I want my own personal agent that I can collab with for years. Not just a chatbot that helps me write or code, and not some SaaS product that feels incredible right up until the company behind it changes the rules of engagement.

I want a system that actually feels like an extension of me. A second brain in the real sense. A place where my notes, morning pages, memos, goals, projects, links, drafts, screenshots, half-finished thoughts, and recurring questions can live and compound over time. And if that’s what I’m building, I want full control over it.

That part feels obvious to me now in a way it didn’t before. For a while, I was willing to trade control for magic. If the model was good enough, useful enough, human enough, I could ignore the rest. I could tolerate the outages, the weird product choices, the clunky interfaces, the feeling that none of this was actually mine.

But eventually that starts to wear on you.

Especially when you’re trying to build something deeper than a workflow hack.

The more personal software gets, the less acceptable it feels to have that relationship mediated by a company that can shut you out, rate-limit you, or decide your use case no longer fits their strategy.

I don’t want the thing that knows my writing, my taste, my obsessions, and my private thoughts controlled by any company. I don’t want to build a real memory layer on top of servers I don’t control using a model I can lose access to six months from now because demand spiked or incentives changed. If this thing is going to become part of how I think, it can’t be fragile. And it definitely can’t belong to them.

Closed models still feel more alive than anything else. That’s real. Claude Opus 4.6 feels closer to a legit collaborator than anything I’ve ever used. The conversations are warm. Fluid. Weirdly human. However, relying solely on OpenAI and Anthropic feels like a massive long-term risk.

I want hardware I can control, and ideally, models I can control and run on my own servers. I want a memory store I can inspect and back up. I want the vault to be mine. I want the agent to be mine. If one company disappears or changes direction, I still want the system. To achieve this, the primary tools one uses must be open.

Never bet against open source.

I still reserve the right to get seduced by some god model from Anthropic later. But if I’m serious about building a personal agent that truly feels like an extension of myself, then I need to treat it like infrastructure.

And infrastructure should be owned, not rented.

— Daniel

Publish into the void.

Pour your soul into the digital page. Hit send…

Crickets.

No reply. No signal that anyone on the other end felt something. The quiet hum of algorithms deciding whether your words deserve to exist.

Every writer I know has felt this. That strange paradox of being more connected than any generation in history and yet more isolated in the act of creation than ever before.

The feeds are louder than they’ve ever been. Ads, engagement bait, brainrot, power grabs. The public internet, the one we grew up believing in, is long gone. Real voices are getting harder to find. Not because they stopped speaking. Because the noise swallowed them whole.

has a soluiton.

It’s called DFOS. The Dark Forest Operating System.

If you don’t know Yancey, you should. He co-founded Kickstarter. Started . And he’s been writing about the state of the internet with the kind of clarity that forces you stop stop scrolling. His thesis is simple: the internet isn’t dying. It’s migrating. Moving from the loud, extractive surface layer into smaller, quieter, more intentional spaces underneath.

Yancey is building the foundation to support that migration. DFOS is a new operating system for cooperation. A place where group chats, members, shared money, and private feeds work together under one roof. Lightweight and intentional. Built for people who want to make things together, not perform for strangers.

and I have created a space for Indie Thinkers inside DFOS.

You can think of it like a stripped-down Discord, but with a philosophical backbone. The interface is clean. The signal-to-noise ratio is high. And the most exciting part hasn’t even shipped yet: a shared Treasury.

Here’s what I’ve always believed about Indie Thinkers. The newsletter, the essays, the reading recommendations. Those are the surface. The real purpose of this community has always been something deeper: pooling our resources and attention toward building something greater than the sum of its parts.

A Treasury makes that tangible. It means we can collectively fund projects, support writers, back ideas we believe in. Together. Not as passive readers. As co-creators. The audience becomes the author.

That’s the shift Yancey is betting on. And I think he’s right.

I’ll be putting my money where my mouth is and you’ll see this treasury grow organically every single week.

We’ve all spent the last few years watching the creator economy tell us to build personal brands, grow followings, and monetize our audiences. And some of that works. But it misses the deeper hunger most of us have. The hunger to belong to something. To contribute to a shared vision instead of performing a solo act.

Indie Thinkers was always supposed to be that kind of place.

DFOS gives us the tools to make it real.

We’ll be opening the space up soon.

Consider this a heads-up.

If you’ve been wanting to write more and build more alongside people who get it, this is the space we’ve been building for you.

More details to come.

— Daniel

Here’s the thing.

You have more than enough time.

You have more than enough skills.

You have more than enough tools.

You have more than enough goals.

You have more than enough agents.

You have more than enough insight.

You have more than enough agency.

You have more than enough intuition.

You have more than enough expertise.

You have more than enough confidence.

You don’t have enough focus to succeed.

I’m making a conscious decision to focus on as few tools as possible.

My current bag.

Current setup in Notion.

I’m leveraging Tiago Forte’s PARA framework with the addition of a daily Journal plus a Tasks database.

Tasks may or may not be tied to a specific project.

I expect to do the majority of my “knowledge work” in Notion moving forward. I don’t use Notion Agent at the moment, but a massive upgrade is coming next week.

Most people I know haven’t leveraged the Agent feature in a serious way.

Myself included.

It’s felt more like a toy than a serious collaborator.

This was hilarious.

I gave it a simple task.

I want to go viral. Make no mistakes.

Millions of views are inevitable.

Jokes aside,

Something more useful is coming soon.

I value minimalism. Simplicity.

Obsidian is all the rage right now because of how everyone is leveraging Claude Code to organize and automate everything. I was tempted to give it another shot. So tempted, in fact, that I spent 2 hours yesterday getting the setup “just right” with the goal of avoiding the permanent underclass.

Then I scrapped all of it. Realized I fell into the shiny object trap, again.

Obsidian is incredible.

I’m stoked that Kepano and the crew are having this moment.

The CLI is dope.

There’s only one problem.

I can’t get rid of Notion, and that’s ok.

Once you start collaborating with other people, you have two options.

I’m still searching for my life’s work, but no matter what it is, I am certain it will be collaborative. There’s an obsession with the solopreneur ideal and the first single-person billion-dollar company.

I’m not interested.

The future belongs to small teams, not superheroes.

Fin

I’m curious,

What’s your stack?

How many tools are you living with day to day?

Let me know in the comments below.

— Daniel

I feel a deep need and responsibility to learn these tools, the value they provide, how they impact the company I work for, and how they impact the people I have chosen to support outside of my 9-5. It legit feels irresponsible and negligent not to be living in Claude Code every single day.

If I’m going to live and breathe these tools, why not write about how you’re using them and what’s interesting to you? What you think doesn’t work well yet? What has drastically improved since the last time you tried it? What tools are you paying for? What haven’t you tried yet?

I’m not interested in writing how-to articles. Nope, not one bit. I do enjoy learning about companies, founders, their unique angles on a problem. Packy McCormick is one of my favorite writers and I love his deep dives.

Not Boring by Packy McCormick

a16z: The Power Brokers

Welcome to the 310 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since Tuesday! Join 256,606 smart, curious folks by subscribing here…

Read more

3 months ago · 326 likes · Packy McCormick

I’m struggling with my identity as a writer, that’s the cold truth. Which is why I can’t figure out what to write about. I’ve been admittedly distracted by so many incredible advances in the knowledge work space, seemingly on a daily basis, that I’ve completely lost focus on who I want to be as a writer and the daily actions necessary to get to my desired destination.

But, what is that destination?

I think it looks a lot like Packy McCormick and Reggie James, who just landed an incredible gig at General Catalyst as a creative director.

Telling stories about the people and companies I admire.

The destination is being able to do this every day.

What’s funny is, I’ve already arrived, and yet, I’m not writing. The “destination” I’ve set out to drive towards is a place that I should technically always exist in. There’s no reason why I can’t tell stories about the people and companies I admire, right now.

Why am I not doing this? What’s stopping me?

If I’m being honest, the biggest blocker in my brain is distribution.

I’ve been writing on the internet for a long time now, and I’ve never, ever, really had a viral hit. That’s ok, it doesn’t really bother me that much, but it does color my decision-making. I think I’m stuck on the fact that I could spend so much time on a Packy McCormick deep dive, only for a few hundred people to read it and for 5 people to comment on it.

The problem, for all of us, isn’t that we can’t get distribution; it’s that we can’t guarantee it, and that uncertainty is paralyzing.

This is why SEO and Domain Ratings are so fascinating to me, because this is the closest way to guarantee distribution. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but it feels like the closest thing out there.

If you write something that matches search intent and build enough authority, traffic arrives whether you’re sleeping or not. It’s the antithesis of the viral lottery. But here’s the issue... SEO-driven content and Packy McCormick-style deep dives are different games. One optimizes for what people are already searching for. The other creates demand for something people didn’t know they wanted.

What’s the point if nobody is listening?

Of course, writing is thinking, I know that.

I should write because I love to do it and I’ve somehow forgotten this important fact.

You shouldn’t write because you want thousands of people reading it.

But that’s how I feel at times.

So maybe the writing, itself, is not fulfilling enough.

That’s sad, and terrible, but it’s the truth.

I don’t need millions, thousands will do just fine.

I don’t just want to be heard, I also want to make someone pause and think.

I don’t need 130 million views like Dan Koe’s latest piece.

I just want modest adoration, not household name recognition.

I’ve got this all wrong though, and I know better.

Here’s a reframe. What if the goal isn’t thousands of readers, but being the person who deeply understands the companies and founders I’m curious about? The writing becomes the vehicle for my own education, and the audience is a byproduct. Write to learn. The readers will come because the learning is genuine.

I love to write. I know this to be true because I’ve been writing for the past 16 years and it’s one of the great joys of my life.

I love how it clears my head.

I love the cadence and rhythm of words dancing across the page.

I love how prose can reach anyone, anywhere in the world.

Even if it’s just one person.

I need to focus on inputs, not outputs.

Write every day.

Write about the people and companies you admire.

Here’s what I’m thinking about:

As I close out the year, this line still blows my mind almost every single day.

Then Karpathy decided to break the internet yet again this past Friday.

I think Karpathy and most of us feel behind because the definition of programming is changing almost every week.

I started learning how to code back in 2014, and it completely changed my life.

But how I learned is no longer relevant, and what I learned is 90% irrelevant.

Indie Thinkers

Mornings, Nights and Weekends

Change is hard…

Read more

2 years ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Daniel Hunter

Many have asked: In 2026, would you still learn how to code?

Yes, but not in the traditional sense.

Learn how to build and leverage software.

Learning systems engineering, automation, marketing, user research, understanding leverage, social psychology, etc., yes, these are still a few of my favorite things, and companies are desperate for people with these skills.

Understanding how software is built and maintained at scale is still incredibly valuable. It always will be. The best way to learn is to build, ask questions, build some more, and ask more nuanced questions.

Repeat.

— Daniel

Here are some of the best things we read in 2025:

Tumse Na Ho Paayega

How to live an intellectually rich life

Go to the main page of Wikipedia…

Read more

a year ago · 8726 likes · 281 comments · Utsav Mamoria

Patchwork

Notes on Internet Addiction

I grew up on the internet, and I love it, but something broke in me during the COVID era and its aftermath. I worked remotely in the crypto industry for 5 years, spent all my spare time on Twitter, and got stuck in a doom loop of e-addiction that I couldn’t unplug from. It fried my brain. So, I took a break this year to reset and reckon with my relation…

Read more

4 months ago · 159 likes · 22 comments · Ben Roy

Kyla’s Newsletter

Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy

Good morning from Washington DC! This is a long one, so it might be cut off in your inbox. Also, if you’re looking for an economic holiday gift for your loved ones (or for anyone at all), and want to support local bookstores In This Economy? is a great gift…

Read more

4 months ago · 1046 likes · 111 comments · kyla scanlon

The Etymology Nerd

slop capitalism and dead internet theory

Early this January, while we were all looking the other way, the slop revolution unfolded right under our noses…

Read more

a year ago · 934 likes · 28 comments · Adam Aleksic

signull vs. noise

the new power stack

not wealth. not title. not access…

Read more

a year ago · 81 likes · 5 comments · signull

The Sublime

What matters in the age of AI is taste

The more I use AI, the more I realize ignoring its creative potential is like dismissing the ‘90s internet as a porn delivery system…

Read more

a year ago · 286 likes · 38 comments · Sari Azout

Chris Best

Make something people want to do together

About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the phrase that became our motto: Make something people want. We've learned a lot since then, but if I were choosing now that's still the one I'd pick. [emphasis added…

Read more

10 months ago · 146 likes · 18 comments · Chris Best

Yancey Strickler

Defining groupcore

In a recent post I wrote that Metalabel’s focus is groupcore: software, tools, economics, spaces, and ideas that help creative people cooperate. But what does groupcore mean? Can one groupcore as a verb? Is groupcore distinct from other forms of coordination we already know…

Read more

5 months ago · 46 likes · 5 comments · Yancey Strickler

crystal clear

literally just do things

A few days ago, I was on FaceTime with my best friend (who coincidentally just texted me as I wrote this, hello synchronicity), telling her about a new endeavor I’m excited about. I was telling her I realized there’s one thing I’d really like to do more of in my work, and that’s creative direction—so I went down a TikTok rabbit hole of creative director…

Read more

a year ago · 51084 likes · 706 comments · Erifili Gounari

Escaping Flatland

Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself and bloom

Brioches and Knife, Eliot Hodgkin, 08/1961…

Read more

7 months ago · 1489 likes · 51 comments · Henrik Karlsson

P.S. Being basic as a virtue

Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, Giorgio de Chirico, c. 1914

It’s the week of December 14th, 2025.

Here’s what I’m thinking about:

I started to respond to and realized it was getting long.

A lot of us, myself included, are still in denial that the old playbooks work. The first step is probably just accepting that they don’t. At least not like they used to.

Attention used to be much cheaper. Algorithms were more friendly. Followers mattered more. The advice was simple. Post consistently, play the long game, and people will find you. And for a while, it worked. But that era is over, and we’re all struggling even if we haven’t publicly admitted it yet.

Paul’s note reminded me of why shut down Write of Passage.

AI is part of a bigger story which is that the internet is in a new era. Write of Passage was based on a simple idea: write consistently, get a following on social media, build an email newsletter, and your life will change. It worked. Our students had amazing outcomes. But then the internet changed, starting with TikTok. We went from a follower-driven graph to a content-driven algorithm. Instead of distributing content based on who follows you, platforms now look at the content itself and spread it to anyone who might be interested. This has caused the value of a follower to go way down. On Twitter, I have people with a fraction of my followers who get more impressions than me. On YouTube, what matters is your click-through rate and average view duration, not subscriber count. This meant that what we were teaching at Write of Passage was no longer an honest approach to success. Now, the way I approach writing is to think of a piece as an event.

— David Perell

Once you accept this reality, opportunities start to emerge.

I keep coming back to the concept of digital real estate.

I’m officially obsessed with micro-apps. Small and focused products that actually do something for people. There’s more leverage in building owned experiences that solve a specific problem and far less leverage in content alone.

My first experiment is going well: TechTwitter.com

The idea is simple. Turn the social media firehose into a library. Curation and multimodal discovery of the best tech-focused content on Twitter. It’s not just about saving people from doomscrolling; it’s a searchable archive optimized for learning rather than engagement. A utility people return to because it solves an acute problem.

New subscribers are a natural byproduct of delivering value before asking for anything. I’m investing in SEO and building domain authority as if it were an appreciating asset. Better search rankings, more clicks, more subscribers.

LLMs are checking domain authority when deciding what to reference, and humans are reviewing citations because they don’t trust outputs blindly. I always look at sources when I get answers from AI. I want to know where certain types of information are coming from, especially when I’m conducting research.

Domain authority isn’t as hard to build as you might think.

I grew the DA for Tech Twitter from 0 to 32 in a month by launching on directories and launchpads. It’s quite effective if you’re intentional about it.

The vision is to build a portfolio of these micro-apps. Small, useful products that compound in value through organic search and AI recommendations.

Digital real estate that appreciates.

Each micro-app will link back to indiethinkers.com, improving the domain authority of the main publication. This will draw more eyeballs to the original essays we publish here. I’m still figuring it out, but that’s the current play.

— Daniel

Here’s what to read this week:

Sunday

Patchwork

Notes on Internet Addiction

I grew up on the internet, and I love it, but something broke in me during the COVID era and its aftermath. I worked remotely in the crypto industry for 5 years, spent all my spare time on Twitter, and got stuck in a doom loop of e-addiction that I couldn’t unplug from. It fried my brain. So, I took a break this year to reset and reckon with my relation…

Read more

4 months ago · 107 likes · 16 comments · Ben Roy

Monday

Escaping Flatland

When is it better to think without words?

Portrait of a Man with Glasses I, Francis Bacon, 1963…

Read more

5 months ago · 650 likes · 34 comments · Henrik Karlsson

Tuesday

postcards by hasif

Things to Leave Behind in 2025

The end of 2025 marks not just the close of a year but the closing of a chapter. In these final moments, there is a subtle whisper that calls us to reflect not just on what we’ve gained, but on what we need to shed, to leave behind. The process of letting go is not a simple one. It requires a willingness to step into a new year free of the emotional clu…

Read more

4 months ago · 966 likes · 14 comments · hasif 💌

Wednesday

maxOS

Building My Backlog

Today, my writing process has evolved. I’ve started to do a better job at writing during moments that motivate me. If I have a thought that inspires me, I’ll start writing and capture the feeling while it’s there. Then eventually I’ll get distracted by something else and move on, only to be inspired by a new idea which I then proceed to write about. As …

Read more

4 months ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Max Nimaroff

Thursday

Build like a scientist

I have almost no proof I existed before age 14

Read more

4 months ago · 10 likes · 6 comments · Dominik Gmeiner

Friday

Write • Build • Scale

1,000 Lessons From Building a $1M Online Business

🎯 The 1,000 Lessons Launch Special…

Read more

5 months ago · 125 likes · 62 comments · Sinem Günel, Philip Hofmacher, and Jari Roomer

Saturday

The Pavement

The era of jobs is ending

Morning again…

Read more

4 months ago · 1027 likes · 88 comments · Antonio Melonio

P.S. Which ecosystem would you choose?.

Here’s what we’re thinking about:

I’m hiring an Executive Software Engineer. Think of this like a Chief of Staff, but your job is to create technology that allows me to scale and move faster.

— Isaiah Taylor

How do you position yourself for a gig like this without building in public?

Thinking out loud on the internet is no longer an activity reserved for creators and influencers. It’s how anyone can get the most interesting opportunities.

There’s no world in which you apply for a job like this on LinkedIn.

You need to build interesting products or write thought-provoking prose.

You need to create a body of work that will speak for you when you’re not in the room.

Isaiah continues:

I’m looking for a general athlete, not a specialist. The more and weirder systems you’ve built with your own hands, the better; but you need to be well-versed in all the latest and greatest ways of creating things wicked fast (Vercel, Replit, AI coders, etc). You’ll be responsible for everything, from front-end design to backend implementation, auth, hosting, maintenance, testing, planning, product ownership, etc.

The lines between roles at startups will continue to blur.

This begs the question.

Should you be a Generalist or a Specialist in the AI Era?

— Daniel

Here’s what to read this week:

Sunday

Beck At It

Set your goals on fire

I failed my 2025 resolutions…

Read more

4 months ago · 17 likes · 9 comments · Becky Isjwara

Monday

Creative Thought Partner 👨‍🎨

The engineer who became a silliness consultant

Hey, it’s Harrison 👋 Welcome to my publication about creativity as a tool for personal growth…

Read more

4 months ago · 5 likes · Harrison Moore

Tuesday

Martian Madness

To Be Honest...

For some reason in my head, I can see the success in front of me like a prophecy just waiting to be fulfilled. Somehow, someway, it will be me that holds the reins, known for my worth, value, and contributions to society…

Read more

4 months ago · 12 likes · 4 comments · Christy

Wednesday

Max’s Newsletter

Staying top of mind (without being weird about it)

There’s this idea that staying top of mind requires some big personal brand strategy, a perfect posting cadence, or a whole content calendar color-coded within an inch of its life…

Read more

4 months ago · 14 likes · 9 comments · Max Pete

Thursday

Sideroad 38

the quiet path to getting noticed

For the past few years, I’ve been helping creators and founders craft their online presence to achieve business goals. I know which psychological buttons to press, which engagement tactics perform, and how to position someone as the expert they want to be seen as. I get them results and opportunities, which I hope means I’m decent at it…

Read more

7 months ago · 277 likes · 41 comments · Ines Lee, PhD

Friday

Not Boring by Packy McCormick

The Company as a Machine for Doing Stuff

Welcome to the 499 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since our last essay! Join 254,224 smart, curious folks by subscribing here…

Read more

5 months ago · 191 likes · 28 comments · Packy McCormick

Saturday

Yancey Strickler

Defining groupcore

In a recent post I wrote that Metalabel’s focus is groupcore: software, tools, economics, spaces, and ideas that help creative people cooperate. But what does groupcore mean? Can one groupcore as a verb? Is groupcore distinct from other forms of coordination we already know…

Read more

5 months ago · 44 likes · 4 comments · Yancey Strickler

P.S. The hat, haircuit, and tattoo framework

This doesn’t really happen anywhere else.

Handles on Twitter are so valuable now that there’s even a new marketplace for them.

You might hate the toxicity. You might despise the owner. You might be exhausted by misinformation, as am I. But if you work in tech or media, you’re probably still there, even if you’re not an active contributor.

Twitter is, and will always be, the internet town square.

When Google ships a new model, they announce it on Twitter. When a founder wants feedback, they post on Twitter. When journalists need to know what people are talking about, they check Twitter. The platform has become infrastructure.

But the town square is loud. Everyone can see what’s happening. Information moves fast. You bump into people you weren’t expecting. Sometimes you witness something important. Sometimes you just get yelled at.

You can’t think deeply in the town square. Everything you say is a performance. The format pushes you toward quick takes. And there’s this anxiety about who’s watching.

Substack is different, and it should focus on staying that way.

Substack is the coffee shop.

People are more vulnerable. They share personal struggles. Half-finished ideas. They’re less afraid and more honest. The long-form format filters for readers who’ll invest time. However, Substack has drifted away from this core value prop.

Twitter and Substack solve opposite problems. Twitter: “I need to know what’s happening right now.” Substack: “I need to think through something that matters.” Threading out a long essay on Twitter feels awkward. You’re still performing. Using Substack for breaking news feels weird with this half-baked trending feature.

I wish Substack would stop doing this.

A city needs both town squares and coffee shops. So does the internet.

The space shapes the thinking. Town squares produce quick reactions optimized for spreading. Coffee shops produce reflection, complexity, vulnerability.

Zuckerberg created Threads and tried to be Twitter with better moderation. LinkedIn tried to be professional Twitter with longer posts. Both struggled because they wanted town square reach with coffee shop depth. You can’t have both. The town square works because it’s open and chaotic.

The coffee shop works because it’s intimate and curated.

Online discourse will never consolidate into one platform.

Substack should take note.

— Daniel

Sunday

The value of writing has officially taken center stage in Silicon Valley.

Anthropic announced this past week a couple of job openings for writers, with starting salaries north of $200,000.

• Editorial, AI for Science

• Editorial, Economics & Policy Lead

Several things jump out at me.

First and foremost, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model is an incredible writer, and the Opus model is a legit researcher. Yet, Anthropic wants to hire humans for the job.

This got a ton of people excited, and rightfully so.

Writers are back!

Writing is THE most important skill of 2026 and beyond, and it’s exciting to see the tech industry placing this much value on something I love to do.

And then a16z announced this… 🤯

Introducing the a16z New Media Fellowship

Watch this space.

Monday

Both Are True

lets talk about substack

I would very much like to open the floor (don’t fall in!) and see how the people of substack are feeling about substack…

Read more

5 months ago · 105 likes · 132 comments · Alex Dobrenko`

Tuesday

Fiona Monga

The New Founders and the Systems They Need

From Overload to Orientation…

Read more

5 months ago · 98 likes · 7 comments · Fiona Monga

Wednesday

The 2hour Creator Stack

The Substack Shift I Saw Coming (and why you need to build differently now)

Substack is not the same platform it was six months ago and if you’ve been here that long, you’ve felt it…

Read more

5 months ago · 236 likes · 67 comments · Benjamin Antoine

Thursday

Creative Thought Partner 👨‍🎨

I'm about to get evangelical about the nomad life

Hey, it’s Harrison 👋 Welcome to my publication about creativity as a tool for personal and professional growth…

Read more

5 months ago · 4 likes · Harrison Moore

Friday

SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB

ADD A VIDEO. GO BACKWARDS. MAKE A ZINE.

My name is Seth Werkheiser and I help creative people quit social media, promote their work in sustainable ways, and rethink how a website and newsletter can work together…

Read more

5 months ago · 24 likes · 7 comments · Seth Werkheiser

Saturday

Anna Mack's Stack

Income diversification 101: land then expand

Bonjour mes amis, I’m writing this week’s newsletter from my second favourite city in the world, Paris! Two quick announcements before diving into today’s post…

Read more

5 months ago · 39 likes · 2 comments · Anna Mackenzie

Sunday

Substack finally acknowledges they essentially built a social network. I’m a fan of notes and the Substack app and I believe is sincere here.

Disjointed

Why we built a social network

On Wednesday night, we hosted a small event at Substack’s New York office to demonstrate the value of Notes…

Read more

5 months ago · 168 likes · 36 comments · Hamish McKenzie

I have no idea how this is going to play out. However, but I think this goes one of two ways. It either destroys the platform within the next 5 years or it becomes THE human-powered respite for writers and creators that are fatigued from AI-slop and bot-replies elsewhere.

Substack either fades into irrelevance, or it becomes even more valuable than Twitter.

I don’t see a middle ground here.

What’s your take?

Monday

Since November 2022, the stock market is up more than 70 percent and job openings are down more than 30 percent. Nothing like this has happened in decades.

—

It’s paywalled but I can share some gift subscriptions, just shoot me a DM.

Derek Thompson

Is This the New ‘Scariest Chart in the World’?

In the last few days, I’ve seen the following chart bounce around my corner of the Internet, often with some commentary declaring it the scariest chart in the world. The graph seems to show that the release of ChatGPT and the ensuing AI boom cracked the US economy in two, crushing the workforce while lifting the stock market…

Read more

5 months ago · 334 likes · 20 comments · Derek Thompson

Here’s a comment I left.

I’ve been mulling over this topic for months now and haven’t been able to articulate what I’m seeing and hearing. I live in Los Angeles, which now feels like ground zero for the bifurcated economy we seem to live in.

Tech is thriving here. Apple is building a new 536,000 square foot office in my backyard, while all of my friends who are gig workers or entertainment veterans are struggling. If you work in the tech industry, as I do, it does feel like a bubble that’s completely separated from reality.

But it feels so weird. And this feeling concerns me.

It feels like a new normal and not a flash that’s doomed to crash.

Tuesday

offline crush

how to use the internet again: a curriculum

The most common (and easiest) thing to do on the internet is complain. The range of topics varies from person to person, but one consistent grumble circles around The Algorithm and it’s incorrect assumptions about what a person might want to consume…

Read more

5 months ago · 539 likes · 38 comments · ✧ brooklyn 𓆏

Wednesday

Kyla’s Newsletter

Who's Getting Rich Off Your Attention?

Good morning!This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber…

Read more

6 months ago · 899 likes · 88 comments · kyla scanlon

Thursday

Shae’s Substack

AI’s Hidden Crisis: The Industry Is Running Out of Data

Fifty thousand people followed me on Instagram because I made a simple, yet bold claim: the AI industry is running out of high-quality data, and humanists hold the key to solving this problem…

Read more

5 months ago · 96 likes · Shae O.

Friday

Creative Thought Partner 👨‍🎨

12 ideas about education that get me out of bed in the morning 🌅

Hey, it’s Harrison 👋 Welcome to my publication about creativity as a tool for personal and professional growth…

Read more

5 months ago · 7 likes · 1 comment · Harrison Moore

Saturday

Max’s Newsletter

The art of writing it down

I’m a big journaler. I can’t remember exactly when I started this practice, but it feels like it has been at least 10–11 years now of journaling. Yes, that includes some breaks in between, but this might be one of my longest hobbies I have ever stuck with…

Read more

6 months ago · 12 likes · 5 comments · Max Pete

— Daniel

Here’s your reading list for the week of October 12th, 2025.

Sunday: The Future of Media-Driven Startups

Earlier this year I spoke with the managing partner of a venture capital firm about the “Every” Thing blueprint and the creator fund from Jack Raines. We talked about how the venture studio model seems poised for a renaissance in the agentic age and he challenge me to try and develop a thesis as a fun though exercise.

My core thesis is a stack:

Collectives → Ecosystems → Communities → Products → Capital

• Collectives blend creative and technical talent to rapidly test and build ideas.

• Ecosystems (like Substack) are leveraged by collectives to build communities.

• Communities become the moat—offering organic growth, trust, and feedback.

• Products emerge from within, often launched through essays and content first.

• Capital follows influence; it becomes most powerful when paired with trust.

Startups have always been laboratories—spaces where people test ideas, fail fast, and pursue concepts that seem crazy until they work. The best founders do things that don’t scale, engage directly with the market, and iterate rapidly.

That won’t change.

But how startups are formed, funded, and grown is undergoing a fundamental shift.

I have a lot of conviction around venture studios in the agentic age because you can take more shots on goal instead of going all in on one idea. Venture studios often raise capital from LPs similar to traditional venture capital firms but it’s now feasible to form a viable studio with far less capital.

When the cost of software development approaches zero, you have to rethink everything — business models, metrics, burn rates, revenue per employee, etc. Investors have to consider the purpose of pre-seed and seed rounds when tiny teams can go from zero to profitability on their own. Bootstrapping isn’t new, but it’s now far easier to get to venture scale without venture capital.

Startups are hiring agents instead of leaning on growth capital.

I read an essay from signüll a while back about the new power stack.

platform > creator > audience > company > capital

This helped me form the basis of a thesis for where I think startups are headed.

I’m calling this the collective stack.

collective > ecosystem > community > products > capital

The Collective leverages an Ecosystem to build Community and Products.

The Community reduces customer acquisition costs and serves as the marketing fuel for new product launches. Successful products generate Capital which is returned to the collective. The dream of the one-person billion-dollar startup is still alive but more and more creators are realizing it’s far easier to win if you collaborate with others.

What happens when you toss a brilliant entrepreneur, engineer, designer, and writer into a room? You get things like Spiral and Cora.

The members of the collective are the founding members of the community.

Members of the collective serve as both creators and curators, building in public while attracting others who share the vision. The collective model allows for rapid ideation, shared resources, and distributed risk. Each member brings their unique audience and expertise, creating a flywheel effect that accelerates growth.

When successful, these collectives can spin out multiple ventures, each benefiting from the combined network effects and creative capital of the group. The key is finding the right balance of autonomy and collaboration.

The most powerful ecosystems are YouTube, Twitter, and Substack.

The smartest people on earth are in at least one. Two of my favorite writers, Packy McCormick and Anu, use two quite well.

Ecosystems > Platforms.

Bluesky is trying to be a viable ecosystem but it unfortunately is running into headwinds from competing protocols I don’t believe you have to choose only one ecosystem and it’s becoming increasingly easy to manage several. It could be an advantage to have different members of a collective leverage the ecosystem that they’re most active in and understand intimately.

Followers and newsletter subscribers alone won’t be good enough.

Community is the metric that truly matters.

Show me your subscriber count and I’ll ask for your engagement rate.

Community will be one of the last moats standing in the creator economy.

A strong community provides organic distribution, rapid feedback loops, and built-in product-market fit validation. They act as both early adopters and evangelists, spreading the word through genuine enthusiasm instead of paid advertising.

The key is fostering authentic connections between members.

This creates a self-sustaining ecosystem where value flows naturally between creators, community members, and the broader market.

The future belongs to creators who understand this dynamic.

An essay should be the first product.

Every spent years building trust by creating brilliant content.

I do believe that software is now a form of content but the focus should be on writing and community building first and foremost.

Engineering as Marketing is a viable tactic to grow an audience but it shouldn’t come at the expense of great writing and storytelling.

A mix of code & prose, one informing the other, is probably the answer here.

Having a ton of money is no longer an advantage. Products are cheap to build and capital is becoming more of a commodity if there’s no influence behind it.

But capital paired with influence and community?

That’s a moat.

Influence amplifies capital’s impact and creates opportunities that money alone can’t buy. When collectives combine capital with the trust and attention of a thriving community, they unlock unprecedented leverage.

— Daniel

Monday: Leap Capital: How Much Do You Need To Quit?

Tuesday: “Be Different” doesn’t work for building products anymore

Wednesday: What’s it like to live in 2025?

Thursday: Why post things online?

Friday: Weird prompts, better answers

Saturday: In the Costco Era of Software, Design Is the Differentiator

I appreciate your feedback. If you enjoyed this piece, drop a like or comment below. You can also send a note to daniel@indiethinkers.com. Would love to hear from you.

— Daniel

Moving Forward

We’ve made an important decision… we’ve decided to sunset the forum and focus 100% of our efforts on the newsletter. I was bullish on the forum, but I must admit I was wrong about how valuable it would be. I still think forums are incredible, and there’s absolutely a place for them on the internet.

Here’s what I got wrong. I believed I needed to build a community on a separate platform outside of the ecosystems that already exist.

When I built the IndieThinkers.com forum, the main purpose was to create a space where people could connect, share ideas, and support each other’s work. That vision was sound. The forum itself worked beautifully and looked great.

But here’s the thing… very few people came consistently.

The problem wasn’t the execution. It was the fundamental premise. I was asking people to add another platform to their already overwhelming digital lives. To check yet another site. To split their attention. No matter how good the forum was, I was fighting an uphill battle against inertia and habit.

“Go where the people are” is an old axiom in community building, and I should have listened to it from the start.

I think I ignored this in part due to the fact that I have a complicated relationship with Substack. There are several things I genuinely love about it, and several things that are bat sh*t crazy. What do I hate? It’s a closed system. There aren’t any APIs I can leverage as a developer to build the kinds of tools and integrations that could make the experience even richer. That kind of platform lock-in has risk.

But I do love the ecosystem.

Ecosystems are so important and critical in the age we’re living in.

The network effects of having thousands of writers and readers all in one place, the cross-pollination of ideas, the serendipitous discoveries… you simply can’t replicate that when you’re building in isolation. Substack has created something rare, even with all the imperfections.

So we’ve decided to lean into this reality. Instead of fragmenting our energy between building out the forum and maintaining it as a separate community, we’re going to focus solely on the newsletter.

We’ll embrace the brilliant writers we’ve met on Substack and grow our community by engaging in comments, fostering dialogue, and prioritizing genuine interaction over platform building. Our guest lectures will be less fragmented and provide a more cohesive experience moving forward. Everything in one place, where you already are.

What’s Next

Our next guest lecture will be from on Tuesday.

Over the next month, I’m thrilled to share original essays from , , , and .

The support we’ve received from our community here on Substack has been incredible. It’s reminded me of something essential; the vision remains even if the form changes. We’re still committed to supporting writers on and off Substack. We’re not dogmatic about platforms. We’re not blind to the risks of putting all your eggs in one basket, and we don’t plan to do so long-term.

But for now, this is where we are. And I look forward to building more tools to help writers get more attention and more eyeballs on their work.

The Real Problem We’re Solving

Content discovery is the chief concern of our time for writers. We need to address it collectively. We don’t need to focus on scale for scale’s sake. Not vanity metrics.

I don’t think I need to say this again, but quality matters more than quantity.

It’s not about reaching 10,000 or 100,000 subscribers. It’s about finding the first 100 true fans, or even just a handful to start. It’s about discovering and nurturing a deep and rich community of people that you can collaborate with, people who genuinely admire your work, people who will support you even when there isn’t a paywall, even when there’s no transaction required. Those are the connections that matter. Those are the relationships that sustain creative work over the long haul.

That’s what we’re building here. That’s what we’re committed to.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

— Daniel

What is your “Life’s Work?”

Figure out what works for you

Growth and consistency are all about finding what works for you, and figuring out what keeps you motivated. What actually helps you improve? Some people like Justin Welsh have elaborate systems for creating and scheduling content, while others just go with the flow. Discover your own optimal way of doing things and ignore the naysayers who try to tell you otherwise. Keep moving, keep doing your thing, and success will follow.

What is the brain doing when it’s resting?

The next time you're bored or start daydreaming, embrace it. That's when the best ideas could potentially turn up. Your brain starts to connect thoughts and experiences in unique ways. Just keep pen and paper close by.

Not all newsletter subscribers are created equal.

Don’t get high off big numbers.

Newsletters with 10,000 subscribers aren’t as valuable as they used to be because they’re not as rare. A lot of creators have crossed this threshold. It’s not just about numbers anymore; make sure you focus on the quality of your audience.

Ship early and often. You never know what will go viral.

By consistently putting your work out there, you increase the chances of getting noticed. Don't wait for perfection or overanalyze every detail. Hit the publish button and let the power of the internet work its magic.

Write for yourself first, the world second.

Writing something that no one reads isn't a waste of time. Overthinking is a massive waste of time. The fear of wasting time is an overlooked cause of procrastination. Keep writing, whether or not you think someone will read it.

Best,

Daniel

Just got home over the weekend from a trip to Barcelona, and I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity to see Sagrada Familia in person.

It’s the most stunning man-made thing I’ve ever seen.

The 9-hour time difference between Spain and Los Angeles is crushing me today, so I’m keeping this post short, but I wanted to at least say hello to you all and highlight what’s coming next.

We’re going to start publishing original essays on indiethinkers.com starting next week. Every Tuesday, starting on September 30th, we’ll publish what we’re calling a “Guest Lecture,” and we’ll kick things off with .

Each Sunday we’ll still publish Think Week. We’ll pick Substack Live. If you’re interested in doing a Live or publishing a Guest Lecture, don’t hesitate to shoot me a DM or an email → daniel@indiethinkers.com.

Best,

Daniel

Writing What You Want to Read

I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately. I listened to a podcast by Alex Banayan. He talked about how he wanted to understand how people like Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and others were able to become great. There wasn't a book that answered the questions he had. So, he wrote the book.

Anything that I've created that I loved always have this ethos: to create the thing I want to see. Any time my brain leans towards "What would they think about it," it never works.

—

The 13 viral marketing laws

Sharing one of my favorite articles I read this week, by Tom Orbach. This post is packed with helpful ideas for marketing.

—

How Pickleball Explains American Culture

This is a good read, though I would argue the baseball chart is a little bit of a moot point (even though I don't care for baseball). How many 50+ year olds play baseball vs. how many 50+ year olds play pickleball? Very different sport/mentality toward age-ism.

Pickleball is definitely the most dominant right now, however, when it comes to actually playing and widespread appeal. I'm skeptical of translating it to consistent television revenues as a pro sport -- and I say that as someone who knows multiple pro pickleballers too.

—

ANALYTICS

I’m currently using PostHog for analytics on indiethinkers.com, and I’m encouraged by these numbers. They are obviously low, but what I’m paying the most attention to is the quality of interactions when people do finally discover the site.

Every metric is an improvement over last month (that’s what those green numbers mean). On average, 72% of visitors don’t just bounce after viewing the first page.

Also, not listed here, 27% of visitors click on an external link.

This is important because one of the main goals of the forum is to drive traffic to essays that are shared. We want to help other writers grow, and we can’t do that if people are visiting their websites and publications.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

We announced paid subscriptions last week, and I’m stoked that we immediately got some contributors. I know most writers would be devastated to see only 5 paid subscribers, but people don’t just give you money because you’re a good person or have a good idea.

Even if both of those things are true, you still have to earn it.

Now, “earning” it doesn’t mean you need to offer a long list of perks in exchange for money. You could simply offer someone the opportunity to support a vision.

To support the work you already do with no expectation of more “things.”

But you still need to have real conversations with human beings, directly.

Most of the paid subscriptions we received came after 1:1 interactions.

A phone call, email, and even iMessage threads with friends.

When you’re trying to measure success or failure, it’s helpful to focus on active subscribers and consider benchmarks as well.

If only 23.5% of our subscribers even saw our announcement email last week, then we only had an opportunity to convert 260 people.

Well, ok, what’s a good conversion rate?

Indie Thinkers falls in the general interest/lifestyle category.

However, this can be a bit misleading because most commonly reported conversion rates are based on total subscriber count, not active/engaged subscribers. If your overall list conversion is 2%, your engaged subscriber conversion might be 4-6%

Alright, so let’s say I should be able to convert 4% of the 260 active subscribers. That’s 10 paid subscriptions, and we’re halfway there.

We will certainly need more active subscribers to achieve our short-term goal of 50 paid subscribers, and we have a number of ideas to help us get there. More on this next week.

QUESTION

Let’s talk about open rates.

23.5% 😅

Well, a lot of our subscribers are on Substack and are probably using the app. This means they might not ever actually receive an email from us.

I’m considering kicking out subscribers who haven’t “opened” an email in the last 90 days. What are your thoughts?

Here’s my question for the week:

Are open rates dead? What metrics actually matter for newsletters?

Talk soon,

Daniel

Sometimes you just need to create what you wish existed in the world.

Even if everyone thinks you're crazy.

Like building a forum.

Or launching subscriptions without paywalls.

I’ve spent an absurd amount of time creating in isolation, but I’ve always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself.

Ideally, a community of writers who invest in each other.

It’s difficult to cut through all the noise on the internet these days. It’s a fierce battle for mindshare and engagement. I believe we’re stronger together. It’s cliché because it’s true. If you’re not partnering and working with others, it’s easier to fail.

We need more communities.

More collective efforts.

Building a community from scratch is hard, but you know what’s harder? Finding opportunities to get paid for simply writing.

Today, we’re launching paid subscriptions to fund Indie Thinkers.

Price? $10 a month. Prose will be the only product.

The revenue generated will fund our new “Guest Lecture” column that will be published directly on indiethinkers.com once a week.

Here are the benefits of subscribing:

• Support independent writers and designers

• 100% of subscription revenue goes directly to contributors

• Contributor badge on indiethinkers.com

Our goal is to publish 4 long-form essays a month.

All of our essays will be public.

Why No Paywall?

Most publications either paywall everything or run in a daily clickbait race to the bottom of the interwebs. We're trying something different: premium content at a price that’s inclusive of a global audience, funded by readers who value thoughtful writing.

We want the best ideas to spread, not get trapped behind walled gardens. Your subscription funds creation, not access.

Think NPR, not Netflix.

Some more thoughts on this.

Landon’s Letters

What People Actually Want Isn’t A Paid Newsletter

I haven't read a full Substack post in months…

Read more

8 months ago · 1643 likes · 309 comments · Landon Poburan

Yes, $100 per essay is painfully low.

But it’s better than or on par with most literary magazines.

We’d prefer this to be $500, but we're starting with what's sustainable.

50 paid subscribers get us to our $100/essay minimum. 150 gets us to $300/essay. 250 gets us to $500/essay plus designer fees.

We're not asking for charity - we're asking for contributors who want to see quality content funded properly. To start, 50 people. $10/month.

In return, we’ll deliver essays from writers you'll want to follow.

The writers we're bringing on to kick things off in September - , , , - are all incredible. They're established voices who could publish anywhere but believe in what we're building.

If this resonates, we’d love for you to subscribe below.

Subscribe now

, shared this quote that I think about almost daily.

Marketing is talking to your people.

Community is building with your people.

We want to build with you and not just talk to you.

What are we getting wrong?

What should we do differently?

How would you like to contribute?

Let us know in the comments below.

— Daniel

Humans don't care for word vomit, and it turns out LLMs don't either.

Context engineering > Prompt Engineering.

This past Friday, I watched a brilliant video from Matt Palmer, a developer advocate at Replit. The core idea to take away is that it's not about how long or clever your prompt is when you're trying to produce a certain outcome from a large language model.

People are just dumping so much into a prompt, thinking that the more they give, the better the model will be able to implement their idea. That's just not the case. You can share unnecessary information or even be too specific. You can share way too much detail that forces it to focus on a particular technology or a specific schema for a database when you should leave it up to the model to figure it out on its own.

Let's say you're building a web application from scratch in Lovable, Replit, or Bolt—maybe your own version of Slack or a blogging platform similar to Medium. You don't need to tell the model exactly how posts or messages should be stored, or specify what fields need to be created in a database. That level of detail can be counterproductive.

A common pattern is to first create a product requirements document in Claude and then feed that into a vibe coding tool like Bolt. When you’re creating that PRD, you should tell Claude or ChatGPT what platform you’re using. It might even help to share the official docs so that the model doesn’t try to use certain technologies that aren’t supported on that platform.

You shouldn't just create a PRD and say, "Hey, I want to rebuild Slack," or "I want to rebuild Substack," or "I want to build my own version of Twitter." Instead, say, "I want to build my own version of Twitter on Replit, and here are the docs. Here's what is possible." That's important context. You don't need to tell a model, "Here are the database tables that you need to create, and here are all the relationships between the different tables in the database."

I will say, one important exception to my “less is more advice” is that you can certainly provide more detail if, and only if, you know what you’re doing. By that I mean, you’ve had experience with software architecture before these tools existed.

Creating art with Midjourney

I've been talking with a lot of artists because I want to create illustrations for essays that we publish on Indie Thinkers. The idea would be that a writer will create an original essay, and then we would pair them with an artist who would create a unique illustration for that essay.

I was fascinated to hear many artists say, "Can I use Midjourney in conjunction with my own original art?" I don't mind that at all. What's interesting is that for a while, I felt there was a lot of resistance against these tools from the art community. Pushback against normies like me who can't draw using them instead of hiring an artist.

It's surprising to think that, in this moment, artists actually want to use these for client work and are asking if it's okay. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it doesn't bother me. I'm totally okay with it. I think Midjourney is incredible. I love how Every pairs AI with original art and creates a beautiful combination of the two.

I can tell it's AI and human-led, but I love it. I think it's really impressive.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. What you like, don't like. If you're an artist, I'm especially interested to hear your take. Are you offended if they want to use Midjourney to create illustrations? Does that bother you at all? If this is something that's inappropriate and I'm not aware of it, I would love to know.

New Indie Thinkers Logo

I'm sharing some examples below of work from an artist I'm considering.

What love to know what resonates, if anything.

Rethinking Community Contributions

Instead of having an open call or lottery for essay submissions, we would proactively reach out to writers and ask them if they're interested in writing a guest lecture post. This would allow us to filter out the noise. If I'm reaching out to someone, I admire their work, and I know that what they would write would be a level of quality and would resonate with the community at large.

If we have an open call and 100 people submit, what percentage of that is going to be noise? What percentage will be individuals who didn't read the requirements or didn't consider the topics we asked for? Then we're in a position where we're writing a lot of rejection letters for things that should have never been submitted in the first place. I don't like that. It's also tough for people to submit multiple times and not get accepted, and to keep saying no to the same person.

It's inbound versus outbound.

Outbound is more intentional and targeted. It will allow us to build a collection of essays on a quarterly basis and work with artists in a sustainable way.

Rule of Three

(1) GPT-5 Hype

The vibes are not immaculate.

There's a lot of disappointment out there.

This pre-launch tweet didn’t help.

Everyone thought it was going to be epic, but it was more about a consolidation of models and the beginning of sunsetting a few that people actually loved.

Slightly related, and this might sound silly, but I just hate referring to ChatGPT as ChatGPT. If it were called something else, I might use it more. I love the name Claude, and I think it's a better model. Now, ChatGPT's voice mode is significantly better than Claude's. There are certain things about it, like memory, that I miss, but I'm okay with just using Claude for now.

(2) Next Level Investments

Something that recently blew my mind: Peter Levels shared he's now making $300,000 monthly from his investment portfolio alone.

This reminds me that investing is still the highest leverage wealth-building activity out there, regardless of how much MRR you generate, how many digital products you launch, or how much you make from coaching.

We get so caught up in optimizing funnels and offers (which are important!) that we forget the basics. If you want to buy back your time and control your life, investing should be your top priority for generating passive income streams. Don't forget the fundamentals.

(3) Seems like Remote is okay?

Levels is making more from RemoteOK than he is from Nomad List.

I don't know when this changed or when the crossover happened, but it's fascinating to see an uptick in revenue from his remote job board and a decrease in interest in being a digital nomad.

Maybe the need for a resource like Nomad List has been directly impacted by AI, but I thought people subscribed more for the community and less for the information they could access.

It's fascinating to see those numbers go down significantly. I'm curious about the reasons behind this. Are there socioeconomic factors at play? Is it that Gen Z is less interested in being a part of Nomad List and Millennials are now settled? Meanwhile, Peter is making $40,000 a month from RemoteOK. This is nuts considering I thought remote work was dead here in the US. I repeat, he's making half a million dollars a year from a remote job board.

I’ll admit that the traffic numbers are impressive.

Alright, thats all for this week.

Talk soon.

— Daniel

I have an idea to pitch to you.

Please bear with me while I ramble a bit. There could be holes in my proposal here, and I encourage you to tell me how stupid my great idea is.

Let’s start with this: I believe writers should be paid to write.

I've always believed "a great essay is a product."

We don't need to rely solely on courses, private communities, consulting, etc. to monetize our brains. These vehicles are great, but words alone still have value.

What’s floating around in my brain feels a little weird.

That’s why it just might work.

I'm considering turning on paid subscriptions for Indie Thinkers, charging $10 a month, or even $5, to get more people involved and lower the barrier of entry. I'd use 100% of the subscription revenue to pay writers for original long-form essays.

I know $10 isn't a lot in the U.S., especially for technologists in California, where I'm writing this. But in other countries, it might be a bit much. You could do a lot with 10 U.S. dollars in many parts of the world, and I am cognizant of that. I want this to be inclusive, so I don't want to charge more.

We'd publish once a week, and whatever money comes in would pay each writer.

It would be a lottery instead of a contest. A competition would be interesting, but it would be hard to pick winners. There are so many writers I admire.

If it were a lottery, chance would decide.

If it's transparent and people trust me and the process, maybe it could work.

Here's what I'm considering: what if I seeded the lottery to be $250 a week? That's a thousand dollars a month out of my pocket. I want to put my money where my mouth is. My goal is to see if I can get the community to match my $1000.

That’s 100 subscribers paying $10 a month.

Then we’d be able to pay one writer $500 a week, which is the goal.

If we’re fortunate enough to generate a ton of revenue, additional funds would support additional writers at $500 an essay.

My commitment: If the community is on board, I'm prepared to sustain this $1,000/month for at least one year, regardless of subscription growth.

If circumstances change, I'll give the community three months' notice to either find alternative funding or wind down gracefully. The goal is to build something sustainable that eventually runs on subscription revenue alone.

This doesn't include paying artists for illustrations.

I'm still thinking of other ways to fund that.

Payment Infrastructure

One important consideration is managing the money. I'd use Substack for paid subscriptions, but then route funds to Open Collective.

I appreciate their transparency, which is critical to earn and retain community trust.

People could contribute directly to Open Collective, but there are trade-offs. Open Collective is a platform where people don't have their credit cards hooked up. There’s some friction here. It's far easier for people to subscribe to a paid newsletter on Substack. Additionally, more paid subscribers on Substack would increase the publication's visibility, creating a flywheel effect benefiting the community.

I like using Substack as the funnel for a "writers fund," and then leveraging Open Collective to transparently pay contributors.

The weekly writer payments would run through Open Collective for everyone to see. I'd handle tax reporting (e.g 1099s for U.S. writers) and work with Open Collective to ensure smooth international payments where possible.

Balancing Fairness with Quality

Here's how I envision the lottery working:

Basic Requirements:

• Must be an Indie Thinkers subscriber (free or paid - paid doesn't increase odds)

• Must have an active newsletter or blog with at least 6 published posts in the last 6 months

• Can only win once every 6 months (ensuring broader distribution)

• Must commit to delivering an essay within 2 weeks of selection

• Eligible topics would include but aren’t limited to: technology, business, future-of-work, personal development, productivity, culture, philosophy, art, and design

• Non-fiction essays only

The Selection Process:

1. Weekly random drawing from eligible writers

2. The selected writer has 48 hours to accept and propose their essay topic

3. If they decline or can't deliver, we redraw

4. Writers submit the first draft within 14 days for light editorial review (not gatekeeping, just ensuring completeness)

5. Payment upon publication

Quality Assurance:

• Essays must be original, long-form work (1,200+ words)

• Basic editorial support provided (not to judge, but to help polish)

• If a selected writer can't deliver, they remain eligible for future drawings

• Must be previously unpublished work

• No AI-generated content (human-written with AI editing tools acceptable)

• Includes proper citations for any referenced sources

• Aligns with Indie Thinkers' values (no hate speech, misinformation, etc.)

Outstanding Questions

Marketing and Growth: I'm unsure how to market this subscription model besides running sponsorships in bigger newsletters. How do I get the word out? If everyone says, "This is a good idea. You should do it," how do I let people know this exists?

My initial thoughts:

• Start with our existing community

• Feature each paid writer's story

• Encourage selected writers to bring their audiences

• Run targeted sponsorships in aligned newsletters

• Document the entire experiment publicly

I'm in it for the long haul. I'm happy to put up a thousand dollars a month as "seed funding" for another year, if needed, without making money off it. This isn't about profit; it's about creating a sustainable model for compensating writers.

Alright, I'm done rambling. Let me know your thoughts.

What am I missing? What could make this stronger? Would you support?

— Daniel

P.S. New domain, who dis?

Here’s what you missed this past week:

Flounder Mode

Stay in the game

How Do You Measure Your Life?

$100 million to build a new economic engine for culture

The Death of the Amex Lounge

When curiosity doesn’t fit the world we’ve built

This is how we should think about building modern careers

They’re coming for Twitter

The Substack Post

A media future to believe in

Today, we’re announcing $100 million in Series C funding, led by investors at BOND and The Chernin Group (TCG), with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Rich Paul, CEO and founder of Klutch Sports Group, and Jens Grede, CEO and co-founder of SKIMS. BOND’s Mood Rowghani will join our board. We’re thrilled to partner with these investors, who bring a …

Read more

9 months ago · 2418 likes · 478 comments · Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi

I’ve been using Twitter, inconsistently, since January 2013. Peak usage was probably during COVID (2020-2022), but I grew less enamored with it over the past couple of years. It became harder to find meaningful content from smaller accounts. I had to unfollow users with massive audiences and add them to lists so I could prioritize content from my internet friends. Engagement was trash. It felt like I couldn’t get off the hamster wheel. Had to post daily to keep the algo gods from punishing me.

Bluesky caught my attention shortly before the 2025 general election cycle. What I loved was the ability to use my domain (indiethinkers.com) as a handle. The idea of carrying my friends across platforms using the AT protocol was promising. However, Bluesky never became a non-political space. While people claim they want to control their feeds, I don’t think they truly do. I don’t want granular control. I prefer following a group of people and letting that inform my feed. I like a mix of “internet friend” updates and discovery of new voices. My Substack feed isn’t perfect, but it’s now far better than Twitter’s or Bluesky’s. I see content here from people I engage with more often, and I don’t feel pressured to post daily. Short-form content on Substack has a long shelf life. A note I post today might attract commentary a week later.

I have concerns, as I’m sure you do.

I do love it here, not gonna lie.

I’m not going all in, but hedging my bets instead.

What’s next for Substack?

What will they do with all this cash?

Will Substack eventually go public? If they do, how will that change the ecosystem?

You can read my take on the future here.

What are your thoughts?

Does this fundraise excite you?

Motivate you?

Are you headed out the door?

Join the Conversation

— Daniel

P.S. Get a personalized hand-drawn illustrated Substack profile banner

Here’s what you missed this past week:

please hustle responsibly

how to plan your day in 15 mins or less

there is something about sitting with important ideas for several weeks

AI Doesn’t Care About Your Résume

How to Network as an Introvert

the difference between an artist and a creator

how do you build a menu for your day?

I unfortunately had to attend a funeral this past week. The essay below was written years ago, but it felt important to share again during this time.

Love y’all.

— Daniel

Begin with the end in mind

“Begin with the end in mind” is sound advice.

But how does one practically take action on this?

Read someone’s eulogy.

There’s no better way to reflect on your inevitable end than to pause and examine another life well lived.

Eulogies capture the essence of a person’s journey, their triumphs and trials, and the impact they’ve had on those around them.

They distill a lifetime into a narrative that invites us to contemplate our own paths.

If you can slow down just enough to read the stories of the giants that have come before us, you’ll gain insights that will shape your future.

On December 1, 1987, James Baldwin passed away from stomach cancer in France.

Baldwin called so many legendary figures of the 20th century, friend, including Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, and editor Sol Stein.

Notably, Stein (one of the greatest editors to ever live) and Baldwin were classmates at De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

But it was Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison who wrote Baldwin’s Eulogy. Life in His Language was published in The New York Times.

It’s 1241 words of goosebump forming prose.

Toni demonstrates a command of storytelling that few of us will ever achieve.

Jimmy, there is too much to think about you, and too much to feel. The difficulty is your life refuses summation — it always did — and invites contemplation instead. Like many of us left here I thought I knew you. Now I discover that in your company it is myself I know. That is the astonishing gift of your art and your friendship: You gave us ourselves to think about, to cherish.

— Toni Morrison

Baldwin’s legacy reaches far beyond the impact he had on the civil rights movement and the elevation of black people in America. His work continues to help all of us take a closer look at ourselves and reflect on what it means to be human.

You made American English honest — genuinely international. You exposed its secrets and reshaped it until it was truly modern dialogic, representative, humane. You stripped it of ease and false comfort and fake innocence and evasion and hypocrisy.

— Toni Morrison

Baldwin was unapologetic, fierce, honest, and courageous.

You have to be comfortable making other people uncomfortable, but you also need a steady hand when your opinions and beliefs are challenged.

Exhibit A below.

… initial spectacle of mediocrity condescending to genius is painful, but the subsequent triumph of [Baldwin’s] self-taught brilliance over credentialed ignorance is thrilling to witness.

You replaced lumbering platitudes with an upright elegance.

— Toni Morrison

It’s tempting to regurgitate common knowledge and phrases just because algorithms push it. Chasing after a quick dopamine hit from the notification bell.

Don’t do it.

Infuse your posts with a unique style, grace, charm, wit, and soul.

I wish I could have met James Baldwin. He left this world in December of 1987, about 6 months after I entered it.

Through the process of writing this piece, I felt like I got to meet him face to face. His words and legacy have become a part of my own journey, challenging me to think deeper and live more authentically.

Baldwin’s fearless exploration of truth and humanity resonates with me more now than ever, reminding us of the power of art to transform how we think.

Writing about him has not only been enlightening but also therapeutic.

As I reflect on his life, I’m inspired to live mine with more purpose and passion, carrying forward the wisdom and lessons he left with us.

— Daniel

P.S. my mantra for the past decade