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Chapter 1: What are the new rules of media in the internet era?
One rule of old media is don't be interested. Like, that's the worst thing you can do. There is no way to get to anything resembling a story that you're gonna like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible.
Old media, you had very restricted channels with very restricted formats. New media is unlimited formats, unlimited channels. And the brand is now the person. The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp.
If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. Everybody just naturally thinks inside out, me and my company and my product out into the world.
Chapter 2: How is the shift from legacy media to creator-led platforms changing communication?
Don't think that way. Think in terms of like, what are the most interesting things happening in the world? And then how do those things relate to us?
Old media is defense-oriented. New media is offense. Talk more about why that is.
There's still this anxiety that people have, which is legacy media somehow is like where the respectability or the prestige is. I don't believe that anymore. And I think it's very important for people to kind of get that out of their system.
For decades, most public communication flowed through a small number of institutions.
Chapter 3: Why is authenticity a competitive advantage for founders?
Television networks, newspapers, magazines, and a handful of gatekeepers determined which stories were told and who got to tell them. That world is changing. Today, founders, creators, investors, and operators can communicate directly with audiences through social media platforms, newsletters, podcasts, and video.
The result is a new set of rules for how ideas spread, how brands are built, and how influence works. Recorded live at the New Media Summit, this conversation explores the rise of direct communication, the decline of traditional gatekeepers, and what founders can learn from the people who have successfully built audiences in the internet era.
So first, I just want to say it's Gabby's birthday today. Welcome, Gabby, to the firm. Thanks. I'm so excited the Knicks won in five for many reasons. But one is that Ben had four seats to game six and wasn't going to make it today.
Chapter 4: How can founders build audiences through direct communication?
And so we're so lucky that we get to have Ben here. And Mark, not a huge basketball guy, but he did tweet about how Jalen Brunson, he had a comment that he operates purely on instinct, not on introspection. And Mark appreciates that. Retard Maxing, obviously working. Exactly. many people are saying across industries.
And so I actually think that's a pretty interesting segue because one of the rules of new media, Mark, that we were talking about with the CEO last week in our growth portfolio is authenticity and sort of being able to have the same conversations on camera that you would have in person behind closed doors.
Why don't you talk about that a bit more and why that's so important to really nail in terms of nailing your voice and how to build that presence? Because a lot of mistakes that founders will make is trying to be too buttoned up, trying to be too media trained, et cetera, as we uncover the new rules of new media.
Chapter 5: What mistakes do founders make in their media strategies?
Why don't you start there?
Yeah, so I had this really formative experience when I was younger. So in the 90s, when Ben and I were coming up, you know, it was pre-blogs, pre-YouTube, all this stuff. And so in those days, the assumption was 100% of what you did, if you were running a company or doing anything, was you're going to have to work through established media, legacy media.
And then everybody would get, of course, media trained in how to do it. And most painful experience in the world. Oh, yeah.
So for people who haven't been through media training, it's actually...
Yeah. So, okay.
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Chapter 6: How does storytelling impact brand building in new media?
So here's how media training works. I don't really still do it, but do they still do it? You guys still do it? Okay. Okay. So people who haven't been through it. Yeah. So it's like you get put in front of a camera in your face and then somebody like who you think is your friend, they do the full 60 minutes interview with you for like an hour.
And then they literally make you sit there and watch it, which is just like the meanest thing you could do to somebody. And critique you.
Chapter 7: What role does personal branding play for CEOs in today's media landscape?
And you're looking at yourself, fuck it up. And they're going, you see how you fucked that up? And you're like, wow, I'm really uncomfortable now.
I'm never going on TV. Exactly. And you're like, can we just fast forward? No, you can't fast forward. We're going to watch the entire thing. And then maybe we'll watch it again. And so it is very revealing.
Chapter 8: What advice do experts have for founders navigating new media challenges?
And you discover all kinds of things about your personal affect, by the way, also. You discover all the things you do, all the extra words. How much you hate your voice. Yes, exactly. How much you hate how you look. I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible. And so if your ego survives the beating, you go into a successful career. And so that's what you did.
But it was always so weird because it's like the result, it just always struck me is just like the result is, wow, you see important people with important things to say. On TV or whatever, they just seem like plastic people. They just seem like it's all very fake and staged.
And then by the way, you know, this is the old days because all the anchor people or interviewers are all like using anchorman voice. And then you get a CEO up there who just says like the most innocuous things possible. And a lot of CEOs in those days, and by the way, still, they rank their success in doing an interview or giving a speech based on minimum controversy, right?
So I've worked with lots of CEOs. They come on stage, they're very proud of themselves because they didn't make any news, right? Sort of like that. And so... Yeah, that is the key. Tall news is bad news. So we hire, at the time, was considered the best media trainer who was a guy who had previously been a producer of 60 Minutes. Lee Zeldin. Lee Zeldin, who'd been a producer.
He was actually quite a well-known guy at the time. He had been Lowell Bergman's producer, and Lowell Bergman became, Lowell Bergman, no. Well, I mean, Mike Wallace, it was that whole complex. He's like, we're not doing any of the classic media training that we do.
He said, we're going to do the thing that everybody always underrates, which is we're going to get you to basically just say all the things in public that you would say if you were sitting having lunch with a friend. Right. And I remember the back of my head like just blew open because it's just like, okay. And then immediately you're like, okay, why are we paying this guy?
Then it's like, because that's like very obvious advice. And then it's like, nobody else will give you that advice. And what's going on? He said the following. He said, if you were on stage or in an interview and you were talking about something and you don't know that topic inside out already, what the hell are you doing there?
So the only thing that you should ever be talking about is something you know intimately. If you know it intimately, you should be able to talk about it in a viscerally interesting way that really relays your thoughts on the thing. And you ought to be able to come across as a very interesting person because, you know, it's just like if you're sitting across the table talking to a friend.
And so he's like, my training is 100% to try to get you to not do all the other stuff and basically be able to do that. And then the other part, because you assume the media is adversarial, the other part was then, I forget what he called it, the pivot or whatever, which was basically just the thing of like, you never answer their questions.
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