Substack’s big contribution to date is successfully bootstrapping a Schelling point:
Expert writers: I would write more but my only compelling options are day job or gift economy.
Readers: I get incredible value out of people I follow on Twitter.
Substack: I have a proposition.
Interestingly I think that Schelling point is probably going to be substantially bigger than the universe of Substacks (as currently conceived), both on their platform and off of it.
I’ve had a WSJ subscription built into my assumed cost structure since I became employed. Now, I’ve got probably a gym membership or so worth of budget for “things that have a value proposition similar to @ByrneHobart’s Substack.”
My next business? Same story but B2B prices.
Let me clarify: I model purchasing these sorts of things as more likely (~100%) than producing them.
(When I pencil out the economics of prestige content they always look much better attached to a software or financial services company than they do attached to a media company.)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
There is, FWIW, a similar dynamic with tech careers, where you can tolerate the maximum variance immediately out of school (typically) and as you start hitting, as an example, fourtysomething with kids you probably need to be wealthy or in a relatively stable job.
Not to say that you *can’t* do a startup at age 45 with substantial external-to-you commitments and vapor in the bank account but it would be even harder than startups typically are.
Also, playing this game backwards, in the same fashion as you probably have some notion of scheduling career milestones in advance of important personal milestones like house or marriage or what have you, you may way to schedule prior to making high variance 2nd half career plans
Insurance: Oh and another thing while I have you on the phone about your new policy: you don't have life insurance with us.
Me: I am surprised by that statement.
Ins: So I have a refund check for the policy that we didn't issue.
Me: Delivering me a policy via hardcopy is in...
... my admittedly amateur understanding a very non-consensus way of not issuing me a policy, particularly after you have been paid for the policy.
Ins: Yeah weird thing huh the company had the policy down as Issued Not Accepted.
Me: For the benefit of the recorded phone line...
Me: ... I have received no communication from the company that the policy was not issued, have a copy of the policy in writing which appears to me to be executed, and have not received nor cashed any refund check of the timely made policy premium.
Ins: But it wasn't accepted.
Next up at MicroConf, and possibly the only talk I’ll tweet today (dealing with some insomnia so might need to nap), @randfish on what he learned regarding the VC funding versus bootstrapping models.
“After publishing Lost and Founder [a guide inspired by Rand’s experience at Moz], some VC friends told me ‘What are you doing?! You’ll never raise money again.’ That was sort of the point.”
Rand: Many people who are accredited investors could not place the hundreds of bets on startups that one needs to statistically get a venture style outcome.
Next up at MicroConf: attendee talk from Austin Bouley on doing $100k much faster than typical in building a SaaS business.
Find a community: being a frequent participant in an online forum establishes you as an authority and makes it much easier to sell into that community in the future.
Austin says remember to build rep with admins so that they don't get annoyed with you for restrained promotion.
Deliver quick wins: you want to have a short feedback loop for getting users to value.
First business died because churn was too high. Users didn't see benefit until years after doing the thing.
Celebrate small wins of customer early. Confetti/etc, make it fun. Show progress.
I’ve been working with an executive assistant for the first time in my life.
I cosplay as being impressively organized, but I have limited amounts of that energy, and often deploy it in other-than-strategic ways.
This is how I’m both the person who has 125 pages of KYC information ready to fax to a Japanese regional bank and also forget to follow up with a consulting lead for a month at a time.
When I was working full-time, one of the most useful things my manager did was simply reminding me of commitments I had made and then checking to make sure they were done. Not rocket science, but not something computers are good at yet.
An internship project worth doing at any age: go out into the world, learn one relevant thing, write it down, then bring it back to us (who are equally capable of going out into the world and writing things down *but will not do this*).
I have literally suggested this to interns over the years, but it was also my default marching order for my executive assistant: if you don’t know what to do, to learn one interesting thing and write it down.
The ceiling for this being useful is crazily high.
And while one could perform years of academic effort to do a study with controls etc etc given how low the fruit hangs you can probably have an artifact worth reading for the price of a single coffee conversation or five user interviews or similar.