An email-style memo written to JCal, host of TWIST and co-host of All-in Podcast.
Jason,
I want to activate All-in Media, the idea Chamath mentioned during the 2022 prediction show.
Why: While each bestie has their theory to explain why people watch the show, I think viewers attach to the rigor of your discussions. And, in the conversations after the show, they feel intellectually rigorous too. A dog whistle is a good analogy for how people feel when they watch All-in. When a dog owner whistles, the dog runs to the owner. When people hear All-in, they run to their notebooks. The podcast triggers rigor in their brain just as the whistle triggers running to the dog.
Viewers start thinking about events, politics, and technology differently. They ask new questions, do more research and everyone trends toward becoming an independent thinker. People desire more of the rigor they feel when they watch the pod, but there's no way to get more unless you rewatch past episodes.
AIM helps them get more.
What does AIM look like: There are four components I think good media needs:
a) High standards design: Bari Weiss' publication is what good looks like. Add the all-in branding with this style and the landing page is good to go.
b) Good thinkers with original ideas: Many bestie guesties embody this description, so invite them to begin columns under All-in Media. For example, Andrej Karpathy can write on ML, Phil on poker, and Brad on public markets. They can write when they want, so there's no pressure of consistency and in whatever form makes sense: short, long, unfinished.
For an unfinished post, for example, I can envision the blogger asking for help from the All-in community to finish the rest. Contributors can submit their changes, and before it's live, the blogger reviews and ok's the post, like a pull request on Github. If the writing is approved, those contributors can begin writing for AIM too.
When listeners of the pod begin writing more than anomalous guest columns, AIM's impact will be felt because these aren't traditional journalists. These are smart people who have something to say and trust the All-in community with their thoughts. I anticipate this model creates a flywheel that leads to more unfinished posts, open-source journalism, and AIM writers.
c) Monetization: Although monetization isn't a focus of the All-in podcast, I think an idea like Balaji's Media Fund can be tested here. Here's the tl;dr: people get value from listening to the All-in podcast. Some of these listeners might be founders. If a founder decides to sell their company because of a comment made on the podcast, you will get 1-2% of the deal because your value resulted in a monetization of some kind. This sequence of events was publicized at the All-in Summit, and I expect more stories like these to manifest this year.
d) Community home: The All-in community is now homeless, bouncing between shelters called Twitter, Youtube comments, IM, and Call-in. AIM centralizes the conversation, and because it's on one platform, people can go deeper into what they ask and say to other viewers. Maybe you find more people to invest in Launch's latest fund, or a pseudo-YC directory starts and people begin co-founder matching or Sunday mornings become a weekly gathering of All-in fans on Callin/Twitter spaces debriefing the episode and talking about topics the besties don't cover.
Who I am: 19 y/o writer/programmer studying quantitative methods and electrical and computer engineering in college. You can check out things I've built here.
This is phase 1 of what I think AIM looks like; happy to workshop this with you and the besties.
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Zayn