Eric Newcomer on Scaling to 80,000 Newsletter Subs, How to Pitch Reporters
Eric Newcomer is the founder of Newcomer, a publication he launched in October of 2020 to cover the business of startups and venture capital. He had just left Bloomberg after nearly six years, and was previously the first employee at The Information.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:46) The current state of media
(05:59) Anchoring his 4th grade newscast
(07:21) Becoming the 1st employee at The Information
(09:34) How reporters get stories
(21:12) The moment he quit Bloomberg to start Newcomer
(26:02) Why he writes for VC insiders
(32:19) The VC top fund survey
(34:01) The Founders Choice VC leaderboard
(35:51) Why leaked documents grow his newsletter the fastest
(39:45) When Eric knew Newcomer was going to work
(43:31) How events become Newcomers most profitable business
(51:56) Why Eric invested in Substack
(57:42) Why its harder to cover tech’s downturn than boom times
(59:10) How to pitch a story to a reporter
(01:02:59) Why the internet incentivizes negative media coverage
(01:06:06) Advice for starting a media company
(01:10:33) Why media works so well to sell adjacent products
(01:12:55) Newcomer Banking Summit
(01:14:27) The $1.3B acquisition that happened at his first conference
(01:20:05) New products Eric’s thinking about
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Referenced:
Newcomer Passes $1m in Revenue: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/04/substack-writer-eric-newcomer-says-his-revenue-surpassed-1m-in-2023
Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/
Mike Solana’s Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/
Mentioned Newcomer Articles:
VC Survey: https://www.newcomer.co/p/sequoia-founders-fund-usv-elad-gil
Founder's Choice: https://www.newcomer.co/p/founders-choice-vc-rankings-revealed
Paywalled Bill Gurley Interview: https://www.newcomer.co/p/above-the-crowd
SBF’s Leaked FTX Email: https://www.newcomer.co/p/exclusive-read-sam-bankman-frieds
Eric’s first article on Sequoia: https://www.newcomer.co/p/sequoias-political-paradox
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Where to find Eric:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricNewcomer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericpnewcomer/
Newsletter: https://www.twitter.com/newcomer
Email: newcomer@newcomer.co
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
SEC Comes For Coinbase, Hindenberg Comes For Block, Congress Comes For TikTok
Eric Newcomer is the founder and author of Newcomer. Louise Matsakis is the tech and China reporter for Semafor. Both join Big Technology podcast to break down the week's news. We cover: 1) The SEC's notice to Coinbase that enforcement action might be coming. 2) Hindenberg Research targeting Block. 3) Character AI raising $150 million at a $1 billion valuation with no revenue. 4) Tiktok's day before congress 5) TikTok's future in the U.S. 6) Cow and Zebra escapes this week.
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Industry Episode (SVB): Dan Primack (Axios) + Eric Newcomer (Newcomer) - Where the Venture Industry Goes from Here
In a special bonus episode of the Logan Bartlett Show, Logan is joined by journalists Dan Primack from Axios and Eric Newcomer from Newcomer to discuss the implications from SVB and where the tech and venture capital industry goes from here.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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Stripe to raise $6B, $SIVB drops 60%, generative AI funding | E1695
Eric Newcomer joins to break down all the trending tech topics, including Stripe raising $6B (16:31), major generative ai fundraises (35:55), Silicon Valley Bank dropping 60% (50:35), and more!
(0:00) Jason kicks off the show
(1:55) Eric’s move to independent journalism
(10:07) First Republic Bank - Discover what a long-term financial relationship can do for you. Visit https://firstrepublic.com today to learn more.
(10:57) Take rates and more on Substack
(16:31) Eric’s Scoop on Stripe
(20:43) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist
(21:46) The narrative around the tech layoffs + Generative AI
(34:24) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist
(35:55) The deluge of Funding into AI
(43:39) The state of VC investing
(50:35) Silicon Valley Bank drops 60%
FOLLOW Eric: https://twitter.com/EricNewcomer
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood
Simplifying Cloud Native Application Development with Ballerina
For the past six years, WSO2 has been developing Ballerina, an open-source programming language that streamlines the writing of new services and APIs. It aims to simplify the process of being able to use, combine, and create network services and get highly distributed applications to work together toward a determined outcome.
In this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast Eric Newcomer, Chief Technology Officer of WSO2 discusses how the company created a new programming language from the ground up, and the plans for it to become a predominant cloud native language. Darryl Taft, news editor of The New Stack hosted this podcast.
Founded on the idea that it was too hard to do development with integration, Ballerina was created to program in highly distributed environments. “Cloud computing is an evolution of distributed computing of integration. You're talking about microservices and APIs that need to talk to each other in the cloud,” said Newcomer. “And what Ballerina does, is it thinks about what functions outside of the program that need to be talked to,” he added.
With Ballerina, developers can easily pick it up to create cloud applications. The language design is informed by TypeScript and JavaScript but with some additional capabilities, Newcomer said. “Developers can create records and schemas for JSON payloads in and out to support the API's for cloud mobile or web apps, and it has concurrency for concurrent processing of multiple calls transaction control but in a very familiar syntax, like TypeScript or JavaScript.”
WSO2 is using Ballerina in the company’s low-code like offering, Choreo, which includes features such as the ability to create diagrams. “The long-time challenge in the industry is how do you represent your programming code in a graphical form. [Sanjiva Weerawarana, Founder of WSO2] has solved this problem by putting into the language syntax elements from which you can create diagrams. And he did it in such a way that you can edit the diagram and create code,” said Newcomer.
Engineering for the cloud requires a programing language that can reengineer applications to achieve the auto scale, resiliency, and independent agility, said Newcomer. WSO2 is continuing push their work forward to tackle this challenge. “We're thinking Choreo is going to help us because it's leveraging the magic of Ballerina to help people get their job done faster. Once they see that, they'll see Ballerina and get the benefits of it,” Newcomer said.
(TWTR SPC) Techpocalypse Now! W/ @EricNewcomer @loganbartlett & @alexrkonrad
Techpocalypse Now! W/ @EricNewcomer @loganbartlett & @alexrkonrad
How bad is it? How bad can it get? How do we get out of this?
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Trump SPAC, WeWork SPAC, GitLab IPO w/ Eric Newcomer + Quick Commerce w/Matt Newberg | E1310
Tech journalist Eric Newcomer joins to talk the Trump SPAC (8:26), WeWork SPAC (15:58), and the behind the scenes funding story of GitLab's IPO (25:41). Then, HNGRY's Matt Newberg joins to talk innovations in the quick commerce space, the growing impact of ghost kitchens, and more! (1:01:10)
Reporter Roundtable: Discussing Media Narratives and Tech Industry Attacks On The Press
When the Big Technology Podcast debuted last month, The Verge’s Casey Newton joined to talk about why people can’t stand the tech press. Our wide-ranging discussion explored how tech reporters should be more upfront about their values, how algorithms and social media reframe their work, and why some go astray in the quest for retweets. But there was more to discuss.
This week, three talented reporters—Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer, the Financial Times’ Hannah Murphy, and OneZero’s Brian Merchant—join the show to pick up where Newton left off.
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The first cloud native programming language (Interview)
Jerod talked with Paul Fremantle, the CTO and Co-Founder of WSO2, about their new programming language, Ballerina — a cloud-native language which aims to make it easier to write microservices that integrate APIs. They talked about the creation of the language and how it was inspired by so many technologies, cloud native features like built-in container support, serverless-friendly, observability, and how it works with, or without, a service mesh — just to name a few.
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Featuring:
Paul Fremantle – X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Ballerina.io - Landing page of Ballerina.io : Cloud Native Programming Language
Ballerina’s philosophy - Ballerina.io design philosophy which incorporates fundamental concepts of distributed system integration into the language
Ballerina Central - Ballerina.io Central code repository of reusable code packages
Coverage on The New Stack - Article on Ballerina in The New Stack
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
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