, you have

to get massive leverage on it and spread it everywhere. Yeah. Jonah Paredi blames the social networks for not paying for quality content. I think it's a reasonable case, but there's just so much content out there. Maybe that was never actually viable. There's lots of reasons why, you know, it didn't, it couldn't sustain the cost structures that they had. They've had to cut a lot. Maybe it's going to work with AI. That's what BuzzFeed is pivoting to where you just you're you take your costs really down to to not to zero literally but drastically lower by leveraging AI. That's probably right. I think that makes more sense. You just you can't you can't you can't support the cost structure. So you have to fix the cost structure problem and that's what happened to a lot of these

sites like when I I talk about the article's blogging is down like no the blogging is a business model problem. Asra Klein could have set up a subscription site right. Matthew Iglesias is his partner at Vox did so and makes millions of dollars a year. Like he's doing, he's doing great. The challenge is they want to have it all. They want the massive reach. They want to get to everyone and they also want to make money.

And one of the things the internet is forced on publishers is you have to make choices. You don't get it for free anymore. You don't get to be Microsoft. You don't get to be a monopoly. You have to actually focus and choose and be strategic. And that means in the case of someone like Iglesias, stuff's going to be paywalled. and people are going to be unhappy and it's not going to get the reach you might want,

but you're also going to make money along the way. Ezra Klein went to the New York Times, like the sort of winner of the wars, New York Times is 10 million subscribers, most of whom are not in New York City. They've sort of like, they are the newspaper for basically everyone, which I commend,

and I think that's another one I got right. I wrote what they should do very explicitly in like the early run of strategy. And I, that was, I know they had a big impact. And like, I admire what they've done from business perspective. And so, yeah, so that this question encapsulates actually both sides of the coin as far as getting stuff right and getting stuff wrong.

Well, you don't want to be the guy in 2015, 2016, saying none of these websites are going to exist in a couple years because revenue stream is just going to dry up entirely. But in addition to that. I should. I mean, I was I was generally too optimistic about BuzzFeed all along. And I had to write a Mayacolpa about that. In part, honestly, just looking back, I wanted it to work. I wanted the idea that you can have a site that is a publishing site that it doesn't have to just be subscriptions. I think the concerns about, look, it's a real access and equality sort of issue with

all the best stuff you have to pay for. That's a problem. And so I wanted it to work. And I think my wanting it to work clouded some of my analysis in that case. So this is a little outside. the box, but in addition to the points on the financial structure, just looking at the names in this email, one of the things that I find interesting is you think back to Andrew Sullivan at New York magazine, for example, where when he was at New York Magazine, oftentimes he's just writing

exactly what he thinks. You can say the same about Matt Iglesias. And toward the end of Matt at Glacius at Vox and Andrew Sullivan at New York Magazine, it was creating a lot of friction within the newsrooms there. And so a fair way to summarize the situation. Right. And so in addition to the failed financial structures of 2010's digital media, there are also some institutional challenges that can make it harder for independent thinkers and creators to thrive when they're part of a giant organization.

It's not just independent thinkers. it's the internet forces specialization to an astronomical degree. And so you end up where everyone at New York Magazine or Vox's online is on Twitter. They're getting herded into a consensus point of view. And there's a bit where that's powerful. Having a consistent culture and everyone pointing the same direction in a massively competitive dog eat dog world. And you think about even subscriptions, right? You want people to pay because they agree.

They want more of what you say. The problem for digital media, though, was, every newsroom had the same attitudes. There's less differentiation now. That's why a lot of them are not succeeding. I think that's a reason why you see generally the successful substackers are not aligned with the New York Times as an example, right? If you're aligned with the New York Times, why do you need a substack?

You already have the New York Times. And New York Times faced this internally in 2020, just an internal pushback against sort of like dissenting sort of points of view on the opinion page. And that's a real challenge with subscriptions generally. You have power because you only serve your subscribers. And so you can be an Andrew Sullivan or be a Matthew Glacios or be further afield and get support from your sort of subscribers. But you're also constrained to a certain extent. And it's difficult and challenging to manage that.

It's a distinct problem from an advertising based business model that like audience capture in sort of a certain extent. And it's, you know, so it's definitely a real. Well, yeah. And I think back to the. internet like 15 years ago and all these outlets had a distinct point of view. And then over the course of 10 or 15 years, it all sort of merged into one collective voice. And it's why I appreciate it. It's totally Twitter's fault. Entirely Twitter's fault. But it's why I really appreciate the independent creator universe because it's sort of a taste of that early internet. This is the good part about

subscriptions is subscriptions give you a feedback mechanism that's independent of the loudest voices on Twitter, right? Are people paying or are they not? Now, again, this can lead to problems of audience capture and people want a certain point of view and that's what they'll pay for. But the opposite problem where publication will brag, oh, we don't even show our writers their traffic numbers. We want them to be independent. Guess what? Humans crave feedback. They want to know what people think. If you don't give them an independent source of feedback, they'll go get it from social media. And social media ends up in these heard sort of mentalities where the loudest voices and the attacks push everyone in particular direction. And that's how you end up with this collective sort of thought across all these organizations in part because they didn't have alternative incentives and feedback mechanisms for their writers, whereas Substack gives that to you.

Yeah, exactly. And it's why I love Substack. It's why I love Stratory. And podcasts also a medium that has the spirit of the. early internet where. And it's harder to kill someone for a podcast take, right? Like, this is why the Apple automatic transcription stuff irritates me. Because I absolutely believe in accessibility to those lines and I've helped people that

need options in that regard. I don't like it being done automatically precisely because the beauty of this format is, what's the Bill Simmons for a long form conversation they had to put it up for ESPN. Free flowing conversation. Free flowing conversation. That's what I'm looking forward. That's right. Absolutely.

It's a beauty of the format, for sure. And you hear the tone of voice. You hear the vigor with which I'm talking right now, right? Yeah. And it changes the product and allows more room for exploration. Right. The tradeoff is it's a non-hostile medium most of the time. What's the tradeoff?

It's hard to grow a podcast because it doesn't go viral, right? It's hard to spread. And so everything is a tradeoff is sort of the long and short of it. If there's a theme of checkery through the years, that is certainly. 10 years of that message. 11 years for the record. That's right. 11 years.

Yeah, I kind of killed the, I feel like the actually focusing anniversary this year. And then I'd actually diminish to my, well, we're celebrating last year's 10 year anniversary, 10 year plus one. I don't know what medal that is,

but we'll Google it after the show. Next question on the questionnaire. What's one area you haven't covered as much as you want to? And why? Why would you want to cover? Well, I would say my biggest miss as far as coverage was, Amazon advertising in that it was so predictable.

You're an aggregator. You get a huge amount of attention. Then you put ads in front of them. Like I should have written a big article saying Amazon has a astronomical business in front of them that they're going to seize and it's to be worth a lot. I don't know why I didn't, to be honest. I think there was never like, I'd like to trigger it on a, like something in the news instead of just writing some sort of abstract thing. and it just sort of built and never came along. And I look back now, I'm like,

that was an easy article to write. It fit in perfectly with aggregation theory. It fit in with all my analysis of Google and Facebook. Why did I never write that article? I did write a lot of good Amazon articles like the AWS IPO, like when they, the first best customer, like that understood I think their business very well.

I wrote one bad one where I got very confused about their video thing. I'm like, what exactly is Amazon doing? What's the point here? But, but I wrote a, retraction of that like two weeks later. I go, well, here's the thing. Like, blah, blah, blah. But so I think I've done pretty well on Amazon. But that's one of my biggest regrets of an article that I didn't write. It wasn't complicated. It was actually pretty straightforward. And I'm irritated. I never wrote that. Are you ready to get into robotics for the next 10 years here? I saw a pretty compelling video from Boston Dynamics on Twitter earlier today. Maybe. I mean, I think that the issue with robotics is there's marginal costs involved. I would say to the degree I have a specialization, it's understanding the implications there being no marginal cost.

What does it mean when everything goes to software in distribution? And a lot of the sci-fi understanding of AI was all about these manifestations of machines, right? And there's a reason why it's actually all happening with information and text and video and images. It's a function of this question of, is there, like, cogs is a limiter. It's a fundamental piece of friction in the manifestation of these sort of ideas. And that is inherent to robotics. It doesn't mean robotics is not going to matter. It is, you know, I think it's going to be a big deal.

And having these interfaces will certainly help. And it's a huge deal, sort of industrial speaking. I think understanding the nature of robotics and automation generally, I've talked about how China has gone down a different route than the rest of the world as far as their manufacturing capabilities and the implications of that because this is a function of understanding this going capital intensive versus going labor intensive. What's the difference between capital investments and ongoing labor investments? And like what is the implications and the path dependency that matters there? So certainly an area

that I'm going to pay attention to. But it is, I think that distinction is important. and is a distinction that I think is characteristic of a lot of the work that I've done. Okay. Yes. I saw the video and it occurred to me. Number one, this technology is disquieting. Number two, Ben and I have not talked about robotics of solid two years of podcasting together. So I look forward to diving in or maybe I don't look forward to that future.

But it seems like it's going to be a factor one way or another. I mean, I think one of the most interesting robotic stories of my time here was Amazon by Kiva. systems, which was this sort of this. And this is actually, this is a pertinent story in the context of some of my antitrust discussions, actually, where Amazon bought Kiva Systems, which did like warehouse robots. They're like the flat sort of things where they have the racks of goods. They go under and they lift them up and they drive them around.

That's like the core sort of bit of robotics in these fulfillment warehouses. And the way it works with Amazon now is it used to be that all these aisles and pickers would walk around and grab stuff and then walk all these steps. Now the pickers stay there. These machines bring the rack to you. And then you pick it out of the rack and sort of put it in the box. And so there's a lot less movement. It's much easier on the body, you know, things in that regard.

So they bought them and Kiva Systems had a broad customer base. And then Amazon withdrew it from all the other customers and brought it internal. And that is like that is a, that is should be the go to counter example. And it speaks frankly, no offense to you, but to your movement's incompetence that you don't know about this or talk about this. It is one of the go-to examples. That was not directed to you. That was directed to the FTC.

I'm just like, I don't know when this Kiva acquisition happened, but sure, yes. No, but this is my point. This is why you have to understand Royal You, what's going on. They did a short-term economically destructive move in that Kiva system's valuation was based on its current customer base. They made it exclusive to undergird this dramatic expansion, such as, said it's a huge differentiate there for in the very sort of long run. So that and that's one where it's interesting to think through the COGS questions,

to think through the implications and think through what that said about their strategy in the long run and where they were going. They bought that around the time. They were shifting from core warehouses avoiding tax states where they're saying, we have no presence in the state. When I interviewed with Amazon and business school, it was all virtual because they didn't put any employees in the state of Illinois because they didn't want to pay tax. And so they were, then they were shifting to, okay, no, we're going to pay taxes everywhere.

Actually, everyone should pay taxes. And we're going to build a ton of distribution centers right next to all major cities and all states everywhere, sort of everywhere. And that sort of predicated the shift. There was a lot going on there around that. That was sort of interesting. That's probably the most interesting robotic story of my sort of period here. There you go.

The more you know here, I was not expecting to learn on the 10 anniversary show, but here we are. Next question on the questionnaire. of all the major companies you cover, which one produces the most unhinged responses online? So what company generates the craziest feedback as a strategority right? So feedback specifically or just people are unhinged about generally? Because unhinged about generally is obviously Facebook. Like they're like just just a fundamental related to 2016. Was there like a distinct shift there?

For sure. I mean, Facebook was the scapegoat for Trump being elected. And so, you know, and so every problem was undergirded by that without anyone realizing that it was undergirded by that. And so it was almost impossible to have like straight conversations about it. Like Facebook was the darling in 2012. Well, look how Obama used Facebook to get elected, right? Yeah. Just the sort of start change there.

And certainly I've gotten, you know, people are unhappy that I've generally been favorable. Generally speaking as far as company fans, Apple's fans have a well-earned reputation. And they felt very betrayed by me because I. started out by by explaining why no apple's not doomed in a lot of you know my first sort of exposure was through john grubred during fireball and when i got more critical of some of apple's decisions uh they felt betrayed it's not very happy about that right when did i subscribe what am i supporting here the the most unhinged article though for sure was the debt neutrality one during the trump administration everyone was convinced the world was ending if this is repealed

the internet is going to be done finished for can we look back at uh seven years later uh It's fine. A take that has aged pretty well. Yeah, absolutely. Nothing happened. The internet's takes on that one have not aged well. That's in the worst category. Yeah, I figured Trump and anything that the Trump administration did is sort of cheating with this answer. But that's the obvious yes. And then Facebook downstream of that. I mean, my mom, it's proof that MSNBC liberals take the New York Times very, very seriously. Because what was written about Marxists, Zuckerberg has stuck. And my mom still thinks Mark Zuckerberg is evil based on what was written in 2017. So it doesn't surprise me that that was the answer. But I had to ask. Next question, Daniel, when Ben sits down to write an article, what questions does he ask himself to help tell the story of strategy, so to speak? I have to write white papers and presentations for my role. And a big part of telling that story, and a big part of that is telling the story of different business models.

I subscribe to Strategory to help get better at my craft like I'm sure many readers do. So I'm wondering, does Ben have a brief crash course he could give us on his approach? We can keep the crash course very brief, but do you have any high level tips in terms of what your process entails? Yeah, you could go shorter along on this. I mean, I think just, you know, I have a just view of the world. Like I have an all-encompassing sort of view of how the world works. And that's risky. You have to be super humble about that and appreciate, you know,

This is where my life experience has helped. I think living abroad, for example, you understand there's actually core assumptions that you bring to decisions that you didn't even know you had. And like people just might start out with totally different assumptions and that leads to in their universe, what they're doing is correct. Even if your universe, it's totally wrong. And by the way, you have to sit in the same one, right? So that awareness and doubt and concern, I think has helped ground an approach, which is predicated

on I have a high level view of sort of everything. And so a story happens, I can explain it. If a story comes through and there's something missing, oh, there's a prediction. There's something else going on here. Something else is going, another shoe is going to drop. Or I'm wrong. Or I miss this. Or there's something else going on here where I enhance the model.

I expand it or I change something. Look, this is mistaken. And those are usually the best articles because it's like really understanding at a very core level, like what's the logic sequence? what's my actual thinking, what's the core assumption, and walking through that and how this makes sense. I do have certain things that I go back to a lot. I think you can understand all companies by understanding their founding. What was the key decision point?

How that gets lodged into the culture as an assumption that is never questioned because no, it's not questioned because don't thinks to question it. It's just there. It's in the water. It's sort of the way. It's like country cultures, right? Why I found value living abroad. Just knowing that those even exist. It's like Donald Rumsfelds, you want to just know that they're unknown unknowns.

Even if you don't know what they are, at least you're aware they exist, right? And so that's the process. Now, it's from a very tangible sense, daily updates, news of the day analysis, what happened. Usually at least a couple of links to bigger articles I wrote that give you more context of the broader world view. Right. The daily up, the main articles are harder. There's an audience challenge. There's a lot of people who will read it who have not readstarchicry before, but

also my readers are going to read it. And also, the best ones succeed when they are a story. Like people, humans love stories. This has been something that's helped to check read the best articles, the ones that resonate, tell a story. And people are intrigued by that. But you need to not get trapped into wanting to tell a story in a narrative such that your analysis is actually bad. Cable's last laugh.

That's a good example. Well, in club policy, I think it's sort of a similar thing. So just why? Why does stuff happen? Like one framework I talk about a lot is assume someone doing a dumb thing is smart. How does a smart person end up doing this dumb thing, right? And that leads you to underlying drivers, incentives, culture issues, things along those lines, that lead to these outcomes and sort of the, you know, how that manifests and how that might

manifest in good or bad decisions going forward. Yeah. Well, and it's definitely a lot more interesting than just this person's. an idiot and poke fun at somebody who made a bad decision. Right. But enough about Twitter. Yeah, that's true. What's the strangest place you've ever filed a daily update from?

I filed a lot from airplanes. More previously because now that I record them, I actually, I'm much more careful to schedule my flights to make sure I have a place to record. I've definitely recorded in very weird areas in airports where I'm trying to find a quiet enough place to sort of record. Off in the corner, great. I've been in some unexplored airport terminals that are like under construction or something, like early in the morning or things like those lines.

My first year when I had just started and I just started the daily update, I think I've told this story, but, you know, I was working automatic and I had scheduled a trip to Paris for my wife. We've never been before. My wife and I, to be clear, not just her. And I started checking, like, I wasn't meeting my goals. And so I'm sorry, like, stop paying my credit card bills. I'm worried, I think it's not going to work.

And in the run-up, I'm like, I felt like it was starting to work. So before I went there, you know, I paid off all the bills, ran them all that cup again. But I was definitely not going to take a vacation. At this time, I was doing five daily updates a day plus free articles, plus a podcast. And so I would wake up at five in the morning, go sit in the bathroom in Paris. I can still picture the bathroom in the hotel we were staying at. And I'd pound out a daily update. And then go out with my wife sort of.

in the afternoon. That one definitely sticks in my memory. That's fantastic. Writing daily episodes in the middle of Canada, like, you know, thanks to Starlink, that was an interesting one. But I don't know, I've written them all over the world. It's definitely kind of a cool, a cool bit about it. And the older I get, the more I try to not do that. I'll be right to have at my desk. Good. Good bit of advice as we all get older here. seven, through your work, you've developed relationships with a ton of prominent companies and prominent personalities in tech. Without naming names, how do those folks typically respond to criticism on Sretakery? What have you found along the way?

Yeah, this is always, this is a hard transition to go through. I still remember the first time I had a company really mad at me, calling me on the carpet, blah, blah, blah. I think it was Twitter. And I said their direct advertising efforts are failing. I could tease it out of their earnings. I'm like, this is a problem. This company cannot do direct advertising. People saying this is a growth story are wrong.

And they got really, really mad and like sending me all this stuff. You're wrong. And it was the first time I'd gotten this full-fledged corporate attack on something that I'd written. And so the next day, I kind of like, I didn't walk it back. Like, well, there's other things. Maybe, blah. Next quarter, they come out and say, yeah, we're re-jiggering our entire sort of direct-the-response thing. It's not working.

I was totally right. And I'm really glad I was right because that was a very formative experience in that you have to be able and willing to sort of stand up if you believe it. And if they give you real evidence that you're wrong, then sure, print it and do it. But there is a motivation to tell a particular story. What's interesting is it completely flips on its head when you talk to a CEO or you talk to a founder. They never argue. They rarely argue with you. Although they'll explain something, but they will reach out.

or to the extent you talk to them, they are so hungry for feedback that is independent of the incentive structures inherent of their employees. Because they're all in an echo chamber. They're in an echo. They're all motivated to show stuff being better than it is. Like there's political conflicts internal. And they're just so hungry for like. So they may know, oh, there's all this information you don't know that that is, you know,

complicates the narrative. They're thinking on this. But they're not going to, they have no desire to sort of make that point. They, they will, again, they're just so thirsty for a different, like someone without the incentive problems their employees have that even if the tradeoff is that feedback is coming with less pertinent information, it's super valuable to sort of have that. And that's interesting. It's really striking.

It helps your relationship with founders and CEOs over time. Yeah. I mean, I try to not wean into that too much. Like, I don't want, like, I think maintaining independence is really important. I do think another factor that's helped strategically is not being in San Francisco, like, not running into people, not having to worry about people being mad, you know, being, having a view from the outside. And by and large, I push, you know, DeSencio's when I talk. I'm like, sure, let's do it on the record. Because if I'm getting information from you, I want my readers to get it as well.

Like, that's the deal. It's kind of the MKBHG article. my loyalty is to my readers. I'm not in, I definitely want, like want to influence things. Like I'm just to be honest, that's certainly motivation. But my loyalty is not to those people doing it. My loyalty is to my readers. And so I always try to push for, yeah, you want to talk sure.

Let's do it on the record. And what I learn, they're going to learn. And we're going to transcribe it and make it available. That's all I thought about the interviews, you know, just like, one of the challenges also getting bigger is I started out, no one knew I was. I had four followers on Twitter. I'm just out there shooting from the hip. And there's people that read me for 11 years that I probably say, yeah, you were better

then. It's probably some truth to that because nothing to lose. You're just out there. When you're bigger, you kind of, you have a broad sense. You worry about people actually doing what you say. What if you do it and it's wrong, right? And so it's hard to sort of navigate that. And this question of starting as a total outsider that I knew no one, to maintain that, though, is a fiction.

It's like it's like someone in their 30s or 40s trying to still act like they're in their 20s. It's actually not very cool and it's inauthentic in a certain way. And so that was part of bringing on the interview sort of aspect. It's like, look, the fact of the matter is I do have access to basically anyone. And people do reach out to me. So how can I acknowledge that fact? while still maintaining alignment to at the end of the day, I'm writing for my readers.

Deliver value to them. Not for, not for someone else. And that, that's sort of like the, there's a lot of, you know, I have to worry about,

I write positive about Facebook versus ATT. People accuse me of, yeah, you just want a Mark Zuckerberg interview. Like, that's definitely not the case. Zuckerberg drives a lot of traffic. By and large,

CEO, they don't drive subscriptions. They don't drive interest. I make all public executive interviews free. Just to, number one, like in case like, influences markets.

I just want to be widely available or whatever might be. Number two, I don't want to even give the hint that I'm doing this for favor or access. Some more readers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's not what I'm selling. What I'm selling is my access.

So yeah, I'll make those free, right? The, but so there's definite challenges in doing it. But there was a bit where I just felt this real, this real sense of in authenticity. So technically he was framed as being on the outside. And that's not really the case anymore. how do I still deliver what I promised my readers while acknowledging that my life and position in the tech ecosystem has changed?

There you go. I think that's my favorite answer thus far. We also, speaking of Marquez, Matt writes in and says, question for you guys on AI replacing creators. On Tuesday, Ben wrote, I don't think either Brownlee or I particularly need AI or, to put it another way, are overly threatened by it. And now Matt continues and says, It seems that Brownlee and yourself are distinguished from the sea of content by your reputations around which you've both built followings. Couldn't AI develop something comparable?

For example, an AI with an amazing reputation for product reviews that are both insightful and entertaining. Even if it only aggregated reviews from actual humans, if it could credibly and consistently provide accurate information in an enjoyable format, would it not also develop a reputation and a following. What's to prevent AIs from filling the role of MKBHDs for everything? What do you think, Ben? Well, I think that Matt is not following his logical chain all the way, all the way to its initial point. Like, he says that Brownlee and yourself are distinguished from the sea of content by your reputation around which you built followings. Where did the reputation come from? Your content. I had 380 followers on Twitter when I started.

Marcus Brownlee was a high schooler reviewing a PC remote. He couldn't review the PC. Amazing video. He couldn't review the PC because he was using the webcam to film it, right? Like, like the, at the end of the day, it's hard to say this without sounding like a jerk. We succeeded because we have consistently put out good content regularly on a daily or weekly basis for a decade, right? Like, like, that's where the reputation come from. Is there feedback that comes from that that makes you better?

Absolutely. Do you get better at it for sure? Does feedback help give you information you have got otherwise? It absolutely does. Do you get access to executives? Does Marcus Bronley, is he the number one focus for Apple such that he always gets the device? He gets all his questions asked such that his Apple Vision Pro video is the second most viewed ever in two months? For sure.

But that's all downstream from building this reputation. And like does having an audience give you a, an advantage going forward in the world of AI? Yeah, it does for sure. But it still matters where that came from. And can AI start from zero and build an audience like that? I'm skeptical. You were talking about pure commodity output. We're talking about the averages of a bunch of inputs. Is it good? Is it useful? Is there a lot of commodity output and content out there? There is for sure, but I would actually argue the opposite. A world of AI generated content is going to be more lucrative and more interesting for highly differentiated products for the New York Times of the world.

I wrote this before. They're suing ChatchipT. ChattypD is great for them. Like if everything out there is AI generated content, you're hungry for something that you feel is curated that has a particular point of view. So, again, I might be totally wrong. I'm utterly and completely biased on this. question. Like my literal livelihood depends on it. So take that with the appropriate grain of salt. But I think there's like we're going to be awash in product reviews. Are you going to have an

entity that consistently builds, it helps? Maybe that it's, it seems plausible, but it does seem more likely that there's just going to be so much AI generated crap on the internet that humans and users are going to go running to find trusted human sources. Right. Humans are going to be a personality layer. They're going to be a trust layer. These things that they're going to bring to the table that AI by virtue. Like there's just an implication of being a commodity. Even if that commodity is brilliant, it's still a commodity.

Differentiation matters. People listen to vinyl records, right? Now it'll get some angry email. Like an objectively inferior sort of technology. Oh, it's warmer. It's like, you know, take it out. I don't know. I'm not a vital guy.

Final people will say it's. sounds better somehow? I don't know. I have a friend that is like he's all into it. He's got all the big speakers, all the sort of thing, swears by it. And I'm happy for him. That's great. I think we're going to have a lot of vinyl records in the future and it's going to be a lucrative place to be. Okay. Well, I look forward to it and there's always a chance that Matt's exactly right and AI bots are going to take over and replace all of us. I think we've acknowledged that from day one. But the theory makes sense. If that's the case. Then so it goes.

So it goes. It's been a good ride. You know, the tin anniversary could be the peak year. I made it to tin. I got some tin. That's right. Yeah. The diamond might not be accessible, but what are you going to do?

All right. Two final questions. Can you walk me through day one of the subscription launch and what that was like? Because you sort of teased it in your article this week. And I'm just curious if there's any more detail in terms of what was going on there. Oh. So I, so I. I've told very sure the story before, but I was working at automatic, which was great because who can complain about me having a hobby of writing a blog.

It was also, I felt very awkward because like this blog's getting a lot of traction and a lot of people are paying attention to it. It's like, what is this guy doing? Actually, there was a valid question because my team that I was working on pivoted to building a completely new feature when I ended up being Gutenberg, the new sort of editing interface for WordPress, which I had no nothing to contribute to. I wasn't a JavaScript engineer or whatever. So I actually didn't have much to do. I did some of my special projects for Matt Moldwag, you know, strategically thinking. But I did have a lot of time to write to checkery.

But I felt guilty. I was way, I felt terrible. Like Midwest sentiment, whatever I'd be, I was so guilty that I'm getting paid a good wage. And I don't feel like I'm contributing to this company at all. And I have this successful thing going on the side.

So I felt I really wanted to, I really wanted to do it for real, do it for my job. So a friend reached out like, oh, our company's expanding to Asia. We need someone to help us with this on sort of a consulting basis, do X, Y, Z, you know, blah, blah, blah. And would you like to do it sort of part-time? Like, perfect.

I can pay the bills. I can get out of feeling guilty about not doing a job here. And, you know, I can keep writing strategically. I can start monetizing it and build it up. And so, but I had to actually build the subscription part, like, because Strickie was just a blog. It was a WordPress blog. Right. Do the actual, like, all the pieces of it.

Stripe didn't exist at that point. Did it? Stripe did exist. Okay. But it was only two years old. And like there wasn't all the tooling and stuff around it. There were WordPress plugins to sell content, like one time access to content, but the whole subscription thing didn't really, didn't really, you know, exist.

Like, so I modified a particular plug-in to like work for it and all these sorts of things. But this took time. So I quit automatic in February, I think, because I needed to work full-time on actually doing this and build it out. And so I built it out. And then in the meantime, I reach out to, I think, like, Kara Swisher to like, you know, plan a story. Oh, you know, Strickery goes independent. which put this self-imposed timeline on me because like it was dumb.

It was such a dumb thing to do. And what happened was I built this all out and I had this whole model. There's a bunch of things that I made mistakes on. So I had this whole model of if you're a subscriber, you go to Shrekner and you get way more content. You're going to have like Daring Fireball like all these links and comments and things like that plus the regular articles. If you're not a member, you'll just get the articles and like teasers for the other stuff. It was all website sort of centric. And meanwhile, building all this sort of stuff.

I'm doing all this testing. I was actually also training for like a half marathon or something. And so it gets to, it gets to this week because I turn it on, I watch and it's super confusing. Like what am I actually getting by subscribing? But number two, I had never tested with a live SSL certificate and the payments didn't work.

Like I can't remember exactly what I had wrong, but it was something, it was some SSL certificate related. And I'm trying to fix it for like 24 hours straight. People, the story runs in all things D or whatever it is or digital, whatever it was. And I'm talking about it. I quit my job.

And people literally cannot sign up. I've stressed out 10 years later sitting here, here in the story. It was so, so I finally get it to work. I go to run the half marathon. I have to, my knees hurting. I've like walk the whole things. I'm going on like no sleep for like 40 hours. The last half marathon I ever ran.

I'd actually run a few. view at that point. I can't believe you still ran the half marathon. I didn't run. I mostly walked it. Yeah. Stumbled, crawled. And meanwhile, it's weighing on me that my offering doesn't make sense. Like, it's confusing. So over the weekend, that was Saturday morning, I spent the whole weekend, I spent the whole weekend, tore the whole thing out, put back my old theme. It's just a blog. And I'm like, look, if you pay, I will email you every day. I'll email you all these other stories and comments and things that you might be interested in. And there you go.

It was so much more elegant. It was so much a clear distinction between the web is free. You pay for the email. It's going to get more stuff. Necessity is the mother of invention. The oldest story technology has. And their new business model was born. That's right.

So I was a little, I should be clear. There were paid newsletters for years. Like they used to print them out and like send them out. They also cost thousands and thousands of dollars. because the only audience was like hedge funds and bankers and things along those lines. Andrew Sullivan also did the paywall before I did, but he was still only on the web. I think what made trajectory unique and new was the high volume, relatively speaking, low cost. So it was only $10 at the time.

And then also you would get it via email. And that was sort of like what was the unique combo that was new. And then obviously substack copy, which I'm happy about, to be clear. made it broadly available. Right. And now we have this independent creator economy that, you know, keeps the web diverse and interesting and vibrant. Yeah. I mean, it was, like I said, it was stressful.

Like I had a one day goal, one week, goal, one month goal failed to reach all of them. The other bit of this story, I think I told before is six months later, or is November, so it's seven or eight, seven months later or something like that. I reached a thousand subscribers. This was my one year goal. A thousand subscribers at $100 a piece, $100,000 a year, like the thousand true fans. of idea. And, uh, and I just put a little note saying, hey, saying out of thousand subscribers, uh, you know, the model works. Because no one thought the model worked. I've got a lot of, if you want an anti-VC story, heard from a lot saying, Ben love you. This is nuts. People are

not going to pay for it. Uh, I believe me, the amount of people who listen to my basketball podcasts and are like, you guys still do that? Like, is anyone possibly paying to listen to that podcast? Thousands of people. A lot of people have. Yeah. So what I said was, you know, model work. The next day, this is the only step change in trajectory subscribers I had. I got 250 new subscribers, a 25% increase in 24 hours. Wow. What that was was my modeling of my audience was actually correct.

I was basing it off of people who visited the homepage of trajectory on days I didn't post. To me, those were people who wanted more. They kept going to Shetri hoping I posted that day. And they were leaving disappointed that I hadn't. And instead of dropping a paywall and making people mad that I'm taking stuff away, I wanted to have, I'm going to give you more. If you want more, you can pay for it. I'll give you more.

And it's a very positive sort of relationship with them sort of paying. That was sort of, and it turned out my modeling was correct. What I didn't model was the skepticism that it wouldn't work and they would lose their money. That's going to go out of business. Yeah, that makes sense. And so once the model worked, it was, I wasn't going anywhere. Then all those people that I was correct wanted the subscription then subscribed. And then there was never there was never another step change other than that.

Just sort of slow gradual, slow gradual growth. Okay. Last question. This also came from Dumbin. I, Lena Khan in her infinite wisdom would never do this. But he writes, if Lena Khan shuts down Straterey tomorrow, what would you do? What's your answer? That means shutting down all the podcasts as well.

Yeah. Well, that's a good point. There is the Bill Simmons, you know, like, yeah, he, doesn't write anymore. He's just podcast and he's doing quite well for himself. Five podcasts a week, people. Here we go. No, I mean, honestly, where I was feeling burnt out a couple years ago, thanks to people like Lena Con, regulation and stuff like that. That was part of the reason to start this. It's like, look, maybe I'm just going to be a podcast on the long run. I should build up

other things I might want to do. And part of the, you know, so that's part of why actually it is meaningful to me that I am raising the price now and committing to continuing to write. Like I'm reinvigorated, you know, I want to keep doing this. And so, but because it wasn't doubt. I thought maybe I'll just be a podcaster. There is a part of me that is always been intrigued by what I ever go back into a company. Okay. You know, I wasn't a great employee in that I had a lot of great ideas, but I could not function in a corporate environment very well.

I'd not want a good, you got a happy face. Like I would always be grumpy. I was very emotional. But you've grown a lot since. then, yeah. Exactly. I've grown a lot. And obviously I would have the opportunity to enter companies at a pretty senior level,

I think at this point. And I think that's always that helped. Like at some point, I realized that and that was a very freeing factor that. I have options. It doesn't work out. It's going to be fine. Yeah.

So I don't know. I think, you know, would I ever go work for a company. At this point, I would say probably not. If Shrek were shut down tomorrow, I'd probably take some time off.

Yeah. Like, you know, it would be nice to actually manage my investment portfolio. I don't do that for conflict of interest reasons. I think I could have grown my money better than my investment manager did. I mean, if only you held out of the Microsoft options, been able to keep that stock. Yeah, that was not possible.

But the, you know, I could obviously open a fund. That would be something I could do. I don't know that at this point I would want just the, it goes back to the automatic thing. I felt so guilty not doing what I thought I deserved. I have tremendous admiration for fund managers that are taking other people's money and like riding or dying with like the stocks that they're picking. And sometimes they get killed. Like there's a certain sort of mentality. I don't know if I had that.

You know, I could potentially find out. But I'm doing what's good for me. I think that's why I'm so blessed. Like obviously I'm blessed because of success and the reader support. But there is, and I see this with our friend. Like we were talking to our mutual friend Spike Eskin who, you know,

tremendously talented, very skilled, rose to the peak of his craft, which is managing WFAN, the biggest, most important sports radio station in the world. And not very happy doing it. Guess what? Spike's good at talking. He's got a great Sixers podcast. He ends up taking a very unintuitive career move where he's going back to Philadelphia, and he's the afternoon host SportsCact Radio.

The job is Dadd, Dad used to did sort of full circle. And for him to be able to be okay with that. like handle that. But then you talk to him and he's so happy, right? And like he's doing what he was meant to do. There's no greater gift in the world than finding something that you just feel uniquely suited and talented for. And I, if I only made, I do feel that if I only made, if I ever, never exceeded my goal. A thousand subscribers, $100,000 a year, but I get to do what I do, I would be happy. and I do feel like one of the luckiest people in the world that I get to make a lot of money along the way. So it's hard to imagine anything else.

Yes. Well, I share in that gratitude, secondhand gratitude, because it's allowed me to do this. And it's been very, very enjoyable getting to know the Stratacri audience over the last year or two. I was expecting to make a good podcast with you. But I was also expecting the first couple months to be full of people complaining and writing me. things and being like, why the hell is Ben podcasting with this person? And the welcome was so much warmer than that. And it's only improved since then.

So I just really appreciate it. No, and I think it's great. I mean, I think one of the things about the, you know, Stereg is not much of a bundle, but part of the bundle aspect is there are some people that listen to every podcast I do and read everything I write and they're awesome. I love you. You're also kind of an insane person, right? Like here, the whole framing is, look, Schrotery.

I've been writing for 10 years. I'm assuming a lot of share knowledge and wisdom about what we've been talking about and ideally getting into some of the technical details and people who read are busy. They're going to work. They want to, you know, just dash through something. And that's great. But there is a whole different sort of audience, more casual, more fun, more back and forth. Let's reroute Ben and Normie World because he's ascended into the clouds and is talking to executives, right?

which is your bit about VR, your bit about skepticism. Like, yeah, could have used that point of view and I was idiotic crap about Clubhouse, right?

Like so, and I think to the extent, so yeah, that was the point of view of this particular podcast. And I think it's been great. And it's, it's amazing to have you on board.

I want to thank you. I want to thank Duman, who, you know, just takes care of, you know, answers your emails, takes care of all this.

Like, I'm so bad. Everything for every. I'm so bad at minutia and stuff like that. And I find it exhausting just to go through stuff and deal with all these, make all these micro decisions about all these sorts of little things. And he's been a critical factor in me being able to fashion my life around just ready good daily update. If you do that, everything else will take care about itself. I want to thank him. I want to thank Jim Metzendorf, who edits all of our podcast for all the bundle, John Gruber,

who does dithering with me, Bill Bishop. You and and him with Sharp China. It's the best. Make Chetri Plus, not just about me. You and Ben Goliver with greatest of all talk. It was a tremendous pleasure to bring my favorite podcast in. And hey, a true bundle should have completely different stuff. I have a podcast about basketball. It's very cool.

I want to thank John Thies and Rob Rodriguez. They are building passport, which more news about that soon. John E is doing YouTube videos for Chetri. There will be more news about him. and the stuff we're doing together soon as well. But, you know, thank you to everyone listening and to all the subscribers. Lena Con is not shutting.

Thank you to Lena Con for giving me content to write about. I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. And it's awesome and I'm excited to keep going. I feel the same way. All right. Well, on that note, we will be back next week. Thank you, Ben, for indulging 10 questions in the hot seat. Yeah, enough about me.

I actually don't like talking about myself that much. There's been a lot of it. I actually felt bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming. Probably have some depressing updates on the bucks Sunday night.

But we'll keep it rolling. Look forward to 10 more years. For now, Ben, have a great weekend. And I will talk to you next week. Talk to you later.