Remote Work and Ice Cream Sandwiches Key takeaways: • The speaker worked from home next to their fridge and gained weight, due to constant snacking on ice cream sandwiches. • Gizmodo was entirely remote and there was never an office. • The speaker’s team used precursors to Slack, such as Aim, to communicate.
Speaker 2
And where did you work out of an office? Was it like, would you go into an office every day with a couple other people?
Speaker 1
I worked from home and I worked right next to my fridge. And whenever we get scooped, I’d eat like an ice cream sandwich. Like 10 in the morning, I would eat an ice cream sandwich. I was just eating every time we got scooped. That’s how I gained like 30 pounds in that job.
Speaker 2
So Gizmodo was never, there was never an office. It was entirely remote.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think at some point there was a move to like get everyone into an office and we were just like, no. Yeah. Which is a very modern thing. But I worked remote the entire job.
Speaker 2
I’m trying to figure out how you did then without Zoom and Slack and all that stuff that makes it so much easier now.
Speaker 1
There were some precursors to Slack that we used. I don’t remember them now. Aim probably. But we used what we used. Yeah. Yeah, we were using, oh my God, you’re right. We were using Aim.
Speaker 2
Right. Aim. You’re using Aim. Yeah.
Speaker 1
We built a $300 million media campaign. That’s right. Amazing.
Speaker 2
But I mean, it’s in a sense, it’s like the parallel between what you’re doing at Gizmodo and at the gym to me seem very similar because you were just focused. It was like you’re going in. You’re just like working out and just exhausting yourself and eating dinner and going to sleep. And it’s the same, it sounds like it was a similar kind of rhythm at Gizmodo.The iPhone Jailbreak Story: A Risk Worth Taking for More Impactful Sales Key takeaways: • The speaker was willing to go to jail for an iPhone as they saw it as a marketing opportunity. • Steve Jobs understood and appreciated the speaker’s commitment to their cause. • The speaker believed that they were making a positive impact by discouraging people from buying the old iPhone model before a new one is released.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And then bad cop came. He was like, you know, this is serious stuff. You can go to jail for this. And I just said, I would love to go to jail for an iPhone. Because I was just thinking about how much traffic we can make from it. I mean, how much more legendary would that story have been if we went to jail? I mean, he knew that that point that I think Steve also understands my understanding of Steve Jobs from talking to, you know, people who work in Apple. And he just understands when he finds someone who also is fully committed. Yeah. And so at that point, he kind of just backed off and he got the letter written. And I knew that we would impact sales and I was glad because you shouldn’t buy. You shouldn’t buy the old thing right before the new one comes out at the same price, especially because you’re going to keep these things from multiple years. Right. And like, that’s a really big deal for people spending their money. You know, these things cost so much money now. So I felt very spiritually engaged in this idea of this telling people to wait because most people have no idea about the timing and the cadence of product release. And I think he was really upset for many months. Like he would, he would probably against all advice would go to like a conference where he was speaking and he would start talking about gizmodo being horrible randomly.How Wirecutter Grew Without Marketing Key takeaways: • Wirecutter did not do any marketing for their product. • The company had a small team with no business or social media personnel. • Wirecutter distinguished itself from other media companies by its unique approach. • The success of Wirecutter was due to word of mouth.
Speaker 2
I’m curious. I mean, did you, I mean, you had a, people knew who you were from Gizmodo, obviously in San Francisco, for sure. And you had a reputation for, you know, for being a solid editor, but how were you getting the word out about Wirecutter? Did you have like a big social media presence? Were you doing that kind of marketing? Like, how did people discover it at all?
Speaker 1
We did no marketing. We were mostly editors. We didn’t have business people. We didn’t have social media people. We were really light. We had no offices. I really liked having a silent media company because it’s just like all of media is like this party where everyone’s talking over each other and saying the same things other people are Saying. Even worse, they’re spending money on reporting, duplicating other people’s work. And so I just wanted to contribute in this way. That was different. And the power and focus of it, I think, caught people off guard in our industry. And it was all word of mouth.
Speaker 2
So you were really, I mean, it sounds like you were motivated by just like something that you would have wanted, right? Which is just to save people time. Just like, trust us, we’re going to do the work for you and you can have this information for free.The Impact of Format Changes on Time and Traffic in Online Media Key takeaways: • Editors in other publications wanted a similar format. • Business people were apprehensive about the loss of time on page and traffic. • Moving away from advertising was a conscious decision. • Advertising is viewed as a great evil with shallow metrics.
Speaker 1
I think editors were freaking out in other publications because they wanted a format like that. And business people were maybe scared of that change because you’re talking about a severe loss of time on page and traffic. So if someone’s just clicking on one article and leaving in two minutes, they have to understand that can lead to a different type of business and a better service. But you’re also sacrificing maybe 50 page views and like an hour on your site. It’s significant. Yeah. So the people were really slow to move. And at first I was scared. People were going to copy and then I realized that big companies are incapable of really competing in that way.
Speaker 2
And then the get go you knew that advertising was just not a direction you wanted to take because it was it was basically a race to the bottom to chase those ads.
Speaker 1
I think advertising is one of the great evils of the world because it gets in your brain no matter what. And the metrics they use are basically what has made media what it is today, like really shallow, fast cadence. It’s crazy that if you are like a high end.The negative effects of advertising on media and society Key takeaways: • Advertising is considered a great evil as it has a strong impact on people’s minds. • Metrics used by advertisers have led to the present state of media which is shallow and fast-paced. • Even high-end brands need to advertise alongside low-quality content. • Advertisers do not get money back for being next to bad content. • Affiliate fee gets reversed if a recommended product is returned, resulting in zero income for the advertiser.
Speaker 1
I think advertising is one of the great evils of the world because it gets in your brain no matter what. And the metrics they use are basically what has made media what it is today, like really shallow, fast cadence. It’s crazy that if you are like a high end. Brand for like a watch or something. It’s crazy that you don’t want to help reverse that because your amazing watches need to live next to like BS top 10 lists or like a magazine you flip through in like five minutes that they Took a month to put together. Yeah. It’s all just like really trashy and I can’t wait for this trend to reverse and reverse in more areas than just what wire cutter did around product. Yeah. And the other thing is if someone returns something that you recommend the affiliate fee gets reversed and you get zero. You can’t say that for like the Rolex ad next to the top 10 list or something factually incorrect. The advertiser never gets that money back for being next to articles that are terrible. So and the readers don’t get that time back on clickbait. So for me it’s more ethical.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think about two years in you started to see some profitability enough where you could pay yourself a little bit of money. But did you I mean I know that you started this because you really wanted to do it.Collaborating with The New York Times on Cheap Printer Test Key takeaways: • The Times published a wrong leaked number which was not an extraordinary amount. • The speaker believes The Times deserved better service and collaborated with them for a successful project. • The speaker received an email from someone on the strategy team asking about selling.
Speaker 1
You know what’s really funny is that number is actually wrong. It was a leak that was incorrect but the Times published it. It was more but it wasn’t an extraordinary amount. Yeah. I always knew that we would end up at the Times. I thought it could fit in there from an editorial standpoint. I had an introduction to some of the Salzburgers and I told them about what we were doing and I said, I love the Times and I believe the Times deserves better and the readers deserve better Service. And so there was another meeting after that meeting where I said, let’s do a collaboration. So I commissioned a cheap printer test and I said we actually found the best cheap printer. You can do this work if you are motivated enough to do it. And we did a collaboration. It was one of the most trafficked pieces they had because it had that Wirecutter punch of we were actually doing the work. And so we did more collaborations. And then one day I got an email from someone on the strategy team saying, do you ever think about selling? And I was like, yeah, I’ve thought about it before. We started a process.
Speaker 2
It’s pretty remarkable. I mean, five years, more or less, within five years of launching this thing, you took it from nothing, an idea to a company that sold to the New York Times for more than $30 million. I mean, if you and didn’t feel that way the time, but that’s pretty great. I mean, that’s pretty fast.
Speaker 1
It’s fast considering it was bootstrapped more or less.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And it’s fast considering the first year. I was only working on it 10 hours a week because that’s all I had.Recognizing the Value of Craft and Starting Something New Key takeaways: • The speaker emphasizes the importance of today’s values when starting a business focused on physical goods. • The speaker is currently interested in and practicing woodworking with Japanese hand tools. • The speaker recognizes the value of craftsmanship and believes that the best media is also light craft.
Speaker 1
Let’s put it this way. If I were starting something now, it wouldn’t necessarily be about things. Yeah. But since that’s kind of my wheelhouse, maybe it would be. But it would have to be in a way that’s more in tune with today’s values. Yeah. You know, I spend most of my time these days fixing up this old house, and I’m basically talking with craftsmen all day. And I have started to build and practice craft myself specifically woodworking with Japanese hand tools. And like a lot of these tools are made by hand, by blacksmiths, and the speed of craft and the values of craft are so precious and humbling to me. And I’ve started to recognize that the best media is also light craft. The best podcast, the best books, the best everything is not capitalistic at scale. It still needs to be capitalistic.
