Azeem Azhar

The shift from institutional trust to personal connectedness.

And I was talking to Jasmine's son, who was an early Substack product manager, and she's now gone off on her own.

Absolutely brilliant.

Stanford English undergraduate.

So, you know, a character you would recognize yourself as well.

And she said to me,

Something that was really prescient and insightful, rather insightful.

I said, look, I've invested in lots of companies, lots of startups, about 40 of them.

I will disclose when I've invested, but I think it's really high signal for my readers to know that I have enough conviction in this theme, in this team, in these founders, in the way they're going, that I'm risking my family's capital in something like this.

And she said, look, there's a distinction in the East Coast.

In the East Coast, that's a conflict of interest.

And on the West Coast, we start to see it as skin in the game, right?

That it really, really doubles down on the authenticity of the message because you have taken some risk.

And I think there is something about that shift in how people can relate to institutions with great mastheads compared to

humans with eyes and eyebrows and sweat and nerves that actually feels like it's quite a difficult strategic challenge for businesses that have been built under a masthead.

I would agree that the rules really, really matter in certain classes of writing and analysis.

And what's on Substack is not just journalism.

I don't think I do any journalism.

I do essays.

I do think pieces.