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With most content, there's usually one thing that the author of that content wants you to know. The question that I ask myself is like, what is that one thing, and is that thing valuable?

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So it took three years to go from zero to one thousand, five years to go from one thousand to twenty thousand, and then only three years to go from twenty to forty thousand. Tell me, like, what the growth story is.

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Well, first of all, growing these letters is really hard. [laughs] True.

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It was all organic growth, which I actually think is the best kind of growth sometimes because I think when people find you on their own accord, they stay with a different intent in mind.

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Is there anything that's, like, such-- like, so controversial enough where, like, you shouldn't have a take? So... [laughs] Welcome back to the Creative Spotlight Podcast.

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My name is Francis Zehrer, and today we're speaking with Suraj Kapoor, the creator of Pointer, a ten-year-old, forty-thousand-subscriber newsletter curating articles for engineering leaders.

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He started it ten years ago when he was working at a VC firm that asked him to curate things for, uh, tech leaders at their portfolio companies to lead.

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He took it with him three years later when he left because nobody else had really the ability to run it precisely like him. He developed this really specific taste that people-- that his readers really missed.

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So he kept writing it, um, and then in 2022, he left his last full-time job and really began monetizing it, and now he's been living off this newsletter, uh, since then. So really good story.

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He has a lot to say about curation, about building internal tooling for newsletters. Uh, yeah, great conversation. I hope you enjoy.

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So I think that aggregation newsletters are-- it's a popular style because- Mm-hmm...it seems easy on the surface, uh, but because it's so easy, I think it requires a finesse- Mm-hmm...a level of taste, a knowledge of what to include, what not to include.

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Um, yeah, there, there's this finesse to it that I think makes it much more difficult than it seems on the surface. Tell me your approach to aggregation. You've been doing this for a decade.

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I mean, I started out just reading a lot. [laughs] It's-- I mean, it sounds, it sounds maybe obvious, maybe silly, but, um- That's how you tune taste. Well, it, it-- that's exactly right.

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Like, you spend a lot of time training your brain, thinking about what it is that you are trying to share with your audience. Mm-hmm. So, um, you know, when Pointer was small, um,

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I, I really spent a huge amount of time sifting through and reading a lot of content and debating and discussing with myself what I think is the thing that our audience would want to read. Mm-hmm.

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Um, I think that I, I really spent a lot of time just doing that. And obviously, as you kinda move forward and, um, you get more and more reps in, then that becomes easier.

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But, um, there was a lot of work done in the, in the very beginning, um, just reading a lot and also just talking to our audience and understanding what they were struggling with.

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I think because we ha- I have a very specific audience, or I think I do, like,

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y-you know, learning what they are s- what they are working on and what they are struggling with actually helps a lot in figuring out where you want to share content.

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Um, I think, you know, if you have a newsletter that's a little wider in terms of its, uh, the, the content that it covers, then maybe that becomes harder. I, I don't know. Yeah.

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Um, but that wa- that was, that was a big part of it.

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Um- Well, I, I, I think at-- I mean, we have to bring up the origin story, which is that this started-- It wasn't-- This wasn't, like, something you went out and started.

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You're like, "I'm gonna- [laughs] "...I wanna curate, you know, news items for, for engineers."

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Uh, but you were working at a VC- Right...and the VC's, you know, the, the engineers across the portfolio companies, you wanted to specifically give them information that would help them, uh, which is, like, a, a really good forcing function on, like, here's this very specific audience.

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I don't know how many portfolio companies there were and how many engineers there were across them, but let's say it's, like, a few hundred.

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It's like- Yeah...here's a few hundred people, and we need to, like, make them better to get a return on our investment. So that's like, it's rare that there's such a clear and specific, uh,

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audience to, like, actually go talk to and, like, how will I help this person be- Right...better at their job? Right. Yeah, I mean, it wa- it was, it was, um,

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it's probably an, in, like, an, an atypical way of starting a business. But, um, yeah, we had, I think at that time it was, like, a hundred companies, maybe a hundred and fifty. Mm-hmm.

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Each one of them had a technical co-founder. A lot of the, the technical co-founders were pretty young, so they were good programmers, but they didn't have experience with, necessarily with managing teams.

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And, um, my job was to help them. My job was to, like, you know, what is the, um... They would, they would come to us with, with basic questions about management and leadership.

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Um, or they would have some problem that they had, and they needed help solving it. So, um,

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initially, you know, m- the way that I, I, I tried to solve that problem was, is by pairing them with, with other CTOs that had gone and been there and done it, but that's not very scalable.

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It's not very, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to do. It's hard to scale as you have a company of, of a hundred and fifty or a portfolio of a hundred and fifty, um, CTOs.

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So we just started, like, I just started sharing articles. And the cool thing is in 2014 is that there weren't, there wasn't a huge amount of content.

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There was some obviously, but it's not what it is now as opposed to today. The thought leadership industrial complex was in its infancy. It was not, it was not [laughs] what it is now, for sure.

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Um, and what's cool is that the content that was, um, that was present at that time was just, like, blog posts by CTOs who wanted to write for themselves- Mm-hmm...who were thinking for themselves.

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I mean, that still exists today and, you know, no, no, no shade on content right now.

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But, uh, it was definitely more focused in that space where y-you know, there were, like, three or four writers, and I can name who they are now, who I was like, "This is just really high quality stuff."Uh, because they were writing for themselves, they had clearly had experience, they clearly knew what they were doing, and,

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um, I would just, I would just sh- share those articles. And it was, you know, that is the thing that, that, that started this business.

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Um, it was just, like, sharing, like, three, four, five articles of- by these, by these folks that I was like, "Okay, this is great.

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This is exactly what you need, or is something that will prob- you will probably want to consider as you build your business." Mm-hmm. Um, so... And that just some...

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kind of formalized itself into, into a newsletter because, because then the CEOs shared it. They shared it with their peers, they shared it with their friends, they shared it with their teammates, et cetera. Yeah.

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So I mean, back then, much easier. There's a very specific group of people you're speaking to. Yeah.

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Like, as you're saying, there's maybe, you know, three or four, like, must-read writers, probably a few others that you're folding in from time to time. Um, now 10 years later, you are no longer at that firm.

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Th- this is your business now. There's around 40,000 people in the audience, and there's a, a glut. There, there's just so much writing out there. Uh, how, how has that changed it?

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Like, may- [laughs] I don't know, maybe there's, like, steps in the, in, in the growth of- Yeah... of, from like, z- you know, zero to 40,000 and, like, not a, a lot of writing to a ton of writing.

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But, uh, yeah, what's different now? I, I mean, th- there's a lot more content to go through. But I also think it's become easier for me, uh, I think as I've honed my skills.

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I, I, I also think with most content, there's usually one thing that the author of that content- Mm-hmm... wants you to know.

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And so when I look at a piece of content, the question that I ask myself is like, "What is that one thing?" Mm. "And is that thing valuable to the people that I know?" So,

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you know, I, I, I speed read, uh, so I do go through a lot of content, but I'm just able to go through it a lot quicker. I think there's also just ways of going through content where you can, you know,

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m- m- sort of just, like, read the introduction or just kinda get a sense of like, okay, this is the direction of, of this article. Like, is this genuinely interesting? Mm-hmm. Um, you know, is this sophisticated?

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Is this unique? Is this sharing something novel? Um, is this opinionated? What is the intention of the article? Is it trying to sell something, or is it trying to share something?

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Like, I think those are two very critical differences.

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Um, and so, like, having that kind of a light framework, um, when I look at an article helps me immensely in just distilling it and being like, "Okay, yes, I can short this, this for, from- Mm...

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for my, uh, for my newsletter," or, "This doesn't feel right." Um, okay. So the newsletter structure itself is basically at the top there's an ad, if there is one, which there usually is.

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Now we'll get into the monetization in a little bit. Mm. Uh, there's a handful of article links. Maybe it's, like, five to eight. Um, there's a block quote in the middle of those. Mm.

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Uh, with each article there is a TLDR. Either it's a little summary that you've written, or it is a, a longer quote, but just a short paragraph really.

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Um, and then there is the most popular link from the previous issue, which I think is a really nice feature. Uh, and then the notable links, which, uh, they seem to mostly be, like, links to, to GitHub pages. Mm.

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I'm not an engineer, I don't really understand this. Uh, [laughs] and then a feedback poll and the end. Um, and the structure has held true pretty much the entire time. Yeah.

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But the, uh, the TLDRs, it, it's probably quite simple, but I am curious more how you write these and, like, which one...

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Like, why this one, you know, justifies a, an actual little write-up from you versus, versus a quote. Like, what's the- Right... thinking there?

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Uh, I, I mean, I think this goes back to, like, every article tends to have one thing that the author wants to say. Mm-hmm.

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So if I can find that one thing in a quote and use their voice to say it, then that to me is my approach. Mm-hmm. Um, I think the... You know, I try and stay as neutral as possible.

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You know, uh, the way that I see it is I'm like, "This is not my take on what they are saying, this is their take that I am sharing with you." Um, I think that's somewhat subtle, but to me it's quite important.

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And then, um, if it's hard to find, if it's hard to find a quote, then I'll, I'll, I'll try and summarize it the, the, the best way that I can. Yeah. Te- tell me more about this neutrality.

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Like, is it- [laughs] Is there anything that's, like, such, like, so controversial enough where, like, you shouldn't have a take? 'Cause it, it doesn't seem like it's politics to me. Yeah. It's not, you know.

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I mean, it's not. It, I think it's more just stylistic. Mm-hmm. I, I, you know, I, um, I... The, the, when I, when I conceptualized Pointer, I mean, I was working for a VC firm. Yeah.

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And this is a newsletter being published by a VC firm to engineers. And you were doing it for three years at this VC. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I was doing it for three years.

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And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to divorce it just in terms of its aesthetics, in terms of its brand from the VC firm. Mm.

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And make it feel very neutral, make it feel very, like, you know, this is its own entity, it has its own voice, but there's no face to it. There's no name to it. Mm. There's no person that's trying to,

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um, kind of like m- be the face of it, if that, if that makes sense. And I think that's just kinda carried on in terms of its, its style and its branding. Uh, it's, I think it's also just [laughs] if people...

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You know, it's, like, who I am. Like, I, I'm... Yeah, I don't like to be... I'm not big on, like, social media, I don't like to, like... I don't post a lot of stuff myself.

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So I just think, like, having that neutrality, I, to me is important. It just feels good. Mm. Um, and I think stylistically, I, I, um, I actually think it helps. Like, uh, this is a stupid example.

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I, I read The Economist, and one of the things I think The Economist does is that it doesn't actually have the author's, the author of the, the content. The byline. The byline, yeah.

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Like, it's, it's by The Economist, and it's kinda like this is the entity that is publishing it. This is their, their, their point of view. And my point of view is the curation, right?

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These are the articles that I'm endorsing,

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and the reason why is really the author's reason why, the author of the article's reason why, but I am just kinda like the person that's putting it together, or Pointer is the, the entity that's putting it together.So I, I, I try and divorce myself as much from it as possible as who I am.

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It's...

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I mean, this-- it's really rare, I think, in the creator economy era to, to have something like this because it's, like, o-obviously one of the most reliable ways to grow a presence, to grow a newsletter, is to have organic social and, and pushing something there and having, you know, the opinion that people come for, the person with that opinion.

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Um, I, like... Do you think it would be possible...

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Like, if, if you, if you had to start it today and you wanted to build something similar and maybe you aren't building it at a company, you're building it fully independently, do you think you'd be able to build this up in, in this neutral, like, you know, way where people might not even know your name even if they read it every day?

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I mean, it-it's pro... I'm sure it's possible. Um, I just don't think I would enjoy it [laughs] as much. [laughs] I don't think it would be me, um, that would be... I don't think it would be authentic, put it that way.

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Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think I, I en- I enjoy it more as, like, b-building this, this brand. Okay. Um, it feels more of a brand that way. And it's also why I don't really identify-- We talked about this a little bit before.

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I don't really identify [chuckles] myself as a, as a creator.

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I, you know, I, I, I think to your point, like, creators, a-and maybe this is just a bias, but, uh, they have names and faces and I, you know, I, I, I don't have that with, with Pointer. Yeah.

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Um, one more thing on the curation. I think, uh, regarding AI, this is something I know people, uh, are using AI for. Like, or there was a-- I forget what it is.

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What was that, that Google thing where it's like you could put in, "Give me the news of the day of this," and it would, like, generate a podcast. Do you remember what that was called? Uh. It's not like...

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It's not NotebookLM. It, it might have been, but regard-regardless- Okay... my point is I think this is one thing people have talked a lot about using AI for is like, "Oh, I don't have to read the news anymore.

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I can just say-" Yeah. "... 'Hey, ChatGPT, uh, I wanna know what happened in my favorite sport today and, like, in tech regarding, you know, like, AI.'" Whatever it is, right?

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"Give me the summary of this in 10 minutes, um, and then I'm not gonna go read anything." Uh, I think obviously there's an art to curation, and that's, it's this, this finesse that we've been talking about.

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Um, I don't know. Does that... Do you f- Does that threaten you at all, though? I thought about that a lot. I mean, in principle, yes, 'cause it's, it's probably... maybe it's an easier way to get information.

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Maybe that information is more personalized, which I imagine it would be because an LLM would know what you're thinking, working on, et cetera, those sorts of things. Mm-hmm.

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I do think, though, that human curation is gonna be important and maybe more important as we go through this, this transition. Um, I think having a relationship with what other people thinking is a very human thing.

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Yeah. I think also understanding what's happening in the industry, um, is a very important thing. And,

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you know, like, part of building this brand is building trust with people and hoping that they trust me in giving them a, a unbiased opinion as to where this industry is heading,

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and I don't know if they'll be able to get that with... and or they'll feel that they, they can get that with an LLM. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, so... But yes. I mean, could it be a threat? Probably, yeah. Yeah.

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Well, I mean, what about your relationship with your audience? Like, you told me before that you do... The, I mean, some of these people are just your friends from regardless of the newsletter.

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Um, some of these people, I don't know if you have a correspondence with them, but we were just talking about how this, it's not the, the Suraj newsletter. It's not about you. Your, your not...

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Your name isn't really in it, uh, but you do have a relationship with your audience and with specific people in your audience to some extent. Tell me about this. Yeah.

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I mean, you know, wh-when we s- when we launched it, it was with the portfolio companies of the VC. Mm-hmm. So it was a small but really high caliber audience.

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They really enjoyed the newsletter, so I always stayed in touch with them about it. Obviously, that was 2014. It was a long time ago. So some of them still stay on.

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I'm sure others have, others have unsubscribed and- Some of these startups have exited. Some of them shut down. [laughs] Yeah. Some, some of, some of those people are probably billionaires now- Sure. [laughs]...

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and I'm still writing a newsletter, so cool.

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[laughs] Um, but w-what is really nice, and I think this is the thing that I never expected happening, but I think it's probably been, I would say, one of the most, like, joyful things of, of, of this business is- Mm-hmm...

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you start to actually connect with people in the business. Mm-hmm. And I've made friends because of the newsletter. People have reached out to me who have wanted to sponsor.

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Maybe it wasn't the right time, but I'm like, "Oh, what you're building is really cool. It's really interesting," so I would have a conversation with them. And I, I love to do that.

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I love to, like, just chat with people who are in the space because it also gives me the opportunity to learn what they are working on, what they are thinking, what challenges they have- Mm-hmm...

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uh, which educates me and educates m-my, my, my process for, for, for building the newsletter and also I do like to connect with people. Mm-hmm. Um, so just having that, and I do encourage that in the newsletter.

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Like, I, I think I, I haven't published it recently, but I will say, like, you know, "I, I, I love to know what you're working on. Click reply." And, you know, I would usually get, like, two or three replies.

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"I'm working on this side project," "I'm building this business," or, "I have this problem at work," et cetera, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And that to me is super interesting. Like, it's, it's great. And, um, yeah, I...

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it's, it's, it's allowed, it's just allowed me to, to, to connect with people. Um, I've, I've, I've... On two occasions now I've actually, like, ended up investing in, like, doing, like- Wow...

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angel investments in companies that have sponsored us. Uh, and, um- Just put the sponsorship money right back into the [laughs] Put the sponsorship money... Yeah, yeah.

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No, I, and it, you know, they, they weren't at the, the... Sorry. They weren't at the times of the sponsorship- Yeah... but they were just connections that I made, and I was like- Mm-hmm...

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"Oh, what you're building is really cool. Like, this makes a lot of sense."

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And I would grab coffee with them, and we would build a relationship and, you know, they would be in a position where, where they were building their company, and I, I was, I was able to, to, to make an investment.

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But really I think the overriding thing is I was like, "Okay, that's cool." Like, I've made a friend, and- Yeah... it's, it's someone that's, that's like-minded 'cause I, I love to build companies, and so do, so do they.

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Mm-hmm. And I was not expecting that from, from this. Hey, if you're enjoying this conversation, consider subscribing to the podcast. We release a new episode every Tuesday. All right.Back to the show.

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I wanna talk about The Pointer origin story some more, though. So the basic summary from what I understand is you started it, you're at this VC, you're there for three years.

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You leave, um, and, you know, it's, it's part of your job that you leave there. They don't really know how to do with it-- know what to do with it, which makes sense.

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It was your taste and your approach that you'd tuned over three years. Um, and so they give it to you, you have it, um, you keep doing it. I don't know if you take any breaks, but then you [lip smacks]

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try to monetize it in twenty nineteen, experiment a little bit.

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You have a full-time job, uh, so you're not really pressed, and then in twenty twenty-two you do start monetizing it, and now ten years later, it's your full-time job. So, um- Mm-hmm...

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that's the basic summary for the listener. Tell me about, like, the point when you leave the VC and then from, from then to you then taking it.

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'Cause I've talked to people who, like, they sold their newsletter, it was acquired, whatever, but this is the first time I've talked to somebody who, like, started this at a company and then took it with them. Yeah. Um,

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so I mean, when I was at the VC, I was doing it twice a week, and I just really enjoyed it. Like, it was... almost felt like an escape to me.

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Like, just this like, hey, I can like, you know, spend three, five, seven hours in this week just reading stuff that I'm interested in. The dream. Yeah.

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And, you know, l- just sending this out, and I knew people liked it. Um, so when I left, it was just biting to me that I couldn't do it [chuckles] 'cause it was mine. I mean, no one was helping with it.

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It was, you know, um... A-and so when, um, when I left in two thousand and seventeen, uh, two thousand and eighteen, I, um... It was, yeah, it was just tough. Like, it, it wasn't being sent out.

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I was getting e-emails, um- Mm-hmm... from, f- to my personal email being like, "Hey," like all my, like LinkedIn messages. Where the hell is this? [chuckles] Yeah, being like, "Hey, what's happened?"

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[chuckles] Like, "Why aren't you sending this? We, we love this."

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And so, you know, I, I basically just had a conversation with them I think probably like a year later, maybe like nine months later, being like, "Look, like you guys aren't doing it. I love doing it.

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Just, just give it to me." [chuckles] You'd found better product market fit than the average startup. [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah, basically. [chuckles] And I mean, they were super cool.

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They were like, "Yeah, just, just take it. Just keep on doing it." Um, I think that they, they very much respected like the, the, the, the builder culture. They, they- Mm-hmm...

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saw like the spirit in which, which it was built. Well, and it was still benefiting their portfolio companies. Yeah. I mean, it was- Yeah... yeah, it was, it was still helping. Not to be, like, cynical about it. Right.

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Yeah. Right. So, um, yeah. And then, and then I, I kept on doing it, but it was always like this, this thing on the side. Like, I had a full-time job, um, up until twenty twenty-two.

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Um, so it was about just finding the time to do it and kind of fitting it into my schedule. Um, but I... Yeah, it just, it just kinda...

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For me, it was like I, I have this, this really cheesy quote that I r-read once, but I kinda live by it, which is, "Do what gives you energy." Mm.

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Um, the founder of a company said that, but it's always stuck in my brain and, uh, and it's the thing that gave me energy. So I, I wanted it back, and I kept on doing it, and then,

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yeah, now it's a, now it's a, a, a, a proper business. Mm-hmm. So you started properly monetizing it in twenty twenty-two. Yeah. Um, I... You don't need to tell me like, you know, specific revenue numbers, et cetera.

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I don't expect that. But like when I, I, I trust that you basically live on this. This is your full income, right? You have another business, but this is how you make your living. Yeah.

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How long from when you started monetizing in twenty twenty-two did it take to reach a level of, of, of income from this that, you know, was what you were comfortable living on? So [chuckles] when I, when I left my...

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I was, I was working at Nike. That was the last full-time job I had- Mm-hmm... as an entrepreneur in residence. And when I left them, I gave myself six months to experiment with Pointer.

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'Cause at that point, I think it had reached about twenty thousand people or twenty thousand subscribers. So it wasn't insignificant. It wasn't, you know, some of the newsletters are today. Mm-hmm.

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But I knew it, the engagement was great, and I know people enjoyed it. So I said to myself, "Okay, I am gonna give myself six months. I have the runway, financial runway to do this.

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What kind of revenue can I make with it, and, uh, what kind of a business can this be?" And so

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the, the funny thing is, and I think actually one, like in hindsight, one of my regrets was I just assumed it would s- always be a side business. Hmm. And it would never really make my,

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like m-m-make a living for me the way that it, it has now. And then, I mean, you know, not a billionaire, but it's, you know, it, it, it does well, and I, I think that I wasn't as bullish about it as I should have been.

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Hmm. Um, because yeah, within s- I mean, less than six months it was, it was, uh, letting me, me, me pay rent.

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And I was definitely under the gun at that point 'cause I had just signed a lease in [chuckles] LA, which is super expensive, and I was like, "This has to work, otherwise I have to find a full-time job," which I didn't wanna do.

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So, so I, I almost like- Great incentive. Yeah.

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I almost reverse engineered like the, the finances of the newsletter, the sponsorship money [chuckles] to like be like, "Okay, like how can I, how can I survive off of this thing in the next year-" Mm-hmm...

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uh, comfortably?" And so- What did you... You, you said... Wait, you said a second ago that it was a regret of yours that you framed this always to yourself as a- Yeah... as a side business. What do you...

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What's the regret there? I mean, now the way that I see it is I'm a lot more bullish with- about it financially. Hmm. I, I think as a business,

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um, I think that I can build this into a, a much bigger business than I anticipated. Hmm. Okay. Um, yeah, and I'm starting to see the path to that as well. Mm-hmm. Um, so let's talk about how you do sponsorships.

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So at the time you started monetizing this, it was twenty K. Now it is, uh, forty K in the audience. The, the audience... I mean, o-on the website, there's the sponsorship page. You have... Let me see what you have done.

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Uh, that fifty percent manage teams of the audience, ten years average professional experience, ninety percent US-based, and then you've got logos from, you know, Google, all the big tech companies.

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Uh, obvious- It's very obvious that this is a high-value newsletter to sponsor. It's B2BAnd it's managers, it's people with high spending power in their personal lives and as people who hold budgets at work.

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Very clear why any tech company would wanna sponsor this, right?

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Um, tell me about standing up that function though and, like, how you-- the, the businesses you first approached, who your first sponsor was, minimum commitments you were asking for.

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Um, I'm curious what it was at the beginning, and then maybe how it's matured. Yeah. Um, so i-ironically, I remember the, the first company that ever reached out to me was-- this is kinda random, but it was

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Burrow, the, the sofa company. Yes. Uh-huh. And I was like, "Oh my God, someone wants to pay me for this." Uh, I was so excited. And so we-- I tried to, like, make that work and it, it, it didn't work.

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And then what I realized very sub-- like, very quickly afterwards when I stood up sponsorship properly- Mm-hmm...

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was that really the-- there's a very specific type of sponsor, um, which is developer tools, the, um, SaaS companies, but ninety percent of those, uh, of those SaaS companies are developer tools that want to sell to engineering leaders or want to get their attention.

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Um, it's a, obviously a huge business j-just in terms of, like, product category. Um, you know, a lot of those names aren't consumer names. Mm-hmm. They're-- but they're names that engineers would know.

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Uh, and they all raise a lot of money. Uh, they all raise a lot of money because they have to hire a, a lot of engineers to build them.

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Maybe that's gonna change with AI, but they also need to spend a lot to, um, to acquire customers. Like, that is a, that is a big reason by which they, they raise. Mm-hmm. Uh, acquisition for them is expensive.

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So if you're a B2C company and you want to acquire a customer, maybe it's three dollars, five dollars, ten dollars. It's very different if you're a SaaS company. You know, you're in the hundreds of dollars. So that's...

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and that's something that I can leverage, um, because I-- that's, that's my audience. So I, you know, that and also positioning ourselves

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intentionally as this premium brand, uh, so it's not me, it's this brand that we've built that's trusted, that's been around for ten years, uh, I think is a core part of, like, building the framework for sponsorships and saying that this is what we can offer, but it is a premium price that you will be paying.

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Um, and so, y-you know, like, pricing is, is hard. Um,

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and I, I don't know if we've, we've, we've gotten it right, but I think that we started off in a good place, which is like, because we've positioned ourselves in this way, let's go premium. Mm-hmm.

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And we know we have this audience, we know they engage with us, so let's charge a high price.

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Um, you know, at twenty thousand, I-- we charged, uh, I think it was fifteen hundred, uh, for, for an ad, for the, for the top ad. We only did one, one ad at that time. Now we do two ads.

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Uh, we do a primary, which is the top ad, and then a secondary, which is lower down. Um, and obviously the, the, the audience size has, has grown a lot more, so we can charge more. Mm-hmm. Uh, is it mostly...

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Y-I mean, you said Burrow was inbound. Yeah. These days, is it mostly inbound or outbound for sponsors? It's mostly inbound. Um- And mostly...

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Wait, real quick, I bet a lot of the people sponsoring you already read the newsletter.

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Well, so what tends to happen is when a company, when a, a, a, a developer tool company, a SaaS company, they raise a bunch of money, like they go from Seed to Series A or Series B,

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they'll build out their acquisition team. Their acquisition team will be like, "Okay..." Th-and they may not be engineers. They usually aren't. Some of them are, but they'll- But they ask their colleagues who are.

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But they'll ask their colleagues, "What do you read?" Mm-hmm. And so hopefully in that conversation, we are there. And if we are there, then we usually get, you know, some, some sort of inbound.

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Um, and then we also just got endorsement from, um, the-- there's a, a, um, a blogger called The Pragmatic Engineer who is a huge Substack, and we recommended a lot of his content early on when he was a lot smaller, I mean, a brilliant writer.

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And, um, he, he recommends us in his, in his Substack 'cause he does not take sponsorship, and that's also just given us a lot of inbound as well. Mm-hmm. So I think those two things have, have really helped us.

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Uh, do you have like a minimum issue commitment? Or la-last question about like the nuts and bolts- Yeah, yeah... of the advertising.

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Uh, is there any-anything like that, that, uh, is like a forcing function for these relationships? No, I, I actually don't.

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I mean, you, you can sponsor one issue if you want, and I do that intentionally because I want people to try it out. I want them to experience it.

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I also like the idea of, um, you know, if you're a, a seed stage company, you may have some budget. Yeah. Uh, I like the idea of varying up my sponsorships so that, you know, it's a, it's a company that's growing.

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I like the idea that we can work with them, we can help them, I can learn what they're building. I think there's actually just value to that. So I don't do minimums for that, for those reasons.

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Is, is monetization or is, is, uh, advertising the only way you're monetized right now, or are there others? No, it's just, it's, it's all sponsorship.

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[crosstalk] Have you considered anything else like a, like a subscription product or like a paid subscription product? I have. I, I'll, I'll never do it. Um, I'll never do it because

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I think I'm very conscious of the fact that I am using other people's... Well, not using, but I am- Mm-hmm... promoting and endorsing other people's work.

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Um, it doesn't feel right to me to, um, to charge for that, so I, I, I'll, I want it to be free. Um, we have also thought about other opportunities around, like, coaching and leadership- Mm-hmm... and diving into that.

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Uh, you know, I think increasing sponsorship, there are kind of two, you go wide or you go deep. Um, and so I've, I've thought of both of those.

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And think going deep is like, is there a, some sort of like a coaching, uh, leadership or management course orUm, platform where people can connect with coaches, et cetera, uh, that could be valuable.

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So I've, I've spent some time looking into that- Mm... um, as, as opportunities, but I haven't really committed to, to any of those. Yeah. No, that makes sense.

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Um, you were saying that the newsletter was at 20,000 in 2022, and I know that at the end of, uh, around the end when you... In 2017, after about three years when you left the VC, it was around 1,000. Now it's 40,000.

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So it took three years to go from zero to 1,000, uh, and then another five years to go from 1,000 to 20,000, and then only three years to go from 20 to 40,000. Tell me, like, what the growth story is.

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Why, why so long zero to one, uh, and then relatively not too uneven from, you know, that to 20 and 20 to 40? Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, growing newsletters is really hard. [laughs] True.

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Um, I mean, it's becoming easier. There are more tools, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can grow it the way that you wanna grow it with the right audience.

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I think that's something that I've always been really mindful of. It's not just like, "Hey, let's increase our numbers," but, "Let's increase our numbers with the right, the right audience"- Mm...

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'cause that's effectively what our subscribers pay for. Oh, sorry. What our customers pay for, what the sponsors pay for. Mm. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, at the VC that was, like, not a huge incentive, uh, to grow it.

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I, I, I like that people read it and I liked the fact that it was growing. It grew organically. Uh, we were on- But it was also just, it was just a corner of your job. It wasn't like- It was... Yeah...

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your main job, but yeah. Like it was, it was, you know, 10% of my time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um,

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we were on Product Hunt, like early Product Hunt as well, and that, that gave us like a, an really nice boost, um, with a good, good quality audience, and then it just, it just kind of...

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It was all organic growth, um, which I actually think is the best kind [chuckles] of growth sometimes, um, because I think when people find you on their own accord, they stay with a different intent in mind.

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Oh, it's product market fit again. It's product market fit. It's usually much higher- Yeah... product market fit. Yeah. It's like they kind of haven't been, like, forced into it and- Mm-hmm... and, yeah. Um,

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and then, you know, I, I, I think that that, that has held true probably up until 2022, which is like, "Okay, now this is a business. How do I think about growth?" Mm. And now I'm... You know, and then, um, I...

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The, the first thing to do was to be like, "Okay, can I monetize this? Can I sustain myself? Let me get that going," and then like what budget do I have to reinvest in growth? Mm-hmm.

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Um, also, when you're living off a newsletter [laughs] there's not a lot of budget to invest in growth, uh, especially in, in, in when you're living in Los Angeles or New York. Mm.

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Um, but now we're at a point I would say where I can, like, meaningfully be like, "Okay, let's, like, put this budget aside. Let's run some experiments." So and that's what we're doing now.

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So we have two experiments running. We have Facebook ads, which is tried and tr- tested way of, um, growing newsletters. Um, you know, I, I...

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The, the emphasis for me is always like how do we do this meaningfully, get the right people in, not just grow numbers for the sake of growing numbers. So I have a small team doing that.

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Um, and then, uh, we have this other experiment which is just [laughs] me being weird which is like, "Hey, let's publish this cartoon," um, which I think is kind of fun and interesting. Two months.

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You're two months in, right? It... We... Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, you know, will people share it? Is this something that's like- Are you... Wait. Real... Did... Are you the one drawing it? No, I'm not. [laughs] I wish I was.

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I wish I was. That's the hardest part, by the way, is- Yeah... um, and it's not AI that's drawing it either. It's funny.

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I was talking to someone the other day who's a friend of mine who reads it, and he's like, "I love them." He's like, he's like, he's like, "What prompts are you using? What?"

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And I'm like, "No, this is, these are hand drawn." Engineer brain. [laughs] Yeah. I know. I was like, "No, these are hand..." So now I write hand drawn. Yeah. And, um, I mean, it, you know, the...

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It's a, it's a quirky experiment for sure, but y- you've seen the newsletter. It's very text heavy and- Mm... what, while I... Like that will always maintain.

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Like I've always liked the idea of breaking that up a little bit with a visual element. Mm.

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So I have the bit in the middle, but I was like what if we have this like fun animated like just, you know, ironic, like cerebral cartoon. It doesn't have to be funny. It could be thought-provoking. It could be weird.

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It could be any of those things. Yeah. Uh, it's also inspired by like The Economist again 'cause they, they do that I think very effectively and, um, a couple of other newspapers.

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So I was like, "Why, why don't we just try it?" And the hardest part of that was finding, um, someone who understood the humor who could execute on it. Um- Yeah... it took some time to do that.

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Well, I'm reminded, somebody I interviewed recently, this guy Tom Fishburne, the Marketoonist. You've probably seen his work. It's...

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He's been doing this in various ways for like 20 years, but he, he was like a marketing executive. He'd also always like had like a hobby of cartooning. Mm. And 15 years ago or so he, he quit his full-time job.

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He'd had published one of his cartoons in The Wall Street Journal, and now it's what he does for a living, and he, you know, has the cartoons. He has a big...

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He has like 400,000 people on LinkedIn, 100,000 people on his newsletter, um, but really he makes his money as like a consultant and like doing ad campaigns for companies where, you know, he's drawing cartoons for them, um, or i- you know, he just will go in and do like, um, coaching on like humor and leadership- Mm...

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et cetera. But I'm, I'm very much reminded of this, and it's a play I really like that I think... I mean, when I was a kid, I, I would re-... Like I, I grew up in northern California. I...

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The San Francisco Chronicle was like the local big paper, and I remember like flipping around to look at the cartoons, go to the cartoon page, but also like the, the political cartoon, like- Right...

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I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of... So when I saw this, uh- [laughs]... I just think it's such a good thing to have. I'll read one. Yeah. Maybe our producer Tom can, can put it on the screen here. It's from issue 624.

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Um, so the cartoon's called Null Pointer. This is two panels.

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Um, and it's this, this guy, probably a developer, uh, you know, talking to these two black pillars, and he says, "Can you write me a binary search function in Python?"

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And one of the pillars says, "Such a great question. You're an absolute genius." Uh, and the guy says, "Okay, that's a little much."

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And then one of the pillars says to the other, "Human didn't buy it."The other one says, "World domination requires properly deceived underlings." [laughs] "Recalibrate genius to moderately competent."

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And it's captioned, uh, "Sycophant AI." Yeah. So I, I mean, just to say, maybe I didn't [laughs] need to read the full thing out loud. Uh, maybe Tom will edit that out and just put it on the screen. But, but I love it.

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It's so funny. Um, I, I, I'd been wanting to ask if you'd...

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Uh, before when, when I was prepping for this, if you'd done any other, like, formal experiments like this, but I couldn't really find any, so I, I'm just in, in trying to encourage you, uh, that it's awesome.

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Keep doing it. Yeah. Thank you. Have people been responding positively to it? Yeah. It's funny. Like, so the... When I published it, I was expecting a huge response. Mm-hmm. And no one said anything.

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[laughs] And I was like, "No." I know the feeling. [laughs] And it... So just, just to give you some context, like, when I transitioned off of, um, my, my ESP to another ESP, I changed my fonts. Mm.

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And I probably got 30 people email me being like, "Why did you change this font?" Or, "I love the new font." Yeah.

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And so I was just anticipating, like, this feels like one of the biggest things that I've tried to experiment with just 'cause it's, like, this visual component in the newsletter- Mm-hmm... which I've never had before.

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So I was, like, expecting a lot of response. Nothing. But then when slowly I started to con- I had conversations with, with my friends who read the newsletter. Mm-hmm.

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They would mention it to me, which made me feel, okay, like, there's, there's something here. And what, what I like about it is that the newsletter's a very cerebral newsletter. Mm. Like, there's a lot to read, right?

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You- Yeah. Like, you know, each article hopefully is, like, very thoughtful. Some of them are, like, very technical. Um- Even the TLDRs are pretty- Yeah... idea dense. Yeah. They're very dense.

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So, like, to your point, when you, you know, have a cartoon in a newsletter, like, sometimes you just flip to it. Mm-hmm.

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Sometimes you're like, "This is just the easiest thing for my brain to consume right now," and I just... and I want a, a dose of that. I want that little dopamine hit, that humor or that, that thought. So...

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And that's what I was trying to do, is just create that feeling for, for, for, for the subscriber. Um, because I, I think that it is

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something that complements the, uh, and is different from what we have been offering them. Mm. Um, but yeah, I, I, I mean, it's, it's, it's been, it's been fun hearing people talk about it.

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It's also been f- really fun doing it. [laughs] Yeah. Uh, 'cause I, I work with an awesome cartoonist who is an engineer, was an engineer at Google, w- uh, Twitter, and he's awesome. Very, like, clearly very talented.

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So we just have fun, like, riffing on these ideas. And I think also what's nice about them is that they kinda tap on the, the pulse. Like, those pillars you talked about- Mm-hmm... they are AIs.

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So, like, a lot of the, the, the, um, the thinking now is, like, okay, there's so much conversation about AI, and clearly, like, some of us are very worried about it, some of us are very excited about it, but it's a very, like, emotional topic.

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Mm-hmm. Um, but how do we just, like, make it a little fun just for now- Yeah... um, before we all lose our jobs to- Uh... AIs. Yeah. Okay. So one other m- little change. Maybe not so little. I don't know.

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I think the newsletter was initially called Project Uno, right? Oh, yeah. [laughs] When did that change and why? Was that, like, the leaving the VC?

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That was just like, "We don't have a name for this right now, but we need to get this started, or we wanna get it started. Let's call it Project Uno." Mm-hmm.

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Um, and it was myself and my, my boss at the time, who was awesome, who kind of, like... At, at the VC, Nicola- Yeah... who really advocated for it, um, i- internally with, with the partners of the VC.

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So yeah, we called it Project Uno for a bit, and then we were like, "Let's give it a name," and we, we came up with, with Pointer. That's funny. Yeah.

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Uh, and then, okay, you've been using we to talk about working on the newsletter, and I know there is this cartoonist. Sounds like you have some people helping you with Facebook ads. Um, it's...

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Maybe it's just you full-time, I don't know. But who works- Yeah. How many people work on the newsletter, and what are their functions? I mean, I'm, I'm the full-time person. [laughs] I'm the we. Uh, yeah.

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So we have, um, I, I have some consultants that help me. Mm-hmm. I have, um, you know, a, a couple of people with the, with the Facebook ads, um, someone with the...

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on the creative, someone helping me with, um, just m- managing the strategy for and, and executing on it.

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And then, um, we have the cartoonist, and then I ha- I have help with, with, um, bookkeeping and accounts and those sorts of things, like back of office kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. Which isn't insignificant.

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Like, that's, that's, you know. Yeah. So I, I... It's a collective we. Uh, how many hours a week do you spend working on it, do you think?

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And how much of that is split into, like, reading versus putting it together versus managing w- your time with all those consultants? Yeah, yeah. Um, I probably s- so I've, I've tried to build this business

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in a way that I can do other things as well. Yeah. So this is the business that I run so that I can also run my own experiments. Um- Friday Employees. Friday Employees, yeah.

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[laughs] Um, and, uh, so I, I probably spend about 10 to 20 hours. I would say probably 20 hours on it. Um, you know, I've gotten much quicker at writing the newsletter. Mm.

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Um, I used to spend probably, like, five, seven hours writing it. Now I can probably do it in, like, a couple, uh, each issue.

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Um, every day I'll spend at least half an hour to an hour going through content, um, just finding articles and then probably another, like, four to five hours a week, like, sifting through them.

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Um- That's not bad for what- Yeah... I'm assuming pays you a decent six-figure salary. Yeah. Uh, and then I...

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The other thing that does take time is just sponsorship management, um, and, and ad, and reporting and, and those sorts of things, um, invoicing, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but yeah.

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One thing that you'd mentioned when we first spoke that I've been wanting to get into, uh, that I have very little context for is the internal tooling. Mm.

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You said that this is something that you've invested a good bit of time into, um, and that you think you probably have done in a way that very few other newsletter operators have. Well-Uh, I, yeah, I, I don't know.

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I mean, I, I don't know who's done what- Maybe I'll put it somewhere to be- Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs] No, no, it's cool. I, I mean, I...

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The, the reason I say this is one of the best things that I did-- This is a side note, but I'll, I'll segue into answering or, or, or talking about the thing that you mentioned, which is one of the best things that I did was that initially I did this in a big silo.

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Like, I can run this newsletter from anywhere in the world as long as I have an internet connection. Um, there are pros and cons to that. [laughs] Um, but

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one of the best things that I did was I started to reach out to other newsletter creators because I was just curious to know what they...

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like, how they operated their businesses, and I became friends with, uh, with one creator, and we just took this approach of sharing everything with each other.

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Uh, you know, like, our growth strategies, like, how we thought about writing our content. Like, a lot of the things that I had a very specific point of view on for the first time- At, at what point?

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How many years into it was this? This was not that long ago. Mm-hmm. This was, this was, uh, probably t- twenty-three, two thousand and twenty-three that I did this. Um, and that's when I was running...

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when it was like, "Okay, this is a business now," which is like- Mm-hmm... like, I should learn how other people run s- similar businesses. Like, that, that feels like a s- like a intelligent thing to do.

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So and that was a great unlock to me because it was like, oh my God, like, I... There were so many other things that I should be doing, so many other things that they could be doing. Mm-hmm. Um,

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and so it was just, like, a lot of v- very rapid learning, uh, for both of us. Um, but yeah.

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I mean, like, uh, going back to your question about internal tooling, like, my newsletter is specifically, like, you know, I share s- seven links, seven unsponsored links- Mm-hmm... and two sponsored links.

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Um, when I say sponsored, like, you know, the, the sponsorship, there are more than two sponsored links- Yeah... but let's just say there were two sponsorships.

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I need to track their performance, but I also want to track the performance of all the content that I'm putting in there and understanding how my audience engages with them.

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That to me feels important because it's a way of measuring the s- uh, one way of measuring success of the newsletter. Like, you have these, this content in front of you. Are you engaging with it? Is it interesting?

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What part of it is interesting to you? Why is it interesting to you? It's impossible to answer all those questions, but it's hard to also answer them with, I think, the way that a lot of, um,

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like, current tooling is set up. Like my ESP, for example. You know, yeah, I can get open rate for the newsletter. That's great, and yes, I can...

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If I can, you know, click on this tab, I can see how the links are performing. But it's very hard to be like, okay, this link performed with this number of clicks, unique clicks and total clicks.

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It was in the third position of the newsletter. How does that compare to all the other third positions of the newsletter in the last six months or a year?

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And what kind of an article was that, and was it about leadership? Was it about architecture? Was it about scaling? Was it about career advice? Wow. And how does that compare to those other articles?

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So th- those are questions that I was genuinely curious about, and being an engineer, [laughs] you know, I, I was like, "Well, I want to solve them."

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So I, I built a CRM, which it automates now, so there's not a lot of work that goes into managing it or upkeeping it, but it pulls in all that information into a dashboard and allows me to track on a pretty granular basis, like, how, um, my, my newsletters are performing- That's amazing...

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and how each individual link is performing, how each, each, each link has a tag, like, how that tag has performed over time, how it's trending. Um,

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how that link that's in sixth position has performed against other links in sixth position, et cetera, et cetera. So that to me is, is, is really helpful. It's really valuable because I think there is some opacity.

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Like, I'll send out this newsletter. Sometimes I don't get any responses, and I'm like, "Okay, like, how did this do? Like, is this good? Do you like it? Do you not like it?"

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Um, but this is a way of trying to, like, get some feedback. Mm. Um- H- uh, not... You don't have to go into full detail, but like- Yeah... how, how is that set up? That's, that's, that's fascinating.

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Uh, I mean, so the hub of it is I use an Airtable. Um, it's massive, but it basically has, like, every historical link that I've ever shared in Pointer, and it's plugged into my ESP using their API.

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I also have APIs for my invoicing system, which is QuickBooks. I have, um, uh, APIs from, uh, Streak, which is what I use for sponsorship management. That's all plugged in. Mm-hmm.

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And that gives me the ability to, um, just have, like, one dashboard, one, like, entity that I can interact with that gives me that information.

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And the funny thing is, I think I make it sound bigger than it is, and it wasn't that hard to build. Like, get- Yeah.

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Setting it up was hard, but now, especially now with AI [laughs], like, you can build a lot of this stuff pretty quickly. You can buy, build it. And you can buy, build it, but you can also just...

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Like, there are integrations. Yeah. There are probably hacks you can use. Um, but just taking a more, like, scientific data tr- like, oriented approach to, like... to augment m- my curation is helpful. Yeah.

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No, I, I really, I really like that. Um, the... Another feature I wanted to talk about briefly is the, um, the most popular from last issue link. I feel like this...

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When I see this, what it tells me is maybe it's, like, training readers how to read it, I don't know if better is the right word, but, like- Mm...

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helping them navigate the newsletter where it's like, "Oh, I didn't click that one," or like, "I saw that one, but I didn't read it. Like, I, I guess I should have."

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And maybe then it's influencing how they read this issue, how they read the next issue. It's like the...

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Like, it's a way of, of showing them a glimpse of the mass of other readers, uh, and then, like, h- having them adopt

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the mindset of those other readers, which maybe I'm thinking too much into, you know, one link you put at the bottom of every issue. But I, I f- I think it's pretty interesting from that perspective. Yeah, and it's...

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It, I mean, it, it's funny. That also gets high engagement. Mm. So... Which, which I always find interesting as well, because I'm like, "Okay, so you, you probably saw the, the last issue.

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You probably saw that link in it."But now you are choosing to reeng- to engage with it probably for the first time because if you- Mm-hmm...

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engaged with it last time, you're probably not gonna click on it again unless you forgot. Um, but I agree with you.

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I think there is some psychology to it as well, which is like, you know, we're accruing mass just in terms of our- Yeah...

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engagement, and this is, this is one of the end products of that, which is like this is what people are thinking about. This is what people are really interested in right now. Mm-hmm. Um, and it...

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I think it, it helps steer that ship and tell that story, uh, which is maybe I should be thinking about this. Exactly. Yeah.

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Uh, is there, is there a sell-by date on the content you aggregate or is, like, you know, uh, stuff from last week and- It's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's tricky because, um,

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le- leadership and management for engineering is relatively new. Mm-hmm. You know, it's,

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it's a lot newer than leadership and management of non-engineers, of typical business people, and it's a very specific, I, I would argue, a very specific way of managing and leading teams.

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Like, you know, it's, it's not tr- I would say, traditional. So I think people are still figuring it out. Uh, I, you know, I it's... I think it's a skill that's been around for 30 years, 20, 30 years- Mm-hmm...

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really since we've had tech companies. Um, so

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I, I, I still think there's a lot of, like, evergreen content that is applicable, um, that I still like to reference 'cause I think sometimes we also as, as, as people who manage and lead, we forget, and I think it's good to be reminded of, like, best practices and, you know- Mm-hmm...

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like, ways of doing those things and complement that with, like, okay, this is also, like, the new stuff. This is the, the more modern stuff. Um, so I would say that there is a sell-by date.

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Like, I try and stay on, you know, like, current. Um, I also have com- competitors.

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Like, there are other aggregators out there, so, you know, we're all look- probably looking at the same stuff, so I wanna be first to that stuff as- Mm... much as I can, the, the stuff that I think is good.

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But I do like to complement it w- a little bit with, like, okay, this was written in 1991- Yeah... but it's still really interesting. It's still really relevant.

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Doesn't mean because it was written 30 years ago that it's not.

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That makes your curation better to know, like, oh, this is this one thing that is, you know, maybe older, but it, it adds context to the issue of the day, to the other links they're putting in. Mm-hmm.

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Uh, regarding the competition, I think, you know, one of your moats is obviously your taste. We've talked about that from the very beginning of this conversation. Um,

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have, have these competitors, like, risen up just in recent years as the newsletter industry has gotten bigger, more, more competitive?

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Uh, just a brief word on how you view the competitive landscape and your position in it. Yeah. That's a good question. Um, I mean, there are a couple of, um, newsletters that are, that are huge now.

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There's TLDR, which has millions. I, I don't know if I view them as a direct competitor. I mean, they cover tech news at large. We cover, you know, we're very focused on engineering leadership management.

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That's not gonna change. Um, there are more niche ones, niche newsletters that I think are really excellent that- Mm-hmm... uh, focus on, on our audience as well. Um, you know, I, I, I'm all for it. Uh, I, I don't...

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Yeah. I, I, I don't actually see them, I don't really see them as threats. I think the biggest, the bigger threat for us is how is technology gonna change, and how's- Mm... that gonna impact this business?

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Like, I think that's the thing that I'm... that's more pressing to me than other newsletters that, that also curate similar content. Mm-hmm. Uh, okay. Only one more thing. Um, [clears throat] two-part question.

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What stops Pointer from being a business for another 10 years? I think part of the answer is probably in what you just said there. Okay. Uh, and then more near term, what are your goals for the next 12 months? Yeah. Um,

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so I think that the, the, the thing that could stop Pointer is just where the industry could head.

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I personally, a- as I learn more and build up a deeper understanding of where we are now, and I try and think logically of where we will go, I don't think it will happen.

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But that doesn't stop me from reading [chuckles] articles that say that, "Hey, engineer, like, we're not gonna need engineers in the next few years."

335
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Um, you know, or there's an article that says, "Hey, everyone's gonna be an engineer in the next few years." Like, like, who knows? Uh, you know, I think the answer is probably gonna be somewhere in between.

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Uh, I do think things will change drastically. Um, so I think that could, it could be a threat that, yeah, you know, engineers will come, be- become obsolete, and we'll have AIs building everything. That being said,

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o- one thing that I love about this industry of engineers is that there are people who do it for the love of the craft. Mm-hmm. And that's not gonna stop with AI.

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Um, I also don't think that AIs are gonna all of a sudden start building really complex systems immediately.

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Like, there is a lot of human involvement that is necessary to build safe, secure, thoughtful, elegant systems and architectures that, um, vibe coding is not gonna do right now. So I think we have a long way to go.

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So I, I, I, I don't really fear it as much as maybe other people, but it's still definitely in my, in, in my brain. [chuckles] Mm-hmm. Nice. Yeah. Uh, I think, uh, we can end it there.

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Uh, do you have any regrets doing your first podcast? [chuckles] No. I think it's great. I love, I love talking about it. I don't know. [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah, I don't really talk about it as much, but I, I enjoy it.

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I think it's great. Well, thank you for talking, thank you for talking about it. This was fun. Yeah. No, it was great. I, I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Yeah, of course. Listener, I will see you next week.

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