Open Tab: Emily Sundberg — Transcript

I said, "If I ever make more from my newsletter than I am from consulting with tech companies, I'll try doing it full-time and see what happens." And that happened. I think about Feed Me as a studio. There is a newsletter, there's merch, there are events. I like to make people ask questions about what they're being sold. I like people to ask questions about what they're being marketed and not just accept everything that the world is constantly giving to them. I'm not in the business of hurting people. I'm not in the business of messing over people's lives. I think I have readers in every single country now. I'm amazed by it. I'm going to cry.

In 2019, I worked at a cookware startup called Great Jones. And this was about a one-minute walk from our office. We would come here afterwards sometimes, like me and my co-workers. We were all like 23. And then, um, when I met my husband when we were dating, I found out that this is one of his favorite bars, too. So, we come here a lot. We were actually here a month ago for his birthday party.

Um, but we've spent a lot of time here. It's a good bar. And it's called Oldtown Bar. I asked you to select a place that you think would be perfect for a conversation like this.

And it also has quite a lot of media lore, right? Yeah. We have some friends on the walls like Alex Vadol from, uh, the New York Times is framed somewhere up here.

There's a lot of media lore and there's a lot of New York lore. Like they treat a lot of New Yorkers as characters on the menu, which feels like something that I do a lot.

They have a Bloomberg burger. I think they have a Governor Pataki sandwich. I'm really curious what the owner of Feed Me New New York, so I just got called it New Zealand. Uh, but it probably is true for New Zealand, too.

New York's hottest newsletter. Uh, what does she drink at a bar like this? This is sort of a when in Rome situation.

And I think we have to get a Guinness. Guinness. Okay. What is Rome in this case?

Um, an old bar with great Guinness on tap. I've had Guinness here many times and they do a good pour.

Bman, can we have a couple of Guinnesses, please? Right there. Um, okay. So, you've had kind of, even though your career is relatively short, you've had an eclectic career already working in, uh, Great Jones and working at Meta, um, writing for magazines and now running your own media business. But you do really seem to have this strong affinity for media. You seem to love media, New York media in particular. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, I think over the last

few years, New York media at large has really welcomed me and been accepting of me. Like I didn't go to journalism school. I went to SUNY FIT a few blocks away from here, which is technically like a fashion trade school, but I

studied business there. I liked writing online. I liked playing online. And I think that people who read Feed Me can really feel that in the way that, um, I write and interact with my readers.

Thank you. Here we go. Not at all. Great. Um, we're not going to split the G, right?

We could try it. Why not? Okay. You nervous? I mean, I've never tried it in my life, so yeah, I'm nervous for performance reasons, not for, uh, sudden rush of alcohol reasons.

Maybe we shouldn't. It could be scary. Okay, let's just maybe the second one will do that. Okay, cheers.

Second one. It's a really good beer. I have actually come to love Guinness. I'm just made to find out it's trendy to like Guinness now because about a year and a half or two years ago, I decided, oh, I'm going to drink

Guinness more because it's tasty and it's low alcohol and, um, it's a different kind of experience than your just typical cold fizzy beer.

I didn't know it was a lighter beer because you look at it, you're like, like chocolatey cake is richer than a white. Like you would just assume like, oh, it's got to be heavier, but it's not. It's great. You can drink 10 of

them and be fine. Which brings us back to your writing. You can never imbibe too much Emily Sunberg writing because it's so obvious that you're having fun with it.

That's nice of you to say. I hope that's the case. I try to switch it up every day so you really are surprised with what you're going to get. Like one day you might get a ridiculous listing

of summer jobs for college students. One day you might get more of a deeply reported finance or tech story. Another day you might get like a classic Feed Me roundup. But I try to switch it up so

you're not, you never get too used to the format. Um, and even if you do get used to the format, you never expect what's going to be in there.

And what does that come from? Like why do you write like that? Like where did you discover your joy for writing in this way?

I spent a lot of time online as a kid. Um, my dad's a teacher.

And my mom, what kind of teacher? He's an admin for K through 12 for social studies at a school district on Long Island. Um, he still works there. He's been there for like this job for like 20 years. But my mom,

when I was younger, she was a graphic artist. So we had a lot of like Mac computers in the house from a young age and we were encouraged to play on them.

Like it was my sister and I. My sister also works in news. But we were, I mean, I was always like playing on, I got an iPhone in 8th grade. Like so I was always attached to the internet, um, from

a young age and I had my own laptop in my bedroom and I was playing on Tumblr and I was in chat rooms and like I was on Facebook talking to people from other school districts who would send me

playlists and like it was, it's always been an extension of me. And then you had a positive experience of the internet as a child.

As a child. Yeah. Um, and then when I was in college, you know, I identified that social media was sort of an emerging need for marketing teams and I, because I went to school in the city, I could go to class at night and work

during the day. So, I worked at NBC for a while and I worked at Yahoo and then after I graduated, my first job was at New York Magazine doing social media there. But I was able to really fine-tune what a social media

manager for like a magazine could look like while I was in these internships, which was a blast. And then Stella Bugby hired me at New York Magazine when she was running The Cut. And then to do what?

Um, running Instagram for The Cut. And it was like when we were breaking stories about Harvey Weinstein and Trump and the need for driving traffic to the site via Instagram was being recognized.

So like developing the strategies. I remember like the first time Taylor Lorenz recognized my work as a social media manager and I was like, whoa, you know who I am, like you're seeing me, like because at that time that role was sort

of ignored and because of the work of like Rachel Carton and writers like that I think the role of the social media manager has really been elevated. But I was 21 and I was meeting people at Apple, Twitter, Meta or whatever

Facebook at the time, Instagram and I still have those relationships today, but at the time it was like, "Do you want to go to this demo?" "Yes, send Emily." Like, and I was learning about similar to what Substack's doing today,

like creating relationships between these tech companies and newsrooms. And, um, I was sort of sent to do to build those relationships and learn best practices.

Um, and then after working at New York Magazine, I worked at a cookware startup that was co-founded by, um, one of my New York Magazine colleagues named Sierra.

And I was the first in and the first out. But what I witnessed there was like how, um, investors were treating young women who were founders. And I sort of put a pin in it like what happens when

men with a ton of money give people cash to build a viral internet brand and that process. I mean, I was doing marketing for them so I wasn't really involved in like P&Ls or anything like that or even

negotiations with investors but just like

Um, and then after working at New York Magazine, I worked at a cookware startup that was co-founded by um, one of my New York Magazine colleagues named Sierra.

And I was the first in and the first out. But what I witnessed there was like how um, investors were treating young women who were founders. And I sort of put a pin in it like what happens when

men with a ton of money give people cash to build a viral internet brand and that process I mean I was doing marketing for them so I wasn't really involved in like P&Ls or anything like that or even

negotiations with investors but just like the feeling of that moment was it recognizably a moment did you have that perspective Yes. Like every day there was a story about Great Jones's social media. It was like we were like this darling company.

The way that we were posting on there and I was doing a lot of that sort of like I would go to a vintage cookbook store and post the cookbook pages on our Instagram stories and add it to like the

Instagram highlights. So like the Instagram team was like, "You're using Instagram highlights in exactly the way that we wanted you to." And it's all comes back to storytelling which is this sort of buzz word now but we both know

how important that is in in building a consumer brand. This is 2016 2017. This is like 2017 2018.

Yeah. Okay. And then um after that I worked at Meta and during co I started writing on Substack. I was living at I've told this story so many times, but I was living at my ex-boyfriend's parents house in

Beverly Hills and we went there for a bit during co and I was spending a lot of time like walking around these really empty quiet streets and we were watching a lot of TV and a lot of movies and I

started writing short horror fiction that was super informed by my time working in social media and the sort of consumer moment that was happening. How how was it informed by that?

Like one of my first stories was about um a female founder who was giving an architectural digest tour and the camera and crew kept being like, "Well, what's behind that door? Like, can we go behind that door?" And the founder kept being

like, "No, no, no. Don't pay attention to that. Like, look at all these rooms.

I want you to pay attention to this." They eventually went down into the basement and there were all these young women sort of like sweating over their keyboards and like wrapped up in wires, but it was more of a commentary about

like the workplaces that people were complaining about that eventually led to like the downfall of the girl boss.

Um, but Matt Lavine from Bloomberg linked to one of those stories in his newsletter and a bunch of my friends sent me photos of their terminals and they were like, "Lavine put you in money stuff. your story on Substack and Money Stuff and I

was like, wait, you're reading newsletters for pleasure and there's cross promotion in newsletters and it sort of just opened my eyes to the traffic potential but also pleasure potential of reading newsletters cuz in the past it was like

this chore that you gave to somebody on the audience team like aggregate a bunch of stuff and put it in the newsletter.

It has to happen. Nobody wants to do it, but we have to newsletters were used to try and drive traffic to the stories of the property.

Right. Right. To check off a box and the best case scenario was that somebody wouldn't turn it into spam or unsubscribe.

Yeah. And I was freelance writing at the time while I was at Meta and I wrote this story about the phenomenon of Shopppee shops for New York Magazine.

Shoppee shops. It's sort of this this retail experience that you've definitely encountered. I wrote it in 2023 where you go into a store and you recognize all the brands immediately and it's like the Graza olive oil, the fish wife

tinned fish. Oh yeah. Uh the Gia like canned non-alcoholic beverages and you see it in a store in New York, but you also might see these things in like a hotel lobby in Tennessee. And you also might see these

things in like a bookstore in Maine. Like just the phenomenon of like copy and paste product selection.

And I learned that it was all sourced back to this um this platform called Fair, which is a wholesale website. It's like a deck of corn. It's a huge billion-dollar business where anybody can order all of this stuff and they're sort of

curating the bestselling items. So, like whether you're a wine store, a hotel lobby, a bookstore, or a small market somewhere, you can have the same exact product selection. So, I wrote a story about that and it exploded. People loved

it. Some people hated it because they thought I was making fun of their stores, but it was sort of just like this is happening. You can make your own decision about it.

Yeah. And I thought tech people want more of this. Consumers want more of this kind of writing. and the CPG brands and marketers also want to be like talking about this more.

So I was at Meta and I started writing sort of shorter versions of that every day behind a payw wall on Substack. So I pivoted from Why did you do the payw wall?

Cuz I cuz I could and I wanted a little bit of space. I didn't have an online following.

So I was just like let me keep this safe and protected and if you really want to read it, you can. And I had really hot takes at the time, you know, most of my friends who were having those kinds of

takes were then taken care of by like an editor um to to like sort through it to do to you mean to make their takes a little bit cooler.

To make their takes cooler or safer or maybe a bit more palatable. Yeah. Right.

So So people appreciated that you didn't have that filter. Definitely. And that you put it behind a pay wall.

So it's kind of like a secret club, right? Yes. Exactly. And I think that's why my comment section is I mean I have like over like there's thousands and thousands of paid readers who are below that pay wall now. But um it's such a

wonderful experience every day when I see my comment section. I'm never like scared that anything bad is happening there. Um which is not unlike that's not what people got used to with regards to comment sections up until 2018 or

something. No. No. Um and do do you have to pay to be a commenter? Do you have to be a paid subscriber?

So, that's a good filter. But it wasn't always that that wasn't always the case. That happened after Machine in the Garden got a little out of hand.

Okay. Well, we should Well, we we're we're racing ahead to all the good juicy stuff.

We can we can get to that. I'm sure you have a machine in the garden. Um Well, just generally, I want to I want to dig in more to the to the Feed Me story a little bit later, but I I want

to sort of understand more how you got there as well. you seem to like the the what's interesting about Feed Me to me is it kind of strikes me as like an inbox magazine and you worked at magazines. Um is that is that a part of

who you were growing up or are you like did you miss the gold the golden age of magazines? My um my dad officiated my wedding and when he was officiating the wedding, he referenced this little clip from a a a Long Island newspaper called

Newsuesday and they had a section called Kids Day on the weekends that um he like referenced that I would write for them.

You were going to be one of those people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm one of those people if you were wondering.

Did you write for the uh student magazine or newspaper at high school? We didn't really have a robust student magazine or newspaper, but I did do the morning announcements senior year. So, every morning everyone did hear from me.

And I remember sometimes throwing something into the announcement that I'd sort of get my wrist slapped for like I did a a what the day that Steve Jobs died, I like said something on the loudspeaker about that and the principal

came out of his office and he was like, "Emily, no. Like, we're not what are you doing?

What did you say? Stick to it was like rest in peace Steve Jobs. It's really sad. all of you use iPhones and the person who like created all of this and he like came out and he was like stop.

That seems fair. It's a very reasonable homage to this. I think they wanted to stick to like pledge of allegiance, birthdays, any important things. Like they really needed to keep it tight. Also, this was like a Long Island school where people

were kind of zoned out during the announcements. Like it wasn't it wasn't like we had a radio show and we were playing music or anything like that. Surely if they let you spice it up in the way that you wanted to, you could

have dominated those announcements and the school would have came. Oh, I would be hosting the morning show on BLI for sure. My friends and I, we I'm still very close with my six best friends from from high school. But

senior year, we did create this gossip flyer called the toilet paper where we put these flyers in the bathrooms with gossip on them and like rumors and it wasn't mean.

Was it well sourced gossip? Were you just making stuff up? It was as well sourced as you could be.

Like something about like the lacrosse uniforms or something about the cafeteria or announce. We were mischievous. We were like a very mischievous group of people. Um got drunk at prom. We're friends with the principal's daughter. Like we were

causing trouble a lot, but we were really fun and we liked to party. But anyway, we did I You're making me remember that we also did have this little short-term publication which got shut down.

Yeah. and the sort of the prototypical substack. Mhm. Um, growing up in Long Island must have been interesting as well. I'm a New Zealander. I don't know anything about this stuff really, but I do know that uh Long Island, the Hamptons, there's like

a scene, right? There's there's the glitzy well-moneyed people that the magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue would be obsessed with. Um, but there are like working-class communities there as well. And I you you told me your father is a teacher and your mother is a

graphic artist. So you must Yeah, she's sort of like a an artist who's had many different jobs throughout my life.

Um, so what was your position in the sort of millia? We grew up in sort of a sleepy beach town. I had neighbors who were like lobster fishermen. I had neighbors who worked on Wall Street.

I have neighbors who probably still live at home with their parents. Like it was very workingass. I would consider it workingass. Um, but it was beautiful.

And so I was always close enough to the city where that like reaching thing I felt it at all times like I even when I was deciding on schools my dad was like you can go to any school that you want

as long as it's a state school. And after going upstate to Jio and Bingington and on it I was like hell no I'm going to the one in the city even though I'm not doing fashion like I want

to be in the city. I want to work and I always wanted to work a lot because I didn't I wanted to make money.

I wanted to I don't want to say get out of where I grew up because that's not really it, but I wanted to to have things like I worked really hard. Even in high school, I had like three jobs.

Um, where'd you pick that gene up from? Probably like trauma from like stuff that I grew up around, like not having stuff or seeing cards like get declined or something.

Um, and I liked having cash on me. Like I liked figuring out how to order things online myself. So, how do you think that background growing up in Long Island in that situation influenced the way that you've built

Feed Me and the way that you look? Cuz Feed Me, a lot of it is about sort of money, power, and status. Um, how does it influence how you do that job?

Well, I've had a lot of jobs which has opened me up to a lot of different networks of people. So, I'm not coming out of journalism school and writing about the DTOC world or coming out of journalism school and writing about the

hospitality world or coming out of journalism school and writing about newsrooms that I've never been in. I've worked in newsrooms. I've worked in venture-backed companies. I've worked at Facebook. So, like I can write about all these things. I don't want to say with

authority, but like with experience. I know what the chairs feel like in the meta offices at Hudson Yards.

What do they feel like? Bouncy. Like very adjustable. Everything is like bring it up, bring it down.

I I know what the New York Magazine office when um What are those chairs like compared to Facebooks?

That was the only job that I had like a proper cubicle at. It was at the old like Varic Street office when Adam Moss was the editor. I loved that job so much. I loved having like my own as an

intern. Having a cubicle was such a special experience. But I can write about all these things and I I saw all these things happen in real time. Like Olivia Ni was one of the first women to ever come up to my desk and be like, "Do

you want to go smoke a cigarette?" Like that happened to me. I'm not writing about her from over here. I hung out with her. So I think and then and then like even being in this bar, I came here

with a bunch of co-workers for a period of time in my life. And then um you know like you you build up your own sources. You're not like blind calling anyone because I've kind of I've been around a bit. So I think that

has given me a lot of perspective when I write about work. And a big thing when I started FeedMe in the current form is that I like to write about the way that people spend money and what that says

about them. And I think that's changed a bit. It's a little bit more like New York news and it's probably a little bit less like judgy about how people literally spend money. I think I was probably forcing myself into that

narrative a bit. You you used to be more judgy. You think I didn't have an audience. I get hit so hard. Like I have so many people watching me now. It's It's hard. It's It's I also don't really have a team. So

it's like if I have a shitty day, there's nobody who I'm really looking at being like, "But it's fine, right?" Like I can only ask my friends that so many times. Like nobody's being That's hard.

Do Do you miss being able to throw the punches? I do it when it's necessary. Like I I I do it I or I do it when I really feel it, but I'm a little bit more hesitant now. I think I wrote something about

like Max Tanny said changing his send time and Ben Smith texted me and I was like, "Okay, wait, we need to for the uh for the normies among us, we need to explain what I wrote about some uh

media reporter Max Tanny, media reporter, uh Max Tanny, who's fantastic, writes this Monday night or Sunday night media newsletter, which I look forward to every Sunday night. I love reading it on my couch when it hits. I'm like, "Okay, it's almost

bedtime, but like the week's about to start and it's going to be great." And he announced that he was moving it to Saturdays and I don't really engage with media news on Saturdays. I need to log off, you know? I need to sort of be away

from my industry a bit. And Ben texted me and was like, "You sort of mogged Max with that." And I was like, "I don't want I want it on Sundays. I'm used to that cadence. I am I am It would be like

if I said to my readers, I'm sending Monday, Wednesday, Friday now." like they wouldn't I don't think they would like that or or they'd ask questions, you know, and and maybe it was a data driven decision. Maybe they know

something about it, but I'm getting the text from the guy in charge. I'm getting a text from the boss like, and it wasn't bad. It was fine, but I have to expect that to happen now. I I sit in rooms occasionally with people

who I've had hot takes about, and it's hard. And it's my job. It's a job that I gave myself and it's a job that works well and I think that it's appreciated, but it's not always the best way to make friends

and that's hard for me because I like people. Ah, so you didn't start this news newsletter thinking I'm going to be the uh no holdsbred trutht teller. Um I like telling stories. I don't like I don't I'm not in the business of hurting

people. I'm not in the business of [ __ ] over people's lives. I like to make people ask questions about what they're being sold. I like people to ask questions about the technology they're using.

I like people to ask questions about what they're being marketed and not just accept everything that the world is constantly giving to them and it makes people uncomfortable.

So, how much solace do you find in the community of Feed Me readers compared to the people who you're covering?

They amaze me every day. I'm I I I I'm so surprised by it. The the digital friendships are wonderful. The in-person gatherings. I throw a lot of parties for my for for Feed Me. Um and the warmth in

the room and the range of how interesting these people are. It's like there are mothers of teenagers, there are college kids, there are people who live I think I have readers in every single country now. Um, and I'm amazed

by it. And it it was really done just by being myself, which is a very rare, I think, experience for people to have to try something. And listen, I had a million businesses before Feed Me that didn't work out. This one just happened

to work. What? I wrote a couple that didn't work out. Um, I I sold watercolor paintings during COVID.

Um, I made these little Do you know what like a barret is? Like a clip? Like a hair clip? Yeah.

I made like little baguette barretes like bread shaped hair clips during co and sold those. I'm going to cry.

I mean those are that's amazing that you sold that you were able to sell these.

I had like a lot of weird jobs. I was like always trying to like make some cash.

Why Why were you going to cry there? I don't know. Like a little drunk. I don't know.

It's funny. You're not even splitting the G yet. I'm sorry. I'm probably also a little hung over.

Okay. Well, that's quite acceptable. Let's talk about why you started Feed Me. You had you had these other businesses that didn't work. And you didn't just start a newsletter, although what you probably felt at the time was that you were starting a newsletter, but

you actually started a media business and it's growing. It's got 10, which wasn't on purpose. I I uh I didn't know that this would happen. And like I said at the beginning of this conversation, like I've been welcomed so

warmly by the the world of New York media and I didn't even realize what was happening while it was building. Like I feel like I woke up one day and I had this thing that had influence that worked really well.

Um and people didn't like respond to your newsletter cuz they thought you were some cool person who they should all like suck up to. They they responded to your newsletter because they were reading it and had the selfies at first.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Tell us about self. They might have responded a little bit to that. For the first two years of my newsletter, I included this um photo booth selfie every day no matter where I was.

Very smart branding. So people got familiar with this face that was sometimes like put together sometimes totally a mess, hung over occasionally like and it was just like staring at you when you opened it. So, it's like even on the the Substack feed

as people were downloading the app, like you saw my face everywhere. Um, and then at at my like 2-year anniversary, I hired a brilliant designer named Justin to put together like a proper branding exercise. I was really inspired at the

time by like Japanese car ads and um uh like also original Mac iconography like Macintosh iconography and he translated it really well into the current Feed Me branding which has you know like it's on hats now it's on

sweatshirts now like people will text me photos when they're on a walk and see somebody with the hat like it's just must feel it must feel crazy it's the best I mean you see like that Oraorus command sign and you're like oh

that's feed me You know, it's it was a really fun exercise, but it also gave me a little bit of distance from the brand in a really healthy way.

I didn't need to always be pushing my face because I had other icons that were immediately recognizable that people could associate with feed me, which was awesome.

And sometimes people stumble upon it and they don't even know what I look like, which is nice, too.

Um, not always. Sometimes people stop me like in restaurants and stuff and say hi, which is always nice.

Oh, wow. You get you get mobbed on the streets, ask for autographs, all that kind of thing. Yeah, autograph. I always keep a Sharpie on me. Um, so I used to have like the selfie on there every day. And I'm sure that,

you know, when I was promoting like hot selfie in bed on LinkedIn, writing about like the financial restructuring of uh like the real real or something, people were like, "What's going on?" and clicked into it. So, I think that

didn't, you know, the amount of traffic I got from that was non zero. Like I there was something going on there. But I'm happy that we're in a post selfie moment for Feed Me.

And when you started this, when you started as a newsletter, at some point you had a decision to turn this into more of a fullyfledged media business.

But were you being opportunistic uh in sort of spying the chance to build a media property around business writing or were you just sort of following your interests and your passions and then one thing led to another? I I I mean there's

like the practical answer which was I said I will double I told myself I'll double down and do this full-time when it makes more money than I was laid off from meta and then I was doing consult they did like all those layoffs in 2022

and then I was so you didn't do anything crazy you just got let go as part of the uh one of those waves. Yeah, with like my whole team. We weren't doing that much around at the time.

It was okay. I immediately got a consulting job with Shopify. Like it was fine. I knew that I people wanted to work with me.

Um so I was working with Shopify at the time and I said if I ever make more from my newsletter than I am from consulting with tech companies, I'll try doing it full-time and see what happens. And that

happened. And I doubled down on Feed Me and I sent it earlier in the day and I sent it, you know, with a more consistent voice and I tried really hard to engage with my readers and I tried

really hard to meet other people in the media space and, you know, like I I met Ben and then like I met John Kelly from Puck and then I like met people like you guys and I was like, "Okay, I understand

what's happening a little bit more. Like I the newsletter thing is real. people want better things in their inbox and then they want to talk to the other people who are reading this. Like I I understand this. This makes perfect

sense to me. So So this is interesting because you you do talk about feed me as a newsletter still, but it seems to be something much bigger than like just something that gets dropped into your email inbox. It's a community around it.

It's it's got a feeling. You got a a podcast or two podcasts that go with it.

There's a party reporter. So the newsletter is is the nucleus of the thing. That is like where all the ideas are generating. Most of the features I've written in the last two years for other publications have come from the editor saying, "I saw you write

about this in feed me. Can you write about it for our like October issue or whatever?" So that's like the thing that has to happen every day.

Mhm. That informs the other decisions. And the extensions of the newsletter include the events, includes the merch, includes the podcast. one of my um columnists has a a restaurant and hospitality podcast and he's great.

Um but I want to make other things. Like before I made a newsletter, I made a movie. I can't even access that part of myself now. Like I made a whole documentary.

Why can't you? Cuz I spend so much time on this other thing that has to happen every day. I don't have five consecutive days of like playing on another project. Like I could, but I probably have to either

have somebody else write the letter. It takes a lot of time. Mhm. If I wanted to read the way it does, I'm sure I could ask Claude to do like a B minus version of Feed Me and that would work for San Francisco.

Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about the documentary. It's called uh The End, right? And it's about Gardener's Island, which is this privately owned enclave outside of I made this uh this short dock that did quite well about the oldest privately

owned island in America, which is off the coast of East Hampton. Um and the same family's had it since the 1600s.

And it's sort of this perfect little magical sort of Wizard of Ozy feeling story. Um, and I worked, you know, it like scratched all my itches, right?

Like going into museum archives and working with librarians and then working with like sort of eccentric old men who are romantically obsessed with a body of water and the island inside of it. Like it was a blast to make and it was such a

pure project. I had all this extra time in my in my life. I mean, don't tell my old bosses at Meta, but I I made this movie while working at Meta. Um I promised never to say a thing.

Yeah. Um and you know, I got a small grant from Adobe to make it. I think it was like $3,000 which we put towards renting a house in the Hamptons during COVID which cost probably $3,000 for a week.

And a bunch of my friends work in documentaries so we brought them out there and just kind of turn the cameras on to see what would happen. And um yeah, I don't know. I don't I probably could do it again today. It just feels

so inaccessible to me right now. Maybe that's Feed Me Studios like a couple years down the track. Yeah.

So, it seems like what you're doing has got it encompasses all these different aspects of your interest in your life.

There's the art projects. There's the writing aspect. There's the marketing angles and the branding stuff. Um, there's the community like you like people. You get get to be around people.

You get to convene people. So, what does it feel like to be the owner of this business and responsible for all this thing that is suddenly big?

It's great. I mean, you know, it's a big it's a big business. you guys see the the network effects of it all and and um how many people read it and it's funny like everyone sees how big it is because

of the leaderboards which is great for me like I'm very proud that I'm in that I that I have amassed that many people without you know bringing them over from somewhere else or whatever but it's also a lot of that

part of the job is pressure like the purple check mark like it it doesn't not put a target on your back as a journalist to be doing that because it's so different than pe other people who are working in

journalism who are not having the same type of experience at all. Right. Just for the viewers like the purple check mark on substack means you've got at least 10,000 paying subscribers and so a lot of journalists are probably like looking at their

shrinking news rooms and the jobs um disappearing and the insecurity and like potentially are jealous of that. Do you think? Yeah, I think that people can do back of napkin math and figure out how much money I'm making. And I'm sort of

tired of being on panels and always being asked that and then, you know, being followed on a on some sort of talk or panel where there's uh an investor or a CEO of a media company and they're never asked that. So, that is like

something that I started actually pushing back on in interviews. Do you think that's because you're a young woman running a business or do you think it's a a media business curiosity thing?

I think it's both. Yeah, I think it's both. But a smart person can also see that I'm putting money back into my writers and I'm putting money back into my free parties and I'm it I don't even need to

explain all this. Like it just feels like that sometimes. I also know that I'm doing more than just writing. Like I'm a product manager. I'm a social media manager. I'm a graphic designer.

I'm emailing my warehouse all the time and talking on the phone with them about uh stocking products for me. Um I'm also running payroll. Yeah, I'm I'm running payroll. Like I'm an event planner. I'm event producer. Like it.

So I do a lot of jobs. Um and I love my job. I love it. I feel crazy half the time, which might be coming through in this conversation, but like it's an awesome job. Um, I feel really grateful

when I can connect with other media operators and trust them and get along with them, but I also feel like there's this competitiveness, especially um, with people who have been doing this longer than me and might look at me

like, where the [ __ ] did you come from? And maybe if they listen to this, they'll have a better idea of that. But I almost feel better about my job when I talk to friends who work in totally

different industries who are like I learn some of my best qualities of being a good person and a good um operator from people who don't do anything close to this. Like talking to my friends who are moms who just like get their kids to

school on time or like make sure to send a birthday card or um just like good people. And then I think that that sort of radiates out like show up to things, bring somebody a birthday present, send like respond to the text, do things

that you'll say you'll do and and like life is easier after that because you know where you stand. Um, and what do those people think about the success of Feed Me?

Like a lot of my friends don't know what Substack is. They must know what Feed Me is though.

They I I asked them the other day. I asked my home group text, "Do you guys know what Substack is and they said it's like a newsletter, right?

We got some marketing work to do. I don't know. I think there's people who will be reading a lot and then there are people who probably aren't. You know, um do you like that they don't know exactly what you're doing?

Yeah. Why? Because when people know what I do, our relationships change. Ah, in what way?

I'm going to show you my phone after this and show you some of the texts I get. Um we can't do that for the No, I can't. I'm sorry. Um, yeah, it's like people are looking to take advantage of

you, use you like even from other like writers saying, "Can you put this in your newsletter?" where I would never text them say, "Can you write about this?" You know, that understanding how favors work and that my job isn't necessarily a favor.

It's just funny. Um, and I'm I'm grateful for for the media world sort of welcoming me. welcoming me. But like immediate people are very there is this patina to them that is very specific um noble, wise, hilarious.

Yes. Gentle and so clever with how they come up with information when they don't have it. You know, if there's not something to write about, you sort of spin something up and then that becomes the content.

And I do it too, you know, right? If it's a slow news day, the you know, I always say that a slow news day isn't the worst thing for Feed Me a Hangover is, but a slow news day is second and

you figure out what you figure out what kind of news there is. My the benefit to my newsletter is I can call a bar and say, "How many of these did you serve last night and put it in the newsletter

and that I'm I keep referencing a bar because we're in one, but like that's the news." Or I can go for a walk and spot how many people are carrying a certain bag and that's the news. Or I

can go into one of my Rogue Hampton's Facebook groups and find out about a famous person whose household and that's the news. And I don't need to write about other people I know. But there's this quality to media reporters who

write about media that is a little scary to me in a competitive type of way or like oneupmanship type of thing. What's going on?

Well, how do you feel about media people? Well, I love and hate them. Yeah, I love and hate them.

I consider myself a media I was a media person. Now I'm obviously a startup guy.

Um Don't you think you take it with you though? Don't you think you kind of Yeah, definitely.

You can scratch the sticker off, but it's still kind of there. Definitely. Well, this is why we're doing this. Um I I I found the New York version of it particularly rough because it's very sceny. people are very status

insecure. They're very conscious about being in the right groups. Yeah. And that can create a kind of like high school schoolyard, you know, popular groups effect and people are always sort of like looking to get ahead in a way where they

got to know the right people and say the right thing to the right people. And it doesn't always mean that they're going to be kind or nice.

Um but they can always often be kind and nice as I'm very sensitive to that.

I think because most of my life I didn't know people like that or I knew them but I wasn't directly involved in it.

Um, and I'm really happy that a lot of my friends don't do anything that have to do with media.

I've tried to pull back from listening to media podcasts. Not this one. But um Well, now you're going to have to read uh Sema's newsletter on a Saturday morning. Well, you know, you're going to do delayed uh delayed reading.

I probably just won't read it. I know Ben Smith is not going to be happy.

He'll be okay. Maybe they'll move it back by the time this podcast comes out.

But um true. I don't like always hearing news about people I know and I know so many of the players in this space and I don't always want to hear uh like skepticism about them or theories about how they're thinking,

especially if I've heard how they think and they've told me. Um, so those are some of the like challenging things about being a media owner in this current landscape, but there are also good things to it, right? You're you're

employing people. You're giving people jobs. You're paying freelancers. And I hear you pay pretty good rates. Can you tell me about that like and what the thinking is behind that? And how does it how does it feel to be able to pay not

just yourself, but others around you in that way? Well, what's cool is that a lot of the people that write for me aren't writers.

They're not career writers. Like for example, Jason who hosts Expense Account, the FeedMe podcast about restaurants. His background is he's an artist. He was a wine distributor. He's not his background isn't writing. He's just an excellent writer. And Teddy, who

writes about movies and entertainment, and he asked if he could go to Sundance. And I was like, you know, I kind of want to go to Sundance, but I'm not going to go because I have this SF trip. And I

was like, yeah, put together a budget. Tell me what it would look like. He's like, "Yeah, go. We can we can run this." Like, "Go there. Whatever." Same thing with Jason. He wants to go to an expensive restaurant. Go write about it.

Nobody else is writing about it. Get in there. Be weird. Like, I love identifying interesting people and then sort of doubling down on them and having them build out their own little worlds within the newsletter. But it's also really like I've never managed

anybody before, so it's new for me and I'm learning as I'm doing it. and I, you know, the only thing I can do is like talk to other media operators who have been through it and try to get best

practices from them. Um, yeah, there's like there are some true business benefits to running a a newsletter on Substack, though, and this isn't an ad, but a lot of the operations are sort of dealt with, and the founders and the

other people that work at the company are so present on the feed that I feel like you can sort of reach out to them and get a response or people will answer you where I hear they're real pricks.

No, they're great. They're really great and they're very interesting. Um, I've never run into to like there's this backend sort of foundation and that is why you guys take a cut of writers, but that writer's income, but like that

never has been a problem to me whenever that question comes up. I always say that that's that's totally reasonable to me that that happens. Um, yeah. Well, to try and broaden it beyond just the like the substack commercial

which you know we've always tried to take all the [ __ ] off the table for a writer so they can focus on the most important thing which is the work itself the editorial work.

Yeah. Um but the the broader principle of it is that the media could be evolving in such a way where there is infrastructure that supports writers and creative people and creators and publishers rather than just exploiting them. And I

wonder if you can take that sort of thought and your experience of running FeedMe in its current state and your knowledge of what the the media scene is like in New York and give me your sense of like how do you feel about where the

media ecosystem is going and like what media jobs or the future might look like. Are you know people are feeling a lot of doom and gloom at the moment but perhaps you have a different kind of perspective. Do you have any other

feelings of optimism? To go off of what you're saying really quickly, like here's what I'm wary of.

Taking cash up front for a business that doesn't exist yet. And you know, I see these new food publications to launch.

You mean you mean raising money to Yeah. Yeah. I think raising money is risky.

As somebody who's never done it and and runs a really successful media business, venture capital in general scares me.

Mhm. But I do think that there I've seen like glimmers of hope in the media space in a different a few different places. So I think food media is one of them. I think that we'll see some of these people come

out and win. I'm sure I wouldn't be surprised that if by the end of the year Puck launched a food vertical. I wouldn't be surprised if Punch Bowl, the DCbased um publication, launched more like lifestyle stuff. Like I think that

people want more niche specified news that they're interested in. Mhm. I'm also seeing a lot of local news publications on Substack that make me really happy.

And I don't know if these people are doing it for the love of the game or to try to make a ton of money, but like there's the Borum Bulletin, which is just for Boram Hill. There is um

the East Side Rag, which is about uh the east side of LA, which is like focused on Silver Lake and Echo Park. and they're they're they're they're making people really happy and feel connected to their neighborhoods in a way that

newspapers used to do or smaller circulations used to do. And I don't think that everybody is in this game to to to make a ton of money and then sell and then buy a house in um the Hamptons. I I think that some

people are truly just trying to better their community and spread information and make interesting content.

Um we were talking about the doc world earlier. We have better tools than ever to make films. I think more people should experiment with teaching themselves how to edit and shoot with the the iPhones that we've been given

and the software that we've been given. I think more people should be turning on their video cameras and experimenting that way instead of just consuming creator creator types of content. Like there's this writer um Biz Sherbet who runs a

publication called American Style. Have you seen it? Yeah. She's really talented and she's been doing some video stuff during fashion week that really stood out to me. It felt super refreshing amongst a sea of kind of exclusive fashion front row

reporting. Um, and I'm excited for her to maybe double the length of the things that she's been making and cool publish more videos on Substack. So, yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. Um, you wrote an essay called the garden, the machine in the garden, which was uh criticizing sort of the precursor, the slop, which in in your view, and this this um had a lot of supporters and it pissed a

lot of people off as well, which is common for some of my bigger reported projects and any any piece that's saying something interesting.

Um, and so your contention in that piece was that uh people were the garden in this case was selfstack itself. I think you're talking about like people were trying to game the Substack system uh to make money by sort of monetizing

their personal essays and it was becoming a bit sy. Is that a fair characterization of So this is how that happened. I was in Greece. I was on an island called Fagandro. I take like a week off a year.

Every other weekday of the year I publish a newsletter. Yeah. So, because I was off, I actually spent time using the Substack app and reading other people's stuff, which I don't usually have time for. Like, I don't usually have time to just read

stuff. I am typically producing. Um, and I was reading a lot of newsletters and I was picking up on some patterns of lists, diaries. All of these are fair game, but if you want to do that, do it.

But it's sort of these patterns of ways that a lot of women were writing on the platform that if you blacked out the name, they would all sort of blend together. Um, and it didn't feel good. So, of course,

I was I started doing some research to see if other people were noticing it and they were agreeing with it. You know, I spoke to Kyle Chica, I think, for it, who works at the New Yorker and writes a

lot about tech and these platforms, and I spoke to a few other friends, and there was this monotony in the way that everyone was writing. And the essay was basically pointing that out. I didn't say this is bad. I didn't

say this was good. And immediately people were getting extremely defensive. people were saying easy for you to critique this platform as somebody who's doing well on it.

As a reminder, I didn't say this is bad. I said this is happening. So, if they were getting offended by it, they probably, you know, were doing that. And and I was I was asking them like why are

you do why are you choosing that to be the way that you're moving through your artistic practice, you know?

And I also want young people to be careful about what they share online. If if like you're maybe it doesn't matter and in the future we're all creators and the and the best way to make money is to totally expose

everything about your life, but like remember my my subway takes on Kareem's subway takes was like doing a house tour is the best way to get robbed. Like I don't want you to see my house. You're not going to see my house. I've lived

there for eight years. Um you even had the experience of putting your face on the newsletter. That did come back to bite you in some way.

Yes. And still does. Uh yeah, I've seen so many dark sides of virality. This this was sort of this was fine. It it messed up my vacation for a few days, the reactions, but it's okay. Um so that was I think my most viral piece.

I think that's my most popular piece ever. But after that, I decided if you want to comment on my stuff, you have to pay me.

So that's when you just pay subscription. people were really mad and I didn't I still don't understand why. I think that that text holds up. My friend Sophie uh is a professor at Yale and she taught that that was part of the

syllabus for a course that she taught last semester about writing on the internet. Um which I was surprised by, but I think it holds up. I I would publish that today and feel just as great about it. Um,

why why do you think people had such a strong reaction? Why why is it so divisive?

I'm not sure. I I don't think everybody sees I don't know if everybody sees writing I don't know if everybody sees the importance of like eating your vegetables and like in in the act of like writing books and do or reading

books and doing hard work and trying hard with everything you put out. Like I don't like shortcuts.

Um but I do like young women writing diaries. I don't know. It's complicated. It's all fair game, Emily. It was a good piece and it got people talking and anything that's interesting is going to get strong reactions. And the surveys

are something that do really well for you. The surveys are so fun. And I I remember one that was particularly electric, which was like surveying people's experiences of sex with co-workers.

Yes. Yes. What inspired that? It was either a TV episode. Oh, it was when Baby Girl came out when Nicole Kidman, right? I haven't seen it, but I know it.

It's great. Great office sex drama. It shot in New York, which means there was a big budget. Um, so I love those surveys and I love getting a better idea of who's actually reading the letter between the comment section and the chat and the

surveys just and the parties in person. getting a sense of this community being a real I know community is like a gross overused word but this audience like feeling like a real interesting specific thing. Um I'm so grateful for it and it

it obviously wouldn't be possible without Substack. Like when I talk to people who use like Beehive or other things you can't replicate that in um an Instagram caption or something like that like the comment section of Instagram or

a Facebook group. It's just different. Where can you go and where do you want to go with FeedMe?

Um, as I was saying before, the newsletter rocks. The the Substack rocks. Like the the the systems that I have in place on there between the comment section and the chat and the ease of sending the letter are great. I

do want to make another movie. I want to make better uh there there are some small scale things I want to do like I want to launch a really good merch shop.

I want I I like making things. I'm really enjoying working with product developers to make fun little things.

People come up to me and they say, "Do you have a keychain? Do you have a hat?

Do you have a sweatshirt?" That's fun for me. I really enjoy that. I don't want to outsource that to some person. I enjoy working with a designer and somebody who knows textiles. I work with Justin, my designer, and do my product

developer to like make things. That is fun for me. I I was talking to my grandma last weekend on Long Island and she lives in this sort of I guess it's like a senior community and she's in this club called Current Events and they

just get together once a week and they talk about news articles that they're interested in and they bring in filmmakers from Long Island or politicians or writers or whatever.

I'm like there's no reason why I shouldn't be figuring out how to do something like that there. My comment section would be really nice in person.

It would be nice to meet some of these people and not constantly be going back and forth online and just have a little bit more of a solid I think I'm lonely so I'm looking for people to spend time

with and I think that that can be done through a a series of feed me events like an ongoing thing.

So I think figuring out the events this year would be good but um I've written about this before. I think about FeedMe as a studio. There is a newsletter, there's merch, there are events, there are podcasts, there could be a movie,

there could be a lot of things there. It's um it's all mine. So, if I wanted to turn the lights off tomorrow and do something totally different, I could also, but um yeah, that's sort of the direction it's going in. I I want I I

said this, but I'm trying to spend a little bit less time reading newsletters and a little bit more time um learning about other things because I think I figured out the newsletter.

Does that mean reading books? Reading books, watching movie, listening to music, and like seeing people and talking to people. Yeah.

Living life. Yeah. Well, cheers. Thanks for the conversation, Emily. This is really fun. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for coming on.