00:27:32 · Emily Sundberg, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:27:32] S4: Yeah. That was so fun. We we were together in Cannes [00:27:34] S2: when that was [00:27:35] S4: real blast. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's... I... When I started writing on Substack, I didn't ever expect that it would be a full time job or even something where I started hiring people and had, like, a built out company... Media company, and now I'm getting photos of people running the marathon with a Feed Me hat or people who are on... In an airport in London, like, who see the Feed Me hoodie. It's a really good feeling. And on top of that, on top of, like, I feel like we all embrace sort of fun as part of this job. When you start a business that is kind of a little piece of culture, it also sort of cracks open the world for you, and you get so many interesting experiences. And you meet so many cool people, and you get access to secret rooms and secret gardens. And, like, I just... If it all was over tomorrow, I'd be so happy. Like, it's been such a fun ride. [00:28:31] S1: That's great. [00:28:32] S4: I'm so happy I started when I did and that I've been able to [00:28:35] S1: Yeah. [00:28:35] S4: Play around for over the last years. [00:28:37] S1: The latest growth initiative? Is that the job board, or is there other stuff going on? [00:28:41] S4: Job board isn't really a growth initiative. It's just, a fun thing to build. Sure. We started a podcast last year called Expense Account. [00:28:48] S1: I remember Joe Weisenthal was one of the first guests. Fantastic episode. [00:28:51] S4: Overlaps. Go [00:28:52] S1: listen to it if [00:28:53] S2: you wanna know if you
00:28:53 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Emily Sundberg, Joe Weisenthal
[00:28:53] S2: you wanna know if you [00:28:53] S1: want more Joe. [00:28:54] S4: I think I was... Last time I was here, we were discussing the launch. Yeah. Since then, we signed a production deal with Higher Ground, which is Cool. The Obama's production company. It was cool. We've doing... We've been doing a lot more events. I mean, the... Like, that movie series was one. [00:29:08] S1: Sure. Sure. [00:29:09] S4: We're throwing a pie contest this month with Walmart. [00:29:12] S1: Okay. [00:29:12] S4: It'll be a blast. We have a big poker game next week. [00:29:15] S2: Pie [00:29:15] S4: contest. Contest. Yeah. Yeah. High contest. Yeah. You wanna dupe dupe? [00:29:19] S0: I feel [00:29:19] S1: like tree lighting ceremony. We would... [00:29:20] S4: We could do that. Yeah. [00:29:23] S1: Tree lighting ceremony. They do one here at the New York Stock Exchange. [00:29:25] S4: They do. Brought Villa [00:29:26] S1: Roach one. So... Yeah. I I think it's... You're you're in the major leagues here in New York in terms of tree lighting. You're going up against some of the most elite tree lighting ceremonies. But if you can play in this league, you can play anywhere, really.
00:29:26 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Emily Sundberg
[00:29:26] S1: Roach one. So... Yeah. I I think it's... You're you're in the major leagues here in New York in terms of tree lighting. You're going up against some of the most elite tree lighting ceremonies. But if you can play in this league, you can play anywhere, really. [00:29:39] S2: And you can play spot. You felt... How have you tried to balance covering AI? Because something that's... AI has become so unavoidable that every single media company, podcast, newsletter, etcetera, is now... Is effectively like an AI. Whether they they want to or not, it feels like Stories... There's just like Yeah. Yeah. No matter what the the category of podcasts it's in Yeah. Whether it's, like, politics or health [00:30:02] S1: movie podcast, and then you're like, well, we gotta talk about how AI will affect movies, or you could be a health podcast. [00:30:07] S4: Yeah. I mean, specifically, in [00:30:09] S2: some way, like, feels like it feels like, in some ways, like, TBPN emerged at a time when every tech show was focused on politics. Not every, but, like, a lot of them were focused on politics. Sure. And by not focusing on politics, we created, like... People, like, were, like... It was refreshing to be able. Sure. Sure. And so it feels like there's almost, like, an opportunity right now to have, like, a business and culture thing that's just, like, yeah, we're just not gonna talk about that. There's plenty of other...
00:30:09 · Jordi Hays, Emily Sundberg, John Coogan
[00:30:09] S2: some way, like, feels like it feels like, in some ways, like, TBPN emerged at a time when every tech show was focused on politics. Not every, but, like, a lot of them were focused on politics. Sure. And by not focusing on politics, we created, like... People, like, were, like... It was refreshing to be able. Sure. Sure. And so it feels like there's almost, like, an opportunity right now to have, like, a business and culture thing that's just, like, yeah, we're just not gonna talk about that. There's plenty of other... [00:30:37] S4: Yeah. I mean, it would be impossible to write about culture and business without touching upon AI. I would say it's not like a a a beat of ours that I'm, like, consistently keeping keeping my readers up. But, like, I don't think anybody's reading Feed Me to I hear responsibility. Latest of what's happening in AI. But whether you're writing about, you know, literary magazines or hiring or art or or even, like, food ordering systems, like Sure. It does creep into everything. I mean [00:31:08] S1: Yeah. [00:31:08] S4: You walk around New York and you see the ridiculous bodega signs that are AI generated photo of, like, a sandwich. Like, it it is part of the city, and I do write about it [00:31:19] S1: Yeah. [00:31:19] S4: Probably every day. But I wouldn't say it's something that I'm, like, consistently going deep on. [00:31:24] S2: Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:25] S1: Have you used artificial intelligence to book a restaurant reservation?
00:31:25 · John Coogan, Emily Sundberg, Jordi Hays
[00:31:25] S1: Have you used artificial intelligence to book a restaurant reservation? [00:31:29] S4: No. I haven't. I'm pretty lucky that... Lucky or blessed depending on how you look at it. Most places, I have a a a bit of a plug. [00:31:41] S1: Connection. Yeah. So it's happening off of off of [00:31:43] S4: a platform. Restaurant with [00:31:45] S1: me there? I did. I did. I demo all this stuff. [00:31:47] S4: What was [00:31:47] S1: it? It was just a random restaurant in my town. And I just said, like, I need a reservation for tonight. Just go find something. Book it. And it worked. Yeah. It used OpenTable, though, which was weird. So I I could have gone to OpenTable, but it was slightly faster to just type, I need a table for Tuesday. [00:32:04] S4: I like the adventure. Of Finding the reservation. [00:32:08] S1: The restaurant yourself? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. For sure. [00:32:10] S2: I like showing up to a popular place with no reservation and making it happen. [00:32:15] S1: Yeah. Well, that's a new hack. So you can go to basically any restaurant in the city now because everyone's using these agents. You can just say, oh, the reservation, it's under Muse. And they'll be like, oh, yeah. Like, there's a bunch of them under Muse, you can just take someone else's reservation. [00:32:26] S4: Or you can just go to the ATM, get a little cash. [00:32:28] S1: That works too. The little old fashioned. [00:32:30] S4: It works. [00:32:31] S1: Yeah. In the age of cybersecurity incidents, maybe more than ever. [00:32:35] S2: What's the overall Substack market update?
00:32:35 · Jordi Hays, Emily Sundberg, John Coogan
[00:32:35] S2: What's the overall Substack market update? [00:32:39] S4: Did... Oh, let's see. This overall Substack market update, I think that it's getting really crowded on there. Mhmm. I don't know if you guys saw this, but Tyler's... [00:32:49] S2: There's also, like, like, there's now, like, a... I've been seeing content of people that are promoting it in a way that, like, guys in, like, the twenty tens promoted, like, ecommerce. It was like, here's how you can make, well, like, here's how Yeah. Anyone can make 50 k a month. [00:33:07] S4: It's not just guys. There's a lot of women doing that too. [00:33:09] S2: No. No. And I'm saying Substack now is is is... I'm seeing that, like, I write one newsletter a week, and I make x amount of money. Yeah. [00:33:18] S4: There's a lot of that. It's sort of like LinkedIn speak has quickly moved over to Substack speech. Like, here's how I make $500,000 a year on Substack, and you can too, which [00:33:29] S1: I like the sublat. [00:33:30] S4: I haven't really clicked on any of those, but maybe we could grow that way. Yeah. I think Substack people will continue to, like, try it out. I think it's really hard to get... I I [00:33:57] S1: very established Substackers, and it was probably seen as like, oh, it's probably late because it's really competitive. There's already all these great Substacks. But, of course, it was still early. That's always the story. [00:34:06] S4: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. [00:34:08] S2: Are you saying about Beehiiv? [00:34:10] S4: Oh, I included a growth chart in my four year letter. [00:34:14] S1: Yeah.