November 10, 2023

Hi, it's been a while (here's what I'm up to)

Hello friends! You likely signed up for this after reading one of my essays on Medium, my personal website, or seeing something on Twitter. See past issues here. There are always typos. Now, to the newsletter…

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Hi, it's been a while

Welp - it's been more than a year since you've received one of these and you'd be forgiven for forgetting who I am or why you signed up for this thing. (The door is here - or in the footer - if you want to leave. No hard feelings.)

The theme of the past few updates was a general stagnation and focus. Well, I can confidently tell you lots of things are changing. Here's what I've been thinking about and working on (I'd love to hear what you're focused on. Hit reply! Even if we haven't spoken in a while.)

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Babies!

I am now officially a dad of two! Baby Marceline joins not-a-baby-anymore Quinn <3. Both are happy, healthy, adorable, and the light of my life. They are also now usually sleeping through the night, giving dad a chance to revive his incredibly dormant internet writing career.

Consulting

I've started taking on a very limited number of consulting clients building audiences, scoping events, and providing fractional marketing leadership. I've been prioritizing working with people I can at least occasionally work with in person. I have capacity again beginning in January, reply to this if you're interested!

Sabbaticals

I've started putting together a new newsletter called The Sabbatical. (More to come, but you can sign up for it here — think travel guides mixed with career advice mixed with life design).

ZIRPS, baby

When I began my post-college career I, like many other millennials, had to slog through the Great Financial Crisis to get on solid ground. Since then, the charts have all gone up and to the right, especially in my weird corner of media intersecting with tech and startups. It was an unprecedented bull run.

Then, after decades of near-zero percent interest rates, money is now expensive. Companies can no longer raise more money from venture capitalists with ease. "Grow at all costs" has become "profitable at all costs"

If you started your career in 2010, you wouldn't have experienced a down market until you were 33. As a result, tech companies are staffed (and often led) by people who have no idea how to navigate a market where making money is important. Simply raising another round or exiting to another company is no longer on the table. Tactics such as using VC money to monopolize a market or, say, hiring an entire content team are becoming "Zero Interest Rate Phenomena" or ZIRPs.

The effect on the startup and tech ecosystem has been profound. In past newsletters, I wrote about how everything on the internet felt stuck and stagnant. But lately, I feel like I'm standing in the middle of those controlled burns. The dead brush is being removed. And just around the bend, we can see what the next generation of the internet will bring. And it's exciting.

Everything is fracturing

With the end of ZIRPs comes an end to the way people build traffic and audiences online. For the past decade, massive channels such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook have allowed people to buy or build massive audiences quickly. But now?

• Twitter is now "X" and is antagonistic to anyone leaving the platform. Links don't even expand and the algorithm suppresses institutional accounts like publishers. (Catch me on Threads)

• Google search results are decaying in quality as the search giant is falling behind in its cat-and-mouse game with spammers. Simultaneously, the 10 blue links of Google are fast being placed by AI.

• LinkedIn and Facebook are also exiting the news / links game by boosting posts that keep people on the platform and, in some cases, banning entire news ecosystems.

If you want to build an audience you have to interface directly with existing publications, newsletters, individuals, and creators. Instead of pouring $10,000 into Facebook ads, you need to cultivate relationships with actual people in weird often hidden pockets of the internet. The days of quickly growing an audience are over, but that's a good thing.

Combine the above with a leap forward in the capability of martech tools, AI (for business tasks, not for writing), and consumer familiarity with solo creatives and all signs point to what Brian Morrissey calls "the twilight of the brands". Going small is the future.

Crossbeam

As of September, I've worked at Crossbeam (where I'm VP of Content) longer than I've worked anywhere in my entire life. I recapped year 3 in this post, which is already a tad outdated.

Philadelphia updates

Things in Philadelphia are looking up. Our record-crime has eased up (homicides are down 30% YoY). The food scene is continuing to explode. This week Philadelphia elected a new mayor months after our current one said he doesn't want the job anymore. And our trash problem has seen progress — in 2020 I raised money to find clean-ups. Now we have (brace yourself) street sweeping!

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Whew, I think that's it for now. No official flag today, I think a new schtick is in order.

I assure you, it won't be another 18 months until you hear from me - because I missed you so dang much. Please reply and lmk what you're up to. <3