Packy McCormick: commitment

Transcript context

…From the graph I'm looking at, if it keeps the shape, it would be in the next two years. So the question is, how long can it continue on this 20% month-over-month growth? What do you think the saturation point of your audience is? It doesn't feel as exponential the chart where it still grows 1000–2000 people a week, the newsletter. But 1000–2000 people a week is a lot different when you're at 40,000 versus 80,000. So maybe it does go a little bit more linear than exponential at some point. Maybe we are hitting the S part of the S-curve. I certainly hope that's not the case. I think probably the reason that that would happen is if I get really lazy on it, frankly. I'm like, look, I have a big audience, things are great, making money, this is awesome, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing, and don't want to mess it up on the content side specifically. But I think if I keep pushing on the content side and keep attracting new readers who are interested and want to learn, while also keeping a tether to the audience that's there already, then I think you can continue to grow. That's why on the content side, other than just being obsessed with the idea of constitution dial was, it's like, all right, I can either write a normal Not Boring piece or I could go gonzo on this, and actually join it, write about what's happening, and take part in this whole thing. I think where this ends up losing its steam is if people don't think that they can get a glimpse into the near future from reading Not Boring and glimpse into the near future that's explained in an approachable and not crazy-sounding way. If I go too far into the future and I'm just making stuff up, then that's bad. But if I'm just like, hey, here's what happened last week, here's your tech roundup, then that's not good. I think what I will hopefully continue to do well at is looking into the very near future, never being the earliest person on something, but being the person who can say, all right, this is actually probably worth taking a look at now, and here's actually why it's not as wild as it seems, or why this is wild as it seems but it just might work. That's where I can hopefully continue to grow as the future will continue to get crazier and crazier and crazier. So if I can just help keep translating what's going on and make people feel a little more comfortable with it, then I think I'll be able to continue to grow. I feel like you live three to six months in the possible future, and we live one month into the probably future. I don't know if you think about it that way at all. Whenever I'm reading your pieces, I'm like, oh, I'm not there yet, but I bet this will help me get there by reading it.…

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