How Ben Thompson Built a Writing Empire

The most important article you write is the second article someone reads. And I do think that volume or quantity is underrated. So that's like 50 or 60 books worth of writing over the last decade. That is an insane amount of volume. It would be hard to have the degree of success that I've had if it weren't for the just day and day out sort of grinding. Should we do the day and the life grand reveal now? So I have a framework and overall view of the world and how it works.

I'm a big believer in house and life in general. So the most important thing for society on the internet is... Ben Thompson is like the OG of subscription newsletters. He makes millions a dollars a year from his writing. If you're thinking about, hey, how often should I write? What is my business model going to be? What is online writing all about and how does the internet work? Well, this podcast is like a 101 class on that.

And I gotta say, Ben is a real visionary. His idea is his way of thinking about the world as frameworks. They're going to give you a sense for not just how the world exists now, but where the world is going. And it's going to help you to think about how to thrive as a creator over the coming decades. You got to walk me through a day in the life because presumably you're waking up, you're thinking, what am I going to say today? And then by the end of your day, you have an article shipped?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the interesting questions that I will get a lot is how long is it take you to write an article or write an update? Well, first off, that distinction is important. So I write two kinds of pieces. I write what I call an article which goes on the front page of Shrekery that's free for I go under read and then I write updates which are behind the paywall. And they generally have different formats. And they're written for different audiences.

I think the articles are more challenging for a couple of reasons. Number one, I have no idea who's reading them and what based knowledge they have. And those they can go viral. They can be read by a million people. And they might be re-renewed Shrekery for the first time or they might not know that much about technology. And so my approach that shifted over time as, you know, the relative based boundaries changes,

but like you have to explain more things on one hand. And on the other hand, it needs to have a hook. It needs to be interesting. But when I started, there were, you know, a number of people that sort of like imitated, you know, they wanted to do the same sort of thing. And I thought they were all very smart. They had good insights. They're people who I've been following them on Twitter, I've been reading their blogs or whatever. And they had good insights about technology.

And the vast majority of them kind of flamed out and never really got popular. And I'm like, well, they have good insights. And the key thing that I sort of realized is the difference between my writing and their writing. You know, let's assume the insights were equal. Number one, I had a lot more volume. We should definitely get to volume because I think that's actually really important. But also my best pieces told a story. And people love stories. And they were

pieces that were analysis, but they had a beginning. They had a path. And they had sort of a resolution and a conclusion of like what it came to. What's an example of that from whenever you're pieces? I was talking about the Disney Charter thing last year where there's that big sort of standoff. And I opened with the story of the first commercial satellite in the rocket launch and all that sort of thing. To me, that was a great example of what, what is a killer article for Shirtekry,

where it's like, you're walked in. It's like, this is really interesting. I've never heard this story before. Then suddenly you're like into our cane sort of business details about about carriage disputes. And so that that was, I think, been a different share of Shirtekry throughout is to the essential checkery is really sort of killing it. I am delivering articles that are not just sort of good analysis, but are good stories and that are interesting and compelling to read.

Now that takes a lot of work. So the answer of how do you spend those on these articles, it's ours. And a lot of it is literally just figuring out the opening. Like once I can get through the first few paragraphs, I know what I want to say, but like how do you actually get into it and sort of make it interesting. And some of the less interesting articles, which I think have very good analysis, they are sort of a week opening. Whatever I see, you know, just because I couldn't,

I couldn't get it, but I needed to publish it. So tell me this is the opening about you for the writer. Like you need to find your flow. And it's almost like going down a ski slope. It's like, once you find it, you're good at worship for the reader that you need to actually hook the reader in. Well, so there's a few aspects to that. So number one, when I'm writing, it is absolutely about flow state for sure. So, you know, the, I actually think about the way I write as being

very similar to a way a programmer is coding. You have the entire structure of the application, which you're working on in your head. So you know all the pieces and how they work together. And the act of programming is, is substantiating what is in your head.

Right. Realizing it. That's right. And so the reason why flow state is really important and sort of getting locked in is because you need to be holding that in your head while you're actually typing stuff sort of on, you know, on your computer and looking stuff up and doing whatever. And so, you know, it took a few years of communication and understanding. And frankly realizing I needed to work in a different place from my family for, for it to really internalized my wife,

which is like, look, no, when I'm locked in, I like, and she would get a noise. I come, like, you know, if I'm me working way and I come to dinner, but I'd just be like, catatonic. And I'm just like shoving food in my mouth and then going back. You're like, I need an office. She's like, you need not this. Get out of here. So I do work back at home now in part because my kids are older

and they're doing their own thing and stuff like that. But for a while, especially my kids are young, definitely reach the point where I was, no, I need to actually rent a different place. And I need to be somewhere else just because it's, at the other day, it's my job. It's not necessarily their responsibility. They feel like that's around they can talk to them. And so that was sort of an imposition of, of even though technically I can work from anywhere, you know, there is an aspect

of I need to, I am in a different place. I'm in a different place mentally, but it's still sort of a different place. And that need to be matched with being in a different place sort of physically. Getting in that state is for sure hard and that's for every day, that's hard. So a huge part of once I actually get started with the writing, then it happens pretty quickly. But actually getting started is hard. And it's a million times harder with the articles because if I don't have that

hook up front, then I feel very challenged started. And I think, you know, just knowing that for me, there's still a weight that comes with this is on the front page. This is going to be sort of broadly available. It's almost like a psychological barrier of like, I need a good hook. But the distinction between the articles and the updates is, I don't do that for the updates. The updates are, I, are, they're very timely. They're usually about something that's happened

very recently. So this now it's earning season now. So I'm writing about earnings. I know exactly I'm going to write about. And the opening is I'm going to pull an excerpt from usually the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg to publications that write in a very predictable way. They have the, you know, it's the traditional journalistic. You have the nut up front, and then you have the sort of the additional thing at the bottom. I just want the nut up front. Like, and that's my watching off point

to talk about that. And so that just makes it way easier. Because I know what I'm, I know how to get started. Number two, I know who my audience is. They're people who are interested in what I have to write because they're paying to get it. And so that is just very psychologically freeing in a way. I assume way more knowledge on the audience. I'll just like talk about things without having to feel like I've to introduce it to other folks. That said, the best updates that I write are the ones

that do have a common thread that that there is. Like I titled something in part one and then part two and three sort of brings it around and tie some stuff together. Like, you know, I had something in mind this just this past week about, you know, I had already written about Google's earnings, but they had a lot of interesting stuff this quarter. So I didn't get into some of their comments about infrastructure spend, which I want or a catback. So I wanted to get into. But then my

personal is all about the catback stuff. So I was able to bring in the Google piece and then retie together how the Microsoft one started. And that was, you know, both satisfying. And I also you want to leave the reader with a, you know, when they finish, they're like, ah, yes. And it's like sort of brings it together. And that finishing moment when they, when they finish reading it, they feel that was a productive use of 10 minutes. Like, and they feel sort of satisfied. I don't

think, and I don't think it's a conscious thing that they're saying. But if they're leaving, saying like, well, whatever, and they go the next thing, but you, I think you built up sort of a, a well of not disappointment, but boredom or whatever. Whereas if you get that little bit of, aha, bit at the end, then it's like, that was great. And then it just sort of leaves a positive,

you know, sort of affinity for, for, for the product. And so while I don't obsess to the same degree with the updates as I do the articles about having that thread, you don't want to not have that thread too frequently. So I did some of the back of the napkin math today, something like 2,480 articles over the last 10 years for you. Daily updates, public ones. I said, you're probably writing 250 a year. I think it's not quite that many. I think it's around

177 or 200, but whatever. It's, it's a lot. Yeah. I've written like multiple books at this point. Right. Well, even then you do five or six books a year worth of content. So that's like 50 or 60 books worth of writing over the last decade. Which need to get that out. That is an insane amount of volume. So people think I'm very productive. And this probably gets to your, you know, to circle back to the, the day in the life thing.

On an objective basis, yes, I am extremely productive. I tend to think on a personal self-reflective basis. I'm a massive procrastinator who wants to just, you know, lay around and not do anything in my free Twitter. And so there's a bit of a hack. I'm a big believer in hacks in life in general. It drives my daughter up the wall. I'm constantly like setting alarms for everything. There's anything I need to do. I send the alarm. Oh, that sounds like it's just annoying. Yeah, I know. My phone is

always going off. But the reality is, is that, you know, to go back to this flow state idea, I am very much a serial thinker. Like I'm thinking about what I'm locked in. I'm not having side conversations. I'm not doing sort of other things. And so my hack in terms of productivity is I have a daily deadline every single day. And, you know, I go back to I remember being in college and writing a college thesis. And so I've done a lot of work for it. But the actual thought of

like sitting down and writing this was very overwhelming. And it was due, you know, you know, the in May when we were sort of set to graduate. And so basically, you know, I'm not, I don't advocate this as far as a good writer. I basically sat down like 36 hours straight. Some sort of combination of tons of caffeine. And then a few beers take the buzz off when I was like getting

shaking and back to caffeine. I just wrote the whole thing. And, um, and then I took the whole thing and then me and some other folks were having sort of a graduation party, which we had invited my senior thesis advisor to. And I walked up to him in the middle of the party with like my thesis, gave it to him. And then like, took like, like slammed a beer right there. Uh, but uh, but the all this to say is that for me, the hack is deadlines make me very productive. And so

I've never written an actual book. And I'm fairly terrified to do so because the idea of it being fairly open ended as far as time you just need to do a little bit every day. Uh, I actually had question whether I could actually do that. Huh. And so what I do is your checkery on one hand, I think the blog style and I still call it a checkery blog is is very conducive to my thought process. And also, you know, and the fact I'm covering stuff that's in real time, like the idea of a book

being frozen in time is is something that that I'm not sure I would like very much. But there's also a bit where it just sort of suits me personally and helps me get stuff done. You've been doing this for what 12 years now? Uh, 11 years. 11 years. Do you dream and sleep differently in terms of thinking about your articles now? If I feel I wrote something that wasn't very good, I don't see very well. Um, and that's the downside of the daily deadline is there's days at work where you're

just like, I don't have it today, not feeling good, might check out early. And that's just not an option. I'm going to publish every day. And the day that I write something that I don't think is great and I sleep well at night is the day I shouldn't be doing this. So, yeah, when it comes to, to, so the question of how often it takes right update the actual physical action, updates are easier than articles happen more quickly. But the reason it's hard to answer is the

reality is is I'm thinking about what I write about all the time. And the reason I'm able to be so productive to your point is people have a perception of my writing is that I sit down. What I'm going to write about, okay, I'm gonna write out this. Do a bunch of research. I'm gonna think about what I want to say and then I'm going to sort of come up with something and I'm gonna write it. And that's not sustainable. You wouldn't be able to write however many thousand pieces it is.

The way I think about it is I have a framework and overall view of the world and how it works. And it's like, it's almost like a machine. And so when a piece of news happens, I feed it into the machine and out pops sort of like a conclusion, like if A, if A happened and B then C then D then E. And sometimes it's very straightforward. Like some, some news happens. I understand exactly why it happened. All you do is sit down and write down the steps in the machine that sort of the

framework in my head. Sometimes it's a little surprising. That's often where you can make like small scale predictions. Like clearly something else is going to happen because there's a missing piece here. Right. That those are the ones. I think those, you know, a pretty good track record on those sorts of things. What's an example of that? There's going to be another announcement about, you know, X support for feature wire or something like that. Like because this doesn't make sense in the

context of their business model, wherever it might be. So the third one is I'm wrong or there's something that there's a void in the machine. Like this doesn't make it. This sort of doesn't make sense. That's usually I think where articles do come from where, okay, there's a lot of different pieces here that are being sort of pulled together and sort of make sense. And now I can write a larger like articles are ideally an articulation, augmentation or correction of sort of the machine,

sort of sort of sort of what I've gotten wrong. So, you know, everyone's thinking about like, you know, AI and catbacks and I just mentioned that. So I wrote that piece about Microsoft and Google last week. And it's in my head. There is some sort of article in the formulation stage about the various risks, the relative risk factors of the hyperscalers. You know, you have metta that AI is all for their own product. You have AWS, which is all by and large for third parties.

Microsoft and Google in the middle. How does risks sort of align to that spectrum? And what are you doing there? You're looking at the different pieces and then are you trying to think is there like a unifying framework that bridges this together? Like how are you beginning now to piece that article together? Yeah, I mean, I think at this point, I definitely have the outline for an article. So then there's a bit about, is there some sort of piece of news

that is worth being a trigger to write about this? So one of the things I have found is I will, I've written stuff that's just a peer like theoretical articulation or something. It usually doesn't resonate that much. I think that this ties to the story bit. People are interested, again, this goes back to starting being a blog, but they're interested in it being tied to something sort of in real life. Sure. So if I were to write a book about aggregation theory

or something on those lines, that would be a here, I'm laying out this whole thing. It's meant to be more sort of timeless, given the format that I work in, a lot of my insights. And this is why it almost be hard if I were to publish like an anthology or something like that. They are anchored in the time and place of which they came even if the insight is relatively timeless. And so I think there is a bit where I think Shritekry rewards the regular reader because you see the development

of this machine. The evolution. Yeah. Then Shritekry is sort of like a journal of my understanding of the world. And so in this is a case where the format regular writing every day and being able to go back and say I got this wrong or change sort of XYZ. And now I think this in a way that sort of writing a book would scare me because it's sort of locked in there. And it's like, well, no, I don't actually think that anymore, but it's in the book is something I enjoy. Well, you're talking about

developing ideas and you have your doodles. And then also you've mentioned logic three or four times. Are you somebody who is working things out with sketches on a white board or does this happen in your head and you kind of get the outline just in the bend brain? Yeah, it mostly happens in my head. I think the more interesting balance is how many essays are sort of in my head fully formed. And I'm just writing it out versus the ones where I vaguely have a sense where I'm going

and by virtue of writing it forces me it forces it into a final form. Sure. I certainly agree with the sentiment. You know, I think Jeff Bezos is famous for tickling this, but other folks where the value of writing is you have to fill in sort of the gaps between the bolts on the slide. And you have to actually see what you actually think. And sometimes when I'm stuck on an article because I don't have an opening or whatever, I know the answer is I just have to start writing

because the issue is I don't actually fully know what I think. And for sure, you know, this gets back to why I do still writing, though I do a lot of podcasting these days and podcasting is definitely easier. I can see, you know, I can see how I built Simmons, you know, sort of the granddaddy of I think internet writing, even though he was sports, I would view him as a a forerunner of evenstratuckery to a certain extent. You know, now you just podcast all the time.

I was like, yeah, I could definitely see that. That would be nice. The reason why I do hesitate to ever do that is I for sure think that writing makes me a better podcaster because I've been forced to examine, make sure everything that I say is actually correct. I've been forced to actually structure my thoughts in a way that every semicolon is used to its maximum, you know, I'm not

repeating myself, but I am sort of building sort of logical things. And I think my goal is, the way I always put it is, I hope the value to my subscribers is not that I'm always right, but rather that I've forced you to think about the issue. And because I've laid out very clearly my thoughts, my assumptions and the implications of that, you are now equipped to come, perhaps do a completely different conclusion. Like if I'm writing about a company and you're the CEO

of that company, you have way more information about the situation than I do. But I've now given you a structured way to think about the issue in front of you, you can bring to bear the additional information you have, which may lead to a different outcome. And in that case, just because you disagree with me or didn't follow my advice, I would like to think I've done a large service for you. So I'm going to throw something out there, use how many of them are right or wrong.

So when I was scrolling through the on your site, you have all the different concepts, and then you can click on one of the concepts and then there's like three to five articles there. And then you have like a one line sentence where you've summarized like MKBHD for everything, this is what it is or ESPN Bundle. This is what it is. But it sounds like the way that you're talking about your articles is more in outline forms and logic trains rather than one sentence one

liner that then you're kind of unbundling to see what's inside of that. Yeah, I mean, those things, well, I just honestly get written at the very last second before I publish because it something needs to go in that field. So I do sometimes feel I should give more thought into those and making sure they're sort of a good articulation. To the extent they're good and useful is probably an accident to be very honest with those. But you're not starting with those at all.

Those happen right at the end. Those out of the end. Yeah, I mean, so I have the sort of a broader thought or sense of, and again, this goes back to the sort of machine idea. I'm very rarely writing an article from scratch. Use like TSMC as an example. So TSMC, one of the values they provide as a fab or as a foundry is you go to them because you want to make a custom chip. So they've enabled this entire world of anyone, you know, all these small companies can have their own

sort of chips. But you're not going to actually build an entire chip yourself. What they provide, and this is a big challenge for Intel and sort of competing in this space, is they have like a huge collection of legal bricks, like all these different pieces of IP where you have all the parts of the chip and then you as a as a company, you're adding your special sauce. It's like the last sort of 5% or whatever. But there's a ton of stuff about, you know, registers, pipelines, all these sort

of, you know, cash in and out sort of stuff. That's pretty standardized across chips. And so what you're adding in is sort of the little bit that that makes that chip, particularly unique and useful for you. And this is perhaps a stretched analogy. But the way I think about my writing is I have a lot of the concepts and overall things in place. Something new has happened. And what, how is that tie into what I understand or how does that explain how my understanding has changed?

The other thing people on Twitter like to make fun of me for beyond the semi-colons is I love to quote myself. Yes, you do. And it is worth mocking. I sort of feel silly when I'm mocking myself. But there's a lot of times where sometimes it's very like pragmatic where I remember I was writing something about I think it was like Facebook and their shift to the tick-tock organization or whatever. And my, you know, my thought was, you know, Facebook, they were constrained by their network.

That's actually that's actually a fundamental limitation on interior content could be. And, you know, the more I write, the more I forget stuff I've written. I went back and I had written exactly that like a couple years previously. And the problem is that because that was when I had the idea and I worked really hard on that article and I go back and read it. I'm like, I can't say in any better than this. Like, what am I like? What am I going to do? I already, I made this point a

couple years ago. So, so number one, it's just like, look, I already did a good job writing this. Why am I going to kill myself to write it again? But number two is again, I think just the overall concept of what Stratécurie is as it being a journal of my attempt to understand technology and understand media and understand the internet, the impacts of the internet on all these sorts of

areas is it's a it's not building something new every day. It's evolving. It's it's it's it's touching up the little bits and pieces of this is the way I thought the world worked as kind of right. But there is sort of a couple a couple of things that I that I missed here. And so,

let me remind you of where we're at and I'm going to sort of add on to that. And I can get that it, you know, it probably comes across at times as a little salt cystic and, you know, again, it's sort of like my signature at this point is that I quote myself, but there it is actually pretty integral to the way I think about what Stratécurie is and how that fits into my process and how it is that I write thousands of articles because I'm not writing a thousand new short stories

a day. And so, there's an aspect of I've been developing this understanding. There's an aspect of I've just been doing this every day for so long that the sort of process of how to do it is

is is um ties into that. How in the world do you edit at the end of the day because something that happens to me something to have us do a bunch of writers is you're in it and the challenges when you're in the article you're reading it from your perspective and you're adding all of these intentions of hey, this is what I meant to say and I like to sleep on things because of that I see it with fresh eyes. You don't have that luxury like you're in it. There I say almost in a

state of panic and now you got to do the edit. So, what does that what does that look like? So, I would say two things. Number one, I will grant the caveat that not all everything I write, but some stuff I write would could probably use more editing and there's sometimes I I feel this when I'm going like 5,000 words on there that's too long this really could be trimmed and that's just sort of the trade-offs of my of my model is that's not sort of happening. The reason I do

generally get away with it is I rarely add up my pieces. So, and I think it's it's and this is a function of I it's not just I've been thinking about the article all day it's that I've been thinking about the article in a certain sense for 10 years. And so, the ideally the the tightness that I'm going for where I'm not repeating myself and it's a very logical thing is springing from a tightness in my own thinking and a structuredness in my in in my own sort of understanding of the world.

And so it comes out in a fairly cogent sort of state. And so I do of course edit, but it's mostly about typos mostly about like repeating words just drives me up the wall. And then the one actually the one sort of hack that that I accidentally developed is now that all my articles that also are available sort of as podcasts. I read it and I always read it out loud before I publish and

that is actually completely killed my typo rate. Like I have like one a month now whereas I used to have many more than that because it's like just the reading out loud and you can feel that oh yeah that's that's sort of stumbling. I do think I write by and large how I talk. You can see I'm talking in long extended sort of answers and senses here. But hopefully I'm talking in a way

I'm not rambling too or you know I'm rambling to certain extent. But it's not like random rambling and I'm tying stuff together and ideally I'm linking it back to it's still in my head you asked me what my typical day is which I haven't yet answered. But there's a bit where we're going to come back to that that's in my head and that's just generally how I write. And you know

I think about the human brain in terms of like computers to sort of an extent. Like I just have a very large amount of sort of like Ellen Cash like you know where the whole thing is sort of in my head and I can retrieve it quickly without having to go to like like like memory or whatever might be do you want to show me the day in the life grand reveal now. Well the I think that the challenge actually in some this sort of gets your editing point is like anyone else you're going to be

more high energy and more capable of doing stuff sort of in the morning. The issue is that because I'm in Taiwan and if I'm doing interviews with people or I'm just talking to like my my assistant that I do all the writing and stuff myself but like all those like taxes and accounting and all

that sort of stuff that's mostly all people in the US. And so my mornings are usually occupied with just admin stuff or doing interviews with people or phone calls if I have calls and also sports some big sports fan and sports that are on at night in the US around the morning in Taiwan. And so I there's a full basketball game on Prairie and Watch the Basketball game.

And so I will wake up very excited maybe you know not always know what I'm going to write but sometimes I know I'm going to write like this is great I'm going to finish the day early it's going to be awesome and stuff happens during the day and then I get lunch and I'm kind of sleepy after lunch and it takes a while and then I start procrastinating and then you get to like three

o'clock or whatever like oh my god I just something I forgot about it. So one thing I have done is I've sort of compressed my entire week into three days and so because the fourth day that I do now

is an interview and so that's usually happens in the first few days of the week. And basically I just somewhat physically destroy myself for those three days where there's a lag in the afternoon where I'm being lazy and procrastinating and now when you do it I'm kind of a little energy and then sort of the panic sets in and then you know the or the late afternoon early evening is about sort of getting that written and getting that done but then I sort of crashed out at night and wake up.

I didn't quite imagine you with like a quill pen and you know some sort of very meditative office writing every single day but it is striking how much panic and I gotta do this all right. Yeah for sure. How big of a part of your writing process that is. And frankly it's one of those things that I'm not particularly proud of it. I wish it was better. Like I wish I was more disciplined. Was it like that when you were at the daily Harold in college? No same same sort of

things. So yeah I mean the in that case you know and that you goes back to one of the things that I want to go over the editorial more opinion or the editorials when I was a senior was student newspapers would do editorials and they would do it about random national things like once a month or something. No one cared. What we would I wanted to do is like wait we're actually in a unique position for a very specific set of issues. And so my idea was that we're never going to write about

national issues because no one cares we're some random sort of student newspaper. We are going to write about these things and we're going to write an editorial every day or Monday through Thursday and then Friday will be like letters of the editor and stuff like that. And we did it which mostly manifested into me doing it every single day and writing it like all those editorials. And of course they were all at do it every day to come up with something you had to figure something out

and then you and then you're doing it at the last minutes. And I loved it it was it was awesome and it was successful. I think of our five objectives. We at the end we sort of did an inventory and we felt we had succeeded on four of them. And so there is a bit where that was sort of a foreshadowing of what I did. Shrekery was you know I'd now again I do an interview now but it's been four days a week for a very long time. It used to be five days a week. And I write about technology

I write about media. I don't I'm not partisan. I go to the extent I write about politics like I wrote a little bit about like some of the you know Kamala Harris or JD Vance or whatever and their views on this stuff and what impact that might have. But I'm presenting it like this is just sort of my view on it. I'm not saying who I prefer or XYZ because like I my goal is of course I have opinions.

My goal though is to have an impact on technology in the area that I am focused on. And I think ultimately I can have more impacts on the world and more influence by sticking to what I'm good at. Just like the student newspaper. Hey if you're if you're hammer on something like student government related they care about the student newspaper says if you write about like

Iraq war no I'm cares like it sort of doesn't matter. And so gauging your what you're targeting what you're focused on to what's your capable and granted some degree of authority to talk and write about I think is is something that is useful and important. How do you think about your own reading? I mean I remember many years ago you wrote a piece called I think it was called

the voters decide which was inspired by book called the party decides. And so there's a book there and then there's a lot that you've built on Clayton Christensen and then you probably wake up in the morning and thinking through headlines like how do you think about your reading input and how

intentional are you about that? My reading is extremely intentional in that I I'm not sitting around in reading books but there are days where literally I know I want to write about I know there's a specific thing I need to understand better I think some of the best trajectory pieces

are historical I agree that they pull into like I think a lot of things companies do go back to things that happen if they're founding and that because that is still part of the culture and to understand how a company thinks you have to understand their culture to understand the culture

you have to understand their founding. And so there's days where I will be writing about something and I will in the morning I'm an extremely fast reader fortunately I will sit down I'll read through an entire book really then I and then I that book will be a heavy reference for you know that

that I'm that I'm writing and reading about now there's certainly foundational books like you mentioned sort of Clayton Christensen and things on those lines and once I've read a book it's sort of in the you know it's in the repository that I might sort of pull on it and things on those

lines and we certainly Clayton Christensen is the is the biggest influence in that regard for sure but yeah I so I read a decent number of books but not what I'm just like sitting on the chair relaxing it's like that's part of my workflow is I'm I'm just going to plow through this and

um you know at this point you know I know which sex is I'm going to for which things I'm sort of really seeking to understand um then those are very satisfying ones I think or there's other ones where I remember there's an article I wrote ages ago when Apple was changing you know

is part of that update sort of explain this and what the implications were and sure that's YZ and the good thing about that is it's directional but obviously that that's in there sort of in the long run you know by the time you know the AI stuff came along and Nvidia and all that sort

of thing like I knew at a very pretty deep level how how GPUs worked and that was are you we've born of a you know an intense day of research because I you know I think the the biggest compliment I can get is when someone will comment on Twitter or they're email me and say you know

I have to say like you know for someone that's not in my field you really got got that and and and and and that's what that's great because you want to we all know like the gelman amnesia thing or yeah right you read something you're like oh that's really good and this about

something you write about like they don't know what they're talking about it's like I I don't want to ever do that and so I know I said do and then I value greatly readers that will will write in and say you got that wrong and not in the next day you know it's not fun but John Gruber who writes stirring fireball has a saying that I have wholeheartedly adopted which is he says I love to be right and the best way to always be right is to immediately correct yourself when you're wrong and I think

that is certainly something I try to live by you know it I'm gonna get stuff wrong especially when you're writing every single day but to I try to not just issue correction but also I walk the reader through my thought process how did I get to the wrong thing and you know what was that bit

in my chain that was that was mistaken and I think that's it's not just good hygiene in general I write pretty authoritatively just that's my style it's like it's pretty direct it's big A because of B because of C I'm not gonna you know like dilly dally around it which I think

is important just general writing tip like you got to go for it you can't be like making excuses or hedging your bets you know too much in your writing if you say what you think but that's also risky because when you're wrong then you kind of look like an idiot tell me more about that go

in for it I want to hear more about that I stake things this happen because of this as opposed to well one could you know in again I'm not saying I'm perfectly this I do hedge my bets you know you can probably tell things where I do leave a sort of an out for myself so I'm not sure but by and

large I think you want to if you think something is the case your whole value is as an analyst is not being a you know not being a stenographer like you insist say oh yeah the company said this therefore it's this your whole point is to find you know if we talked about the power point

to the essay bit before there's a bit where what companies say our power points and the role that I can bring is to fill in the space between the power points of what companies say and you don't do that effectively by just listing every possible thing or on the other hand just repeating

the power points you have to actually the value provide has to be something that's this is what's in the middle so you say what's in the middle right and ideally you're right uh and sometimes you're wrong you have to own that but they're I think that's the best approach because if you're

sort of merely mouth-throwned it then it's not interesting writing like knowing finds it sort of compelling yeah one of the things that you do a lot is you'll look at a keynote and you'll say this thing happened they framed it like this and say that's my wedge and now I'm going to analyze

that and then this is what it means for the cultural grain of Google or Apple yeah I mean I love keynotes um the I love the first five minutes of a keynote because to me it's like they're they're trying to set a frame for what's to follow and to me the frame they're they're trying to set is

more interesting than the products like why is this the frame that they're sort of looking for um you know like satin adela does a lot of like he tries to tie stuff back in historically which obviously I try to do as well so I find that appealing generally but you know does that make sense is that actually a relevant sort of historical comparison like you know and what why are they doing this what does it say about the products they're they're introducing I think the risk that I have to

be careful of is first off there's just a general confirmation bias my whole bit is I think I already know how the world works and I'm plugging this news into it right so I have to be very very careful that I'm not looking for stuff that fits my pre-existing worldview the funny thing is is that

sometimes that makes me get stuff wrong say overcompensate they actually know I had to figure it out but I'm like so eager to look but that's okay that's that those are mistakes I'll accept because it's a function of my process of making sure I don't give in the confirmation bias too much

the other thing is because I do actually think the narratives these companies say are important because they speak to the underlying focus of the company and its culture and things on those lines at the end of the day the actual like results do matter and the actual like specifications do

matter and so I need to make sure I'm still digging into does the actual like numbers match this sort of narrative that's being put forward so I want to talk about I want to talk about introductions and how you think about them and you're talking about stories mattering so I'm

going to read this to you and I want to hear I want to hear your thoughts on it so this from what Clayton Christensen got wrong there's no question it's the very beginning there's no question Clayton Christensen who developed the theory of disruption is Silicon Valley's favorite business

school professor for me diving deep into his thinking in a corporate innovation class was a breath of fresh air for management theory that explained all of corporate America but for its most successful company Apple what's going on there that's probably like the the original

Christopher's secretary even though it was four to five months after I'd actually started you know the the bit was true I you know Clayton you're you're in you're in sort of business school and they have all these sort of theories about how things work and I have a few business school

bits that are you know somewhat relevant I mean number one is the fact I was at business school in the first place I sort of grew up on the internet you know interested in technology interesting in the business side of things and by growing up the internet in the you know

the 90s 2000s MBAs were terrible right they were they were worthless but I sort of grew up in a blue blue collar sort of area no one really went to work for tech never even occurred to me to do that sort of thing even though I was super into it and sort of the dot com era and and so I was

in sort of the 2000s I was in in Taiwan teaching English and my my wife's like you know why don't all you do is read about and talk about tech why don't you go work in tech and I'm like that's a good idea I should work in tech and I'm like well I'm like what 27 years old with my no career

relevant career experience like the only option to me was like to get an MBA that was like the way to sort of like get legitimacy in the US job market and so I did that turned out it was great fit right just because I had a lot of implicit understanding of things like leverage and margin and

game theory and all this sort of stuff that's something I now had was given a language to sort of articulate things like that with and so the MBA was great in that regard but still like a lot of technologist-pilot technology was fascinated by Apple very interested in it and

well there's actually a step up there's one more thing so I go back to to business school first at first class you know management 101 or whatever it's called and I'm flipping through all the case studies we're going to do for the semester and there was zero technology companies

and so I go to the professor afterwards you know I'm a dinner-ling student like that I'm like why are there no technology companies and the answer is like well there's broad principles that you learn from these cases that are applicable to sort of you know companies in all industries

and I'm like I don't think that's true and this is actually one of the core things about Shritechery which is technically it is true but what I think makes technology unique is the nature of zero marginal cost and zero transactional cost by zero marginal cost you know

one more person visiting google.com doesn't cost them anything do they have substantial server costs of course but like one extra person doesn't cost them anything and this applies to basically everything on the internet zero transaction costs is Google can serve 7 billion people without a sweat because they their actual interaction is complete mediated by computers and the implications of this on business models and strategy I think are very profound

and it was very and to me it was a major hole in the curriculum that this wasn't the case yes you had all these equations that you could use to analyze businesses but if you're putting a zero into an equation

the equation comes out looking totally different because zeroes cancel so many things out so number one that I have from business school is there's an entire arena of strategic analysis that at I'm you know at a top five business school is not even aware that's needing to be addressed let me just

pause you one thing that I think is a really good prompt or a thing that you find yourself saying when it's like I should write is when you're in the midst of an expert like you were in business school and what did you say I don't think I agree with that that I think for a lot of people that

they say I think I'm missing something but somehow when you find that can you start asking yourself maybe I'm right let me go explore that because if you find yourself saying that you are right you have the seeds of a really compelling piece well I mean there's a certain bit I think to be a writer

or to be a writer particularly of what I do which is my own site on the internet that entails some combination of narcissism and delusions of grandeur where I think I'm right and I think I'm right enough and compelling enough that I can just put something up there and you're going to read

and you're going to be spread around and it's going to be interesting I'm fortunate I'm not sure this is career advice I'm fortunate that turned out to buy in large be the case you know just I started checkery with 380 store something followers on Twitter no one knew who I was and

there was no hand off were favored given or whatever is just I went up there and wrote what I hope was compelling stuff there was a social media was different then there was a lot of currency to be gained from sharing interesting links you know and different than today when links are

suppressed and there's so much stuff out there and buying large and so I certainly benefited in that regard but yeah there's a bit like that's just my personality and thought process is I'm in English is from Taiwan and I'm going to go tell the strategy professor that I think you're

curriculum on day one is BS because you're a complete missing you know sort of that's awesome yeah that's awesome so that was that was sort of the first sort of business school bit but the other thing was Apple as I mentioned and Apple did everything wrong right they didn't

have a division they had a functional organization the way they sort of did marketing the way did did product development all this stuff was become monetized like what why were they able and at that time there was a real fever around the idea that Apple was doom was imminent

because just like the Mac and PC the iPhone is going to fade away all developers go to Android because it was open and then the iPhone would would become a fractional part of the marketplace and that that that whole argument around that broadly speaking really ties a lot of checkery

threads together number one everyone gets the historical context of Mac versus Windows wrong it was not Mac was there and then Windows came along and knocked it off DOS was there before Mac and that was downstream from sort of IBM and the DOS market was massive

enlarged before the Mac ever even shipped so it's actually the inverse where the iPhone was first and Android sort of came later and that it's amazing that is just a basic historical fact that basically everyone the world does not understand I gray respect fresh criticism as I mentioned he's

had more influence on me than basically one else he got that fact totally wrong and it meant his entire thesis fell apart but that there's a bit where that's why it's really important we go back and read those books go back and make sure I get the bits right because if you just go along with the popular sort of thing you actually don't go back and assure that make sure that what the myth is is what actually happen you can actually get huge swaths of analysis wrong because you're

when your core assumptions is sort of mistaken well let me let me talk through a few things that I've taken so one of the big ones like I said is you got to know stuff another one is to once you have that background knowledge to just trust your point of view and to not be hesitant like there's

something that you're doing we are taking that point of view you're like okay I'm gonna go for it and I think part of that is probably temperamental we are saying okay this is how I am I'm like I mean like the um you know if you do those like personality tests whatever I'm like you're

and disagree yeah disagree why I'm at the zero percent time I'm 100 percent sure that's the case and I think by the way and this does I think color internet discourse generally anyone who's successful in internet is probably very highly disagreeable like because the amount of abuse and

disagreement and people coming at you that you know people people weren't meant to see the get the level feedback that they do right and most people just sort of want to get along and and want to be along and so and you can see them wilt and and it's it's a very difficult thing

to deal with and it's not and I'm not gonna say I'm impervious to it like there's you mentioned not sleeping there's because I haven't slept because it's like something got like spun up into a completely different arena of people that I wasn't aware with your I wasn't focused on and I'm

getting all these sort of attacks and it's it's very difficult and challenging to sort of to sort of deal with uh but at the end of the day um I am temperamentally sort of don't care so well the other Ben Thompson prompts so to speak are what are some places where there's an expert

and you understand their theory but it doesn't explain something and then where's the time in your worldview where you're saying okay something isn't lining up here and I resonated with what you said earlier and just think about to all the daily updates that I've read

some of the times when you've started you said yesterday day before I got something wrong here's what I got wrong this was the hole in my thinking those are almost more instructive and I felt that as a reader those moments are when I feel you as the writer more

intimately than when you're talking about aggregation theory something sort of coming from on high or much more professorial right you well yes you're you're you're getting inside my thinking which I think is is intrinsically sort of more intimate in that regard sure sure you told me earlier come

back to volume let's talk about volume well so you know this this ties into the sort of daily schedule it ties into the the fact I still think of myself as writing a blog um and it ties into the business model which is you know as a contrast uh there's a guy named Dylan Patel right

the site called semi analysis and he and he will get these incredible scoops or details about the next and video processor or what the production pipelines are or or in like components and things on those lines incredibly valuable stuff like like market changing stuff potentially or strategy

changing stuff and you know we've talked about sort of business models and what he has it's a sub stack I mean this guy it's an amazing internet success story he grew up posting on forums and like he was like a reddit moderator at some point and now he's like like the authority about

stuff like this and he charges something like $500 a year and he only sell the annual subscriptions and the reason is he might only write one article a year that actually matters to you but you really have to read that article and and for him to charge what I charge $15 a month you know

that would be weaving so much value on the table because you just sign up for a month read the article and then cancel and you like because it's you know that's what he's selling is these occasional super incredible powerful and useful sort of insights and so he's doing a good job of maximizing

his return on that what I do is I charge $15 a month used to be 10 it's sort of made its way I've done two price royalties raises I just did just another one part of what I am selling frankly is the ongoing production of content and it's almost like it's like monetizing my hack which is

my hack is I have a daily deadline set to publish every day what I'm delivering to you is any one piece I write is hopefully insightful oftentimes my most insightful things are in the free articles which you could just read sort of anyway but what you get when you sign up for

search for checkery is you're going to get three pieces of money Tuesday Wednesday and hopefully a very compelling interview on Thursday I would say I have a podcast you get all this you know it's a big bundle hopefully something's going to be interesting to you but it's that regularity of

delivery and you're paying not for the archives you're paying for the confidence and and even if you don't realize what you're paying for just knowing that you're going to get this in store you're in box every day and one thing that I think is is kind of interesting is the reason I can do this

for so long is I'm ready what's up that I'm interested in sure if I'm I trying to cater to my customers I think that's the recipe for burnout the one time I did almost burnout is like 2019 2020 has regular regulation and antitrust and congressional hearings and I'm like oh this is actually

horrible like it's burning me out I like I work a lot that's not what's burning me out it's very about stuff that I don't that is kind of soul sucking from my perspective but the and you also over index on sports because that's what you love talking about I do read all media I mean

a number more than you know I'm in the media so that's interesting number two I do think the media is it's it it is indicative of everything that's going to happen what's going to happen to everyone the canary in the coal mine right because it is digital inherently and the media you know the reason

why there's like a Wall Street TMT tech media telecom or biggest telecom media tech I remember is those are all zero marginal cost industries that is the connective sort of tissue and so it's interesting I do get the media I would say my analysis of the media is wrong more often

than it is about tech I think a lot of that is I don't fully understand all the incentives like I think a lot of myself out Hollywood has been directly correct but I've gotten details wrong in part because Hollywood's a city of big personalities and like people do dumb stuff because there's

prestige in it or sort of XYZ whereas tech you're you have people doing dumb stuff for those reasons but much less so it's like tech is pretty huge pretty closely to it's broader incentives um but yeah it's also fun to write about all wishes to say I mean so some of the self-serving

ties into my hack all this sort of bit but I do think that volume or quantity is underrated and this is a massive reveal versus state of preference thing everyone will say oh I just want you to write good stuff like don't worry when you write it I'll read it and again maybe I'm just

telling myself this but my sense is it would be hard to have the degree of success that I've had if it weren't for the just day and day out sort of grinding and you know you're gonna get something from me and yes that occasionally leads to stuff that is maybe not as high quality as it should be

maybe could use another round of editing but I suspect that the actual process leads to far more interesting and compelling stuff because there's no choice you're gonna have to write regardless and I do think it's something people find valuable it sort of ties into their their day life I haven't

done a lot of like deep analytics about my readers I think it's important to focus on what just focus on what you're interested in that's the key thing to doing this for a long time but I have monthly subscriptions and I have annual subscriptions and at this point the vast majority of my subscribers

are annual subscribers which is great because that means they're committed they know they want to get this and for me it's freeing like if I have one bad update okay fine I have a year to make it up to them before they have to sort of renew but one day I did notice that was interesting when

I was trying to understand like the lifetime value of the different groups is I have to cut out people who would subscribe in the first month and immediately turn off all the renew in those are people you didn't make sense they're they wanted to try it or sort of they want to get one

article and so I just separate those from people that that's like through but I wouldn't do it did deeper analysis it turned out my best cohort was people who subscribed and and turn off all the renew and then sometime in that first month they subscribed

annually and they were people that like they wanted to try it out and I was delivered them every day and they're in the habit and at some point they're like yeah I want to keep getting this and then like why do I mean why do I bother with monthly it's a discount to go sort of annually and sort of

walk in and I think you know I have a lot of subscribers that have you know they've been they've been there for years and years and they're awesome you know I still have my initial set of subscribers that you know they got me off the ground and I'm incredibly grateful to them

and I've had a lot of people that have churned and you know my churn rate is very low but it's still obviously sort of exists I you know I bounce them to the they still get the free articles sort of bit and it's funny I got a lot of companies to understand their business I don't

want to understand my business too much to certain extent because as long as the number is is not going down then things are good so we don't need to name names but I I got to ask what is it like when you're seeing someone come in it's like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg you're like so I say

big name yeah I I've never sort of tried to read them and know who's coming in actually there is a funny story about this which is you know currently Sheki runs on my own sort of system that will be available probably sort of hopefully soon but for now it's sort of like a custom sort

of thing but for what before that I was I was working with the service club number full and I was like when they're first customers they they'll actually watch after my first first secretary because this business model didn't really exist so it's sort of all glued together by myself and then they

started this like and they did a great job but they emailed me one time saying hey just let's you know you have three subscribers that we accidentally double charged we've already refunded them and then they gave me the names it was random person a random person b top five fortune five

CEO who's number three and I'm like wow I didn't know he was a subscriber I was like he was like totally random but I I don't like knowing it's weird actually it's a real paradox on one hand I don't like knowing and I usually forget pretty quickly because I don't ever I want to write what

I think I don't want to ever write because I know someone else is sort of reading where I write be and frankly they don't want that either like I do you know most relevant well known sort of executives do reach a checkery and I have a chance to talk to several of them the reason they find

it valuable is when you're a CEO everyone you talk to inherently has an incentive to tell you what you want to hear right because it's just it's inescapable even if you have the most disagreeable straight talking person ever there's always going to be some sort of constraint there and so they

like reading me are talking to me because even though I'm lacking a lot of knowledge that they have because I'm not in charge of the company I'm just reading their financial reports or watching their presentations or listening to their earnings calls I have no incentive to lie to them or

no incentive to sort of I just say what I think they can sort of and it's interesting the extent I will get pushed back from companies about stuff I write I never get pushed back from CEOs it's always people lower down the people marketing people or even senior vp's or stuff like that

which disagree and say you don't get this this is wrong there I've never had a CEO push back at that level what's going on there because they they appreciate getting a different point of view of course they want the public record to be in a certain regard and perhaps they will email their

pet a PR say email Ben and tell her if it's lazy but they never I've never gotten pushed back from CEO personally and my perception and you know again just to the extent I've talked to them sort of in person is they're so hungry from a distinct point of view that doesn't care about them

that like I don't care what they think like I saying what I think I my business model independent on them they're paying $15 a month like everybody else and I don't even know if they're subscribers by and large and I try not to know and so the flip side of the paradox is

of course I'm thrilled they're reading right like the you know shitekery at the end of the day I want to have an impact and you know I used to work at Microsoft and you know the you know I had opinions and like what the company should do and what

should be and the great irony is I almost certainly have way more impact on them than I ever would have that I stayed for 10 years and sort of been promoted up the chain and been the internal sort of political fights and that's amazing like there's a bit where my core audience is a very small

collection of like CEOs and everyone else is helping pay the bills you know I sort of go along with it well one of the things that I want to make really clear is this is a compliment that's going to sound like an insult so bear with me there is something now sitting here there's very unremarkable

about you and shitekery and it's because the business model that you founded and that you pioneered has now become a big part of the world and I think of that in two ways first of all you the the founders of sub stack have explicitly said that you inspired their model that's the first thing

and then the other thing is one man media companies have really become a thing both in writing where you know I guess you had before you you had bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein but now we have people like mkbhd we have people like Joe Rogan it is a big thing now that single

person media companies can have all this reach but you go back 10 15 years ago that would have been insane they're going to disrupt the spn they're going to disrupt MTV what are you talking about well I mean the at the end of the day from the user perspective time is time so every minute spent

renish shitekery is a minute not spent reading your time they're not spent reading so from that perspective I am competing on an equal plane with the largest media companies in the world and so that that's all that matters and then for it to pay off from my perspective the advantage

you have as a single person media company is your cost structure can be totally different like like my my cost structure for your first four or five years I was literally one person I did everything I did my taxes I did my accounting I answered emails I did sort of all those sorts of

pieces and well that was busy and stressful particularly since I wrote more back then than then I sort of I do now and you know it's pretty insane the amount of stuff I was doing that meant my my only costs were basically our processing fees right and then like you know because my time

was obviously you know valuable but it wasn't I wasn't paying paying a salary is just sort of like whatever came out of it and I'm working in a zero marginal cost business for me to send an email to a hundred people yes email class money but on the order of cents is the exact same as to send

a two thousand people or to send it to ten thousand people or send to a hundred thousand people the beauty of media is it is on the internet is this perfectly scalable on the back end I can write an article that reaches a million people reach or theoretically can reach billions of people now

depends people read it no but sometimes a million people do which is amazing it's media is not scalable on the front end because you have to keep writing stuff every day like the the and so that turns people off from it it makes media I think maybe often a poor investment

in that's a real challenge but that's that's an opportunity for the people that are capable of that have that generative function so it's appropriate for you to start with what you're did it look like because that is the part that that is marginal costs like I have to literally

sit down and write that update every day once that update is written then I get the internet advantages I get to send that send that to hardening people or subscribers or people are on my mailing list or whatever it might be so that is you know and I wrote a lot about that when I was

getting started like why this is an opportunity and the different frames of reference and so I'm very proud of the model I'm proud of sub stack I'm proud of everyone that is sort of doing this and I hope to some extent it gives even though I've never been the CEO of the Microsoft or Meta

or or or an Apple hopefully get some sort of credence that I'm not I know to some extent what I'm talking about because like the fact that yeah I was the first to sort of really do this again newsletters existed on Wall Street in particular those are more of the you have like hundreds

of subscribers you charge $10,000 or $100,000 or sort of whatever it might be this idea of like you know stripe was really the the core piece they started in 2009 it did probably come up 2011 I watched in 2013 and this ability just take credit card easily do a subscription

not have to muck around with PayPal or whatever and basically make it up in scale like the internet let's everything be made up in scale and that is a challenge like it's funny people will be mown the fact I only have a thousand listeners by podcasts or I only have a 500 people read my blog

it's like well let's step back here let's go back to the 90s and tell someone you sit down in a thousand people listen to what you have to say every single week like it's it's it's pretty remarkable I think the reason why people don't fully appreciate is number one it's everywhere

number two through social media you see all the success stories you're not engaging yourself sort of appropriately that's a problem with all sorts of stuff and then also the monetization is obviously hard because you're doing zero marginal cost content advertising operates at scale

and so the key thing with Stratekery is I mentioned I'm well priced compared to Dylan Patel but I'm very high price compared to most content of the internet and it's really about maximizing the average revenue per user which is if you're selling something you have to you have to be

confident to charge for it and you know if you have if you charge a hundred dollars a year you have a thousand subscribers that's you know thousand true fans you know the sort of plastic sort of essay you have a hundred thousand dollars a year and that's a pretty good outcome so when you see people

launching a sub-stack trying to charge for content and it doesn't work what went wrong what is the mistake the strategy the strategy mistake that people repeatedly make when I started I was the only one doing this sure so that certainly I want to be humble about that fact that makes it

that that that that makes a big difference one of the real big challenges is and this is where the volume thing frankly comes in is you need a way to acquire customers but you also need something to sell hmm I saw that by just writing a massive amount some of which was free and some which was

paid if you're only generating one content a week one article a week which is frankly is a is a lot how are you going to balance customer acquisition with actually having a product that people feel compelled to pay for because they want to get access to it I think that's really hard it's it's

harder to day just grow part of the internet advantage was social media is make my best marketing is my customers telling other people and that was when links were being pushed on social media in the way that now they're just that's right that's right which makes which and so that that makes it

astronomically more difficult today you know I'm now able to launch new things like I started new podcasts and I can overnight have five-figure or sort of listeners because but that's because I'm lending the sort of audience that I game before sort of into getting that off the ground so

what do I say to someone who's trying to start a new podcast that has no audience and no whatever it's I just want to be humble about that sure but also there's something fundamental to Shritekry that businesses campaign or think it provides value right right consistently really

good stuff I mean the the the thesis that I have is the most important article you write is the second article someone reads so they go on your site and they're like wow that was a good article and then maybe they leave and they come back later because they've fallen other wink

or they click somewhere on your site and they read a different article and they're like wow that was a really good article and suddenly there is a level of consistency and expectation that you've established with that with that reader and so some of the things that do with Shritekry is funny

I mean I joke about it's a word of mouth blog with a name no one can pronounce but it's also memorable that's why I can't remember the name of that blog how do you say that again Shritekry had a custom font when custom fonts were a completely new thing in the internet Shritekry had the

hand drawings Shritekry was orange the reason for all that is is I wanted to capitalize on that second visit where people would show up and they'd say I've been on this site before because there was following links on Twitter and then and then oh I see that drawing oh that's the guy

that does hand run the hand drawings and what I want is that user to start to develop an expectation that this site has good stuff and and I did that I started Shritekry with the goal of the it monetizing it but the way I always thought about is when I monetized it I wasn't going to drop a

pay wall I was going to do more stuff so I wouldn't have to have another job I could write more I was probably insanely turned out okay but probably insane at the time confident I could generate more stuff I'm like I have so many ideas and so when I add the daily updates like yeah I

still have the free stuff and now if you want more you can sort of get more stuff and I wanted to build a desire and linkage in people that like this is a place to go to to get good stuff when something happens in the world and Ben doesn't write about it I'm disappointed like I wish Ben would comment on this sort of thing and then I go day left it comes along oh you want me to comment about news of the day as it happens $10 a month and and you get that so I want to do a little segment

here called how the internet works so I'm going to give you framework sentences that you've written and I want you to basically unpack them and I think what we can do is we can get the Ben Thompson model of how media works online first thing is this is exponent my favorite episode of exponent

episode 12 it's called the internet rainforest and the thesis is this that the internet enables big winners and small focused niche players yeah well there's lots of names for this is the barbell effect I've done think of the smiling curve and this is basically the idea that the internet the

implication of zero marginal cost is your transaction cost and this is sort of aggregation theory is everyone had a vision of the internet of being a a million sort of winners because it's a you can go anywhere you can do anything the reality is we can go anywhere and do anything you're

overwhelmed with abundance you have too much stuff and so the product whereas in the analog world the controlling factor is scarcity and so the analog world is who can get you stuff so it's distribution that matters on the internet anyone gets you stuff because it's all free and so you have too much

so what matters is discovery who can help you find the stuff that is sort of interesting what this means is the platforms that control discovery they get more users they get more users they get more supply

because that's where the users are which makes their platform better so they get more users get a virtuous cycle that the implication of the internet is not you have a lot of winners is that you have very few very large winners and so this is the Google's and the Facebook's of the world this is

all very obvious now but I think you know just checking what in the early days is really explaining why are the expectations wrong these companies wrong like the great shame is I know money when I started to checkery I would have been much better off had I had the money out now and then just

investing in my thesis back then of like basically because like the big the big five completely outperform VC complete out for anyone over a sort of the runnest of checkery as Jerry was explaining why that was the case why are they why are all these companies despite the fact that the largest

companies ever still completely undervalued and that you know it was obviously sort of turn off to be the case that's probably why a lot of well subscribers is I hope they make money so so good for them so be others large players but at the same time all these bits about the

cheapness makes all these small creators completely possible and the key thing is is traditional media can't shrink down enough their cost structures were built for a different world they're built for where this predicated on having white manufacturing operations which is printing

presses into every trucks and things on those lines that which which entailed a certain sort of lock in in their market that they had if you're online if you can get just a few subscribers that are really or a few people that are really loyal to and really like your stuff and there's a

gazillion niches in the world and now you can address the entire internet so you can pull I have subscribers from over a hundred countries like you can find the people that like what you want and then you can charge them again a high average revenue per user and you can have a have a

have a very good life and so that is the case in industry after industry like like like cost internet cost structures and niche and find your tribe versus zero marginal costs serve everyone sort of get these aggregation effects everyone in the middle screwed and and that started with print

and then it happened with with it is happening with the rest of media and you're seeing it happen in all sorts of industries right let's do a string of sentences now that truly change my life I remember reading these in my college dorm room and I was like I think that might actually

influence what I do for a career here we go people underestimate the scale of the internet it's not going to appeal your content it's not going to appeal to the whole world but if you're going to like it you're really going to like it and this gets in the bit about the whole world

your addressable market people you know you will like every Shrekry post the addressable market is literally on the order of billions of people now there's the there's the classic phrase everyone makes fun of if we can only capture x percent of the market that's actually true in this

case like and you know it's funny there's a lot of like well-known vcs and folks in the area the what I watch the the pay version of Shrekry's like you know love your stuff that's like and it's interesting people whose job is to understand the scale of the internet to not

understand scale the internet in that particular case like it turns out there is a good number of people that are willing to pay because they really like the content and and we see it it's not just me there's all the success stories of the sub stack there's all the YouTube success stories

to your point these individual creators and there's no there's no cap on that people have like subscription fatigue and they're like I think they underestimate the number of niches and they're they're only focused on themselves there's a lot of stuff and actually their problem is

they're too interested there's too many stuff they want to subscribe to and so they're frustrated how much they're spending on subscriptions without and they forget about the fact that most people everyone is different everyone is not like them and people will subscribe to you know the most

arcane sort of these focus sort of things and in a pays off let's do one more most of what I read is the best there is to read on any given subject the trash is few and far between and the average equally rare well I mean I think this is just an internet effect which is and this is a function

this is why discovery matters what bubbles up what gets traction the links that gets shared are shared because they're they're good and you know this is a reason why you talk with these like misinformation or whatever one of the worst things that exists in terms of intelligent

conversation with the internet is search because you can go on and search and you can find absolute garbage because this is like the whole tick tockization of things the vast majority of videos create a tick tock are trash what the magic is is that if you if say 0.001 percent are great

if you can ramp up the volume then the absolute on the internet the absolute number matters most and so you just like if you have a huge amount of volume even if a tiny percentage of that is good the number of good things is quite large and it can be so large that it starts to overwhelm sort of

other sorts of things one of my favorite lines on this is from a little book by Aubrey Mershenko called human is media and it says that before the internet curation happened before the publication of something and now curation happens after something that's publicized and that's what you're

saying you just let everything go everything can be shared and then you have search or algorithms that then say this is the best stuff now that's what we're going to show that's right so what the curation is on the word for discovery which is which is these platforms that help you discover

the best stuff and they are heavily motivated to engender massive amounts of creation and actually it is a positive for these large platforms if there is gargantuan levels of junk out there because the implication is there's lots of stuff being created which means you know there's going to be

lots of good stuff too I want to talk about writing conclusions so let's go back to what Clayton Christensen got wrong here's how you ended it apple is and for the last 15 years has been focused exactly on the blind spot in the theory of low end disruption differentiation based on design

which while it can't be measured can certainly be felt by consumers who are both buyers and users it's time for the theory to change so as you're thinking about ending a piece what is really important to you well I think that was a good example of how I could be very wordy news a lot of punctuation

so thank you for that you are calling back to an article I wrote in 2013 which feeds my worst fears that I peaked early and it's been downhill ever since what is this staple bento piece but number three conclusions are hard for sure I think the best conclusions they top and this is kind of cliche

writing device they tie back into the introduction and they they they they not the thread as it were and so I started that piece as you quoted before saying everyone in Myers Clay Christiansen he's very smart he's got something wrong and so at the end I say what he got wrong and so that was

it was fairly yeah and I do think when you talk about you asked what editing before two percent I do edit again I think I write with a pretty high degree of clarity but what if I do rework something sometimes because it's too long I just got to take something out but the other big thing is

I'm not pulling the thread tight on the conclusion and so I want to I want to you know I'll go back and sometimes when I'm writing the conclusion I will I'll copy the introduction at the top and I'll paste it down the bottom so it's right there in my my way to site and so I'm thinking about

like how much I'm together sometimes I can't really tie this together and I need to go back into the essay and put in a couple of guide posts so that I'm I'm I'm driving sort of to pull it back in how does that work usually what I came up with the introduction I had a sense of where I was going

sometimes the piece goes in a different direction and I have to like sometimes craft introduction which is very sad but sometimes it's like oh wait no it's there I just there were a couple guide posts I needed to add so that when I get to the end I can sort of wink it back to to where I started

and so I think those are the best conclusions who is there hard though like the the but I do think they're important like you know you you you want to and they can be risky because sometimes you to get a good conclusion you have to like maybe go a little bit more out of branch than you want to say

sort of sort of whatever it might be but I would say the challenges of the conclusion are tied to the challenges of the introduction and again I think that's sort of writing 101 in a certain regard when you're editing and you're in a story how do you think about the pacing of

that story and what the right kind of tempo is for a reader it's definitely a a challenge between saying everything I want to say and having it be sure enough compelling you know again I think that's where when I could use more editing that's often the case or it's late at night or I'm just

like you know like I wrote a piece about it was getting related to European regulators wherever I had a whole section in there about you know using the European internet and this annoyance that everyone wants like I kind of can understand why they're so obsessed with data because everyone's

trying to collect data that's totally unnecessary and I thought it was actually like like you go you sign up for like to go visit a museum and they're like you know what was your income last year or something like that I remember overstating it slightly with the password information like all

the sort of stuff it's like I just want to buy tickets right and the US is so much better this you go in like they're like what we're just going to do transaction we don't care who you are we don't want to know who you are I always had barcelona a few weeks ago and I was trying to rent a

bike and they started ask me for my passport it for me yeah it's out of control and everyone has their own bespoke system and the US like everyone just uses like a standardized platform right and and and actually until my take there was this is actually an area where the lack we've

actually ended up with a much better system the like the European internet feels frozen in time the 2000s when every site was trying to collect data because it gets valuable or whatever and I think it was a good aside and a good anecdote it was also like a 6000 word article that it wasn't directly

pertinent to it and so I was going through I'm like I really should cut this this is not necessary but I was really in love with it and it was also like three in the morning and I'm like that whatever it's good to go in there it's all I got I got a bunch of tweets I need to keep

it I need to keep it like Ben must have had a good vacation because his first post back is like a 6500 word bromade against the the European Union um but uh so yeah in that there's probably a bit to be totally honest where I've gotten worse about this over time because like people are going to

read it and so I can be you're gonna you're gonna hear everything that I have to say I should be I should be more disciplined about like there's a bit also the classic saying I've had more time automated shorter sure where if I'm going through like summers are super hard uh because

actually being Taiwan is a big benefit so I worked during the day and I published an evening that's morning here here I wake up at 3 a.m. usually and I write and there's a bit where here you wake up at 3 a.m. yeah on days that I'm writing so since you're getting ready and done today I

didn't publish today so yeah in July in the first part of August I don't do interviews so that's that's sort of like my break for the years I only published three days a week but um and so there's a bit where and I I still finish later than I want to and I'm under the gun and I feel like

my summer updates get a little long uh in part of that is is honestly just a function of and I almost hesitate to talk about it it's not my readers problem like that I'm busy or I'm making up early I think it's important for writers to adopt the sense of at least from my perspective

I'm selling a product it's if you want access to this you have to pay for it I think I I'm very this happens less but early in the days people there's a lot like personal appeals like oh please support me and a lot of writers you wrote something you want everyone to read it so

they want stuff to be free and I'm to a lot of writers like no you're running a business you need to make like you have to give someone a reason to pay and a reason to pay is not charity and a reason to pay is not that they want you to be popular the reason to pay is because they want

to read what you wrote and you're not letting them read it and there's a bit where a lot of writers are too hesitant and they're not disagreeable enough to basically tell their their potential customers no you're not going to get it read what I write unless you pay for it and you need to have a

clearly articulated that you know what are you selling and and so to that and I don't like talk about myself I don't talk about I'm super busy I'm dealing with xyz and so this is you'll wait or whatever that's why don't I say personal days like if I'm busy or stuff's going on that is not

my readers problem I readers signed up to get an email every day and I'm and my job is to give them that email every day and my problems are my problems that's that my updates get along with the sunrocks I'm busy waiting up early so so if I'm the chancellor at Northwestern at the business

school and I were in fight you back and I'd say hey Ben you're going to teach a semester and we're going to train people how to do what you do what would be on that curriculum how would you structure it I mean I think the most important thing is what you're going to write about like the

everyone thinks I have the best job in the world because I get a you know quote-unquote sit my pajamas right about the big five tech companies but if you wanted to do that you are literally competing directly with me and directly with with with with Twitter everyone has comments

about like I'm getting paid to do what millions of people do for free on Twitter every day which will provide their their opinions on the big five tech companies so you're jumping into a very big pond in a world where you have no inherent advantages of like geography like you can have a

bunch of sports columnists in the US before because they were limited to their geographic area where they're published once you're online you're competing with every sports columnist in the world never just going to rebuild Simmons they're not going to read your your columnist whatever

it might be the dynamics of competition completely change what you can do and this goes back to the niche bit is you can find your own pond what you need to do so the most important thing for succeeding on the internet is defining who your target audience is so for example there's a guy

Neil cyber he writes about Apple right he writes about Apple every single day and I write about Apple so we're not only competitive but if you really care about Apple like he's the guy he's just I know for he's gonna write about Apple every single day and that is a he's choosing in some

extent a smaller pond because he's only read about one company I'm ready about a bunch of companies and media and stuff on those lines but he is owning that pond and and I think there should be some of that writes about Amazon every day there's a lot of right about Google every day um Casey Newton

writes about like social media networks generally and he's been very successful sort of doing that I think you what it again it's a cliche but I think it applies very much is if you want to be the successful fish in the pond the key is making your own pond uh not trying to sort of defeat the other

fish have you ever heard of uh publication somebody fail because they chose a niche that was just too small probably there's a lot of failures out there I mean it's the the old plane on the internet right with bulldozers in it like you you see what succeeds in what doesn't I do think that

grind is underrated like it's very it's it's very easy to get started you've probably been thinking about it for a long time you're like a band putting out its first album with songs you've been curating for years and years the great bands are the ones with the great second album and where

there there there's a there's a ability to generate consistently new and interesting sort of insights and points of view and it's interesting because I do think there's a bit where doing something like because I do it daily I think about it all the time and so my process of coming

up with ideas is always running to a certain extent there's a bit where the way to not run out of stuff is to make more stuff which is sort of counterintuitive like creativity isn't a well the you just borrow from it's it's kind of constantly replenishing that's right I do think there is

something to that um certainly that gets back to the concept that talks about earlier about having a view of the world and the system and you're sort of augmenting and building on that as opposed to trying to build a perfect edifice of like this is my castle of of technology um no this is my

sort of much more organic always changing always evolving always being different um sort of views of how things work lovely stuff well I gotta thank you because I don't think this podcast would exist without without your work and some of the things we're talking about with the laws of the

internet and it's because of your writing and your ideas that that this exists and thank you very much well thank you for having me yeah Winston Churchill wasn't just the prime minister the United Kingdom that's what people know him for but he was also a prolific writer he wrote a novel two

biographies memoirs and of course as prime minister speeches he'd spend roughly an hour working on them for every minute that he spoke so if he spoke for eight minutes he'd spend eight hours in prep and yes I know he's controversial but man there's a lot to learn from his writing so what I'm

gonna do is I'm gonna play you a short clip from a speech that he gave in 1940 and then we're gonna break it down together we shall fight on beaches we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall fight in the fields and in the streets we shall fight in the hills we shall never surrender

so let's break this down like a good battle plan the structure of Churchill's writing here is simple and strategic a commander-in-chief can get their squadron their unit on the same page with repetition and that's what Churchill's doing here there's no mistaking the core themes here what is

he doing he's using the word fight four different times and then he talks about how the British military will fight in five different places they're gonna fight on the beaches they're gonna fight on the landing grounds in the fields in the streets in the hills to see all the build up there

but the entire paragraph is building up to these words right here we shall never surrender that is the main point at the end that's the climax that everything builds up to Churchill also uses style to get his point across to writers these days you sit in your fifth grade English class and

you'll be told to only keep what's necessary cut the fluff get rid of the excess but Churchill does the opposite here you'll notice that rhetorically the volume and the diversity of places mentioned it's actually more important for him than the literal meaning of each place and Churchill

he could have just added emphasis by ad living a bunch more places with the word fight so you'll see here he's got fight fight fight fight he's got all this fight but you know what he could do he could just add a whole row worth of stuff we shall fight in the cities we shall fight in the skies we

shall fight in the forest we shall fight in the little Italian sandwich shops I'm just getting right but he could have just added stuff and look at this the order of the locations is in material so he could take fight this guys and he could make beaches down here streets we'll move it up here

then we'll take this so we'll go over here we're sort of like shuffling things around and this all works here's what matters all you need is right at the end you just need we shall never surrender this just needs to come at the end and if it does the whole thing works now why is this it's because

speech writing is different from the kind of writing that you usually get on paper it's this series of phrases these little phrases that are serving up to the punch line at the end right they're just building building building into we shall never surrender and you could arrange any of those little phrases you could take the first one make it the seventh you know rearrange them however you wanted in the paragraph it would still accomplish its purpose a sense of timing is important though

adding all these little build up phrases right here what are they doing they're increasing suspense right up until the point that you start losing people's interest in the more engage your audiences like when you're speech writing the more engage your audiences the more of these little build up phrases you can add so yeah you could say the majority of what church Hill is saying here is fluff he could

have taken all this and compressed it into one thing it looked like this we shall fight everywhere and we shall never surrender eight words could have had the same meaning but that wouldn't have been memorable we wouldn't be talking about it almost a century later instead church Hill took 31

words and all of these words right here they raised the stakes of what he's saying they're giving his speech an element of suspense right when he wants it the most in this drum beat of repetition we shall fight we shall fight we shall fight we shall fight it's paving the way for his eventual

climax all of this is paving away for what comes at the end we shall never surrender well that was fun who knew that arts and crafts class would come in so clutch huh well look I published one of these writing examples every single week on writing examples dot com and if you go to the site you enter email right at the top of the page I'll email you the latest one whenever it goes live