We’re back to opining on the state of tech media! A16z has aqui-hired Erik Torenberg and his newsletter Turpentine, while the Technology Brothers with ties to Founders Fund have created a podcasting empire. Eric and Tom reminisce about the original wave of “going direct,” why it failed, and what’s different this time around.
Later on, Madeline shares that crypto VCs are growing frustrated with President Trump’s meme coin grifts, and how hosting a private dinner for top coin holders doesn’t help legitimize the industry.
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Welcome back to Dead Cat this week.
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Oh wait, no, it's the newcomer podcast.
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You know, when you say dead cat, it's very triggering for me
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because that's peak pandemic. This was our only socializing
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basically. If people remember a lot of I'm
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assuming newcomer subscribers are too young to remember the
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pandemic, but this was the only way that people knew how to
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socialize was via podcasts. These were the clubhouse days we
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had. We had a beautiful, you know,
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dead cat or, you know, it's a cartoon cat.
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You got you got a guy from fiber to draw that for us.
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Exactly. The on demand economy was
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thriving of people making podcast logos.
00:00:34
And and it was a reference to private text messages between
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Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg using some spy craft, not to
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dead cat bounce as many people believe.
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A big theme of that show was like analyzing going direct and
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sort of the media tech hostility in some ways.
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I don't know, Tom, how would you describe our position?
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We were less pro media than media but also still reporter
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dismissive of some of the tech complaints.
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Or what was our posture back then?
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I think we had a mission statement that we read out on
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the first episode, which was that we believe in media in this
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house, We believe in media. We also believe that the media
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is fallible at times and by and large probably has more of an
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anti tech bias than a lot of people in the media are willing
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to accept. That was the strong stance that
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we took. You know, you got to remember
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basically all people were doing on Twitter, at least our version
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of Twitter was just bitching about the media, right?
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It was just every VC saying, you know, Balaji was like, never
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talk to these people. These people are your enemy.
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They have no, they, they're barely worth your time, like in
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the real world, let alone, you know, as a business person.
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And there were all these fights, right?
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Like they were just just constant back and forth.
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Well, that's also always like, so rich just because, like, Marc
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Andreessen famously is Kara Swisher's source back in the
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day. So like, it was such a flip.
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But of course, that was the posture back then.
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So anyway, yeah, this is exactly what we agonized with.
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We beat the cat dead. We were like, we talked about it
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exhaustively and then we moved on with our life.
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Newcomer became sort of for a while more of a interview show.
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Now we're on the news, though. We we have the freedom to have
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interviews. And now Tom's here and so we are
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about to opine on media, but it's in the news.
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The main story, of course, we're referring to Andreessen
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Horowitz, is hiring Eric Torenberg's Turpentine.
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Yeah. So Eric Torenberg, you know,
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early employee at product time, Co founder of village global on
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deck and then he had this company turpentine.
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It was in some ways running, you know, Lenny Rojski, he has this
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product newsletter and I think Eric in some ways was like, man,
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we should do a category newsletter for everything and
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all in is pretty successful. I should have an all in style
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podcast and like, in some ways, just like, OK, let's let's see
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if we can be mercenaries about building a tech media company.
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I think it was he hasn't disclosed the financials, unlike
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the this company here. So I don't know exactly how it
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did it. And you know, I think sure,
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they're bringing in the turpentine stuff and I think
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that gives them a running start. But I think the key here is that
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Eric's becoming a general partner at the firm and is going
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to sort of help them continue to have sort of their media
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ambitions. That's happening in the context
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of the Sons of Founders Fund have just completely blown up
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with our competitor podcast, TPPN Technology Brothers.
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We're talking about TBPN, the three hour Daily Show.
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Co hosted by uh, Jordy Hayes and John Coogan.
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John Coogan was founders fund entrepreneur in residence for a
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really long time. So they're, you know, connected
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to founders fund. I mean, but they're not like
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officially run out of founders fund, but they have all these
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ties, right? So it's kind of like
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illustrative of how Founders Fund approaches media, right?
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I know I I guess my first just just to sort of take one step
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away from the facts before we give our hot, hot takes.
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I think founders Fund had knows that it's a little cooler not to
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be so corpo. You know, it's like pirate wires
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and TBPN. They're not really founders fund
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things. Obviously having founders fund
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people out and about, you know, Mike Solana, who runs pirate
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wires is the chief marketing officer of founders funds.
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So obviously there is marketing, but he's not going to do
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something that's so terrible here to founders fund.
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Founders funds an investor, but the these shows sort of stand on
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their own. And I think they're also sort of
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spicier than the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio outside of
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Marc Andreessen, the man who of course is spicy.
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But I, I am not convinced that the rest of Andreessen Horowitz
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has been able to be spicy. So you've got sort of founders
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fun succeeding without plastering their brand on it.
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Andreessen Horowitz, you know, Marc Andreessen was on Joe
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Rogan. Like you can't argue with that.
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And certainly they have top podcasts.
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I'm sure they have way, way, way more distribution than us on
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their podcasts. And like they have, you know
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what, hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.
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So they, they definitely have a media presence, but they failed
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to build future their media company.
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And it seems like they've never really satisfied the ambitions
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of being a true a true media company.
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Why do you think that is? That you can have a successful
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podcast or whatever, get a decent audience for it that
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justifies it, it's existence. But every time you try to build
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some sort of media vertical like future or whatever, that never
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takes off. Like why?
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Why is a podcast something that gets people, but text tends to
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just be very limited? I don't have an answer for that.
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I just think it's funny. I think it's more that
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Andreessen is flowing from the ambition to influence.
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Like they're seeing, oh man, like powerful people influenced
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through the media and like we should build our own, hire
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people go figure it out. Whereas I think like Mike Solana
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at Higher Wires who strenuously disagree with on some things,
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he's like got a writer's spirit. He has things to say.
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He's too angry and he needs to get it out in print somewhere.
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You know, he, I feel like he has things to say.
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And I think the TBPN guys, they're funny and like they have
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a sort of point of view. And so I do think it's the it's
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the humanities person in all of us.
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It's like you got to start with like the desire to really have
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something to say in a new format and a style.
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And so I think they've found people for the podcast and some
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of their partners are great communicators.
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But then I think future and some of these other ambitions start
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with we need to be a media company without like the sort of
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fire behind it. Yeah, I guess you don't really
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have an audience built into it. It's just sort of an expectation
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that if you start writing the articles with the bent that you
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think people want, they'll just show up, which is anyone who's
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run a media company would know. It's not really the way it
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happens. I always talk about newcomer.
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It's like, I don't know, we chase the stories that are fun
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to us. Like, you know, I don't, I don't
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know some of the you can be too intentional with media in my
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point of view. Part of what makes the TBBN part
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fun is that it is it feels a little bit disconnected and it
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has cool vibes. They're reclaiming tech bro,
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right? And they're like fun,
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interesting guys to watch and engage with.
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So in your conception of all of this, like is like the narrative
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control and the ability to like talk about things in a fun, cool
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way without it seeming like VC media, like the business
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reporter in me is like, does that actually help your fund?
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I assume it doesn't like a soft power way, but like, where's the
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play here other than just being like, you know, getting the
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attention out, being interesting?
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Like seems like does it really, you know, come back to help
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founders fund it seems like Andreessen.
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It's kind of not really doing anything other than, you know,
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Mark sweater presence. Yeah, I think just being out
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there in people's minds is like good for founders fund because
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they have to find the next founder and being legitimately
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sort of cool, as reluctant as I am to say it helps them sort of
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get deal flow and like is useful.
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I do think the TBPN guys are smart in that, like they're
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trying to build a show. I think it's sort of like they
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could get bought by CNBC. I talked to John Coogan this
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week, and it's not like he's like, yeah, we're building a
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platform. It's like, no, we're building a
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good media show, he jokes. But it's sincere that it's
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corporate media. It's like they have a bunch of
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ads plastered all over the thing.
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They're like for them. I think one of the strengths and
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maybe what could be lasting for like ATPBN is they're not
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explicitly political. Like all of this story you're
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talking, we're talking about like posturing and that kind of
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thing. They don't really do that.
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They have their sort of like bro Y outward aesthetic, but much
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less so than pirate wires. Are they, like, jumping into the
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political foray? They're talking about business,
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yeah. The only political thing is just
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that it's sort of this like the bro that you couldn't be
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anymore. But besides that, besides the
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stylings, I agree it's very like down to business talking about
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companies. Well, of course, like a big
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theme of the whole dead cat era of your of your fame was that
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like tech could go direct and cut out the media and and
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address their audience in a way that like.
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Right. I was terrified.
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I I went on a clubhouse. I was like, Marc Andreessen
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needs to answer questions about his Trump support in front of
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the New York Times. Yeah, it was it was an
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interesting moment, Tom. I'll you take it first.
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Where are we on Go Direct? It's not happening.
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It's it's your your take is that they have not failed to to Yeah.
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They clearly, they clearly failed and I know this because
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when I announced that I was working for for newcomer now and
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I had an e-mail address, my in blocks got flooded with with
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with PR people. They're reaching out to me,
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which in a world of going direct, I understand you're
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you're not legacy. So maybe that was partly the
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reason why they're that. Yeah, exactly.
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Read the market. It's like, it's like they want
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the people to the media to do the work and people who know how
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to write to produce it, but they just want a new.
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They want new just start again like new brands.
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I, I never understood the Go direct thing.
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Like it, It always confused me because ultimately, what did it
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mean? Did it mean you don't want to
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announce your, your, your next fundraise in TechCrunch or or
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the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg?
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OK, three of those publications wouldn't write about it anyway.
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Now, did it? Did it mean like, if your
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company had a controversy and reporters were writing about it,
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that you shouldn't ever deal with the media?
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You should never answer questions to them?
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OK, fine, you don't have to do it.
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But that also assumes that like, if you don't talk to people,
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they won't. If you don't talk to the media,
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the article won't exist, which obviously it will.
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Like, you know, you need to have like fucking object permanence
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to recognize that like people exist outside of your wanting to
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talk to them. And so I never understood what
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the end state of it was. Was it?
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Was it about killing the New York Times altogether?
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All. Right here here's here's my
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view, which I think touches on what you're saying.
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Godirect was framed as a binary. Either you're talking to the
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media or you're talking to tech. Obviously in the real world,
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that's not how it plays out. Things are a spectrum of and we
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could imagine a spectrum of unfriendly detect to friendly
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detect. And part of what happened within
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the media is the friendly detect sort of disappeared, right?
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The, I don't know, Fast Company ink style.
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Oh my God, you're an amazing company.
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Those people all suddenly became the like Facebook's the devil.
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And so the friendliest people became the most hostile.
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And so the media was out of whack.
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I think we acknowledged that back in the dead cat days.
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And so tech started creating these go direct things, many of
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them far, far too positive ever to build or sustain an audience
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because at the end of the day, media is dependent on what
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consumers want. And so now what was the go
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direct period have become much more sophisticated and are are
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delivering a range of content. You've got pyro wires who has
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its enemies, right, which the traditional like PR go direct
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set couldn't deliver right. The you needed some sort of foil
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and antagonist, which pyro wires has you guys TVPN, which is like
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literally sort of embracing the aesthetics of like CNBC and TV
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news. And so I think that spectrum is
00:13:01
going to totally reemerge, and the distinction will soon be
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meaningless. I think on the Go Direct side,
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you have all these people who are still, you know, I think
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John said it to me this week. They're like, I'm not a
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journalist. And I'm like, I don't know what
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that means. Like, obviously journalists
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themselves have a range of expectations for what you have
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to do. And I think the Go Direct crowd
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still wants, like, none of the ethical burden of journalism
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while, you know, delivering it. And I think what's really going
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to happen is it's we're going to go back to a period where we're
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all judged against the expectations and brand that we
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built for ourselves. There isn't going to be this
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like, binary switch of, like, journalists.
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People can shit on me for not doing enough diligence.
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And like, I'm just an influencer and I can be as like, lazy as I
00:13:47
want to. I don't know, Joe Rogan, you
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have a huge audience and you're driving the culture.
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You interviewed the president, like what you say matters, and
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we're seeing that emerge. And so I think on the media
00:13:57
side, you're not going to get this special treatment anymore.
00:14:00
And then on the go direct side, you're not going to be able to
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be like, who me? I'm just like an idiot.
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Like you're like, you have an audience.
00:14:06
And that's that's what makes you morally culpable for what you
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say. Also, the bigger you get, the
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more people are going to view you in the same sphere as the
00:14:14
bigger media companies. Like I had a source of mine the
00:14:17
other day was telling me that he wanted to, he was trying to get
00:14:22
me to help him like an editorial that he had.
00:14:25
And he was like, I, you know, I was going to run it in pirate
00:14:28
wires. But they had, I guess they had
00:14:30
some sort of executive leave or someone and, and they're not
00:14:32
able to publish as much as they were able to.
00:14:34
He's like, oh, can you help me get this into the Wall Street
00:14:36
Journal, the Washington Post? And, and it's like, and like
00:14:40
one, No, like I can't, it's really hard to, you know, I
00:14:42
never dealt with the editorial side, but it's like the fact
00:14:44
that you consider it like one or the other means that like the,
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the lines are already blurred. So like the, the, the, the in,
00:14:50
in its success supposedly of go direct.
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You've basically become to a degree, the thing that you
00:14:54
hated. And we're rebelling.
00:14:55
Against exactly. And they're learning all the
00:14:57
problems. You talk to them, you're like,
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Oh yeah, like media is really hard.
00:15:00
These tech people don't get it. You have to like you're only as
00:15:03
good as your last story. Like it's something we've been
00:15:05
yelling out for years. Like tech's all about
00:15:08
solutionism. It's like do the thing, realize
00:15:10
what the trade-offs are and why people are doing what they're
00:15:12
doing and like stop, stop whining, you know, do it.
00:15:16
So I'm happy that. Why do you think we're such like
00:15:18
negative pieces of shit? It's because our jobs are bad
00:15:21
and and we have to deal with all this stuff like you.
00:15:25
You think you're happy now because you're going direct.
00:15:27
You're just going to become like us.
00:15:28
There's, there's, there's going to be no.
00:15:30
Distinction and journalists are part of the problem in that they
00:15:33
hold on to the distinction, right?
00:15:34
In some ways they're enabling the go direct crowd to act
00:15:38
differently by saying journalists, we behave this way,
00:15:41
you behave that way. And I, I think I've been early
00:15:44
on the like collapse the distinction quickly so that
00:15:48
there's equal sort of responsibility on both ends or
00:15:52
at least relative to audience and relative to brand.
00:15:55
I mean, the only other thing I would say on this is that what
00:15:57
people often overlook is like, is your shit good?
00:16:00
Is it an entertaining product? Like that's all it comes down
00:16:04
to. Like I know and it's I'm happy
00:16:05
to always, you know, shit on the all in guys.
00:16:08
They have a good show. It's an entertaining show.
00:16:10
They have like a dynamic that appeals to people that makes for
00:16:14
compelling, you know, listening or consumption or video or
00:16:18
whatever. And it's like, if you don't have
00:16:19
a fundamentally good product, doesn't matter how much
00:16:21
philosophy behind the changing tides of media you're basing
00:16:26
this on, if it's not interesting, no one's going to
00:16:28
care. That's it.
00:16:30
It's it's like a fairly, I mean, the nice thing about media,
00:16:32
aside from the fact that, you know, the business model is
00:16:34
broken, is that like the audience is often pretty
00:16:36
dependent on whether you day in, day out put out a compelling
00:16:39
product. And a lot of these things just
00:16:41
weren't good. All In is a good show.
00:16:43
I'm sorry to say it. It is a good.
00:16:45
Show arguing for capitalism. I mean part of what happened
00:16:48
with media is that the reporters got very disconnected from the
00:16:51
customer right. I think one thing that newcomer
00:16:54
is a response to is that yeah, we are responsive to our segment
00:16:59
of readers. Now we found the segment of
00:17:00
readers we like right If you're going to unsubscribe because I
00:17:03
shit on Trump or whatever you're a lost cause.
00:17:05
So we we still have a segment but like I think, you know when
00:17:09
I was at Bloomberg and certainly many other Bloomberg reporters
00:17:12
are very disconnected from which stories are driving like the
00:17:15
bottom line. And so building media businesses
00:17:18
that are more responsive to customers, you know, reflect the
00:17:22
culture and are more responsive to to the mood for good and bad.
00:17:26
Speaking of griffs from one to another, you know, we talked
00:17:29
about the, the VC media grift, but I think there's a, there's a
00:17:32
broader, I would say griffs are in vogue right now.
00:17:34
Griffs are in, you know, from the top down.
00:17:36
I think we're seeing a lot of a lot of discussion over how we
00:17:41
can take advantage of the moment and and, you know, fill our own
00:17:45
bag while the gettings are good. There's a point we've been
00:17:47
hitting over and over again in this newsletter when we do talk
00:17:50
about politics, which is that ultimately the Trump presidency
00:17:54
and attitude towards grift and deal making in corrupt ways is
00:18:01
is bad for business and all of the Silicon Valley people who
00:18:04
support him and have viewed it, you know, oh, this will be
00:18:06
favorable and regulation. To me, it's not favorable if he
00:18:11
makes a mockery of what your business is doing.
00:18:14
The Trump meme coin dinner that was announced this week just
00:18:17
kind of encapsulated this, right?
00:18:19
Because basically the top 220 Trump coin holders will get like
00:18:24
a private dinner with the president.
00:18:26
Like that is just such an example of how crypto for all
00:18:29
the VCs I talked who pitched me on the legitimate crypto
00:18:32
industries that they are building is just totally thrown
00:18:35
out the window by their supposed biggest booster and just like
00:18:38
what is clearly of like influence scheme.
00:18:41
You were talking to a lot of crypto people, ones who I assume
00:18:45
are happy that Trump is in office and being one of the
00:18:48
biggest boosters of this, you know, of, of, of cryptocurrency
00:18:51
in the blockchain in history. Are they on board and described
00:18:56
as legitimate, the meme coin? I mean, do they view that as
00:18:58
like part of the same positive uplift in the economy and
00:19:02
transformation or this is like they're trying to push that off
00:19:04
to the side? I would say well within the like
00:19:07
coin holder people, I'm sure people who are just, you know,
00:19:10
like separate from the founders are excited about this in the
00:19:13
crypto ecosystem because they can make a buck off of it.
00:19:15
But like the crypto investors I've talked to, you and founders
00:19:19
that I've talked to who are happy about cutting regulations,
00:19:21
but not so happy about the optics of everything going down,
00:19:25
they recognize that the grifty stuff hurts their business.
00:19:28
So they've actually expressed to me like, no, this is like a bad
00:19:32
call. We don't think that this like
00:19:33
helps the crypto industry at all.
00:19:36
It just seems like it's a pipeline to pay off Trump and
00:19:39
get close to him. And so even the crypto investors
00:19:42
I've talked to know that this seems like it will not help them
00:19:46
in the end. And yet people I like the end,
00:19:48
you know, we talked about, you know, all of the close to Trump
00:19:51
people, the end reasons of the world like are still sticking
00:19:54
with with it for now, and I just don't see why this is seeming
00:19:57
crypto. And in some ways, the Silicon
00:20:00
Valley view of business has always been, unfortunately, a
00:20:03
story of better angels, you know, build, grow, you know, do
00:20:07
new things, create and on the other hand, sort of grift and
00:20:11
make sort of momentum trades, right?
00:20:14
I mean, you look at Andreessen Horowitz, right?
00:20:16
Marc Andreessen is now one of his many famous sayings is it's
00:20:20
time to build an essay about just America.
00:20:22
We need to do a lot of things. Build a lot of things that's
00:20:25
that's supposed to be the message underpinning the firm.
00:20:28
You know, they've got a very successful crypto fund.
00:20:31
But my sense is a lot of those investments, you know, we're
00:20:34
sort of flips, You know, you make a bunch of money on
00:20:36
Filecoin. Obviously Coinbase, you know, is
00:20:38
a key investment. And that is a real company,
00:20:40
though, a company largely built on speculation of crypto assets.
00:20:44
But like a lot of the building for crypto is still to come and
00:20:48
a lot of the money made has been on sort of speculation and
00:20:51
flipping and getting out at the right time.
00:20:53
I mean, you see a lot of VCs making money on Solana.
00:20:56
But anyway, yeah, the the the the ideal of Silicon Valley is
00:21:01
this sort of building and creation.
00:21:03
And the more that front and center in the American
00:21:06
psychology is thanks to our president that the way to make
00:21:09
money is grifting and to selling tokens that's going to every
00:21:13
entrepreneur is going to be like, well, I guess the mood at
00:21:16
the moment is get rich quick, not build for the long term.
00:21:20
But that's always one of the greatest gifts about Trump is
00:21:23
that he has no subtext. And so when you present him with
00:21:26
something like a meme coin, you can construct whatever
00:21:29
architecture of like transformation of currency and,
00:21:32
and, you know, the blockchain and the value it has.
00:21:35
But in his eyes and maybe the truth behind it all is like, oh,
00:21:37
this is a flip, right? This is like, oh, so you
00:21:39
basically just want me to like pump this shit up?
00:21:41
At least we're not getting bullshitted anymore is your
00:21:43
point? Like it like.
00:21:45
He's like crypto, I get it. I get what you guys are into
00:21:48
here. Sure.
00:21:48
I'm I'm totally down to just pump this thing up and flip it
00:21:51
and, you know, see if a couple of people can make money, myself
00:21:53
included on it. This is Trump stakes.
00:21:55
This is Trump University. Like he, he just manages to cut
00:21:58
through everything to make it at its most basic fundamental level
00:22:02
that I'm assuming is very frustrating to the crypto people
00:22:04
because they're like, no, no, dude, this is about a
00:22:06
revolution. This is not a flip.
00:22:08
This is not about just lining my pockets.
00:22:10
This is about a whole new, you know, wholesale change.
00:22:12
He just kind of is like, don't fucking say that out loud dude.
00:22:15
Like we all know what's going on here.
00:22:17
You don't have to just make it that apparent.
00:22:18
Don't make this a QVC, you know, commercial.
00:22:21
Just thinking back even to the tariffs, right, like he, all of
00:22:24
his advisors were trying to say like, no, this is some genius
00:22:26
strategy of negotiation. And the first reason he backed
00:22:29
off at all was that he was like, well, the markets got a little
00:22:31
out of whack. So we're toning it back.
00:22:33
Like he's always been very direct about what motivates him
00:22:37
and where things are going. But I just don't think that all
00:22:40
of this is in any way good for the business community that has
00:22:43
attached themselves to him. And the fact the fact that it's
00:22:46
still hanging on like is a little absurd to me.
00:22:49
And we'll see how long they stay.
00:22:50
I don't know. At the end of the day, American
00:22:53
culture needs to be and can be more than the culture set by the
00:22:59
president. I mean, this is supposed to be
00:23:01
the view of the Republicans, you know, the small government
00:23:04
party. And so I think at this time,
00:23:07
more than ever, we have the obligation not to let Trump
00:23:10
corrupt business in America and sort of to continue to build
00:23:15
real, meaningful businesses even as we're seeing this messaging
00:23:20
that you could try to get rich quick and the people at the top
00:23:24
are doing it. But certainly Trump isn't making
00:23:26
it easier to keep great entrepreneurs focused on real,
00:23:30
sustainable businesses like they should be.
00:23:32
And it seems like every time he backs off most of his most
00:23:35
insane policies, it's because some senior person in the
00:23:39
traditional business world has a meeting with him in which he's
00:23:42
like, yeah, you got to cut this shit out.
00:23:44
So it's like Jamie Dimon goes to the White House.
00:23:46
Yeah, exactly. Where's Jamie Dimon?
00:23:48
Be like, yeah, we all gripped a little bit like, OK, you do
00:23:52
some, you know, short trades or whatever, but like, you can't do
00:23:55
it like this, man. Right, right.
00:23:58
Yeah. So it's Jamie Dimon coming in
00:23:59
there and be like, yeah, cut this shit out.
00:24:01
Like you're you were destroying the S&P and then now with the
00:24:04
China tariffs probably backing down.
00:24:05
It's because like Walmart and Target CEOs basically came into
00:24:09
the the Oval Office and we're just like, yeah, that's where we
00:24:11
get all of our stuff, man. You're not going to be able to
00:24:13
charge 145% tariffs on on the place that makes all these
00:24:16
things like. Yeah, yeah.
00:24:18
All right. All right, we'll see you guys
00:24:19
next week.