So I went independent in mid-September and by the end of December, I'll make more on my own than I would have at my last job. And it was—I had a great job. I had like the best job I've ever had.
Being a solo founder in anything, if you're in PR, if you're in a startup, it's hard to kind of hold everything in your head, hold the whole burden. If someone asks you how things are going, you say they're going great. Why wouldn't you, right? But you're not going to say, 'Oh, I just got off like the most annoying business development call.' Or, 'I wish I could vent about someone.'
When I think about going independent, sometimes people call it like going solo. But as you said, Conrad, like you're not alone. You're working with people. So, I'm wondering if you guys could speak to like who are you working with? I made my first fractional hire this month. The video editor—video is very intensive, time consuming. And business development right now, I am handling all of that. I'm wondering what are the trade-offs you're facing now being independent.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's time, you know, I think you ultimately realize that you're always going to be the bottleneck in every single aspect of your business. One challenge we have, it's so hard to celebrate wins and kind of have ever like a start or stop point on projects. It's like every day is just a new battle, a new adventure. And so you ship something great and there's still five more things to do. I think if you're, you know, thinking about doing this as a reporter, if you are not like excited about the grind and the entrepreneurial aspect of it, and if all you really want is like more money or more creative freedom to keep doing the kind of job you were doing, this is not the path for you.
Hey all, JJ, thank you for that amazing introduction. As you all know, independent journalism seems to be truly having a moment. It's wild to me that all my friends run their own media businesses now. Our founders—you guys were already introduced, but what I'd love to kick us off with is you could give like the one-line pitch to what your media company is. Again, we only have so much time together, so give me your like quickest elevator pitch. Alex, if you want to start.
I'm a month and a half in so I'm still workshopping this, but Sources is exclusive reporting on the AI race and then I have a podcast called Access which is the tech industry's inside conversation. How's that just for all your—
All right. Well, Macro Talk is a video-first platform focused on economic and business trends.
And Upstarts is the premier Alex-led Substack publication. No, I'm kidding. Upstarts is a publication focused on the startup ecosystem from inception through IPO.
Alex Heath, as you noted, you're really new to this, right? So, what was your like why now? What was really the impetus to starting Sources?
Yeah, I've been thinking about it for a long time and everyone I know—I mean we all have friends who have gone independent over the years and no one I know regrets it. So I kept seeing those as data points as like okay everyone's having more success doing more of what they want to do. So I've been thinking about it for a long time and then it was one of those things that was like you think about it and then you just kind of do it really quickly all at once and the impetus was this podcast that I'm doing with Vox Media and my co-host Ellis Hamburger. We lined up Mark Zuckerberg for our first episode and that was like a date of like okay we're launching here and luckily I was able to do that independently and still work with Vox. And so I left The Verge almost two months ago and then Substack was able to work with me really quickly to help me launch which was great.
Yeah, it seems like you had all the like puzzle pieces together and Mark Zuckerberg is your first interview. No big deal. Hope, you know we've had obviously the pleasure of working together at Axios so I assume you have no ill will to traditional media but what I'm wondering is like what really—what are you able to do with Macro Talk that you perhaps couldn't do in your past jobs and again what excited you about going on your own?
Yeah, well first of all it's just awesome to be on the stage and thank you all for having me and Carrie and we're all friends and we used to work together. We used to—we all used to kind of work together. I mean this is, you know, it's a real privilege to be able to get on your own. I think it's a reflection question of the body of work that we've all been able to create over the past, you know, plus decade plus. And so I think I just kind of want to start off by saying that there's no ill will. I see it as an ecosystem, right? We still need legacy media to produce a lot of the breaking news content. They have sources that we don't have, but also as journalists, we all have our own interests. And I think one of the things that really compelled me to go out on my own is I had a lot of interest that I couldn't really satisfy, you know, inside of Axios and especially when it comes to long form and video. And so because of technology, it's just been so much easier to build on my own because, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have AI. We didn't have the networks that we do, the brain that we do. So yeah, it was also kind of like Alex, something I'd been thinking about for a long time.
Carter, I wonder if you could go more into that in terms of what like tools and partnerships when you started out—like walk us through your starter pack like what did you gravitate to? What really was the, as Alex talked about, like the puzzle that he was able to build that helped you really solidify your launch?
Well, pretty much my whole strategy was to get on TVPN on launch day. No. I did go on TVPN. I do think for startups like Upstarts, even—it's part of the launch stack now. But that's maybe a little different. I'd say kind of like Alex, I met with the Substack team. I also met with the Beehiiv team. They made a very compelling offer and I think there it's great if there are multiple strong options out there for independent journalists. Ultimately, it was kind of the power of the community and that so many of my friends were on Substack like Alex Kantrowitz, Eric Newcomer, who's here later. Now Alex, it just felt like I got to be aligned with a lot of my friends while still really owning the destiny of the company and what I'm trying to do from a reporting standpoint. That made me choose Substack. And then you sort of just kind of string together other pieces from there. I had to teach myself to script to start doing video editing. I'm, you know, working with an amazing fractional business person who will be announcing in the future which will be exciting, which has been another touch point for folks. And so I think like you kind of put together your allies and your pieces and the key is to always maintain the center of gravity yourself.
Well I love what you just shared because when I think about going independent, sometimes people call it like going solo, but as you said, Conrad, like you're not alone. You're working with people. So I'm wondering if you guys could speak to like who are you working with? You don't need to name names, but like as you've built teams independent, like who is really supporting you? I guess Alex if you want to start.
Yeah. I mean on the podcast it's Vox. So they handle distribution, production, sales. So they're the exclusive partner for the pod and they're great. And I've worked with them for 5 years before. So and then Substack is—it is more just me. I too have a sales partner that is being announced very soon. I guess I'm not at liberty to say right now, but—
Don't scoop your own partner. Yeah.
We both got a guy. I'll find you after. I'll connect you. But that is the piece of this that I think is being built right now, which is really exciting, is that the subscription piece is there. So, it's easy to build that, but I think we all probably feel like that's not in and of itself enough to support what we want to do. And I think ads are a key component. And right now it feels like the momentum is moving towards brands realizing that they can reach really hard to reach audiences which are increasingly, you know, people like us like our audiences and that infrastructure is being built out right now in the same way that subscriptions were being built out like 10 years ago and that's really exciting.
So, you guys talked about the power of like having a sales team and having the distribution network, but what about like editors and like people to like bounce ideas off?
I'm kind of kidding, but like do you guys use it?
Uh, yeah, I use it all the time. I mean, I use it to double check grammar, little things. Anytime that you see a social media post, I've run it through ChatGPT just to make sure I sound coherent and I didn't miss anything. But yeah, I mean to your question about adding to the team, I made my first fractional hire this month. The video editor—video is very intensive, time consuming. And business development right now, I am handling all of that. And so I've been really lucky that my network's actually reached out to me. I've had very little outbound. It's all been sort of inbound. I had an amazing launch sponsor this past year. We're renewing for next year. So, you know, I'm trying to make this a sustainable business. I know it's one of your questions. And having worked for three previous media startups, I know what my limits are and so I'm trying not to hit that, you know, in the next couple of months, I want to make this a long-term project.
I will say it can be a lonely job for sure. I think being, you know, being a solo founder in anything, if you're in PR, if you're in a startup, in anything, it's hard to kind of hold everything in your head, hold the whole burden. If someone asks you how things are going, you say they're going great. Why wouldn't you? Right? You're not going to say, 'Oh, I just got off like the most annoying business development call.' Or, 'I wish I could vent about someone, but you know, my dog doesn't seem to be super receptive.' Like, my dog has heard a lot of venting. She's our social media manager at Upstarts. Give her a shout out. But I would say that's where trying to find friends, trying to find these alliances can be really helpful. In a way, you know, for traditional media folks here, I call it trad, sorry. But I think for folks like that there might be an irony that it's almost like we're reinventing the same stack a little bit where you need the editor, you need the colleagues, whatever. I see the fundamental difference is ownership. I think like all of us here want to own our own labor, own our own destiny, build a new brand that we really control. And then I think finding collabs and ways to partner is great. Like Upstarts, we want to publish a cover story like feature about a very kind of reclusive exciting person in tech over Thanksgiving week. I'll probably need like part-time assistance across the board on that story, but I own the story. And I think that's just a fundamental difference even as we like need some of the same blocking and tackling we did at our old jobs.
