How To Build A Million-Dollar Media Empire | Erik Torenberg

There's this big opportunity to build like audience in a box business if you're big on any individual on any platform you'll probably be big on other platforms as well you just haven't gotten around to it yet so if you have a big YouTube channel like Colin Samir do or podcast why wouldn't you also have a big newsletter and if you can have support doing that it's kind of a no-brainer to go to any Creator who's Big on any platform and say hey we'll help you get big on this other platform and give you a half

of it there's so many people who want to expand their audiences across platforms a service that did this could charge quite a bit of money or even co- incubate or co-own some of these media properties hey everybody it's Eric torberg dude I'm honored the the rules are reversed exactly so for those of you who don't Know Eric that's how Eric torberg Mr podcast man himself network of podcast introduces and it starts every show so I had to I had to put that in before you put it in I appreciate the tribute normally I have the

pleasure of interviewing you on on one of my shows um but uh excited to come to yours today big fan I appreciate it man all right we got a lot to discuss you brought some heat uh as expected I want to start with the trends first and then we'll dig into Some of your startup ideas so let's talk a little bit about let's start with uh the rise of the B2B Creator and what you're doing with turpentine and why you think that's a trend worth you know betting your career on yeah so a few years

ago during the pandemic I started to watch what you were doing uh on on Twitter and I was like huh this is really interesting and I tweeted out something like there should be a a Greg Eisenberg for for for X where where uh like people should study your playbook go deep on a specific uh domain or sector uh write or podcast about the space and at the time you were you know obviously you remain going deep on consumer on community on audience building on sort of uh you know the rise of creators uh go deep

on a space write or you know create media about the space whether it's writing or podcasting and then building you know products or tools uh that sell to people Who who engage with your content uh and or investing right and so you were early to this trend and and people who were doing this uh in parallel with you were people like Lenny ritky right for product managers audience here obviously extremely familiar or pachy mcor or Harry stebbings these people including you you know Julian people who come on your show blew up the last few years

um and so I saw that Trend and said hey this is just the beginning this this There's going to be a lot more people like this what Lenny is doing for product managers that will exist for every position for for uh Finance people for engineering for sales uh marketing Etc and that will also exist for every sector and so I wanted to create make a big bet on the the emergence or or the continued growth of Niche creators specific verticals business verticals um and create media for for those people and instead of create the next

tech Crunch for everything create the next tech crunch for a specific category uh so I started ttin as a podcast Network that basically you know today we are 13 podcast but instead of saying hey we're going to create the next Lex rman or Joe Rogan or you know hit show it's it's hard to create hit shows from scratch today but we're going to create the best show for CFOs or the best show for people in HR or the best show for people in Ai and uh We've niched down and um we Think that these niches

are only going to get bigger that the audiences are super valuable and um that these will be this will be not only a valuable media business but also just a valuable audience for me to uh incubate other products um or invest in businesses that sell to those Niche audiences so that's uh that that's what I'm up do with with turpentine is is Greg Eisenberg for for X Lenny for X starting with podcasts but then expanding to other other formats as Well and why would you start with podcasts like to me that seems painful given that

I run a podcast and I know how hard it is to to grow one um why do you think it's worth investing as a podcast first like what what am I what am I missing there so podcasts are underrated for a few reasons um One is because they're the only media that you can create that allows you to create every other form of media from a podcast so you create a podcast you can turn That into a newsletter you could turn that into a video you could turn that into um a community right because you

have all these guests who come on um and you boom after 20 episodes of you having uh Chief people officers now you have this you know incredibly valuable Chief people officer Community or conference um so it's it's not that much hard work to get a podcast off the ground um in a niche area and um and establish yourself because there aren't like how many CFO Podcasts are there not that many how many Chief people officer podcasts are there that are good not that many we we've created um you know just in the last few months

I I think we have like a top three CFO podcast or chief people officer podcast um they don't have a ton of listeners um so you know under a thousand per episode but they monetize really well um because people want to sell that audience um and if you pair them with newsletters and you can build Newsletters on top of the podcast um you could then monetize even better but yeah the punchline is the they're the medium where you could build every other medium on top of um and if you go Niche uh it's you you

can create um you know pretty strong uh you know ranking right out the gate so the other thing that people aren't talking about is that social networks are becoming more video oriented so if you could own the Search terms for CFO or how I you know how to Create a balance sheet um and then people consume those videos and then they're like okay let me subscribe to this person or let me go buy his or her product like that's the other that's the other bet I think that you're making because you're not really doing when

people when people hear podcast they think audio but it's really video first podcast right yes yes and and they're just a special relationship you you know this someone who hosts a podcast that You get from from running a podcast that you don't get uh in the same way from from other other mediums because there's audio because there's video um and and just to put some numbers on it we're we're doing about 350,000 downloads a month across 13 shows which is which is not huge like some shows you know my first million does is bigger than

all of our shows put together probably but we're at about 2 million run rate probably um because the show is Monetized pretty well well like each show you know we were talking earlier like 30k a month or something like that like no show is huge but it's it's um it's kind of like the 8020 where it's just it's really hard to build a you know mainstream podcast today um from from a standing start but to get to a show of 30k 40K a month you know in a in a strong Niche it's not that hard

and so if you if you can get a critical mass of of them you could start to build a a Real business uh and then of course you could build all the other mediums on on top of them um and one one thing that people don't realize uh as as much is that when you look at media businesses of the last 15 years one of the most valuable media businesses is this business called industry dive which sold for $500 million to informa today it probably be worth a lot more and it was just a collection

of trade Publications like HR dive CFO dive basically what I'm Trying to do with with it with with podcasts and if you go to HR dive or CFO dive it looks like it was made in 2012 because it was made in 200 like they haven't really innovated on the format and so I've also been inspired by by workweek um which is a media business that's also trying to create the the modern-day industry dive and they they have more of a newsletter first approach and that's also why I wanted to differentiate um but the Val you

know There's been a lot of money poured into media businesses of the last 15 years A lot of it has been poured into consumer uh media because that's where the attention is that's where the the splash is but Business Media these these these are just great customer acquisition channels um and so in in a world where you know distribution is more and more important acquisition is more more important it's easier and easier to build things um owning those Distribution channels those acquisition channels um is is just going to be increasingly more valuable so so that

that's why we're focusing on what we're focused on so how do you think about choosing a new B2B Niche because I think some people are going to be listening to this and being and be like wow like I I want to do this um but I'm not sure if this Niche actually is worth going after yeah so my my first business out of college which you you'll remember was a Rap music business it's called rap fm and it was like uh Chat Roulette for rap battles so I was you know really uh interested in in

in rap and still am and I that was a niche I wanted to focus on and there wasn't a ton of money there you know there there probably is much more today than there was back then because niches are just bigger and bigger but I mean today in terms of how we pick our our we really focus on like who are Enterprise buyers like who do Startups try to sell to right they try to sell to um you know Finance people they try to sell to salesp people they try to sell to and you know

CTO like who are these just buyers at companies HR leaders right um and having invested in a lot of companies I I kind of get a sense for who startups are asking me to to Target so part of it is Enterprise buyers um another part of it is just sectors that are that are important and that are that are hot and that aren't Too crowded like crypto is Extreme extremely crowded or web 3 is extremely crowded there's there's a very mature media ecosystem and so we're not going in there at the moment um whereas AI

um obviously is getting crowded there you know our our friend Ben tossel created Ben bites and other newsletters but it's still really early like there isn't a sort of you know the equivalent of a block works or a coin desk or a coin T this kind of mature media companies for AI just yet they're just a few newsletters that are that are taking off and so we're deciding in q1 to go much deeper on AI ac across platforms um so that's going to be our first um newsletter we're going to get into some news coverage

as as well um and really kind of going on that vertical but um historically we've been looking at it hey who who who are just customers that are really valuable are Enterprise buyers or what are spaces that are Really valuable and then what are spaces that don't seem too crowded where we think we could have a top five you know property within just a few months have you thought about acquir iring some creators in some creative way uh or acquiring a business that has a Creator attached to it like for example now I don't know

if he's selling or would sell but like Ben tossel you mentioned Ben tossel like his newsletter Ben's bites like what if you could acquire that Business and then strap on the podcast as a part of it I I haven't considered it uh in in seriously um because we're in the business of of ownership at the moment the the challenge of podcasts when you don't own the feed is that the uh the host can just leave you um and so if um so we only want to be in business at the moment in places where we

own the feed because otherwise it's almost like investing in a startup but once the startup gets to you know gets a ton of Traction you don't own equity in it anymore they they just don't want to to partner with you and so we want to be you know co-owners for Life otherwise the incentives get misaligned and you have sort of this Taylor Swift or you know um scooter braon like situation and then in terms of so in order for us to acquire majority ownership um it just either would require a bunch of cash which we're

not immune to we did put a Bunch of cash to see this business personally um but I just haven't seen the specific um thing that I that we should go by um but I'd love to hear your your take if you were me H how should I be thinking about um you know Acquisitions as a as a possible strategy well I think uh the interesting thing about owning something like Ben's bites let's say let's use that as the example is you know you mentioned my first million earlier you know my first Million wouldn't be where

it is today in my opinion if it wasn't for its partnership with the hustle yeah and the way it worked was Sam and Sean came up with a brilliant idea for a podcast executed on it brilliantly and they were consistent they did it you know every single week and uh then they use the the the pipes the media pipes of the hustle to help promote some of those um some of those episodes and still do that to that to this day actually like the HubSpot Network helped promote my first million now you could say well

turpentine has all these shows we'll just cross promote and that's true but if you wanted to go faster and you know one way would be to acquire media and then find you know either new Talent or the founders like a Ben um to to create a show yeah one thing we've been doing is trying to partner with the biggest hosts we can find so basically inter Network we have py McCormick we have Noah Smith and um Burn Hobart a few other kind of pretty big newsletter writers for their specific niches who have a few hundred

thousand subscribers and we say hey you don't have a podcast today let's create one for you you all you have to do is show up and talk about the things that you've been writing about regardless and we'll give you 50% of of of everything in exchange for just you know an hour or so a week um and in exchange they promote it in the newsletters too so we Are interested in partnering with people who already have distribution to borrow it um and if there's an opportunity to acquire something where it makes sense I'm I'm really

intrigued I just worry about people's loss of motivation when they don't um when they don't own it in the same way or I wonder if there's a way to get kind of the benefits of ongoing distribution by sort of co-creating with with people already have it in different formats and then Using the using you know those already existing user bases or distribution sets to uh you know bring them to to to the podcast and the collection of podcasts do you know the story The the company behind Colin samir's newsletter have you heard about this smooth

media I I think the team from morning Brew um that's very talented that created a couple star at morning brew and is now trying to do that for other creators as well like pretty similar to what I'm doing yes Well similar but different you know so col and Samir have this newsletter uh it's called the published press newsletter and it's a newsletter just for creators makes sense Colin Tamir YouTuber YouTubers who discuss Creator stuff create a newsletter they want to get off the YouTube treadmill so they have this newsletter and now has like more than

150,000 Subs yeah awesome so I started digging into it and I realized that it's a company called Smooth media that's behind it so basically they partner with um they partner with creators and then they do email newsletters uh for them and they write them Etc so it seems like seems like a lot of people are scratching the surface on this B2B thing um I like your angle for podcast first um because I think it's just harder and sometimes when you do things that are harder like there's more of a moat there yeah um so I

like I Like what you're doing um there's another note that you have here on this list that says media businesses are under monetized what do you mean by that first let me just say I I think there's this big opportunity to build like audience in a box business like if you're big on any individual on any platform you'll probably be big on other platforms as well you just haven't gotten around to it yet so if you have a big um you know YouTube channel like Colin Samir do or podcast like yeah why wouldn't the same

you know why wouldn't you also have a big newsletter and if you can have support doing that um it's kind of a no-brainer to go to any Creator who's big on any platform and say hey we'll help you get big on this other platform and you know give you a half of it but we'll keep half of it right and so um there's so many people who want to expand their audiences across platforms this a service that did This could charge quite a bit of money or even co- incubate or co-own some of these media

properties um is there something like this that exists yet I mean people are trying right like so smooth is trying you're trying we're trying you know we're all kind of we all have our own angle and I think what you're seeing is that 2023 there was just like scratching the surface 2024 I think we're going to see like oh turns out that podcasting with the right angle Or Community was the right angle or email newsletter was was the right angle um so that's my prediction by the end of 2024 I think we'll have a pretty

good understanding of like how creators and then specifically B2B creators because I agree with you B2B creators are you know are probably worth a hundred times more like you know if you have if you have 100,000 YouTube subscribers you know and as a B2B Creator that's like you're basically the Mr Beast of your world Yeah um so that's my take on that yeah and and so let me get to back to how media is under monetized well it's interesting right we we saw people like Harry stebbings um pachy McCormack uh you know built these large

Tech audiences and then raise funds on top of those audiences right hundreds of millions of dollars in in the case of Harry what people say a16z you know it's like 50 billion or whatever AUM they say it's a a media company that monetizes Via Venture Capital right so clearly investing is a uh compelling um opportunity for people who are selling to um business creators at least in C certain categories right um but if you own this relationship with customer there's also additional things that you could be doing like maybe the next Harry stebbings um doesn't

only do a um Venture Capital sort of a fund but maybe he also um sells services to other Venture Capital firms he has an agency You know that does fund management maybe he builds underlying platform or builds by builds I mean he's like an audience co-founder where someone trying to build the next Carta or angelist or whatever you know platform that sells to his customer set where he has the sort of widest set of customers and the most trust with with them just to name Harry as an example and VC as a as one example

position but maybe they give him some percentage of the company for ongoing Evangelism um so I think there those are two ways in which it's directly uh under monetized but there's another way which is there's a lot of data that media companies get as as exhaust that they don't monetize so I'll give one very specific example that was inspired by this business I saw called tus tus is an expert Marketplace if you listen to invest like the best Patrick oasi you've heard them adverti there um and so their expert Marketplace like a Gerson lurman Group

a GLG which is sort of one of the early OG expert marketplaces if you're looking to let's say you're you're at a hedge fund and you're looking to make a a you know biotech investment and you're looking to talk to some customers or or some people used to work at this company or people who have expertise on this on this space you'll ask GLG to set you up for a few calls you'll pay some money for those calls U you as the expert will get paid to those calls it's kind of an Established category so

what Tas does is they go into this established category and they say hey we're going to record the calls these calls are already happening we're now going to record them um in exchange for recording them we're we're going to uh take less of the sort of margin so it's going to be cheaper so it's it's a appear so it's it's it's cheaper for the person paying to in order to use tus as a result these calls get recorded they then build a database Of these calls a data set of these calls and now if you're

looking to learn let's say about biotech instead of having to um place an individual call you can now read the transcripts of dozens of calls in the same amount of time and so they've created a moat there just by using the the exhaust from these calls that were already happening now what do reporters or people in Media do um often is is they get insights they they talk to people all all the time right and so This Insight came to me when I was reading this report on stability AI that came out it was on

Forbes it was a bit of a a bit of a negative piece uh and or Expose and this journalist uh talked to 30 reporters sorry sorry talked to 30 sources early employees Executives investors and then I looked at tus I was like oh wow this reporter talked to 30 people um I looked at tus and they just had a handful of people on stability AI so I was like wow this journalist is Maybe sitting on the best data set in the world a qualitative data set in the world on stability AI who else in the

world knows what early employees investors um you know what Etc um think about stability um and the only Revenue they're making is just the ad Revenue off that Forbes piece there whereas people on teus pay $25,000 per seat uh in order to to access those calls and the irony of those calls is if those calls were released to the broader Public they wouldn't be that popular like it it's these this information is extremely valuable to an extremely small set of people um and so people the media businesses and media creators often don't price discriminate and

especially if you're in Business Media if you can attract information that's extremely valuable to a very small subset of people you should be charging a ton um and so media especially journalists they often Have this broad sense of informing the public and they kind of think the public is is equal but if you're reporting on business maybe your your you know your customer shouldn't be the person outside of tech who's just trying to understand what's happening but maybe you should be informing an investor on or your data that should be informing an investor on hey

should I invest in stability AI should I join stability Ai and so most yeah most people who create media don't Think who is the most valuable customer I should sell this to and what is the actual job to be done here or value prop that I I could sell them that I could thus charge a lot more perhaps so that's a way in which we think media is under monetized and in which we are going to try to do ourselves so we are going to uh create media that helps people do better at their job

and identify um you know which companies are are doing well Etc we're going to get in the list game Right top companies top people per sector get you use these this media to get all this insights all this data on people and companies and products and then try to sell that that data uh you know in a transparent way people know you know what they're signing up for there's anonymity Etc but to the most valuable uh you know the the the sort of customer that values it the most so that was a uh input on

why I think media is under under monetized because they're Not just providing eyeballs they're also providing data uh insights and and sometimes even determining reputation and and and that is is very valuable it's almost like the eyeballs are like the least interesting part yes exactly exactly that that that's well said like if you own the information just as a or Forbes or something and we're not constrained by sort of the U the idea of being a journalist which also interestingly today um people aren't Constrained right the lenni the U's the pis the you guys could

invest in the businesses that you cover you could incubate businesses and you're not people don't trust you any less for it um so that's an interesting development but let's say you you again information what other businesses could you create on top of that right they used to do org charts right it's almost like Craigslist right like remember the the same Craigslist graph where you looked at Every sort of feature on Craigslist and saw oh that's that's Airbnb that that's this kind of business that's another business similarly like if you go in the information I see

they have org charts oh wait there's a company called the org that just specialized in that they have like a different Professional Network I'm like oh wait okay there's LinkedIn like you can imagine building a professional Network off of that there's uh you know all all these data companies There's crunch base that just kind of you crunch base emerged from crunch right um so there's glass door you could imagine like media companies and there other POS there other things that are like this too recruiters what do they do all day they get all this data

on people um one business I want to build is reference checks as a service right we do all these reference checks and yet no one ever compiles them or organizes them um and so and anytime there's a sort of A thing that is done all the time that's not recorded um that could have data as exhaust I'm interested in hey could you create something that structures that data that has like a give to get model um where people are incentivized to give data in order to to to see the data um and and building these

kind of like information marketplaces using media as the as the wedge so what you're saying is similar to how there was the unbundling of Craigslist and I've talked About the unbundling of Reddit yes basically taking a subreddit a niche a subreddit Niche and then people building products for that yes for that niche there's going to there's this new B2B un media unbundling that's happening and you have you have the ability to build social networks you have the ability to build marketplaces you have the ability to build agencies you have the ability to build uh SAS

tools um and the media is just the is Almost like the the ticket to the ride yeah exactly I mean and I've I I've watched you and the businesses you've been able to to build the different the different agencies the different communities the different products and and a lot of it stemmed from your from your Twitter um and then your newsletter and the other stuff you you've built and I think I've realized hey like I enjoy creating but I'm I don't think I'm the world's best Creator uh I I don't I Don't think I'm as

good as good as as good as you are um but I I think what I could do is is find the Greg Eisenberg for x and help produce them or help incubate them um and and some people listening to this have that Creator drive or or that potential and some say hey maybe they're more of a producer or maybe they're more of a partner to these to these uh these these creators um I I think one thing that's underexplored also I I there's this massive Creator I Don't want to burst a spot in case it's

confidential but um at the level of of someone like yourself who has a chief of staff who gets 25% of everything he does and I think that's a really interesting model for someone who realizes hey I'm not the the Creator I'm the producer I'm the person who's going to let the Creator just be themselves and I'm GNA take care of everything else go up to someone you really mire say hey I'll I'll do literally take everything off Your plate that you don't like doing that's really important going to get you to the next level give

me some percentage of of what you make 10% 20% 25 whatever it is I feel like that's an opportunity for people so and that's what we're we're doing at T time we get 50% um and so yeah that's how we think about it yeah I think uh first of all I really like the producer versus Creator bit I'm gonna I'm GNA use that I'll credit you on that um not everyone needs To be a Creator yeah not everyone needs to be a creator that you back when like uh being an entrepreneur was really cool and

everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur people used you know some people that I really respect would say not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur and now 2024 it's like no not everyone needs to be a Creator in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the producers actually do way better than the creators in the end um wouldn't be surprised just Because they're more Diversified they can produce uh multiple projects um they learn like you're going to learn so much about you know what's working what's not working across your portfolio we we see that ourselves like we

have a portfolio and we like we're doing uh an offsite in Miami next week with all the different leads of all the different businesses and they're going to all share what's working and what's not working yeah and as you know the producer you can look at That and be like okay maybe we shouldn't have incubated that AI business but let's go incubate something like this totally yeah and it's interesting like if you you know what I'm we're doing for podcast now what smooth media is doing for newsletters some people are doing for YouTube if you

own a medium you get really good at any specific medium you can then go to people of course you can do it for for service and you know get paid but if you're if you're good enough You can co- incubate you can go to someone who doesn't have one of these channels and say hey what smooth media is doing say hey we'll create this for you we'll run the whole thing we we own we own 50% and want to be long-term Partners or whatever we own and our long-term Partners um and I I think that's

just a different in in mindset it requires taking a bit more up upfront risk but if they're already big on a different medium you know you you've Kind of Diversified it one example I'll give and I this guy's been immensely successful so I don't mean to take anything from him but Dave Perell uh you know he did his writing courses I think another business he could have done now he's not as passionate about it so you know he should do what he's passionate about he's been very successful but he could have instead of teaching people

how to write he could have gone to people who either you know are big on Other platforms or just have really valuable service businesses like um you know Financial wealth managers or accountants or lawyers or whatever and said hey I'm going to make you the biggest lawyer on Twitter or the biggest accountant on Twitter the biggest whatever and in exchange make me a 25% partner in your business and he could have done that with like five or 10 accounts or more um and really just been in kind of the equity game and and it's It's

a shift in mindset from teach someone how to do something to kind of do it for them in exchange for a big chunk now if you do that you can work with they're trade-offs of course you can only work with the you know uh there's much limited number of people you can work with because it takes much more time whereas of course you can you know serve sort of uh you know infinite people in theory in terms of how however if it's asynchronous at least in terms Of how many people watch it but you you

then get in the ownership game and I I'm very excited about the ownership game how much have you studied music the music business a little bit rapm was in the was in the music business I mean labels were were amazing at uh sort of these 360 uh at at owning their their um artists and I have a friend who worked at this A6 this uh company called United Masters which tried to reinvent uh record contracts to look more like Venture deal to look more like situations where the entrepreneurs owned the most of the company instead

of the VC or instead of the record label in the case of music and one finding he had was although I don't know how widespread this is or still today is that most artists or at least rappers actually preferred the deals the record labels gave them because they got more money up front um and they were able to do anything they wanted with that money and I think that's a little bit different between record labels and and VC like if you get a few million dollars from a VC it's Le I think it's less expected

that you're able to just like pay yourself that I think in fact they encourage you to not pay yourself much I know people who rais 5 million BC paying themselves 50k salary like what are you doing you know they pay themselves you know hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars why don't you pay yourself Anything but uh I guess artists just were more comfortable paying themselves a lot of their Advance um and so they preferred the the 1 million upfront and giving up 90% of everything they ever make then ever I mean of course they

many of them regret it later on um anyways I'm I'm I'm rambling a bit that that's my familiarity with the industry so VC and music and the music business have a lot in common essentially they put up both put up money and they're Producers but another way they're producers in your in your words and they get some upside um you know a lot of people including Kanye West uh say some say say some things about uh music labels that you know they they you know they're too they own their artist um and so I think

that's not great um which is why I want to be in Co ownership I want to be hey let's be partners I don't yeah I think it needs to be partners right in the true truest Sense and to to to defend the music labels a little bit like I'm sure not all of their deals are like that real you know but yeah you know I think what you're trying to do is feels to me very much like a music label co-ownership partnership style you're essentially approaching a B2B Creator and you're saying hey like uh uh

let me go accelerate this for you um and then let's go you know put 1+ 1 equals 3 here and you know there might be some you Know advance of some sort I'll get you advertisers I'll do this I'll do that I'll help build um and I think the takeaway for The Listener one of the takeaways is like don't be afraid to approach yeah uh creators and be like hey I want to produce and in fact the opportunity in 20 24 is the is the approaching and the producing in a lot of ways totally and

it's interesting because yeah any Creator who has an audience on one Platform uh probably wishes that they could have an audience on another platform and if you're good at that other platform they've already deris it a little bit by having an audience and showing product Market on one platform so going to them and saying hey let's create this on this other platform you know py has a big newsletter go to paky hey let's reach the same audience via podcast he says yes no Nob brainer but here here's an interesting thing like we Did that in

AI for example um with an AI Creator and now we want to create an AI newsletter and we actually don't need the Creator anymore because we can we co-own the podcast we're going to create he could create a newsletter too he can create meaning he can leverage the work we did on the podcast to help him and any other thing he wants to do in the future but similarly I guess we're I'm saying is we're borrowing using the Creator for their distribution but of Course providing a ton of value giving them more distribution more more

Revenue something they wouldn't have had otherwise but now because we've we've sort of you know established one format we can go in another format and then create our own owned uh sort of audience say hey we're gonna do it 100% ourself um we're gonna and and this is how we're building our brand we're building the the brand off you know great Partnerships with creators that we then Go into other platforms say hey now this is the turpentine AI newsletter and and yeah we'll feature we'll promote the podcast so he's he's happy to and promote his

his stuff um Etc but um the if if you're a producer and you you know or even a Creator and don't don't have an audience partnering with a Creator in one format to to help you get out there right we have this friend safwan who's who's an up andc Comer who partnered with Michael kch to create a podcast and He I think the value exchange was that he did a lot of the the work for it they get seen as co-hosts that grows saf's audience now safwan can use that for for other things um but

yeah being able to add value to other creators helps you build your audience that then you could use for other things is a takeaway I like it man I like it so um is there room for all of us I I I I think so I mean you identified early on that these niches Are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it's it's interesting right like because Venture capitalists have raised more and more money the the expectations of what they need for returns are much higher right so um it used to be like1 billion doll

business uh that they that was like Venture scale then it's like1 billion doll business you know at some point it's going to be a hundred billion dollar bus business right and so a lifestyle business is just a business That's not appropriate for for a venture and so as the Venture expectations have gotten bigger because all this money flooded the ecosystem these um the the what people call lifestyle business is much bigger like if it can only you know make a 100 million in Revenue maybe it's a lifestyle business for for some VCS right but that

that's massively life life lifechanging you know and so these these niches are are getting bigger um and also these areas where VCS aren't Touching um you know as much are are are getting wider um which means there's there's less competition perhaps um and um yeah there's there's I mean you called it a few years ago you know any any subreddit where there's just a growing Community there's probably a a big business waiting to waiting to be built there um if you see a Creator in one format perhaps you can help that Creator get to get

to the next the next format maybe become the Creator yourself Or or become the entity that produces a a bunch of creators but uh it still feels very early Innings particularly in in in in business uh creators we're looking to talk to you know anyone who's creating something for a certain sector or for a certain valuable business uh audience um and um yeah yeah feels feels uh feels like it's just the beginning the short answer is yes there's room for not just only us but really like there's thousands literally thousands of Business ideas tens of

thousands of business ideas for creators out there um B2B is interesting um you know we're also really focused there um there are some opportunities in B Toc um but my take on this is and I'll tell you a little story I haven't shared this publicly but we uh my take is basically that the top 50 creators in B Toc are uninteresting to collaborate with and we had a Creator top YouTube Creator and when I say top I mean top 10 top 12 YouTube Creator come to us we had his trust wanted to collaborate and wanted

to co- incubate something um and we walked away from it and we walked away from it cuz you know that particular I'm trying not to give it away but basically like it was funny type videos and there wasn't a niche there there wasn't a strong Niche it was just like I would watch people would watch it when they just wanted time to pass they did weren't really really connected to that Particular Creator so I think those creators are not that interesting but there are consumer creators who have a niche that the audience has disposable income

that you could produce with yeah totally um but one thing I just find so interesting as an aside Greg is like you're not someone who came up as a 22-year-old thinking about kind of this new Green Field of Niche um ideas you're someone who kind of did it the old way and built a lot of cred in in the old World so to speak of you know raising a ton of venture money having worked for a a venture um you know backed company or the biggest one in in in in we work and there was

so many incentives to just keep going down that path in in some ways and and there's a lot to walk away from in terms of I'm sure some some people came up to you were like hey what are you doing like you know that feel feels weird like it's the Golden Era of raising VC and and you're saying hey Don't raise VC and so it's so much harder when you have stuff to to walk away from and that that's why I used to say things like it was easier to get into crypto if like you

came up in it or something because you didn't have all these people saying oh that's weird but but you did and I think that's inspiration for people who are already down a path who either you know raised a bunch of money or are in a space that doesn't feel that that that exciting or It doesn't feel like you're on the sort of you know what what's going to happen if if you're listening to this you kind of have a Vibe for for where things are going and what types of people are going to have more

and more career capital and it's the it's the 's it's the sahil blooms it's the you know sha sha Pur Etc and so I I just hope that is inspiration for people listening that um you can take that that different path even if you're already uh down a path and if if You know if people are thinking that hey the path is weird maybe you're doing something right um or you know maybe you're you're you're on to something because you're exploring something that is on the upswing that people haven't figured out yet and so that

that's both an opportunity for people who haven't who are just upand comers and getting their start um to explore something that's underexplored um but on the up and but also so people who who've been In the game for a while well first of all I appreciate you saying that um thank you the reason I had this come to Jesus moment was because I saw how the sausage was made and once I saw how the sausage was made I realized that this not only it just wasn't for me it just was not for me um you

know you talked earlier about how sometimes Founders don't pay themselves after even raising millions of dollars and that's really true true and not really spoken about When I was running Islands I paid myself a $75,000 salary in San Francisco which like goes nowhere um and uh and in the last 12 months I didn't even feel like I deserved a salary because I wanted to extend the runway so I didn't I stopped taking a salary so there's so many examples of venture Venture back startups and and where that can go and and I just I'm happy

that more and more people are sharing it and that's one of the reasons Why I like the podcast is it gives me opportunity to share these stories and yeah like I could have gone I was at we work close with the SoftBank folks like I could have just gone and been a partner or whatever at SoftBank for the rest of my life and sold money to people um but no I and I honestly like I find this this path to be for me at least way more interesting I don't know about you like how are

you you you also have a background in in Venture raised a lot of Money uh what how do you feel about this new kind of Rogue path that we're on it's been an adjustment so so yeah raised a lot of money in the past from from a lot of the big names and when you raise money from Big names you get invited to fancy parties and people come up to you and just give you all this validation all the time and people um you know venture capital firms became so good at marketing where they convinced

Founders To take a lot of their money more money than they ever needed right uh I remember at product hunt we raised a seed round we had like $2 million or something maybe 1.5 or $2 million in the seed round and then a few weeks later we got a term sheet a series a term sheet from Andre and harwitz and we didn't even know how to spend the $2 million let alone the 8 to 10 that came after it but it was and I love I'm a big you know I'm I'm friends with uh that

that firm But that money was just so enticing and and and you know did we need the money not really right um was was that the right thing for the business unclear but um the firm and just VC in general is so good at being a signal to the market that our company is one to be taken seriously and people should want to join our company people should want to trust uh you know customers should want to trust that and so it's incumbent on startups and startup ecosystem to have Other version this is why I'm

excited about media too other versions of that signal other versions of that blessing that don't come with major dilution over overly capitalized businesses and um and expectations that are way ahead of where the business is going and there needs to be other entities that can bless these companies with that signal um that don't come with the same sort of constraints so you ask me how it's going it's been an adjustment because I haven't been Invited to all the same fancy parties or I I haven't had the same level of validation people say oh what are

you up to I say oh you know I'm working on this Media company oh that's cute you know it's but when are you going to go for something really big and I'm like oh no wait this is like the infrastru one this is big but two this is the infrastructure and I didn't raise any Venture for it and people just think you're going small right but people Don't realize like the male Champs and zap there's a lot of businesses um or there's at least enough businesses that have gotten massive massive scale that barely raised any

Venture money or didn't raise any at all and venture capitalist would have loved to put money in the same way that there's you know lifestyle business is kind of this like euphemism there should be a similar euphemism for a business that's like too good to raise Venture money right like The mail Champs or zapier like V capus would die to put money into it but it's too good of a business it doesn't need this upfront like you know massive capital and dilution and expectations and bosses as you've been you know writing about how you investors

you you've got bosses and and I have a friend who uh who got his business to 30 million a year ARR totally bootstrapped uh it's a service business he he did just raise some money because he wants To go really big on on AI and and that's and he always wanted to take some some money out that's great for him but um you know it's easier to to get businesses off the off the ground it's easier to get distribution and if you don't need capital for it why raise it so it's a it's a bit

of adjustment but I think what you and I and other people are doing are showing examples of success like businesses that achieve real success That didn't need to raise money that were in fact um sort of advantaged for for for for not raising money and I have in it's increasingly in the same way that a lot of our friends want to do personal holding companies which we we'll get to in minute but a bunch of our friends who've raised hundreds of millions or even more in capital say hey I don't want to do that again

I I don't want to do that anymore I I want to raise zero and now it's like a we need To turn it from a you know something a sign that you couldn't raise money to a sign that you're you're too good to raise money like you you know the the cost of it and you don't need it anymore well let's just change the name of exactly of unicorns unicorn Founders and unicorn companies to like a unicorn company isn't something that gets to a billion dollar valuation it's something that gets to a billion dollar value

you know if you can get it's something that Gets to like 10 million in cash flow that to me is a unicorn company yeah and a unicorn founder is someone who could do that it's like your buddy yeah no totally it's crazy I'm making my goals for 2024 and when I look back at my goals for previous years it was like okay get this you know my my company to 20 million in revenue and to this growth percentage but like those were the wrong metrics like th those metrics were based on what investors wanted right

they Wanted to see a graph up and to the right of of Revenue but that that didn't take costs into account right or or growth but that didn't take retention into account right and so now I'm thinking about hey these are goals just for me and it's like wait what exactly should the goals be it's just like a totally different way of uh of thinking about about business building when when you're Your Own Boss as opposed to your your investors and your investors just Have a different um level of risk reward given they're you know

extremely Diversified and you know playing lottery tickets so can you talk a little bit more about what your goals are for 2024 yeah I'm I'm creating them right now but I I want turpentine to uh I I want a million dollars in my bank account as a result of you know next year uh terpentine um so it's less of a revenue number for the company and more of of you know what I Take personally um I also but I'm also going to keep reinvesting into the in in into the business so I want us to

get so have a distribution goal as well I I want us to hit a million monthly podcast uh listens we're at 350 right now I also uh have a news newsletter goals well I'm still figuring out what what's the right number we're at zero today um but I want us to go big on newsletters but there there are a couple other things I want us to get into as well I want us to get Into the reputation game I I think lists are very powerful if if done well and I want to really establish oursel

um in in the list game um and then I also want to start this expert Network um and so and and I want to create this flywheel between this um sort of the reporting that the media company does and um that data entering this this sort of exp Network or the transcripts each call should be a transcript that enters this this this database that is compounding Um I also have a few other reputation products I I I've just launched one is a VC rating system one is a uh service provider rating system one is a

SAS tool rating system or review site one is a company review site I'm going to have individual metrics for or a company reviews yeah like a glass door competitor individual metrics for for those and those are going to be part of this Bookface competitor that I'm launching this a social network for for Founders um so high level intention for 2024 it's it's build the infrastructure the infrastructure that is going to help me uh create more businesses and you know have more kind of cap uh ability to invest or like get into deals that I'm excited

about um by just having more leverage like I saw how product hunt and on Deck just gave me so much leverage because people wanted me to in their Network or on the table because I can get them distribution and I can get them Talent and I want to create those same sort of bworks in the the broader Empire I'm building on the distribution side and part of distribution is also reputation um but then also on and and and then also on the talent side and so there's going to be a you know tangible sort of

distribution you know uh audience size and you know profit numbers related to that but also this broader sense of hey uh you know am I building the infrastructure that makes It easier for for me to incubate more more businesses on on top of that so that's what I'm thinking about 2024 I like it I like it big year um we only got a few minutes left um I want you to give folks a few free startup ideas or things they should be thinking about what you got yeah okay so I mentioned that I'm really excited

about reputation uh one idea I have is a is quora for people basically a search engine for ex you know who's the X for y I'm in um you Know who's the best dentist in Miami or who who's the best fintech investor or I'm going to New York who should I meet we see these questions on Twitter all the time or Facebook they have tons of Engagement and then they're never stored and so I'm really interested in the intersection of Engagement and kind of like State you know stored State and so you could go on

Twitter and scrape all these questions you you use llms to somehow find a lot of these questions um Organize them structure them create your own social network work just for these um just for these questions um and then find uh you know who who to sell them to uh because similarly to what I said earlier it's not like like some of this information is really valuable to a small subset of people so that's a space I'm curious to to explore speaking of uh things that are really valuable to a small Subs of people um the

dating space I I think people are going around at the Wrong way they're they're not price discriminating I I I think if we were to ask single people how much would you pay of your what percentage of your net worth would you pay to find your partner in the next year or two especially people in their 30s right um I I think it's fair to say that a bunch of people would say something like 10% 20% maybe even more and so I think there is a big up uh opportunity to build sort of a high-end

combination coaching plus Matchmaking business almost of like what an executive recruiter does so we paid you know 100K plus to get a COO or to get a CFO and that recruiting firm not just didn't just source for us they took us through the whole process and made sure we found one it's like yeah you could find a CFO on your own but if you pay 100K you're definitely going to get one and they're going to stay with you until you get one and I I think something similar on the on the Matchmaking front and I've

only seen solutions that do either matchmaking or do coaching but not not like personal trainer style like just make you make sure it's you know do it for you almost like be in the dating apps for you and I I think yeah exactly I think in general it's a big trend of like shifting from like teach you how to do something to like press button and it's done like do it for you and this sort of like going From coaching to person like personal trainer doesn't just tell you what to do he also like or

she watches you until you do it um and I you know I like solutions that that do that um for people because there's all this education and it's great but it's rare to have you know someone who will take the the whole end and I think there's something at the the intersection of like and you've thought about this too in different ways but coaching Accountability um sort of you know executive assistant um that just kind of is there with you personal trainer for Life basically what are the areas in which you want to grow like

I I looked at my 2024 goals and one thing I'm doing and I'm lucky enough to have some people helping me but hey EAS are cheap you use Athena and get it you know pay you know a few bucks an hour I $6 an hour for an assistant and um you can get someone to to help you out too and I'm putting that Assistant next to those goals like it imagine having someone whose job it is to achieve your goals for you um like the the level of not just accountability but support that you will

get from that is is is is really powerful so i' love a service that takes that to the next level maybe that just is Athena but you can imagine it app to different spaces like like relationships as an example yeah and I don't think it's Athena like I don't think it you Know because it's it needs to be purpose Built For This exactly yeah exactly all right man idea machine I like it I also like that the underlying theme of this whole conversation has been price discrimination yeah and it's like how do you sell the

most expensive thing to a small group of people yeah and start there it doesn't mean you can't democratize it and build for everyone tear yeah tears but um so I like that I like that where could uh people get to Know you more uh Twitter uh check out uh I'm Eric torberg on Twitter I have substack I tpe time.co if you want to check out what we're doing if if you loved any of the ideas that that I'm I'm working on I see myself as as wanting to to build a studio and an incubator so

do uh do reach out if if you're inspired to take on any the ideas and just uh want support or want a potential partner on it you got to come back on again man yeah it's been an honor to be here Greg uh always always love chatting with you and brainstorming we got to do our next uh Pita yes absolutely you you left Miami I can't believe you left Miami I know it was it was hard but I'll I'll come back and visit was it because there was just torenberg Eisenberg you were getting mixed up

you know you could yeah I didn't know there was enough Bergs uh yeah no it was a it was a good run but uh there was a moment where I just need did more professional and personal Serendipity in my life yes and uh so I came back so end with this San Francisco how is it versus like our San Francisco 20 2012 2019 wasn't the same you know but it's it's it's it's not the same but it's back um it's it's you know people have left there's a whole new a lot of people like we

came with Ryan Hoover like he's gone like David Spinx he's gone like a bunch of people right a bunch of people are friends they're gone but there's a whole new crop a whole Whole new you know set of uh young people who who who came in and and one thing that's different that I is there's a sort of Consciousness to San Francisco about um sort of making San Francisco great which is like making it a safe place like getting there are people who are now like running for office who were previously doing tech companies and

that's exciting to me because one of the things that I Mi that I sort of Miss about Miami or or didn't like about San Francisco was it felt that everything was just about tech and there wasn't really enough diversity and now I'm seeing all this kind of like Community activism energy um and it's uh is just giving a new flare new excitement and and it it makes me feel like part of something um part of something bigger than than just just myself or just my company it's like no let's actually like make this city great

if you're in your 20s and you want to start a turpentine Or lay checkout type business do you do San Francisco New York or somewhere else I think the answer used to be um you had to be in San Francisco if you were trying to build a tech company now I think you can probably be anywhere um but you know I I I I still think on the margins probably San Francisco or New York or just wherever there's a concentration of you know amazing people like wherever you can find your tribe that that's where you

should go like in San Francisco when I first moved here I couldn't find my tribe for a couple years so it wasn't a great place for me uh so I'd almost like find them online um like see where people you want to meet where do they live um and people you can you can meet too and then just go there like if you're able to get into the Austin scene with Dave Pell and Justin Maris and all these people like go to Austin right like so or so that's I would think about is like where

where Can you find your tribe and look online first or if you want to come hang out with me and Ryan Hoover in Miami yes exactly come come do that so I won't take it personally um and uh appreciate the time later yeah appreciate you bud