Alan Soon #splicebeta

Through their @ICFJKnight Fellowship, @alansoon & @rishadist of @splicenewsroom are looking for 10 “Nanos” to build a product, service or company that serves user needs with the help of AI. Interested? Click here: buff.ly/3MByeHZ

"Tell your Lord that the iPhone 16 has Apple Intelligence, a custom action button, a water and dust-resistant design, titanium finish, A18 chip and a 48 mega-pixel camera.” "The Anjin says iPhone 16 is exactly like the iPhone 15 with a slightly better camera and comes in gold.”

.@ICFJKnight Fellows @alansoon & @rishadist of @splicenewsroom are creating a community of mavericks around the idea that it’s possible to build tiny solo media companies, called Nanos, through the thoughtful use of AI. Join the movement: buff.ly/3MByeHZ

🥁Drum roll 🥁We are excited to announce our newest 2024 @ICFJKnight fellows: @Alansoon & @Rishadist of @Splicenewsroom. The two will launch an innovative program called Splice Nano, aiming to create 10 media startups powered by AI within the year. buff.ly/3X1UW2s

Please welcome our new @ICFJKnight Fellows @Alansoon & @Rishadist. Soon & Patel co-founded @splicenewsroom. Read more: buff.ly/3X1UW2s

@maccaw This is true. Thank you.

I can't promise there'll never be bugs, but I can promise they'll be fixed immediately.

I always read @splicenewsroom's excellent newsletters - but extra worth it today for reupping my Mekong Review sub with a fat discount! mailchi.mp/splicemedia.co…

Wow, this is an impressive list. In my opinion, the groups on here represent the exact types of civil society organizations with deep local expertise & knowledge that large platforms need to be working with *more*...not turning their backs on. foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/o…

@Report4theWorld @MediaMakersMeet @NalluPreethi @splicenewsroom I should really wear socks when I'm on stage.

At the recent @MediaMakersMeet conference, our executive director @NalluPreethi spoke with @alansoon Soon, co-founder and and CEO of @splicenewsroom about his experience building audiences in Asia. Great insights!

My rules for being a founder (after selling 3 companies): - Pay your invoices fast. People appreciate it - Recurring meetings are mostly useless - Your best internet ideas come when you are off the internet - Create products no one asks for but everyone wants - Really interesting people apply for Chief of Staff roles - You need 1000 bad ideas to get to 1 good idea - Social posts are MVP V1, group chats are MVP V2, products is mvp v3 - Avoid VC unless it's a competitive advantage or you're building deeptech, cleantech, AI chips etc - Be a rifle not a shotgun. Rifles are targeted, shotguns aren't. The internet rewards targeted products - Products are like airbnbs. The ones that get booked up the most are the unique experienced ones - Be a community billionaire. Meaning, create value with many micro-communities -Buy the ticket, take the chance. My best opportunities came from hopping on a plane to meet someone - Build communities to avoid reliance on ads - We’re all in the trust business. Do things that make people trust you - 100% passive income from startups doesn’t exist. - Multiple products, multiple revenue streams in case something dries up - Be the creator or partner with the creator but always have a creator involved - Freedom from venture, freedom from ads makes me happy. No bosses or micro-bosses - Do things to put you in the zone to come up with the ideas - Celebrate all wins, little and big - Everyone with an internet connection can build an empire - Be proud or what you're doing or don't do it - The best ideas are capital light, defendable, have network effects & increased demand - Dividends > exits - You can take over your world not the world. Gotta start somewhere niche - If you can turn your jealousy of others into inspiration of others, you instantly become more productive - Don’t lose money monthly, make cash flow - Never call GMV ARR when it's GMV - Brands: people like brands. Community-based brands: people love brands - Google Trends/Reddit is a goldmine for startup ideas - Work with people who will be fun to work with - Be on time, send cal invites, do the little things - Whoever is latest to the meeting pays for the coffee, food, drinks. - Create the things you wish existed - The most important decision you can make on any given day to be productive: ignore the noise - "You can get what you want - if you help enough other people get what they want.” - Every sale has some urgency. No urgency, no sale - Never care what others think unless it's a loved one - Sometimes you need to overdose on caffeine, put some headphones on and ship your heart out - Every startup you start ask yourself what's your unfair advantage. You'll need one - Checking your email isn't working. People go in these "infinite loops" from app to app checking only to realize the day is over. - The best products don't necessarily win, the best brand does - I find all my business partners from either people I grew up with or people I find fascinating on the internet, and nothing in between. - Find true fans. “10 people who yell make more noise than 10,000 people who are silent” - My retirement plan. Pick niche. Build community. Create product. Dominate niche. Hire operators. Don't raise venture capital. - You’d be surprised how many startups spend millions of dollars a year of other people’s money trying to scale a business without an offer that resonates. - TikTok reviewers are the new search engines. - Reality is the ultimate "virtual reality” - Every company is made out of thin air. Anything is possible. - Find cheerleaders. People above you, people below you, people on your level - Underspend on material pocessions, overspend on people, experiences, that move you faster - Some unfair advantages: internet audiences, being "nerdy", spy software, being early - Create products that reinforce the identity. Those outperform. - On creating content: the post brings the people, the replies bring the gold I hope this got you thinking. Reply if it did. You can follow me @gregisenberg for more.

@yanoak @NiemanReports Really great piece!

Journalism Needs Leaders Who Know How to Run a Business niemanreports.org/articles/journ… via @NiemanReports What an awesome read! Thanks @alansoon for sharing this in your newsletter!

"I’m especially resentful that something like Vice — fattened on VC money (...), run by misogynistic managers who cultivated a (...) culture of sexual harassment, and sold syndicated advertorials as journalism — even existed." Read @alansoon 's newsletter. mailchi.mp/splicemedia.co…

I’m at the wonderful Africa Media Festival in Nairobi, Kenya talking about chips. And media. #AMF2024

All @TheMessenger employees: — I'm sorry about your bosses/owners. — I would welcome all of your thoughts, on or off the record, at joshua_benton@harvard.edu.

This is the best time to start a company in 30 years. I’ll summarize some of the best opportunities for you: 1. Buy distressed VC assets. Recap them. Offer team dividends going forward. Turn them into profit machines. 2. The media apocalypse is here. 20,000+ media employees have been LAID off in the last 12 months. From Condé Nast to Washington Post. How can you build a new media company that's profitable, AI-powered and community-first with that talent? 3. Apple Vision Pro App Store. 400,000 headsets will be sold in the next 12 months. it looks like a joke until it isnt. Create unique apps for that app store, be first. 4. The Figma-fication of everything. Turning software that was once single-player into multi-player is a generational opportunity. The future of software looks like Arc, Figma etc. 5. SaaS business model is dying. People are tired of Saas Subscriptions. One-time payments or pay-per-task SaaS is becoming normal. 6. Eldertech. Boomers are retiring. Probably one of the most underserved audiences. So much to be built for them. 7. Leverage creators, they are mispriced. Most creators can’t monetize beyond brand deals. They have distribution old media dreams of. Partner with them. Help them productize themselves and earn upside. 8. GPT Store. Fastest growing product of all time just launched an app store? Literally the next App Store. 9. Agents for everyone. You get an agent, and you get an agent and you get an agent. Who will be the Oprah of AI agents? 10. Productized services. How can you make a service like a product? Enable it by global workforce and AI. We built meetdispatch.com to build marketing assets for folks on a monthly basis. People pay us monthly fee to turn their market assets (landing pages, lead magnets, social assets) into revenue generating machines. Business does 7 figures overnight. 11. The unbundling of ChatGPT. ChatGPT won’t be everything to everyone. Just like how Craigslist, Reddit etc got unbundled, so will ChatGPT. ChatGPT for X. 12. Internet memberships are the new community. Digital communities that sell workshops, IRL events, software, deals etc. I created a limited membership with a monthly email with startup ideas, trends, private Q&A, free $99/month Skool sub, software deals and built $27k MRR in 3 months. skool.com/community-empi… 13. The rise of the detox economy. People are overloaded with screens and seed oils. Build businesses for this new detox economy 14. High Interest rates at 5-6% make companies want to increase profits, reduce costs. There’s a bunch of businesses to create to help them do it. 15. Almost half of gen-z doesn’t believe in religion. The rise of community-based brands. This is your opportunity to build things they feel connected to. 16. Happiness, fulfillment, stability, and safety are at all-time lows for gen-z relative to other generations. How can we build products, services to help them? 17. Google is being completely rewritten thanks to AI. Billions of visits up for grabs. People are calling it "SEO 2.0". Learn how to do it yourself (boringmarketing.com/freecourse or hire someone boringmarketing.com). These "boring" ways to get customers (like SEO) will only get more popular 18. Privacy-first startups. Yeah most people care more about convenience than anything, but there’s a growing privacy movement. The more people get hacked and phished, the more they care about their privacy and security. 19. TikTok stores. Today, I met an 18 year old guy who made $1m in the last 45 days from a TikTok store. He sourced the product, partnered with a creator, never raised $1 and was profitable on every purchase. I think you'll start seeing more of these stories with the rise of social selling, live (IG live/TikTok live) selling. 20. Multipreneurship. Portfolio of internet businesses instead of one internet business. Small mindset shift, big difference. Buy small profitable businesses to help scale it. Fund it via customers ideally. 21. The pop of the newsletter bubble. When the newsletter bubble pops (yes, when), it'll be an opportunity to scoop up interesting newsletters and aggregate and take them from a newsletter business to a business powered by a newsletter AND MANY MORE OPPORTUNITIES. This is just a few to get your creative juices flowing. After reading this, do you agree the opportunities right now are kinda mind blowing? Every business is made out of thin air. Just a good idea, the right timing and consistency. The right timing is now. It fires me up, does it fire you up? Do you agree? What am I missing? (in the next tweet ill give you some free resources for your journey)

@justinbaragona I too am Singaporean, and not a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Tom Cotton: "Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?" TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: "Senator, I'm Singaporean. No!" Cotton: "Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?" Chew: "No, Senator. Again, I'm Singaporean!"

"We’ve failed to update our definitions of media, news, and journalism. We’ve kept these in specific boxes in our heads and filled them with romanticised concepts that no longer exist in today’s algo-driven, attention-starved information space." @alansoon mailchi.mp/splicemedia.co…

I’ll say something you won’t like: much like Web 1.0 made portion of print journalists obsolete, mobile/platform as 2nd wave, we are in 3rd wave journalists obsolescence, if not journalism itself. The brutal end result below, yet diagnosis is incomplete: nytimes.com/2024/01/21/opi…