The Creator Spotlight Podcast Ep. 71: Inside the inbox of 40,000 engineering leaders ft. Suraj Kapoor
4 snips
Aug 12, 2025 Suraj Kapoor, creator of Pointer, a highly successful newsletter for engineering leaders with 40,000 subscribers, discusses the art of curation and how it’s evolved over the past decade. He shares insights on transforming a side hustle into a six-figure business and the intricacies of attracting premium advertisers. Suraj highlights the challenges posed by AI on content curation and the importance of analytics for identifying popular content. With a focus on authenticity, he reveals strategies for building a high-value audience while navigating the crowded newsletter landscape.
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Episode notes
Train Taste By Reading Daily
- Read widely and debate articles to train your taste for your audience.
- Suraj Kapoor used repeated practice to speed up curation and judgment.
Started As A VC Newsletter
- Suraj Kapoor started Pointer to help 100–150 portfolio-company engineers with management and leadership content.
- That focused audience created strong product-market fit and organic sharing.
Extract The One Thing
- Identify the single key idea each author wants to convey before curating content.
- Use that one thing to judge value and decide whether to quote or summarize.