00:49:25 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:49:25] S0: of Who runs that? Fund? [00:49:27] S1: So that's run by my partner Megan and Sam. Megan, like Cap, is awesome. She came in to slow at the same time I did to kind of figure out this and, like, really make it a thing, and and it's going really well. The idea is basically that, like, in a world where... And I would put this under, by way, like second order effects of AI, in a world in which like all of these kind of performance channels are getting really like clogged up, owned access and distribution is like a hugely valuable asset. And so rather than saying, hey, like, we wanna be media investors, we wanna invest in media brands that can go and build really big businesses on top of them. And so there's a lot of, like, obvious places for this. You know, I think, like, Glossier honestly is a good example of this. It was started out of Into the Gloss, which was a blog that Emily Weiss started. And then like built this really big commerce company on the back of it. So like all of those kinds of consumer opportunities I think are fairly obvious. We backed this guy Jonathan Katz Moses, who's like a woodworking creator on YouTube, who's built this really successful like tools business. I think that these opportunities are also Do we bring [00:50:35] S0: in the entrepreneur or is there somebody beside them to run the business or are they?
00:50:35 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:50:35] S0: in the entrepreneur or is there somebody beside them to run the business or are they? [00:50:39] S1: It depends. I mean in our view, he's the entrepreneur. Like does he need someone to help him, like to help support him on, you know, maybe it's a president or something, to help support him on the operations of his business? Totally. We can maybe help him with that, but it's largely on him. As ever, like we're money. You know like, we're money. We're willing to make bets that other people aren't willing to Right, it's [00:51:05] S0: like you run your business, good luck. [00:51:07] S1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like let's find incredible entrepreneurs, and it just, we think we've found a whole new category of entrepreneurs that like the market doesn't yet really have a good way of backing. But are we a peak creator yet, or where do [00:51:20] S0: you think we are in this sort of arc of?
00:51:20 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:51:20] S0: you think we are in this sort of arc of? [00:51:22] S1: No, I mean I think it feels very evident to me that that's just what the future of, I don't know, all media is. Like, I mean we're seeing more and more companies adopt, like mature, large companies adopt strategies that look like that because they're finding that their performance channels just like don't work, and they need some way to reach people and to talk to people. So this is very clearly like, we've looked at any number of b to b companies doing like some version of this, and we're gonna look at a lot more over time. I'm really bullish on the idea. We'll at healthcare companies. I'm really bullish on the idea that we're gonna find these kinds of like creator led opportunities horizontally, not merely within like, you know, consumer discretionary categories. Yeah, running a newsletter can definitely feel like running a marketing channel [00:52:14] S0: without I a mean, thankfully our events business [00:52:17] S1: You have a, yes. [00:52:18] S0: Has delivered on like, Oh, that's something that, people just don't love paying for content. Know, obviously, Sam is married to Jessica Lessin, who I work for, and really believes in subscription. Even she has expanded the business beyond just subscription. But I just think, as much as I love our subscribers and think it's a cornerstone of newcomer's business And
00:52:18 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:52:18] S0: Has delivered on like, Oh, that's something that, people just don't love paying for content. Know, obviously, Sam is married to Jessica Lessin, who I work for, and really believes in subscription. Even she has expanded the business beyond just subscription. But I just think, as much as I love our subscribers and think it's a cornerstone of newcomer's business And [00:52:40] S1: yet you never say thank you to I'd be curious to go back. Like where do I, you know, where am I? What number subscriber, couldn't be, I must be a triple digit subscriber. I might even be a double digit subscriber. [00:52:54] S0: Oh, I can try to check. Paid, I bet. I mean, I just think people don't like paying for media. They have this feeling that quality content will just get to them. And so, I think this idea that you use media as a way to with build a people then sell them something they're more inclined to pay for makes a lot of sense. Do think I should get in the chocolate bar business? [00:53:20] S1: The Well, certainty, I think it's an interesting exercise that genuinely, like, sometime when Megan's in New York or you're in The Bay, I think you guys should get up on the whiteboard together and be like, I'm 100% serious. I think you guys should get up on the whiteboard together, and like, what are the kinds of products and opportunities? Like, you know, I think what you've done in conferences, for example, is like fairly directly extensible off of the media, off of, like, it's still within It's the media media still part
00:53:20 · Yoni Rechtman, Eric Newcomer
[00:53:20] S1: The Well, certainty, I think it's an interesting exercise that genuinely, like, sometime when Megan's in New York or you're in The Bay, I think you guys should get up on the whiteboard together and be like, I'm 100% serious. I think you guys should get up on the whiteboard together, and like, what are the kinds of products and opportunities? Like, you know, I think what you've done in conferences, for example, is like fairly directly extensible off of the media, off of, like, it's still within It's the media media still part [00:53:47] S0: I didn't invent the idea that you pair a newsletter with media, with events. [00:53:53] S1: I would bet that if we sat here for five minutes, we could come up with like a list of 25 things, and some of them would probably require capital for you to do. You know, like, it's crazy to me that you don't have a headhunting business. [00:54:05] S0: It's unbelievable. Oh yeah, they're business is similar to where they do [00:54:09] S1: Yes, it's you could make so much money if you hired a recruiter to work within the Newcomer brand. And like, that's not hugely capital intensive, because that's like paying a salary, and they're probably largely commission based, so you don't really need it upfront. But if you then told me like, you know, there's this product I really like, Aaron Harris used to be a partner at Y Combinator. Right. He now, you've probably interviewed him or met him or something. [00:54:38] S0: Yeah, I've talked to him.
00:54:38 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:54:38] S0: Yeah, I've talked to him. [00:54:40] S1: You know, he now has this product called like the Venture Codex, which I use. It's like a really cool like, hey, like who should my company raise from? It's sort of in the overall category of like a pitch book or something. But like But [00:54:51] S0: he doesn't monetise that. He monetises like an investment banker for fundraising. [00:54:56] S1: Correct. But my point is like if you told me that you were gonna build some, if you told me like you were gonna build a product like that, that's a really interesting product that you have good distribution for. [00:55:06] S0: I've thought about building a data product, but then it's not my expertise. Honestly, my biggest challenge for a lot of these ideas is just like getting a coder excited about, I'm looking for a coder. Know, it's always finding the right- [00:55:20] S1: Haven't you heard? We're all coders now? [00:55:22] S0: I know. I've tried, I have vibe codes, you know. I just feel like [00:55:26] S1: challenge it's isn't shipping something, working it's for getting it from 70% to 90% and then maintaining it. That's not [00:55:32] S0: And then my time is not well spent there. Yeah. You know, it's like I have a lot, a long list of