👋 Hi Reader, If you have known me for a while and have been a subscriber here, you might describe my relationship with AI as a dramatic jilted lover with massive withdrawal symptoms. I have hemmed and hawed at the prospect of writing with the help of AI. I have tried ChatGPT, Claude, and the plethora of tools available which claim to make AI-written-slop sound human. (Yes, tried that one too) So unless you are a writer whom I have known pre-ChatGPT for your writing, I am going to take...
9 days ago • 2 min read
👋 Hi Reader, I like watching TBPN, a technology daily show, hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays. It usually plays in the background, as I go about my daily work routine. TBPN brings up the who’s who of technology and media to talk about their opinions on the media status quo, so that intersection is of deep interest to me, to know what’s happening in tech. TBPN's main site The reason I bring them up is they released a Media Market Map on X, which apparently captures the transition from...
16 days ago • 2 min read
👋 Hi Reader, I firmly believe that you create what you consume. For starters, I wanted my 10-year-old kiddo not to consume brainrot on YouTube Kids. She spent a lot of time on Victorious (which is not entirely bad), but I would rather she spend more time watching Carmen Sandiego (where she learnt about a new city in every episode) So my wife and I decided she needs to watch quality entertainment, so we decided to introduce her to…Full House. Yes, the 90s sitcom with Bob Saget and John Stamos....
23 days ago • 1 min read
👋 Hi Reader, I am a Kyla Scanlon fan. I admire her book ‘In This Economy’ and her work on Substack. So when she wrote recently about the attention economy on this thought-provoking piece Who's Getting Rich Off Your Attention? I had to sit down and write my perspective on how it applies so deeply to my mission at LetterStack. Kyla's book on Amazon Kyla speaks in detail about how only a few media empires have quietly consolidated the TV, and now social, attention span online. These few...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
👋 Hi Reader, I admire Justin Jackson, founder of Transistor.fm. He always puts the spotlight on thought pieces (not like LinkedIn Thought Leadership, actual long-form thesis) where the attention is due. So when he talked about Noema’s latest piece on ‘The Last Days of Social Media’, natually I lined it up for a Friday read. And what I read, validated what I had been mulling all along, on why I started LetterStack in the first place. Justin's post on LinkedIn It’s this: with AI slop taking...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
👋 Hi Reader, Who doesn’t like a great travel deal on an Airbnb? Especially if you are a digital nomad and you are looking for something long-term. If that’s you, that makes two of us. I signed up for a newsletter way back in 2019, when a random guy in a Slack community told he is curating Airbnb deals over email. Naturally, I signed up immediately. Fast-forward 6 years later - I am now talking to that guy, who is literally bananas. Chris Cerra (pronounced ‘Cherra’!) runs Remotebase, a...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
👋 Hi Reader, As you are aware, there has been a lot of hue-and-cry about Substack’s paid subscriptions routing through the Apple in-app payments for the iOS app. But the noise just got louder with creator-side payout receipts now floating in the wild. Tyler Denk, the founder of beehiiv, talked on his LinkedIn post where he showed a screenshot of an App Store payout to a creator, where the difference between the gross earnings and net payout was almost 50%. Screenshot from Tyler's LinkedIn...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
👋 Hi Reader, If you have been brave enough to venture out and understand how (or if) your emails get delivered to your subscribers, you might have been hit with a wall of 3-4 letter acronyms. All of them seem like names you have heard before, or intense calculus problems, depending on which one scares you. Calculate Zach Galifianakis GIF DMARC SPF DKIM BIMI Phew, this is just 1% of the pickle. So we recently sat down with an email deliverability expert, who has made it his mission...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
👋 Hi Reader, If you have been on the fence to start a newsletter and your focal point of indecision is you cannot decide on the newsletter platform, this issue is for you. The Dilemma This week was a blur. I talked to three creators this week and I will talk to two more next week. The topic: which newsletter platform to choose for the future? My counter question: How many newsletter issues have you pushed out so far? Turns out, they never got down to sending one, because they could not...
2 months ago • 2 min read