Where we'll go when the bots take over, with Sublime's Sari Azout

20:49Ellis:Right on time. I've been rewatching Terminator 1 and 2. Well worth a rewatch. Incredible films. And it's interesting, James Cameron, even in The Abyss, in the theatrical cut, it ends with the guy and the girl kissing on top of the alien ship that just, for some reason, surfaces from the bottom of the ocean after saying hi. And the movie ends. in the director's cut, when they go inside the alien ship at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the alien is essentially debating whether to destroy humanity. And it shows them examples of mass destruction. And the solution proposed is that love is humanity's redeeming value and force.

21:36Ellis:And I'm glad. I want us to be talking about more of these movies because that is where you can feel the future, good or bad, I think, in a way that an essay just can't quite do. That's right. In a way that a 20 ,000-word essay cannot do, for sure. Yes. So let's watch Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence. We need more people to be talking about that, besides her and Minority Report, as good as they are. With that, shall we kick it to Sari and Sublime? Let's do it.

22:11Ellis:Support for this episode comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. I've been using Claude to help me resolve those messy contradictions at the heart of brand strategy. How do you triangulate one message across a company's products, beliefs, and future vision? Claude doesn't just tell me what I want to hear. It feeds me different strategies across a spectrum of approaches. More like a partner, less like an answering machine. When you need to get up to speed fast on something complicated, you can just point Claude at it, and it pulls together sources, surfaces where people disagree, flags the things you should be asking about, all with citations you can go check.

22:45Ellis:When you connect Claude's Cowork feature to your Gmail and Google Drive, Claude will read your actual emails and docs along with you, instead of waiting for you to paste things in. Then, Cowork takes it further. You can point it at a folder, describe what you need done, and Claude just handles it. Cue something up before lunch, and come back to finished work. Try it yourself at claude.ai slash access. You know, they've said this about a lot of things. No other president can do some of this shit I'm doing. That's probably true. President Trump continues to give mixed messages about the war in Iran.

23:18Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be prepared for this war to have? Well, I think you could say both. More clear is what's happening to the U.S. and global economies as a result of this conflict. Markets falling like Liberation Day, the sequel. Will oil prices up like we haven't seen in years? That means gas prices up. That means other prices will go up. Trump's supposed to be focusing on affordability. His party has a midterm election to try to win. He talked to Republican lawmakers yesterday.

23:47Ellis:So our message is simple. Democrats created the high prices and our policies are totally ending them. And they're ended and we're doing better. We're even bringing them down further. Self-evidently untrue. Will the economic fallout of the war in Iran catch up with Trump? Today Explained drops every weekday.

24:12Ellis:Sari, hi. Hi. Welcome to Access. I heard you may have met Alex before a long time ago. Do you remember this? Yes, I do. And I feel like it took us like 15 minutes to get sorted. So hopefully it's better this time. I actually don't know what you're talking about. What Ellis is referring to is a DM. Do you remember DMing me? Huh. You DMed me in July 2022. In a past era, a past paradigm for technology. Oh my gosh. Like what? Like the startup-y days. You say, Alex, you are eligible to claim a cool on the internet hat and NFT. Would love for you to be a part of this. Someone added your name to the startup-y world knowledge graph.

25:01Because your content caught their attention. You're in the company of some of the smartest minds, meaning you're officially cool on the internet. How did this work out? How did the cool NFT work out? I mean, first of all, this is so cringe when I look at it right now. You know, it was an era. It was an era. Yes. It's okay. We like to roast our guests when they first show up. So just roll with it. Oh, my gosh. I feel like I need to DM you a lot. So that's not the first thing in our conversation.

25:31Ellis:That's like a unique, that's a unique modern affliction, isn't it? When someone reaches back out and you see that the last time you talked to them, you like left them on read, or you made some cheesy pitch or whatever it was. Yeah, I feel like, well, funnily enough, in that moment, it got a lot of people, it had their reception with some people, like some big people were like, okay, cool. And then some big people blocked me. And I feel like that has forever affected my distribution on X. I feel like there's something in the algorithm where, I don't know, maybe it was like Chris Saka, who actually read my newsletter.

26:14But I think that he got the same DM. And anyways, a little cringe history. I'm sorry I left you unread. At least I didn't block you, though. Yes, I, you know, that's very kind of you.

26:27Ellis:Actually, I love this about you, though, Sari, following all your writings and product development. It's clear that you change your mind fast. You build quickly. I mean, I'm curious when you look back on that crypto moment, like, what were you doing back then? And how did you transition out of it? Because I feel like a lot of folks didn't so effectively make that transition. You know, it's funny. I think I think I've been orbiting the same themes and just like trying to find a wedge in. But the themes around content curation and finding a better way to discover and connect ideas on the Internet.

27:04I think I initially kind of started with this curated knowledge base model thinking, OK, maybe NFTs can there could be like an economic incentive. And I quickly realized that a token is no replacement for a great product. And so this is working way better. But I don't think, you know, and I think we have we'll talk about it. But I think the why now is so much clearer and better now. But but the themes, I think, are consistent.

27:34Ellis:Yeah, I think that makes total sense. And I do believe you. I mean, when I get into like storytelling chats with founders, like I always find that with the best ones, the why remains the same. The method may change, especially as tech changes so quickly. But I mean, I was into that stuff back then. I was never a speculator or like a diehard for the sake of itself. But I liked the idea of potentially using the blockchain for like portable identity so that you don't have to sign in with Facebook. You don't have to sign in with Google. You could sign in with yourself or something like that. Or I also did like the incentives of being able to make money for the content you share on social when you get nothing in return on Instagram or Facebook, or until recently X.

28:21Ellis:I guess YouTube's always been ahead of the game on that. But there were some interesting ideas there. I don't know what percent of the crypto scene was actually about those ideas? I mean, what would you say? What's that percent? I mean, listen, crypto, I think, was full of mercenaries, you know, but there were some, you know, there were some missionaries. And I think it's, you know, you got to celebrate the people that are trying to do good, interesting things. I also think you have to be intellectually honest about, you know, what are you trying to do? What's working? What's not? For me, it's very clear that, you know, everyone talked about tokenizing something as a replacement, like just the amount of hype.

28:59the gap between like the hype and practice. And I think we see some of that with agents today, frankly, you know, like every day it's like quad bot or a cloud code. And I don't know, like personally, I haven't done anything revolutionary with agents, you know? You mean you don't have a digest of your entire life sent to you via iMessage that also controls your smart home and your car and gets your groceries and your eight sleep bed, woken up and all that? You don't do that? I mean, I am open, Alex, to the possibility of being crazy delusional, but I don't. I don't find, like, it's funny. I think that a lot of that banter is about getting computers to do things.

29:39And I think the hard part about my job is getting people to do things, you know, like inspiring my team and like, you know, convincing a creator to charge us like a quarter of what she charges because she fucking loves us. or, you know, like it's, it's, I'm like convincing, aligning and inspiring people. Like the bulk of my work is in, is in that domain and not in the domain. Like, yeah, you know, yes, it took me two more minutes to copy paste something manually. Big deal. Like, I don't want to miss the forest for the trees.

30:08Ellis:That's the fucking preach right there. Saving milliseconds for your like personal white collar efficiency to me just kind of means nothing compared to everything else tech could be used for, though I would like to get a digest every morning that says at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. your wife farted and the bed temperature went up by two degrees and then you ran out of milk, according to Samsung fridge scan, when your youngest went into the fridge in the middle of the night, though that does sound fun. But I mean, do you feel isolated from any of the efficiency obsession being in Miami? I mean, a hundred percent.

30:52Like nobody in Miami, I have not heard a single person in Miami be like, who's going to pay for software when you can vibe code everything? It's like, no. You know, like there's, I mean, the best thing about living in Miami is it really keeps you grounded. Nobody's heard of Cloud Code. Not a single friend of mine here has heard of Cloud Code.

31:11Ellis:So what have they heard of in Miami? I mean, like, they're, you know, they're starting to use ChatGPT to draft emails occasionally, you know. So, you know, I don't know. It's like they say, like, the future is here. It's not evenly distributed. But I just think there's something about being closer to, like, people that don't care about technology, but what it can do for them. You know, there's this obsession with technology for the sake of technology in Silicon Valley. And like, you know, like there's to me in Miami, there's always like what's in it for me? Like it just always come back, comes back to it's not cool to play with these things for the sake of it.

31:48It's what's in it for me. And so you start to suss out a lot of the BS if you think about it that way. Sari, when Ellis said we were going to have a Miami founder on the show, which I was excited about, I was imagining you beaming in from a 20-story deck with a glass pane overlooking the beach and the skyline. And instead, you're kind of giving – I don't know what this is. Are you in like Connecticut, Westchester, Wyoming? Like this is not giving Miami. I live in the water. So like just to give you context, I have in my house, we live on the bay. My kids are fishing at 10 p.m. on a Saturday. So there's a big Miami vibe here.

32:27It just happens to be that I created this like part of the house that is disconnected from the, you know, like I like get wet when it's raining to come into this little office that I made that has more of a mid-century modern vibe.

32:41Ellis:I'm seeing an opportunity to connect ClaudeBot on the Mac Mini to the fishing rod to optimize line strength. Ellis, you're losing me. You're losing me. Oh, no. But that's, I mean, that's the joke I'm making. It's just like, man, why? Why? And I think the truth is just because it's fun. And I don't have any judgment over people who do it for fun. I have judgment over people who think they're doing God's work when they make little things techified. You know what I mean? Totally. The people doing X articles where it's 24 ways the world will never be the same because I have a Mac mini running and doing my day trading and fidelity.

33:21Ellis:I think I know what article you're talking about. Well, I mean, this also raises. Did you guys watch the new friend AI pendant video yesterday? I did, Ellis. Did you direct that one? I did not. No, but I thought it was really interesting. It is a somewhat unusual looking kid who's very religious, clearly lives in some suburbs, talking about God, Christianity, prayer, and his friend pendant. And his parents are like, you know what? Like, this is making him happy and he's talking to it and having a nice relationship. All right. And he talks about it as being like, I'm mostly friends with girls at school.

34:02Ellis:The guys don't really want to talk to me. Now I have a little thing to talk to at different times, but the video ends with him playing with other kids. And I'm like, this is a testimonial that I have never, ever seen in a coastal elite, usual millennial urbanite tech video. And it just makes you think, how much do we really know about users out there? I certainly felt that way at Snapchat. That was my biggest fear with 400 million users. It's like, how could you know anything about them? I mean, does that type of stuff occur to you as you're building like a social platform now? It's interesting that you mentioned that because I think we're all part of this kind of tech Twitter discourse.

34:42And I think in our world, oftentimes, like we hear people say that artists, you know, often hate AI. And sometimes when I'm in artist circles, they're actually incredibly positive as a, you know, with art as a new medium. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's very easy to be insulated. I think in order to build these days, in some ways, you have to put on horse blinders in some sense, right? Like, you know, you listen to things like 10xing outbound with AI is going to bring down CAC. And I find that insane. I worked on that. You worked on that story on a product?

35:21Ellis:Well, I mean, I think there are probably 10 companies doing that exact thing. But I worked on one of them. But I find it insane. Like I, there's just, like the way I think about this stuff is the moment something becomes abundant, then something else becomes scarce, right? You have this, you know, like, I think one of the biggest questions that anyone building anything today is asking themselves is how do you build a product or a business these days when capability is no longer the bottleneck? But AI doesn't remove bottlenecks. It just shifts the bottleneck. it's in the bottleneck. I mean, it's, you know, it's clarity of vision and judgment and, you know, storytelling, as you obviously know.

36:02But I think, yeah, I think a lot of these questions are things that founders are living right now.

36:10Ellis:Yeah, this reminds me of that essay you shared the other day, you can plug the name and author of it, but it was talking about, you know, the ultimate differentiation is not just whatever the next tool is in telling your story or the next format, whether it's video or Substack or X articles or whatever it is, but is actually trying to become almost as unique as you can be by altering your inputs, you know, vis-a-vis creating your unique taste. And I think I agree with that point that that really is the long-term lever as opposed to just whatever the trend is with the medium. Well, I feel like that's the whole sort of like business or value proposition of Sublime.

36:54Like we think of Sublime as a tool for cultivating taste. And I think that we live in this world where, sure, the tools can code and write and design, but what are they going to build? What are they going to design? And I think in that world, your references become your advantage. And I think that a tool like Sublime and the kind of direction that we're headed in. I think in the past, you would think of bookmarking tools, tools to kind of build up, you know, whatever, second brain, digital garden, whatever the name du jour you give to these tools is.

37:28Ellis:I was once a digital gardener. Don't give up, Ellis. Don't give up. But I do think that the ROI on these tools is different now because if you are Ellis and you have a selection of what you think are the best headlines for landing pages, then that is, I think, the uniquely human work is discerning, like, this is good, or this is good to you, you know? And then you plug that into AI tools and you generate a lot of impact. So I think the hills that I'm sort of, like, willing to die on is, like, what are we going to do with all this power, right? Are we going to just, like, outsource and, like, make cookie-cutter stuff?

38:12Or are we going to make beautiful things that we're proud of, you know? And to me, that's like the journey I'm on. It's like we need to be more inspired as a species. We're not just going to prompt things away. This is incredible power that we have. And I think that when I look at the world today, there's the utopia and the side of this technology will save us. There's the doomerist side. and I sort of feel like I and Sublime are on this sort of like Venn diagram middle of people who love technology and hate technology. And instead, I sort of want to like, I want to be like, don't pick a side.

38:53Like, let's just, you know, there's like, let's come here. You know, we don't have to pick one side. We can build something wonderful together. So I, you know, I feel like that that's sort of the world that I want to inhabit and I'm trying to build.

39:08Ellis:It's confusing, isn't it? Everybody has this idea, like, I want to make great content or great art or whatever. And it's so obvious and you hear it all the time. But I feel like people forget that age old saying of write what you know. You are the unique sum of all your lived experiences. And if you make what only you can make, that's probably your best chance of creating something interesting and unique. And I mean, people are like, Ellis, how'd you write that headline? and I'm like, well, that was Emily Dickinson, man. In the back of my brain, some fold within my brain combining E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, and an AI note-taking app into a headline.

39:50Ellis:And at the very least, it's going to be different, right? Hard to say better or worse, but yeah, it is interesting. I feel like the algorithms in some strange way are almost creating a new type of monoculture where we're all only seeing kind of the same thing to pacify us instead of expand, you know, our realms. Alex, I'm curious if you know Mr. Scoopmaster. I know there used to be this idea that TikTok or even Reels like reserved a subset of the algorithmic weights to show you new things. Do they do that still? Because I know that on YouTube, the whole new to you button is at the far end of that column now.

40:33Ellis:And I have to, I have to hunt pretty far to get to it. Yeah. I mean, TikTok definitely created the idea of, you know, we should actually just be constantly introducing new things and like extending the spider web out versus just like reinforcing what you like, like a dog or something. But I don't think they, I don't think they index heavily on that. I mean, like what Instagram will do now is you can do like a trial where if you post a reel, it will trial it to outside of your graph first to see how it performs. So no one who actually follows you will see it. And then it will then show it to your graph.

41:09But that's like a creator-led action. I don't think they're doing it super algorithmically. I mean, all these platforms have following or for you or whatever. I feel like people just have given over to the algorithm, right? I'm certainly seeing more of the same. Yeah, there's a lot more of the same. I think it's sort of this weird world where nobody wants to be posting every day or creating content to please the algorithm, but everyone is doing it because everyone is doing it and nobody knows how to kind of turn that off. And something I think a lot about in building a company is I think there's a lot of pressure to play short-term games, right?

41:48We've seen it with, like, this, you know, kind of company that finds a way to arbitrage attention, like, famously, clearly, for example. But where did that go? You know, where it is? I think the verdict is still out there on whether this, like, rage bait or manufacturing of virality, like, actually leads to any sort of durability versus the, like, I don't know, my school of thought is, like, there's no shortcuts. You kind of build relationships, build trust, tell good stories, do that repeatedly again and again. But of course, the easy thing that a lot of startups are doing, because companies are always trying to find arbitrage opportunities.

42:26In 2010, I'm old enough to know when Facebook CPMs were a dollar. And now it's like the TikTok for you feed.

42:36Ellis:You're making us all drool out here.

42:42I don't know. I think you got to like figure out what game you want to play.

42:46Ellis:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting too. I think all these platforms have constantly shifted what they wait in terms of what to show you, whether it is an algorithm that's prioritizing for engagement, whether it's AI trying to understand your interests and then show you that, or even back to the beginning, kind of the follower model. And then beyond that, the friends of friends model. I mean, how did you think about that when you created Sublime? I feel like what it almost reminds me the most of is Tumblr, where it's not really about the likes. I think you don't even have likes. You just kind of have the amount of people who added something to their private repo of things that they like, which seems like a lot higher signal.

43:31Ellis:But here's the second question. It all depends if your company is built for that, right? I think if you're like a VC-backed company that needs to get results or some huge traction in a year or two, it changes the equation a little bit. I mean, I don't know exactly how you're structured or what your runway is. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think on the surface, Sublime is a personal knowledge library, much like whatever single-player tools people have used to capture anything interesting they come across. Now, the thing that I always yearned for as someone who is obsessed with ideas and insights was, why is it that on the internet I am either alone in my Apple Notes or I am shouting and performing on social media?

44:18Why, when I'm researching or writing a piece, why can't I kind of peek and have some of the serendipity and aliveness that you get from going to social spaces? So Sublime, the metaphor is one of like individual personal utility. It's not designed to be a social network. It's designed to be a place to cultivate your taste so that you can have better references for your projects and create more. And the social discovery piece is sort of a byproduct of that, meaning we don't have a for you feed. The best way to discover ideas on Sublime is to save something to your library and then discover related ideas from the network.

45:01And so that's definitely the hero feature on Sublime. That's the thing that right now is the most differentiated because the corpus. See, what's interesting is that content is infinite, but if you think of the corpus of content on Google, it's highly SEO optimized. If you think about LLMs, you know, you ask LLMs for an interesting example of so-and-so, and it's going to tell you Steve Jobs, Oprah. Sublime has a long tail of the niche curated web that I think partially it's a function of the community and network we've built. But I actually think there's a big argument for how well that scales because the corpus of content that we're building is not the kind of corpus that is going to be sort of like abused for SEO purposes.

45:59We are a like subscription product. So I just think that the dynamics of it and the network that we've built just means that there's just this curated corpus of content. Like where else on the internet can you connect your Kindle highlights and then travel down a path of really high quality? I just think this is where people are going to go when the bots take over to get like to bathe in like human curated wonder.

46:39Ellis:How do you triangulate one message across a company's products, beliefs, and future vision? Claude doesn't just tell me what I want to hear. It feeds me different strategies across a spectrum of approaches. More like a partner, less like an answering machine. When you need to get up to speed fast on something complicated, you can just point Claude at it, and it pulls together sources, surfaces where people disagree, flags the things you should be asking about, all with citations you can go check. When you connect Claude's co-work feature to your Gmail and Google Drive, Claude will read your actual emails and docs along with you instead of waiting for you to paste things in.

47:12Ellis:Then, Cowork takes it further. You can point it at a folder, describe what you need done, and Claude just handles it. Cue something up before lunch and come back to finished work. Try it yourself at claude.ai slash access. When you want your spring break to feel like and your kids pool day to feel like and your hotel bed to feel like and room service to feel like because at Hilton hospitality feels like your cabana's ready would you like fresh towels it matters where you stay book now at Hilton dot com Hilton for this day

48:01Sari, I was watching your YouTube year-end recap. Cool that you're that transparent with the audience about how the company is doing. And I think we have to give you some claps that you're default alive. We love to hear that from a VC-backed startup. We love default alive. Because to Ellis' point earlier, when you raise money and you're doing something that is social in nature, There's tremendous pressure to have a huge outsized outcome, which usually leads to scale, which leads to engagement, baiting. And so how are you navigating that? You forgot ads, Alex. Well, that's implied in that, yes.

48:41So, yeah, what does being default alive mean for you this year? Well, it's interesting. There's so much that we want to build. But the thing I'm most proud of in being Defaults Alive is that we've sequenced our kind of product roadmap in such a way that we prioritize willingness to pay. And that took us to a place where, you know, we are around, you know, like we can choose our destiny. I think I really think I mean, Sublime is a values driven product. And I think revenue gives you the freedom to honor your values. Without revenue, you just start doing wonky things when you need to raise VC and change your narrative.

49:23And so there's so much left to build. But I think that what we built so far is a testament to, yes, we prioritize the things that people pay for first. And that took us to default a lot. How much of that revenue is the deadline candle, which I desperately need? I saw you were selling these candles. Ella showed me this. Do you have one? I was doing one today. I was writing a thing that I'm going to publish soon, and I love my deadline candle. It looks like you did it very fast because that candle's barely burnt. Yeah, the candle's barely there. But listen, you'd be surprised what happens when you light a candle, and in 15 minutes, when the deadline candle is lit up, it's like two hours in non-candle time.

50:08Ellis:So you either get a deadline candle or a full pack of Zins. Can you tell us where that idea came from and what it is for those who haven't seen it? The candle or the zines? Yeah. I said zines. Oh. If you have four hours to get a project done. Well, the deadline candle is literally a candle that says deadline on it. And it was just inspired by this idea that creativity requires constraints, that creativity is better with a deadline. And I think Sublime is all about celebrating creativity, collecting things. But damn, like do something with that. Light a deadline candle and like, you know, get to work.

50:49And yeah, but I think more broadly, the deadline candle comes from, it's like, like the thing that works these days is you have to do things that people remember. Like, see, Alex remembered the deadline candle. How many, like, what are, you are scrolling all the time. Like, what do you remember that you scrolled on today? Like, for the most part, nothing. And so I just think so much of building a company like Sublime in this day and age is about just, like, I don't think there's a playbook. You just keep doing things that are memorable, you know?

51:22Ellis:The thing I remember from my feed today is that I posted some beautiful film photos and some guy told me that they were shit but that my kid is still cute. So that's what I remember from my timeline today. it's just so tragic that the negative stuff makes such a bigger mark on you in terms of your memories. And I mean, that's what interests me about these types of products, whether they're more positive social products like retro, the kind of friends only Instagrammy photo sharing thing, or daily productivity tools like I just got a Hobo Nietzsche notebook. I mean, it becomes very clear at the end of the day or even at the end of the morning if you spend it using those types of tools or not.

52:09Ellis:Here's my next question for you, though, which is that I think historically a lot of the knowledge management tools or even the private social tools have people just kind of haven't built a habit, hate to say, because there isn't as much feedback from people, whether it's likes, comments, otherwise as they get elsewhere, how do you keep that feedback loop rolling? Not necessarily even from others, but even for yourself to keep creating. I mean, God, I've quit a hundred different notes or collecting tools over the years. Totally. Totally. I mean, yeah, I think that's a fair question. I mean, the way that I sort of look at it is if you cultivate, like, I think investing in a curated references library, the feedback loop has to come from the impact that that will generate on your life.

53:02And so, for example, like, I have a collection of emails that I have received that are really good. I call it, it's a, the collection is called Got Got. So it's basically like things that like effectively sold me. I was like, oh, like I want this. And so I'm collecting instances on the internet where I was effectively sold something. And so the next time I'm going to put together some copy, I'm going to go to that collection and I'm going to hit the chat button on Sublime and I'm going to open up Claude or ChatGPT window. And I'm going to be like, use these references as a way to help me do why.

53:43And so I think that that's where my mind is. Like the thing that didn't exist in the past is all of this power. But if you have taste and you can use AI tools effectively, you can generate impact. And I refuse to add likes to Sublime. I think that it should be a quiet space for discovery. Like to me, there's just like certain things that we will not compromise on. And that's one of them. You will not go viral on Sublime. And actually, I think that's a feature, not a bug. So the kinds of things that you come to do here are just fundamentally different. And I think our job is to educate people.

54:26Ellis:Yeah, I mean, I hate to say I feel like I've heard, you know, values like that from so many people over the years, even early Instagram, early Tumblr, early Pinterest, early all of them. I feel like it is wholesome and easy to say, you know, if I'm a user, like, why do I believe you that you're going to be able to stay true to it? I don't know if you ever saw my big butthurt monologue on The Verge called Social Media is doomed to die. I guess a lot of it just comes back to like how much money you raise and thus the expectations you create for yourself. But I mean, that is one of the privileges of being a founder like company is you do get to make rules like that.

55:07But when times get tough, you know, what happens? Yeah, I mean, I always come back to like, because at the end of the day, like I could do whatever I want. The only reason to trust me is like, I'm asking you to trust me. But I can change my mind.

55:25Ellis:But I think I guess that's what the YouTube videos do, huh? Yeah, I mean, there's there's a version of that. But I really think that it's important to interrogate someone's motivation for doing something like legitimately with this product. All I wanted was to solve something for myself. I want this thing to exist in the world. Doesn't mean that, like, you know, eventually if I wanted to build the fastest growing thing, like. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe that's in the cards for me. But for this product specifically, I think that my sort of job is to steward this responsibly so that it exists for the people to whom it is very meaningful and to continue to steward it in the right direction.

56:05Now, you know, this is why, like, people thought, like, the blockchain is trustless and this and that. And I don't really buy that argument too much. But yeah, fundamentally, you're trusting people is really what it comes down to with everything. You can put Sublime on the blockchain and then it all comes home. No, no. PTSD. Like, I will not try anything blockchain related again. I mean, I will say, like, portability is a big thing for us. You know, like, we make it so easy for you to, like, port. Like, the whole premise of this tool is this is not meant to be a place where you're held captive here.

56:45The idea that you take these things elsewhere to create things. And so, you know, a lot of what we've done and what we continue to kind of orient the roadmap around is portability.

56:55Ellis:Yeah, props on that. I actually had that written in my notes that the pro plan advertises export features, like being able to dump your stuff, I think, into, is it JSON or whatever you want? I don't know how. Yeah, into whatever you want. And forever, I feel like that has needed to be one of the digital rules of the web and of these services. And I think for far too long, these companies have just kind of gotten away with saying, oh, I don't really have the time to add an export feature or whatever. But especially with, you know, increasing antitrust scrutiny on the big companies, you're starting to see more companies do it.

57:33Ellis:And I'm sure it makes you feel a little funny sometimes, but then the best product should win, right? Totally, totally. I mean, it's table stakes, I think, for something like us. And, you know, I mean, you mentioned, Ellis, at the beginning of the call, how you're helping companies create language that is different. And sometimes, like, it doesn't even matter if you're worse, but, like, different is better than better. That's so true. That's so true. Like, you know, like there's a lot of things about Sublime that are still clunky, but there's no other tool on the Internet for this, the kind of content that people add to Sublime where you can find similar ideas of this kind of caliber.

58:16And so that alone is, you know, is the thing that people continue to come to us for, even if it's worse on other dimensions. but I think where I'm going with this is I is you kind of see two kinds of founders or companies these days where in some cases it's a race to the box I mean you think of like v0 bolt lovable etc like for me it's interchangeable I mean I kind of use them all but it's like whatever charges like they're pretty interchangeable and I think part of what I'm trying to do with sublime is we're we have this core software product but we do events we do merch we do zines we're building a world and i think as long as we don't betray our values and sensibilities i think the hope is that nobody can do sublime like we can do sublime they can do something kind of different but but i you know i i just i don't know my strategy is like carve out my lane and chill is my business strategy.

59:16I'm glad you brought that up. That's what I was going to ask. Like, if someone just vibe codes their own version of Sublime, what do you do? And it's like, well, I've got the merch, I've got the zine, I've got the everything, the network built around it. You know, that can't be vibe coded yet. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. My take on the, you know, everyone's going to vibe code their own thing is like, that to me brings a little bit like everyone is going to 3D print everything. You know, like the, or, you know, like, there's like so many things that are open source. Like I can open source Sublime tomorrow.

59:49You're not going to go through the pain of doing that. Like the amount of, even with the advances in engineering tools, et cetera, like the number of edge cases and the maintenance required for these things. So I sort of like, my contrarian view is that, is that like, what's on my home screen? You know, linear Slack, Apple notes. Like I don't have a single have I put a tool on my home screen personally? Do you guys? No. Yeah. No, I do not. I mean, Ellis worked with Eugenia at Wabi who's been on the show and I think they're doing really interesting things on mobile. But yeah, nothing I've seen that's like home screen worthy yet.

1:00:28Yeah. I mean, I love what Wabi is doing. I think it's like this idea of software as content, I think is very interesting. But I feel pretty strongly that software for the big kind of recurring things we do in our lives, I'm not worried about that. That said, a lot of where I'm investing my energy is we're doing a ton of events. We're investing in relationships. It's the world building, I think, that is hard to replicate at the end of the day. You also have a Substack. And, you know, as a relative newcomer to Substack myself, but where I'm kind of staking my future media career, any tips? Any tips?

1:01:13What's your free to paid ratio? How do you think about growth, retention? Open up the dashboard. But no, seriously, you've been on there for a while. And it seems like you've built a good audience on there. And have you always just been a writer? Has that always been part of what you do? or was it something you kind of made a concerted effort to do around the company? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I started writing a sub-sec newsletter in 20, I don't know if it's 2019 or 2020, but I think I was like, I was one of the first like people hanging out there. It was very janky. It was very different. I love writing.

1:01:49I think that for me, I sort of like wrote my way into clarity on what I wanted to build is really what it comes down to. And I decided to open that process. So like the entire history of building this company, you know, is accessible on Substack, you know, so somebody were to start today, like, are you going to do something with this brand new person you don't trust or, you know, go through the past five, six years of history here and kind of see a trail of evidence of just like caring, you know, like, I think caring is a competitive, such a strong competitive advantage these days. Everything is so disposable.

1:02:27But you asked about Substack. Yeah, I mean, they've built a network now. So I would say it's a big part of our distribution strategy. I'll give you an example of something I did this week.

1:02:37Ellis:Yeah, I saw you guys have your Substack subscription as part of your lifetime Sublime. Don't worry. We'll turn the referrals on sources to Sublime after this. We'll start referring to Please do. Please do. Well, it's funny. The only thing that's different about the basic plan on Sublime and the Premium Plus plan is the Substack subscription. And a good number of people choose that. So I don't know. I guess that says something about the way people relate to the product. It's not just as a utility tool, which it is, but there's kind of more that they're getting. but you asked about Substack. It's interesting that here's something I did this week that has been very helpful.

1:03:18So creator partnerships can be effective but it's a little bit like, it's a little bit of a wild west out there, right? It definitely is. You know, like, I don't know. It's like, it gives me a little bit of an ache. Unless you work with a trusted reporter who is authoritative in the space with a decade of experience. Yes, I hear you. Alice, I mean, let's talk. Let's talk. But I basically sent out a note on Substack and I said, I want to try an experiment. I want to pay 10 writers$500 to write and, you know, like Sublime will sponsor the newsletter. And I got like dozens and dozens of writers and good ones.

1:04:01And essentially, so yeah, listen, every era has its own like, what are the opportunities to like? what is business? You build something people want, you find people who want that thing. And so where do you find people today? You know, I feel like a lot of the playbook is like, you know, Facebook ads or Instagram ads are so expensive and SEO, like you don't know if, you know, the AI box is going to kill your traffic anyways. And so, I don't know, for us, I think Substack is an interesting place. And I think we've been kind of early in exploring and we, you know, I think we'll continue to do stuff there because it's working.

1:04:33So maybe I should create a software company to tack on the MySubstack to help MySubstack grow. Is that what you're saying? I think you should. It's not a bad idea.

1:04:44Ellis:I mean, is that not one idea for the future, right? Like, I saw that in your lifetime subscription, you also get access to your archives, including your vision deck and even your raw Figma files and things like that. Like you're offering, you've got the candle, you've got the zines, events, Figma files, YouTube videos, sub stacks. Like tech people don't understand that a moat can even look like that, I feel like. And one of the reasons they don't understand it, I think, is because they think of it all as kind of like brand or packaging or whatever. And they think, oh, if my product is similar to others, I'm just going to have to fight in the rat race to be 5 % better and add better markdown support, better than Sublime.

1:05:29Ellis:But in reality, there have been commoditized products for decades and decades and decades, and they differentiate on experiences, brands, ideas, philosophies, opinions, all these reasons that allow things to give you hashtag meaning when you engage with that product. And there's just so much more to do, I think. I don't know how you feel about prioritizing all that stuff versus the software, but um it definitely seems like the way of the future yeah i mean it definitely feels like like the sulfur is the core right but but that's the beauty of building a company right now is you could do a lot more you know like like a lot of these initiatives like the hard part is coming up with the ideas i think you know like i to me there's this sort of like thomas edison famously said that genius is uh one percent inspiration 99 perspiration and i think it's sort of flipped where it's like now it's 99 inspiration one percent perspiration so if you have the ideas like you know and like they're good and they resonate with people like that's the hard part is coming up with things that will land with people that will move people that will compel people into action once you have that like i don't know launch the deadline candle yeah listen like sublime is engineers and me, you know, and like, we do all this stuff, you know.

1:06:55So it's interesting that you mentioned like a lot of tech companies don't understand that. But I think that there's no better way to get attention than to be distinctive.

1:07:08Ellis:Yeah, my therapist told me this term individuation that I like using instead of the common self-actualization. A little bit of a nuance there. And I love any product that's trying to help people build themselves, you know, whether it's a journal, like I worked with a company called Lightpage recently, that was a lot of fun. And what it did was when you would journal about something, it wouldn't say, you're so right. It would send you quotes, articles, and art the next day that like relates. And I'm like, banger, that's awesome. And because it doesn't need to be a massive VC-backed company, and it can just be a handful of people, it feels more possible now to build these funny hybrids.

1:07:55Ellis:I don't know if you are friendly with the every folks, but I've been subscribed to that kind of like the combination of interesting software and interesting newsletters. And obviously, all of our subscriptions will come and go. but I think the combination is interesting for sure. What's interesting is that a company like every, I've spoken to Dan about this. This is not the kind of company that fits neatly into a deck that gets approved by a committee to the, like, you know, like none of these things, like if we had a board that, and I was like, yeah, we're going to make a deadline candle. And like, suddenly the thing goes viral.

1:08:35I'm like, how do you even quantify the fact that Like this morning, someone became a lifetime member. And then we ask in the field, like, how did you hear about us? And he's like, oh, I bought your zine three years ago. How do you quantify that? You know, three years ago, like the tool fits into their life three years later. And so I just feel very strongly, you have to know, like, it seems like a really good time for me or for everyone to look in the mirror and figure out what can you do? Not what are others doing, but who are you and what can you do? I think that's a very hard question to answer.

1:09:18But I think that for the most part, you ask around like, yes, there's a lot of content, but I don't think that amount of content is like matched by the amount of good stories. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, but the reality is I think there's just such a dearth of like, why are you building this? Why you? I really think that like look in the mirror thing is very hard to do these days because we're so exposed to what everyone is thinking and saying all the time. You forget like to listen to the sound of your own intuition. But that's what I try to remind myself is is I you know, it's very easy to have FOMO as you're a building.

1:10:01But if I sit and journal, what are the things that have moved the needle for this product or company? They're usually the things that are true to us. It's not us trying to be like, oh, everyone's hiring, you know, an 18 year old TikTok UGC army to go flood the Internet. Like, I don't think, you know, like, I'm like, damn, that's Eve. Like, we work very hard for, you know, for our default to live state. Like, you know, you see the guy who generated 60 ,000 users over a weekend, vibe-coded product with a TikTok UGC army. How many of those people are going to be around in two, five, 10 years?

1:10:38Ellis:Yeah, I mean, I think the conventional wisdom in tech journalism and criticism is just, you know, it's going to destroy all these jobs and that'll kind of be that. And I think, you know, we'll see how that shakes out. But I've definitely become a lot more optimistic on the idea of people actually expanding what they create. I mean, me, for example, I've always thought of myself as a bit of a product designer in my heart, but because I couldn't use Figma, I couldn't do it. You know, now I actually, I don't feel like we're even quite there yet, but soon I'm going to be able to make whatever apps I want using my unique insights about life or about writing or about meaning or finding yourself.

1:11:22Ellis:I also saw that you posted some stuff on, I forget the name of it. It's a site where you can like list your, it's where you have your merch and stuff like that, if I could easily create and ship a book, I would consider it. And I do think maybe that's the ultimate founder leverage, no matter what you're making, is just to think of what your ideas are that are most interesting. And then how many different expressions can it have? Like, I want to put my mantras on a hat or a shirt. As soon as that's easy, I'll do it. Totally. And I think we're slowly getting to that world. I mean, And I've, like, we're still not there, I think, with a lot of the kind of precision and control that someone like you needs in terms of the kind of fidelity of the final output.

1:12:07But I think we'll get there. And what's interesting to me is that in that world, like, to me, it's sort of backwards to think, oh, I have to learn technical skills in order to be creative. Why do I need to, like, learn technical skills to be creative? Like, the whole idea is that all you need to do is be creative. And then the idea is like it seems like a really, really great time for people who have I mean, the word obviously gets thrown around a lot. But but I think this what I think of taste, I just think of this bone deep feeling that you've made something good. And I think for a lot of people to to make something good required a lot of money.

1:12:48But if you have the vision in your head, I yeah, we need to tell better stories. I just think that it's a tragedy that this is such an interesting time. I think arguably this is the most compelling time in the history of technology philosophically. And I think there are not enough people telling good stories about what that future could look like.

1:13:10Ellis:So with the little time we have left, I'm super curious to learn how you are raising your kids with technology so that I can follow your ideas here. I have not hired anyone to teach my kids vibe coding. That's the beauty of living in Miami. My kids are playing sports all the time. They're outdoors a lot. I think that the thing that I try to, I have a 10-year-old, by the way, and like we fight over his tech use. So I'm still stumbling my way into fluency on these topics. But I think the thing, the world is changing and nobody knows what the heck the world will look like 10 or 20 years from now.

1:14:00So I'm not going to sit here and have a strong opinion on you should learn Python or not Python. honor of the end i don't know but what i do know is that cultivating relationships like relationships are everything and to me that's the thing is like i've given them an incredible community we are part of an amazing world like we feel like we're part of an incredible local community here and to me like seeing that they have a vibrant like social life and incredible relationships that that's it for me like as long as i give them that you know you you deal with uncertainty with your people, like everything else should fall into place.

1:14:37Ellis:I've certainly found that with my own daughter, who's four and a half, she'd rather be going to a party in the community than playing on her iPad. You know, like a lot of this stuff is more fun, more rewarding, more fulfilling. And I think kids understand that. I'm definitely gonna be interested to see, though, how the next wave of treats social media, especially since it's becoming pretty common understanding now that we all do it because we feel like we have to. But the likes and the performance just feels like we're monetizing ourselves and trying to turn all of ourselves into a business. And yeah, I like your point, though, that it's like we kind of can't know right now.

1:15:27We go from being extremely online to, okay, let's go analog, touch grass. And I don't know, like, I don't know, I tend to look at the world in shades of gray. It's like, we got to learn to live with technology. We're not going to go swear off our phones and live in a farm. Like, you know, that's not what most people are going to do. But how can we learn to live with this thing and in healthy ways? And I think, I don't know, for a long time, like complaining to me feels pretty boring in general. Like the idea of like, I hate Twitter. I'm going off Twitter and announcing that on Twitter.

1:16:04Ellis:Spoken like a true founder. Just build it. I don't know. But I think parenting is a hard one in this day and age. Well, I think we're almost out of time here. What haven't we covered, Sari? What else is on your mind at the moment? What else is on my mind? Are second brains actually real? It's a good question. Are second brains actually real? I think that the biggest value to me of having this practice of just, as we were talking about, our relationship with social media, I feel like I just dip my toes on social media, pick the things that are interesting to me, and I bring them back and I workshop them.

1:16:52That's a very human, that's a very intentional process. I, like, the Sublime brand and, like, my style is not, like, I'm not promising some crazy efficiency, like, utopia. So personally, we've attached to this language, but I tell my team that in 10 years, we will have been successful if people talk about a sublime library as a category, not as a second brain, you know, digital garden or whatever. Jimmy Buffett famously said that, he said, it's ironic that I was never categorizable and now I'm a category. and I feel like I want, I'm excited to graduate from the era of, oh, sublime is a second brain.

1:17:43Some people say it's a second brain with a soul. Like, no, you know, like the world right now is so devoid of wonder and a sublime library has to be like a new category, but again, head in the clouds, feet on the ground. So it'll take us 10 years to get there.

1:18:01Ellis:I'm so happy Jimmy Buffett has officially graced the pod. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a blast. All the best. And yeah, we'll see you in various places, shapes, and forms on the internet, I would think. This is so fun. You guys are funny. Thank you, Sari. Thank you.

1:18:24And that is it for this week's show. Don't forget to like, subscribe everywhere you get podcasts. We are access.show on the interwebs for all those links. And you can find us in video at AccessPod on YouTube.

1:18:38Ellis:If you like this episode, leave a five-star review, clip it to your sublime, thumbs it up, and share with a friend. You can find me at Hamburger on Twitter and at Meaning.Company for your startup storytelling needs. And you can find my newsletter at sources.news. access is part of the vox media podcast network and the show is produced by hooked creators bye bye

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