all right. Thank you so much For 20 into forward Thinking Founders, this is the podcast will be highlight. Undiscovered talent. We're scanning. Why Combinator, Pioneer Product Hunt Twitter, Indie hackers all these different networks to find really interesting founders and interesting projects and start ups. And we feature them on the podcast before you've probably heard it, any of them and that what's great about this is you get to follow along on the journey as they become more and more successful and say I knew them when? So thank you so much opportunity in the foreword Thinking Founders and let's get into our next founder You haven't heard of. But you will.

All right. How's it going? Everyone? Welcome to another episode of forward thinking founders. When we talk to founders about their companies, their visions for the future and how the two collide today I'm very stated to be talking. Teoh Next Hill Krishnan. Welcome to the show. How's it going?

Hey, how's it going? Glad to be here. Thanks for Thanks for taking the time chat.

Yeah, no problem. Appreciate you coming on as well. I am. I've been from afar, You know the power of like Twitter is I've seen, you know, some of your awesome tweets, the new letters and everything that you've been up Teoh. And there's like, this guy's super interesting. I want to learn more. And, um also, I feel like we have, like, similar is journeys by,

like, using the Internet to kind of just, you know, get on to come up. So I kind of want to talk about that. Start people that don't know who you are. Like your background can give us an idea on the, you know, quick snapshot of what your career has been so far. Where you've been at, You know, what kind of the journey so far the make and Ivan says some of the stuff that you're working on.

Yeah, sounds good. S Oh, yeah. My name's Nikolai. Graduated in 2014. I went to a company called CB Insights for about 4.5 years, which basically gets the data about private companies and the things happening in tech generally. When I was there, I helped build out our research team and more specifically helped build out our health care research arm, which included writing a weekly newsletter that went out Teoh about 90,000 people a time. I left and it was sort of combining healthcare comedy analysis, which would, you know, eventually sort of lead to where I am today. But after Stevie Inside toe into a company called Trial Spark, which is a company kind of restructuring how clinical trials are run,

Um, and about a month and 1/2 ago, I left to go pursue two projects full time. One is a healthcare comedy, uh, kind of experiment at a rather not describe it. It's like a health care is trying to make health care more accessible through being funny, I guess, and that starts with a newsletter analysis. It's gonna be branching into some YouTube sketch comedy kind of stuff and a few other interesting things down the line, which I won't spoil. But if you're interested, you check it out. It's called out of Pocket on. Then I'm also building an online offline community called Get Really, where?

Basically, I asked prompts each week people answer it, and then I have events for those people who are in this online community to be all flat. So that's everything, ranging from some peer to peer Ted talks that people give a nev ent where we re created hot ones that YouTube show on a bunch of other things. So kind of working on two side hustles Ah ah, you know, full time now, which is which is pretty interesting.

Well, congrats on Ah, no. Taking a leap and doing, you know, your side Awful full time. It's very exciting times also probably horrifying at the same time I was in that boat a couple of years ago. What? There's nothing more exciting in the world. Um, I have a couple questions on your first, uh, on the 1st 1 that you mentioned. So I think that in today's world, everyone, and like in their mother, is starting toe start,

you know, a like standard in informational newsletter. And it's all kind of like it seems like kind of similar to each other. But what's interesting about you is that you're like and I followed some of that. I read some of it and I see some of the tweets and, like, you're not just like this like State of newsletter. You're making a 20 of comedic, and it's like, almost entertaining. I would love to hear Have you Have you always kind of bidden like the comedian style? Or is that something that you just wanted to try with with sub stacker? Like, what made you decide you wanted to bring in the look of the comedy side Teoh to what you're doing there?

Yeah, well, I've always been a joke, so this has been pretty easy. Uh, now I it was interesting at CB insights to sort of see how, um how injecting humor into kind of like a B two B content format really resonated with a lot of people. Um, I think the lines between work and life are blurring so much and basically every capacity that I think that also includes kind of how information is shared, how people wanna, like, interact with, um, like, interact with their with their information. And when I was researching healthcare, it was so boring and like dry,

an acronym filled. And I wished at some point that there would have been something that was, like, fun to read that I would be excited to open every week. And every newsletter out there is just so goddamn boring, like it's it's it's just like it's just It's very unimaginative and it's just like a recap of the events or, you know, just like delving into, like, p value hacking. And I just you know, I want something funny and relatable and terrible, and I just couldn't find that in health care. And I think that's a big problem because I think it actually makes people really, um, scared about learning more about health care and and kind of like scares them off from diving deep into it.

So I wanted to use out of pocket a sort of a more accessible way for healthcare, curious people to kind of learn about how the system actually works in a digestible and easy way. And you know, that's through things like Mihm's. And that's three things like, uh, you know, injecting kind of some personal like roasts and all that kind of stuff. I think people should think you'll want to consume information about industry is the same way to consume information in every other way.

Yeah, that is done honestly, really smart. Especially since you're building your base. You know, with that you're gonna you're differentiating yourself like big crime in a world where new letters They're about to be, like, really popular if they're not already. Another thing that I think is really smart, like you look at someone like me, which I feel like is like the person you're kind of describing where you know, you see, you see something about health care, you see a law, you see something happen and I'm just like, That's so big. I don't even wanna get my toe like it's like a whole pool that I could swim in.

But, you know, I think it's cold. I'm not going to get in. And you're just making it really easy to dip your so in. And then you realize that it's not that cold and they can explore i d leading us through your newsletter, which is which is exciting. How do you decide, Teoh um, you know you A month and 1/2 ago, you said you decided to take on both of these projects or side hustles to make them your full time muscle. How do you decide when to do that while I was in the right time, and, like, how has it been so far? You know what's been?

Obviously there's a lot going on in the world. But even before then, I would not be here is like, What's your experience been like jumping in, you know, into the deep end.

Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, I totally planned for a pandemic toe happen. So obviously this is all going according to plan,

Of course, of course.

But the you know, the real answer is I sort of came to a point where I had these two ideas that were really I was very excited to test out, and I realized that I just I would regret not trying this out of this point in my life when I, you know, have some savings that I can kind of go experiment. And I had the, like, lowest personal obligation ever because I don't have family. I don't have, like, a significant other, except try and I can really take some actual risks. And so when I came to that point, I realized, like they're really isn't going to be a better time that at least try some of these out and I've always wanted to, and I have to tangibly good ideas. I think then I was like,

I was I would be remiss if I didn't at least try it at that point. Um so I I was excited. Thio Thio, I guess jump and just give it a shot and, you know, worse comes to worse of things you know, went to shed I could always come back Teoh Uh, you know, health care startups generally obviously did not expect, like a recession to kick in. So TV on how that goes. But the funny part is, actually, I think the demand for both online virtual communities has never been higher. And the demand for good healthcare content has never been higher. So someone,

fortuitously, this has helped. Actually, um, you know, I think help me get the word out and also being forced Teoh work from home all day actually has made me way more disciplined. I don't have I don't have a film about what's going on outside that No, nothing's going on outside. And, you know, my credit card bill has never been lower, so it's actually, weirdly enough. Been a pretty a pretty fortuitous time.

Yeah, I think that they really honestly, I think when you're founder one of the most important traits tohave, which could also sometimes be sometimes the Achilles heel. But I think it's more important than always, you know, is optimism and just having, you know, things happen in, you know, in the real world. And you've gotta roll with a roll with the punches. Them it sounds like that. That's what you're doing. I would love to hear a little bit like so. I mean, I've been following the news letter.

Um, and I think it's hilarious. Like, if you're if you're can you actually drop the If someone wanted to find the newsletter on on Twitter or just on, you know, on the Internets within they find it just so they can know if they're listening. They can. They can start reading.

Yeah, definitely. It's out of pocket dot sub stack dot com, or you can find it on instagram at out of pocket Health, which I made like, 10 minutes ago. So very dive, Lee.

All right. Yeah. Super timely. I want to talk about sub stack in a 2nd 2 that you neglect its own beast, but I wanted to learn. Um, I don't know much about the other project that you're working on. Um and I just looked a little, like a little more about it. And you know what? What it is what and what kind of the goal for it is And also like, how you balance your time between that and out of pocket, for if it all, you know, just just, like, blends together into one kind of one big project that if two different functions,

Yeah, so, ah, little contact. So it's called Get Riel basically started about three years ago as a newsletter. I was going through my quarter life crisis, as I'm sure everyone does and had a lot of questions. I was asking myself, and I was curious how other people were thinking about it. So I started this newsletter. It's a pretty simple premise. I ask a question each week I answer it. Then I post my favorite answers that people send me the following week. Um, I usually pick 2 to 3. So, you know,

sort of just been doing that. Um, just kind of learned a little bit more about people etcetera in tandem. I had started hosting a lot of events in New York, just kind of, uh, meet new people. Also, I was also was kind of tired of the whole, like, let's go to a bar and hang out thing and wanted to try some new structured events. So had been organizing a bunch of scavenger hunts. Had been organizing this peer to peer Ted talk Siri's where people give talks of better about 15 minutes each, etcetera. And over time I sort of realized that I was actually. But I was actually trying to Dio was basically make it so that it was easy for people to meet online through these through this newsletter because people have been asking me toe,

meet other people on the newsletter based on their answers on, then have the meat on the newsletter and then actually, uh, come together at these events. Teoh basically meet in person, and it's actually sort of replicating what I've done through Twitter a lot and sounds like you've done as well where you meet a person online first, based on some mutual interests, that you see them posting around on the Internet and that you actually like managed Teoh, you know, connect with them offline in some capacity, And what I realized is that I think the average person is not going to, like shit post on Twitter as much as I am. So how do you make that make that friend making process a bit more accessible? And the general goal is just how do you make meeting friends online? A less stigmatized thing. I know that.

You know, the dating world, for example, is really normalized now to be a so say hey, I met this person through an app through tender or whatever, but if you tell someone in the real world like, Hey, I met this friend through Twitter that you get a lot of weird looks, uh, so I'm trying to make that a little bit more normalized for people to say, like, Hey, I met this person actually through this newsletter or this and through the Internet, in some capacity, etcetera. So, yeah, generally, it's kind of like you can think of it as just ah, uh away for people prompts for people to actually meet each other online and then events for people to meet in person.

So you mentioned my favorite word there, which was Twitter and ah, the end. I eat, I I owe my I'm not gonna say I owe my career to Twitter because, like, I have done things outside of Twitter. But Twitter is the most powerful force in the world until they get to know people and then bring them, you know, together in person, or even keep it on Twitter if you want. I'm interested. Like, how have you like you've never presence on Twitter. That's how I found out about you. And a lot of people find out about me to like, I'm curious.

When did you decide to get serious about Twitter? Or have you just always been serious about Twitter and you're following this follows you because you know you are interesting. Follow, I guess. How do you think about Twitter in regards to your career?

Yeah, definitely. I think is a great Western. I you know, it's funny. I think I joined Twitter in college, and this was sort of when Twitter was, like, follow celebrities and see the insane things that they post online. It was like more looking at people's insane stream of consciousness, as opposed to, you know, anything professional, etcetera. So I really never thought about Twitter is a professional use case. When I got to CB insights, a coworker of mine,

Mike Dempsey had actually been using Twitter for a while in a professional context. And it was really interesting, though. See how he used it and met new people, etcetera. And, you know, for me, I was really trying. Teoh get meat. You more tech people because I was pretty new to the industry, and I saw how he had sort of used. And I was like, Oh, this is interesting. Like,

let me try to, um, realized pretty quickly that, uh, my brand of humor, I guess, has always worked well for a format like Twitter, I guess I just have never I never really invested in it. So, you know, I think just like being ah authentic person on Twitter, which seemed like a really low bar, um resonated with a lot of people. So I kind of just try to like, ah, talk on Twitter the same way sort of talk in the real world like that,

trying to minimize the delta as much as possible. Um, I never really thought about using it like quote unquote professionally like that, but it's sort of, um it's obviously, like, really helped to the arc of my career could help me meet a lot of people that have ended up being people I work with in professional contexts as well. So obviously I'm not. I'm not trying to like, you know, be super extra on Twitter all the time, but it's been a great way to sort of just also put my very half baked thoughts out there and then interact with people, Um who can kind of help me shape those thoughts into something more full fledged analyses, etcetera. So it's a great way to a great way to sort of, just, like, get your and get some initial takes out there in short form.

I totally agree. Like my issue with Twitter is that it became my like, I think, you know, five years ago might go to Social Network when I want when I have felt the share with like Facebook, and that was my friends and whatnot, but I don't know what happened. I think Twitter's just so addicting that whenever I have any urge to go on any social media, my brain immediately think that twitter first and I tweet like I've got tweet like 20 or 30 times a day now, and I don't do it like actively, really think about it. I just like Oh, that's adjusting. Tweet. Oh, Retweet Oh, I have a rant or that you know,

it's just But you're right in that you like you while you're doing that you are able, Teoh, just build a refugee. Build a reputation despite being authentic. And it's not even hard to get. People are trying to, you know, game. It's they can't last, right. It's like hard to like not being authentic for so long, especially on a platform like that. People, I feel like people can sniff it out a little bit.

Yeah, I also just think it depends on like your end goal of how you want to use it, right. I think there's a lot of people who, you know, basically growth hack Twitter to basically make it away. Teoh just quickly distribute ideas across. You know, hundreds of thousands of people, but they don't actually care about engaging with any of those people. It's literally just let me like market myself to these people. I think it's very different at the case use cases. I want to actually meet interesting people through this because if you want to meet interesting people through it, then they're inherently like if there's a huge you know, if there is a huge gap between who your online and offline when you meet offline, it will very quickly become apparent what kind of person you are. Um,

so if you want to actually meet interesting people, which I think is really the main use case or the most valuable use case for Twitter, then you have to just be kind of who you actually are online. And then the nice thing, though, is that you will end up attracting people who like vibe with that person as opposed Teoh trying appeal to every Audie and simultaneously, which is what I think. A lot of these more marketing heavy accounts try

to dio. Yeah, I Yeah, I mean, I agree. I speaking of like kind of the marketing heavy account, is like I feel like when you are kind of in the circle, you know, the circle in Twitter, where it's just like I feel like I'm kind of in text Twitter and I don't really engage with, even like any other circle, which may be a bad thing I don't know that you think about it, but it's just a feeling Tech Twitter itself is like this cocoon of like, oh, just I don't know what the word is, but it's just, you know,

everyone who's anyone who's like on it. You can learn about anything even if you're based in Phoenix, Arizona, where I am at. And I'm just, uh I'm a fan. I'm a fan of the platform. One other thing that I wanna didn't wanna learn about from you on, how you made this decision. That's why did you decide todo, um with, uh, with sub stack for your newsletter and kind of like looking forward in regards like the next 10 years of Just, like, creativity and creator monetization subs Stacked seems to be positioning themselves, you know,

to be kind of the place. You know, the race, the happy ground from, like, injuries. And Horowitz, I'm kind of curious. Like, why did you go with, um and how do you think about, you know, just being a creator in 2020 And what that looks like moving forward.

Yeah, totally. I So I I use mail chimp, actually, for one newsletter and then sub stacked with the other, so I kind of have a little bit of a view into both worlds. Um, the nice thing about sub stack is that it's very good to just get up and running really quickly, like you don't have to actually set up templates you don't actually have to, like, get your branding down or all that kind of stuff you can literally just start writing. And for me, Um, I really wanted to just get started somewhere. So for me, it was literally just I'm not totally sure what the monetization path is gonna be, but I need to just start the nice thing about sub sectors that if you want to turn on monetization later,

it's relatively easy to do So, um, but at the same time, what I don't like about substance, because I don't like how you have, like, very little customization. It kind of feels like medium just but for newsletters, in the sense of like, every medium article, just like visually and aesthetically looks the exact same, um, and me and you basically are beholden to like whatever mediums policies are so sub stack, I think the prose is that you can get started really quickly and that's really all I cared about. I think a lot of people wait a really long time to try and get everything perfect before they put their stuff out there for me. I wanted the content to sort speak for itself,

so really just want to get up and running and sub stacked was by far the furthest. One of the things that I'm thinking about going forward is I think a lot of sub stacked writers their you know, their usual goal is Hey, I'm gonna write good analysis, charge for it and that people will pay. I think that's one interesting model for me. The big goal is to trying to get more healthcare, curious people interested in health care. And those people are, you know, probably not going. It's gonna be a little bit harder demonstrate the value to them really upfront. Eso One other thing I I ideally like to keep at least one newsletter free, maybe increased ah, volume of newsletters. Toe one paid one free.

But one of the things I've been thinking a lot about is actually one of the really valuable parts of a lot of these sub stack re Ah, sub stacks are the quality of the readership. So when I think about Ben Thompson straight victory, the forums air actually really, really valuable and very interesting. So if you never if anyone's on the newsletter hasn't peruse them, I definitely recommend it. But there's there's this really high quality membership that I don't think a lot of writers, uh, do a great job of actually capturing that value. And so I'm actually learning a lot from the get really side of things on how to build a strong community and ah, and capture value from there that I would like to actually bring to the out of pocket stuff to better connect the readership of the of the newsletter to each other and figure out interesting ways of monetizing that so, you know, should be launching a couple things soon in that vein. But, um, but that's a lot of what what I'm thinking about.

Yeah, you're just feel like you're in some ways, living in the future where I kind I kind of envision maybe looking 2030. It's like a pretty common profession. Teoh have a podcast here sub stacked their email list here. You know, radio show. You need all these different things. And it's just like this economy that works. Um, for creators and the ability to know make it happen. Um, without, you know, waiting five years to build up an audience is actually a little easier. And you just take Took the leap, I think a little earlier than the market,

which I think it's gonna give you the upside, right. Like not many people are doing it. Uh, so my Yeah, Yeah,

yeah, I I totally agree with that. I think it's like, Ah, I I think independent creators like it's never been a better time to do that. I think there are still a lot of unexplored avenues that have not quite been figured out yet. So publishing is definitely one that sort of been getting figured out. Now, um, the community around a given person, I think hasn't quite been figured out yet on, and I think there's still a lot more opportunity around, like, Okay, how do you make it easy for that person to go speak at places or go consulted? Places are contribute their expertise somewhere. So I think there's still a lot of,

uh, unlock. There's a lot of value this will has not yet been unlocked. That I think, would be really interesting. On the flip side, I think they're I think there's convincing people to take that jump. I think it's still actually, it's an opportunity in and of itself. You know, For me, it was relatively easy in the sense that, like I sort of had ah following already. I had the financial safety net to kind of take a risk, etcetera. But I think actually, if you made it easier transition for people into this kind of independent creator mode, you'd see a lot more value a blocked just in that process.

Yes, yes, um, on that on that being that you see recently, I don't know one of their names, but Nathan Bagshaw, who is the owner of divinations, a subject sub publication, and a different publication like merged. They didn't didn't merge, but they decided Teoh offer like a joint plan at a discount. So it almost seems like it's like, almost like I don't know if you could call consolidation, but it's like a strategy to get more distribution.

Do you?

How do you. Yeah, bundle. Yeah, that's right. That's the word. Do you like, How do you think about it? You know, let's say five years from now, when this this is a little more popular. Do you think that bundle Ian's going Teoh, I don't know, like, become a little more prevalent where people might have subscription fatigue or I'm just interested in the concept of, like, if so many people are potentially doing a subscription thing,

there's only so much money to go around. Have you thought about that? Not necessarily being your problem. But you have thought about, you know, that coming in a couple of years and how how you're thinking about it, that's on the table.

Yeah. I mean, I think I think any industry goes through bundling and on bundling. I wouldn't be surprised if individual creators went through a similar in a similar process. I'm sure I'm sure sub sacral. Eventually, I later released their own bundling product. Or, you know, even in that vein show you kind of like where common readerships exists between you and other sub stacks to make that bundling process easier. You know, one of the things that I think is probably, ah, interested. Most interesting about Sub Stack is that you can actually monetize off a very small audience if you like, are really niche enough. Eso,

you know? Yes, there's probably like a subscription fatigue sort of sentiment. But at the same time, it's, you know, I think the more nish you go, the more like valuable your specific news that there is to that given audience. And the reality is like as an individual person, my overhead and running like this business is incredibly low. I don't actually need that many people like and want to pay for the content for me toe make a decent living off of it. Um, which I think is nice like you can have is I don't think it's not different than like the way Netflix creates a lot of these original original content things where every time I look at it, I'm like, Who the hell is watching this kind of stuff? But you know,

it's fine because they target a small enough audience that is really into that kind of stuff that makes the bundle for everyone worthwhile. So I actually think it's it's okay that they're 70 creators a. Zilong is they're not overlapping and their content and like type of audience of their front of target. I think for me personally, you know, I'm sort of trying to target healthcare broadly, which is like a very large industry. And I'm sure there's gonna be a lot more healthcare people that eventually come out with their own newsletters. And I'm on a bunch that I actually really like and and enjoyed quite a bit. And I'm sure there's gonna the space is going to get way more saturated over time on And that's why, for me, the community part is such an important aspect of this, because I think building a community is extremely is way more defensible just by itself. Um, you know, I can go into a rant about network effects and all that kind of stuff,

but I won't. I think communities are more defensible, and that's also why I'm trying to explore a lot of other monetization avenues that are not just launching a subscription newsletter. And I think Mawr independent creators should think about that because I think you're right. There's gonna be a there's gonna be a time where it's just going to get more competitive. And there's got to be, like, different ways toe to differentiate your newsletter.

Well, I feel like you have a gun already built in moat. I don't know of anyone that would want to start a newsletter. How many of them are going? One to take the comedy route or brave enough to take that route that can actually pull it off. And I don't think that many if I think you already have, like, a pretty, pretty protective moat around you Just because although, if you started yeah, I think I mean, I'm looking forward. Toa some or ah, tomb or, ah, more posts. And seeing them on Twitter,

I I'm like I'm honestly, it exploded with this conversation. You you're definitely living in the future, and it's cool to talk to you like Welcome to the president. Is there any other thing that you just wanna talk about or mention or things on your mind before we finish up the podcasts?

Yeah. I mean, I think just my, like general, take ways from, like, even just me trying out all these kind of things as one, like, just be as authentic as possible on the Internet. Instead of trying Teoh curate a specific version of your life because I think one, you'll have more fun and you'll meet more interesting people to Ah, these tools are so easy to use now that highly recommend at least trying it, even if, like your finished product is not totally Polish or anything, it's kind of just fun to play around with all these tools that let people build stuff very quickly. Like this whole no code things Israel. It's very fun to like,

mess around with Web flow. Very fun. Dio used these kind of, uh, you know, like mim editors in on in on phones now so highly recommend, at least just like giving it a shot and trying it. And yeah, I I think people should try and build their own personal brands regardless of what they plan to do in the future, because it's really, really valuable. No matter, no matter where you go. So you know, I recommend it

Hula Bowl. With that, I am extreme. I'm very excited about the conversation. I think you know anyone listening in the that is wondering, aware the future is headed where things were going I think I think this is right on the money and that, like, the power shift in a little more to the creator and creators, they're gonna become almost corporations in themselves. So listen to this podcast one listen to it twice and then kind of, you know, do what you want to do with it. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Kill. I really appreciate it. Enjoyed the conversation and best of luck, you know, conquering the world with with your cue side projects and hopefully many to come.

Yeah, thanks so much. Appreciate it. And thanks for the conversation. Okay. Thank you, everyone, for tuning into that episode. I hope you really enjoy it. And luckily, there's another one coming up real soon. But before then, I have a couple things to tell you. First, if you're listening to this and you think you're working on something cool or you think you're smart, hit me up on Twitter. I am at Matt Underscore Sherman,

and that is Matt with one t. So hit me up. Shoot me a GM, and I'm happy to check out what you're working on. And maybe we can get you on the part of. But at the very least, I'm happy TV feedback on your product or project or start up. Lastly, if you can please rate this podcast in the iTunes stores, that would be awesome. I'm trying to get up in the ranking. Some more people discover these awesome founders. And the only way to do that or one of the ways to do that is growing with making. So if you like what you're listening, Teoh, please just go onto the 18 story.

Give it five stars. We're for, you know, or three. I'm not gonna tell you what to give, but just tell whatever I deserve. You should read that with that. I'm signing off. See you next time.