Home | Creator Spotlight

🔴 Sending a newsletter for 1,000 days straight

Mindstream is a daily newsletter covering tech and AI. It was acquired by HubSpot only 17 months after launch — we spoke to the editorial team who built the product from the ground up.

Essay

🔴 5 ways creators are winning on YouTube right now

One year of conversations with past Spotlight guests, all focused on YouTube for unique purposes, distilled into a field guide.

YouTuber

🔴 From W-2 to creator-talent contract

Macy Gilliam joined Morning Brew to write tweets — now she's on a creator contract with her own multi-million-view YouTube and a nearly-doubled salary. With one year left on her contract, what's next?

Essay

🔴 Can newsrooms and creators work together?

What two journalism conferences (in one week) taught me about effective creator-newsroom partnerships.

Newsletterist

🔴 The newsletter that became a social network

How, over the course of the last six years, a free newsletter turned into a social app with 400,000 members and ambitions to be "the next Tumblr."

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Recent Essays

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Essay

🔴 5 ways creators are winning on YouTube right now

One year of conversations with past Spotlight guests, all focused on YouTube for unique purposes, distilled into a field guide.

Essay

🔴 Can newsrooms and creators work together?

What two journalism conferences (in one week) taught me about effective creator-newsroom partnerships.

Essay

🔴 On trust as a business model

Two recent Spotlight guests have spent a decade building newsletters sustained by voluntary contributions for no additional content. We wrote a playbook based on their work.

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Profile

🔴 Sending a newsletter for 1,000 days straight

Mindstream is a daily newsletter covering tech and AI. It was acquired by HubSpot only 17 months after launch — we spoke to the editorial team who built the product from the ground up.

Profile

🔴 From W-2 to creator-talent contract

Profile

🔴 The newsletter that became a social network

How, over the course of the last six years, a free newsletter turned into a social app with 400,000 members and ambitions to be "the next Tumblr."