1/ šŸ‘‹ Excited to share what we’ve been building at https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t + we are going to tweetstorm our progress every week!

Week 1 highlights: getting shortlisted for YC W2019šŸ¤ž, acquiring a premium domainšŸ’°, meeting Substack's @hamishmckenzie and Stripe CEO @patrickc 🤩

2/ So what is Brew?

brew / bru : / to make (beer, coffee etc.) / verb: begin to develop 🌱

A place for you to enjoy premium content while supporting your favorite creators. Sort of like a ā€˜Consumer-facing Patreon’ cc @jackconte

(we’re still working on the pitch)
3/ So, why be so transparent? Two words: launch strategy.

jk šŸ˜… a) I loooove doing something consistently for a long period of time b) limited downside and infinite upside (feedback, accountability, reach).
cc @altimor, @pmarca
4/ https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t domain šŸ»

It started with a cold email. Guess what? He was using BuyMeACoffee on his blog, and was excited to hear about what we're building next. Within 2w, we signed the deal at @Escrowcom's SF office. You’re a pleasure to work with @MichaelCyger!
5/ @ycombinator's invite for the in-person interview arrived that evening. Quite a day!

Thanks @patio11 for the thoughtful feedback on our YC application, and @gabhubert for your directions on positioning the product — set the tone for our pitch!
6/ Dinner at Stripe HQ. Thanks for having us, @andylouisqin! It was an amazing coincidence to meet @patrickc. We look up to you, not just for what you’ve built at Stripe, but for your thoughts on immigration, rationalism, internet economy, etc. + please do more podcasts :)
7/ šŸ’” There are ~15mm creators (US only) spending a significant amount of time creating great content.

They have more distribution than ever before (thanks, youtube, instagram, medium, tumblr, twitch, 500px, deviantart, soundcloud, podbean et al.).
8/ šŸ‘Ž Now the sad economics of the internet fame — $1 is the avg earnings per 1000 views (RPM).

Imagine a stadium full of people and the performer making 50 bucks from that ĀÆ\_(惄)_/ĀÆ
9/ Given most types of content can’t even make money from ads without scale (podcast, newsletter, photography, etc.)

What’s worse, creators are forced to optimize for maximum eyeballs (not quality), incentivising clickbait titles and fake news.
10/ So, will people pay?
— we are increasingly paying for good content
— online payments has become frictionless
— we love supporting small creators
— podcast is a $7B market in china, driven by subscriptions. US in comparison does $300mm, mostly from - you guessed it - ads
11/ https://t.co/GOQJ7LjQ2t will launch as invite-only for creators. We’ll give early access to the 30k creators on https://t.co/7zcGHHtYGM <3 If it wasn’t for listening to them, there would be no Brew.

Attaching some screens, lmk if you like it (and especially so if you don’t).
12/ Next week:
a) Brew sneak peek šŸ‘€
b) top lessons we learned building https://t.co/7zcGHHtYGM
c) why it’s incredibly important to democratise Paywall tech (NYT is set to do $600mm 😲, while most publishers can’t even afford to set up a paywall https://t.co/WGJbd501YA).
13/ Since you're here: we accept support in likes, RTs, feedback ([email protected]) and internet karma ā¤ļøāœŒļø

And thanks @joannapedrina for assuring me that this tweetstorm thing is not a crazy idea šŸ™ŒĀ #brewingup

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So we had to develop technologies like this to barely manage control over limited areas in Iraq's few urban centers. Only ~8 in 100 Iraqi adults owns a personal vehicle. That rate is > 1 car/adult in America yet I have never seen any doctrine paper or work of fiction address this


We've seen and struggled in civil conflicts with instant, local, universal, distributed communications (cell phone era, basically every conflict since 2000). We've seen and struggled in conflicts with instant, global, universal distributed communications (everything since 2011).

The world's most overfunded military and glow in the dark agencies struggle and largely fail to contain conflicts where fhe vast, vast majority of people are locked into a ~5mi radius of their home.

How can they possibly contain a conflict in a nation with universal car ownership and the most developed road network in the world? The average car can travel over 400 miles on one tank of gas, how can you contain the potential of that kind of mobility?

I think that's partially why the system was so freaked out by 1/6. Yes, most of it is histrionics but you don't decide to indefinitely turn your capital into the Baghdad Green Zone with fortifications and 25k troops over histrionics alone.

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