Kevin Chaiken
155 posts
I write over 250 newsletters a year and pressing SEND never gets easier.
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Being forced to see Ye as an anti Jew archetype feels insulting to human intelligence …. Like the art is so clear …. I can’t change the public but I can hold my own and I will not be embracing that
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@TheStalwart @tbpn @jordihays @johncoogan Yes exactly what pw could have been if not for bitterness and anger (and prob a personality disorder)
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An underrated aspect of @tbpn’s success is that @jordihays and @johncoogan actually aspired to make something good and entertaining.
Other tech industry-adjacent media often seems kind of bitter. Or like it’s only trying to prove a point.
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Kevin Chaiken retweetledi
.@SteveGelbs: "What made Nolan McLean so effective tonight?"
Francisco Alvarez: "Por que... he's nasty" 😂
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@WebBarr @orenmeetsworld yes if you trust that the message the ai labs are going to pump out via tbpn and the like is the truth
otherwise its a perverse way of using a likable brand for corporate propaganda
its not a new strategy or phenomenon, just a new vehicle (corp. news vs new media)
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this is why comments like "whose next? Lex Fridman! Dwarkesh! All In?" are fruitless
no one is really likeable or has magnetic aura that makes something like this work tangentially in the entire space besides Feed Me (which is also a different business model completely)
maybe Breaking and Entering (which isn't tech), and specific creators/youtubers versus podcasts
this is not about podcasts
atlas@creatine_cycle
in all seriousness the @tbpn acquisition displays the importance of being likeable. if @johncoogan and @jordihays were in any way portrayed as sketchy or unlikeable by even a few, the surface area for bad press and QT dunks from this deal would be immense. the truth is they are likeable guys on and off camera. i get texts of encouragement from john every month and it means a lot to me. they deserve all the success. they have built an awesome product in a way that is cool and honest. no ragebait needed. no hit pieces needed
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@signulll Never heard or TBPN until today. And I'm pretty familiar with podcasts.
What a bizarre and expensive strategy for trying to influence public opinion.
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a huge risk factor for openai is that media acquisitions by tech peeps have an almost perfect track record of destroying the editorial credibility that made the outlet valuable in the first place.
bezos/wapo is the canonical example, it's now widely perceived as captured regardless of actual editorial independence.
openai buying tbpn likely immediately makes every piece of tbpn coverage read as propaganda to exactly the audience they need to persuade (policy elites, skeptics, etc). i wonder how they thought through this risk structure (the deliberations would've been fun). but ~$200m is peanuts to openai so prolly worth doing regardless.
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@orenmeetsworld emily is cool. jordi and john seem like nice, normal guys. the majority of tech/tech media seem like deranged psychopaths who acquired power for the first time and are hellbent on displacing/replacing humanity
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@orenmeetsworld worth noting that tbpn and feed me are inherently LA/NYC phenomena. sf and its culture can't create media worth engaging with outside of its very narrow bubble.
just another example of sf/tech trying to launder their image through people who aren't completely hatable
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Grateful for John, @jordihays and the TBPN team. I joined last August and didn't really tell many people because I felt like I needed to earn my keep here before saying much. This is an amazing outcome for the crew. Suffice to say we are all thrilled to join the @OpenAI team.
John Coogan@johncoogan
TBPN has been acquired by OpenAI! The show is staying the same and we’ll continue to go live at 11am pacific every weekday. This is a full circle moment for me as I’ve worked with @sama for well over a decade. He funded my first company in 2013. Then helped us fix a serious logjam during a critical funding round a few years later. When I took my second company through YC, he was president at the time, and then when I joined Founders Fund, the first deal I saw in motion was the post-ChatGPT round in late 2022. And as we started growing TBPN last year, he was the very first lab lead to join the show. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of TBPN until now. The last year has been the most fun and rewarding part of my career and we’re excited to have more resources than ever going forward.
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FREE AGENCY SEASON THREE is coming soon, this time from Terrain’s New York office.
Free Agency is an 8-week idea residency w/ resources, workshops, and 1:1 partnership to select and pressure-test your idea. More details to come.
Apply early here: terrain.com/application
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