David Rosenthal: commitment

Transcript context

…I have become an increasingly large fan of The Verge. I don't know how I slept on it. In my head, it was like, oh, another one of these Engadget, Gizmodo type things, but that was wrong. It is my—this is embarrassing to say—new favorite publication. Nilay is so smart. I'll basically go listen to Nilay talk wherever he is. That is a way to, for sure, get me to go listen to an episode of whatever the podcast is. Over Covid, I think I'll listen to Nilay in any situation. With The Verge redesign, I don't think I realized how unbelievably thoughtful the team there is and how strategic they are. They're one of the few publications that thinks about the fact that they're a business, too, and thinks about the way to marry their business with their editorial, and how they can uniquely show up in the world based on what they do differently than other people. I think the new Verge redesign is genius. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I love the attempt. They're also one of the few news sites in the world that actually gets a ton of direct traffic. That's a huge thing that plays to their advantage that then they can do interesting things with. There are people that come to them to solve a problem in their life or to fill a need. It's so true. Even me. You're way deeper in the product side as a fan of the product side of tech than I am, but anytime there's a new Apple device or there are a couple places I will go directly, I will go to MKBHD and all the various properties that he had they have now, and I'll go to The Verge. I might consume some other stuff that comes to me on social media, but I'll directly go to those two properties. My impression of Nilay is that he is world class on the product side of tech, but he also gets the business side. Oh yeah, for sure.…

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