Medium: Reaching Profitability while The Internet is Broken + CorePod | E2003
10 Sep 2024 (9 days ago)
Tony Stubblebine of Medium joins Alex.
- AI is not a replacement for the human thought process that goes into writing.
- Medium is a blogging platform that is subscription-based and supports writers, editors, and creators in producing high-quality online content.
- Medium aims to be a different kind of platform that goes against the current trends of the internet and the attention economy.
The broken internet and ad-based models
- The internet is "broken" due to the incentives of ad-based models, which prioritize attention over quality content.
- Ad-based models often result in the spread of misinformation, anger, and a constant clamor for attention without providing value in return.
- Alternative business models, such as direct payments, donations, or volunteer-based platforms, are necessary to create a more honest and respectful online environment.
Impact of AI on content creation and platform quality
- The influx of AI-generated content has led to a significant increase in the volume of content on platforms, making it more challenging to identify high-quality content.
- A two-tier curation system has been implemented, utilizing subject matter experts and publication editors to identify and promote high-quality content.
- The platform aims to prioritize content from individuals with practical experience and knowledge, recognizing the value of insights from practitioners.
Medium's curation and financial model
- Medium uses a two-tiered system that combines subject matter experts with an internal curation team to maintain a standard of quality on the platform.
- The internal team focuses on upholding quality standards and works with subject matter experts to curate content.
- This curation process, referred to as "the boost," helps surface high-quality content to a wider audience on Medium.
Notion - Try notion projects for free
- Notion Projects combines project management, documents, a knowledge base, and AI.
- Notion Projects allows users to manage projects, leverage AI features, and avoid switching between tools.
- Notion Projects is available for a free trial at notion.com/twist.
Medium's growth, geographic expansion, and AI translation
- Medium is focused on increasing the number of high-quality posts on its platform.
- Medium expanded its Partner Program, which allows writers to get paid, to 77 more countries.
- Medium believes that geographic diversity is important for its mission of deepening people's understanding of the world.
Brex - Get the business account trusted by 1 in 3 US startups
- Brex is a financial service provider that offers banking solutions specifically designed for startups.
- Brex provides features such as checking accounts, treasury management, FDIC insurance, and international money transfers.
- One-third of startups in the United States utilize Brex's services.
AI-driven media platforms and the impact of AI spam
- Machine translation tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated, allowing people to access content in different languages.
- There is a significant amount of AI-generated spam content being posted online, but platforms are combating this by increasing the cost of participation for spammers.
- OpenAI's approach to data collection has been criticized for its lack of consent, credit, or compensation to content creators.
OpenPhone - TWiST listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months
- OpenPhone is a business phone app that allows users to manage their business communications from their existing phones or desktops.
- OpenPhone offers a shared phone number feature for customer support, enabling multiple team members to answer calls from a single number.
- OpenPhone costs $13 per month, but "Twist" listeners can get a 20% discount for the first six months.
Medium's subscriber growth and financial milestones
- Medium has over one million subscribers, each paying approximately five dollars per month, resulting in a monthly revenue of five million dollars.
- OpenAI's offer of 20% of one month's recurring revenue in exchange for a year's worth of data was deemed offensive and rejected.
- There is a high probability that Medium will enter into an exclusive data-sharing agreement with Google for AI training purposes.
AI data exclusivity and challenges in forming training data cohorts
- There is a trend of individual companies negotiating exclusive deals for AI training data, which is detrimental to the open internet.
- Attempts to form a cohort of peers to negotiate industry standards for AI training data and avoid exclusivity deals were unsuccessful.
- Medium reached a milestone of one million subscribers, which was a significant achievement for the company and a positive signal for the future of paid content platforms.
Medium's venture scale potential, profitability, and mission
- Medium is projected to be profitable in August 2024.
- Medium reached month-over-month positive cash flow in May 2024.
- Medium has raised $163 million from investors including Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, and Obvious Ventures.
CEO's mindset and financial scaling towards 10 million subscribers
- The speaker's main goal is to collect everyone's stories and create a library of human experiences, believing this will have a significant impact on knowledge and wisdom.
- The speaker acknowledges the importance of financial stability and growth, viewing profitability as a means to further their vision and expand the platform's reach.
- The speaker believes that the current business climate favors practical operators who can deliver results, contrasting this with the previous trend of visionary CEOs relying on venture capital and salesmanship.
Tony's personal use of AI in his workflow
- AI is not used in this person's workflow, and they only occasionally experiment with summarization tools.
- This person believes AI writing lacks originality and depth, comparing it to a poorly written eighth-grade essay.
- While acknowledging the potential of AI, this person believes the current applications are not revolutionary and is awaiting more innovative developments.
Future of AI in practical applications and business model disruption
- The potential of combining increasingly affordable and advanced humanoid robots with large language models (LLMs) to automate tasks is seen as an exciting development.
- There is speculation that some individuals who enthusiastically embrace AI may harbor a desire to be something other than human, possibly stemming from a rejection of their own humanity.
- A question is raised about whether the increasing volume of older content on platforms like Medium could eventually create a financial strain, potentially impacting the platform's ability to incentivize new content creation.
Organizing content and the challenge of integrating different formats
- Medium is more similar to Reddit than it appears, with a strong community curation aspect and thousands of active editors working with authors.
- Integrating different content formats, such as newsletters, short-form content, or books, into Medium has proven to be challenging due to the jarring effect of switching reading modes.
- While platforms like Royal Road have successfully implemented serialized fiction, Medium has not found success with this format, and integrating it would require overcoming the challenge of collectivized payments on top of user-generated content.
Growth potential of niche markets and Medium's independence
- The internet has grown significantly, allowing for large companies to exist within small niche markets.
- Medium's goal is to be a platform for every language, person, and topic, making it a broad platform rather than a niche one.
- Medium's CEO was brought on to help execute the vision of the controlling investor, Evan Williams, and to grow the company rather than to prepare it for a sale.
Jam with JCal! Introduction to Ulan Abdurazakov and CorePod
- The speaker introduces a segment where he interviews founders about their companies, products, customers, and teams.
- The speaker introduces the founder of CorePod, Ulan Abdurazakov, and his company's website address, c r p o d. te c.
- The speaker asks Ulan to describe his product, CorePod, which is a personal sleep device.
Corepod product discussion and go-to-market strategy
- Corepod is a software product designed to be a personalized AI sleep coach that helps users sleep better.
- The current iteration of the product uses a speaker as the interface for the software.
- It is recommended that the creators of Corepod focus on proving the efficacy of the software before investing further in hardware development.
Jason Calacanis's advice on testing and market validation
- It is recommended to conduct small-scale testing and gather customer data before pursuing significant funding for a hardware company in a competitive market.
- A suggestion is made to conduct a 100-person study, recording interactions and language model data, which could be used to attract seed investors or entry into an accelerator program.
- It is highlighted that testing the viability of an idea does not necessitate a fully developed app or hardware; a simple URL with a script, enabling users to interact through a web browser, can provide valuable insights.