Li Jin and Nathan Baschez interview Casey Newton, founder and writer of Platformer News. Casey has been a leading journalistic voices in Silicon Valley for over a decade, most recently writing a daily newsletter for The Verge. Casey covers topics around government intervention in Big Tech, content moderation, and the impacts of social media on society. As discussed in our news roundup, Casey recently left The Verge to start his own publication called Platformer. We're big fans of his work and it’s clear that other people are as well — in just five days Platformer had amassed over 6,000 subscribers. Casey’s story is a perfect example of the passion economy playing out in real time. In this interview, we are going to talk to Casey about:If he sees more journalists considering moving out of legacy media organizationsIf Substack should offer additional benefits like healthcare and legal supportHow he thinks about publishing daily vs working on longer piecesThe biggest issues for both traditional media and social mediaWhat changed most about going independentAnd more!Related links:platformer.newseverything.substack.commeansofcreation.substack.comShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Li Jin and Nathan Baschez interview Dan Teran, founder and former CEO of Managed by Q. Managed by Q is an office management platform founded in 2014 that provides all sorts of services to corporations, including IT support, supply inventory management, cleaning and equipment repair. They were purchased by WeWork for $220 million in April 2019.What does an office management platform have to do with the passion economy, you may ask? It’s a great question, and the answer gets at one of the subtle but important aspects of the passion economy that most people overlook. The passion economy isn’t just about creators making content on the internet — it’s about a broader shift to de-commodified labor. And that’s exactly what Dan did with Managed by Q.Dan’s original inspiration for Managed by Q was, in part, the “Good Jobs” framework, which argues that any job — including those typically thought of as low-paying, bad jobs — can be designed for individual autonomy and creativity. The strategy was popularized by Zeynep Ton and the thesis is simple: treat and pay your employees well, and it will end up costing less than if you paid them less. This leads to higher profits, and all stakeholders (managers, employees, investors, customers) will be better off because of it.In this interview, we are going to talk to Dan about: What the Good Jobs strategy is and if it’s viable for companies todayHow Dan used the Good Jobs strategy at Managed by Q and what he learned from itDan’s take on worker Prop 22 and AB-5, following up from his recent piece on the topicHow he thinks how worker classification will change in the futureAnd more!Related links:everything.substack.commeansofcreation.substack.comShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Li Jin and Nathan Baschez interview Ankur Nagpal. Ankur is the founder and CEO of Teachable - an online platform that enables anyone to sell courses online. Ankur started building Teachable in 2013 shortly after graduating US Berkeley. He had been instructing a course that he was publishing on another platform when he realized he could build something better. Something that enabled instructors to monetize their audience directly instead of relying on another platform for distribution.The subjects on Teachable range from computer programming to drone flying, and over 100,000 instructors have used the platform to date. The courses on Teachable have generated over $800 million in sales for instructors and have transferred knowledge to over 30 million students. In 2019, Ankur was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education, and in March of 2020 Teachable was acquired by Hotmart Technology (a Brazil-based education platform) for around $250 million.In this interview, Li and Nathan talk to Ankur about:How Teachable attracted their first creators and what makes them stand outHow creators have responded to Discover by TeachableIf Teachable is looking at other formats beyond video courses, and what those might beWhy students are willing to pay hundreds or thousands for a Teachable courseThe role of community in online educationAnd more!Related links:everything.substack.commeansofcreation.substack.comteachable.comShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Li Jin and Nathan Baschez interview Joseph Cohen. Joseph is the founder and CEO of Universe -- a new kind of website creation tool. It’s a mobile-only, no-code website builder that allows anyone to create a website through a grid-like drag-and-drop interface and it powers over 500,000 websites around the globe. Universe was a graduate of Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 class and has raised $17.3M from investors like BoxGroup, General Catalyst and GV. This is Joe’s second startup. He started his first company Lore (which was an online classroom platform) while he was in college at Penn and later sold it to Noodle. He’s a self-taught designer and proponent of the open web. In this interview, we are going to talk to Joseph about: How the function of personal websites has changed in the age of social mediaIf Universe is an example of disruption or if they are creating an entirely new marketHow Universe started as an extended Instagram bioThe decision to add commerce functionalityThe most surprising use case for UniverseAnd more!Related links:everything.substack.commeansofcreation.substack.comjoe.onuniverse.com/Show theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Li Jin and Nathan Baschez chat with Blake Robbins, Partner at Ludlow Ventures. Blake is one of the most trusted voices in eSports, the creator economy, and anything that touches new media. He knows more about the rise of YouTube stars and how content creation is changing on these new platforms than almost everyone else in venture capital.A Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, Blake became a Partner at Ludlow Ventures a few years out of college after stints at Google, Nest and SpaceX. In this interview, we talk to Blake about: - The advantages of living and investing from Detroit, Michigan - The biggest issues for creators and what companies are solving those problems- Whether OnlyFans can go mainstream- What dynamics about fandom Twitch uniquely captures- Request for startups in the creator economyAnd more!Related links:blake.substack.com/everything.substack.commeansofcreation.substack.comShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Polina Marinova offers the perfect upgrade to your reading diet. She writes The Profile: a newsletter of the world’s greatest people and companies in business, entertainment, tech, sports, and more. Previously, she was an editor at Fortune Magazine, writing Term Sheet, their daily newsletter covering deals and dealmakers.She reads literally millions of words every year to find the best profiles to share with her audience. In each piece she writes, Polina always asks, “Will the reader learn something from this?” If the answer is no, she doesn’t include it. In this interview, we talk to Polina about: - The decision to walk away from a prestigious journalism job to work full-time on The Profile- The dream scenario for The Profile- The other creators that she looks up to- Balancing publishing a lot vs. publishing the best- Something surprising that she’s changed her mind about recentlyAnd much more!Related links:readtheprofile.commeansofcreation.substack.comShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Li Jin and Nathan Baschez interview Visakan Veerasamy -- writer, thinker, creator who is using the internet to inspire "friendly ambitious nerds." He uses Twitter as a sort of second brain, organizing his ideas in an ever-expanding corpus of interlinked threads. He’s written several books that he sells directly to his fans on Gumroad, and, this year, he’s focusing on growing his YouTube channel.In this interview, we talk to Visakan about:His journey to being a creatorHow he conceptualized his target audience — the “friendly ambitious nerd”What software tools he usesHow he monetizes, and whyHis take on Substack, Pateron, Gumroad, Youtube and eBooks vs CoursesShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Adam Davidson and Li Jin are two thought leaders in the Passion Economy: a new economy where people are able to leverage their passions and creativity in order to make a living. In this session, they answer Q&A about the Passion Economy.Adam Davidson is the creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast and New Yorker staff writer who wrote "The Passion Economy," a book that explores stories of people who followed their dreams to craft a livelihood. He also writes a newsletter here: https://passion.substack.com/.Li Jin is a VC investor who wrote the seminal blog post "The Passion Economy and the Future of Work," who is actively investing in new platforms in the space. She previously worked on the consumer investing team at Andreessen Horowitz for 4 years before recently launching her own firm. She also regularly publishes a newsletter about consumer tech and the passion economy: https://li.substack.com/Moderated by Nathan Baschez of the Everything newsletter bundle.Related links: https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Economy-Thriving-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0385353529https://a16z.com/2019/10/08/passion-economy/https://meansofcreation.substack.com/Show theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Adam Davidson and Li Jin are two thought leaders in the Passion Economy: a new economy where people are able to leverage their passions and creativity in order to make a living.Adam Davidson is the creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast and New Yorker staff writer who wrote "The Passion Economy," a book that explores stories of people who followed their dreams to craft a livelihood. He also writes a newsletter here: https://passion.substack.com/.Li Jin is a VC investor who wrote the seminal blog post "The Passion Economy and the Future of Work," who is actively investing in new platforms in the space. She previously worked on the consumer investing team at Andreessen Horowitz for 4 years before recently launching her own firm. She also regularly publishes a newsletter about consumer tech and the passion economy: https://li.substack.com/Moderated by Nathan Baschez of the Everything newsletter bundle, they will answer live audience Q&A regarding all things passion economy.Related links: https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Economy-Thriving-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0385353529https://a16z.com/2019/10/08/passion-economy/https://meansofcreation.substack.com/Show theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg

Li Jin and Nathan Baschez interview Nathan Barry--creator, author, speaker, designer, and the founder of ConvertKit. He founded ConvertKit in 2013 as an email marketing company for creators, with the goal of helping more people make money online. The company has been bootstrapped to $23.5M in ARR and has over 31K customers.Nathan got his start in the passion economy almost 10 years ago, when he launched a series of books for web and mobile designers. Then, he set his sights on creating a SaaS product. The natural place to begin was scratching his own itch, so he decided to build an email marketing platform for creators.We’re excited to talk to Nathan about his experience growing ConvertKit, his analysis of where passion economy is headed, and his advice for creators trying to build an audience and a business. We interview Nathan on:- Why he started ConvertKit, and how the vision has changed since launch- In a recent tweet, Nathan argued that paid newsletters were a much more difficult path to get to $100k in revenue than courses and books- Deciding to go horizontal or vertical when building for creators- Comparing and contrasting ConvertKit and Substack- Renaming ConvertKit to Seva, and back again- His 3 business philosophies: Teach everything you know, create every day, and work in public⁠Brought to you by Li Jin and Nathan Baschez of the Everything bundle.Related links:everything.substack.commeansofcreation.substack.comnathanbarry.comShow theme music: Compassion by Stefan Kartenberg