Hi, I'm Eric Newcomer. And I am Madeline Rinbarger.
And this is the newcomer podcast.
Each week, Eric and I discuss the VC deals and the drama that
went down. Let's do it.
Here we go. Let's dive in.
You You took a long weekend. Was this part of your American
concert tour? Yes, this is this is part of the
the Madeline's American concert tour.
I was in I was in Denver to see Charlie XCX and Troy on the
sweat tour and then made it to the Sabrina Carpenter Short and
sweet tour this past weekend on the East Coast.
So, you know, wow, you never. In in the zeitgeist, which which
did you prefer? Oh, great question.
They're very different. I feel like the the the Charlie
show, Charlie and Troy Sivan easily hire energy.
It was, you know, just it was they sold out an arena tour.
It was huge. It's.
Like a party based, it's a. Party it's it's and it's all
dance music. So you're just you're up the
whole time just dancing. And then Sabrina obviously very
dancy as well, pop music, but you know, you get some slow
songs, you get some kind of typical you get the flashlights
out, you got a wave, you know, to the ballads, but and she's an
edible vocalist. I I was really blown away.
So you know. We're both like pop pop girlies,
I guess, because I I've seen Taylor Swift in Stockholm and
Boston. So I'm I'm more specifically a
Taylor Swift fan, but. Yeah, Eric is our resident
Swifty on the pod. But how?
Wait, so you went to the Era's tour twice?
Yes, yeah. Which date?
Which date was better? Boston was like a nightmare.
We made a last minute decision to arrive and we hit traffic and
it was. No stuff over.
Nightmares. So Stockholm, we were like, we'd
been in Paris for a couple weeks working abroad and then yeah,
that was great. So definitely Stockholm was we
also like spent all day waiting in line and we're like the
second row. Basically, that's amazing, yeah.
It's great so. Cool.
Yeah. So you got to go international
for your concert tours? Yeah.
I know, yeah. Anyway, we this is going to be a
fun episode overall because it's a lot of talking about
ourselves. So we get to reflect on
Newcomers 4 year anniversary. It's true.
This is This week marks the four year anniversary of the
newsletter. Yeah, you've been here for one
year of it. Just about just shy.
Yeah, I think when I joined, we were around, you know, just over
1,000,000 in revenue and now we've more than doubled that.
Congratulations. Yeah, yeah.
Congrats to all of us. Yeah, I, I sort of announced
somewhat impulsively on stage at a media conference called the
Amo Summit that we'd hit. We're on track to hit $2,000,000
in revenue this year. We're going to cross that
between revenue we've already recorded and the committed
contracts we have for Cerebral Valley.
So very exciting. And we're gonna post post new
job openings and yeah. Stay tuned.
It's crazy. You know, I'm always in denial
that Newcomer is a company, even though it's like, oh, we have
many, several employees this time and lots, if you start
counting up all the people who, you know, work for us in some
capacity is getting bigger and bigger.
Certifiably company. I mean, the moment we moved to
Slack, you know that that felt. More a real I know, a sad day.
But also exciting day. I mean, yeah, I'm, I'm curious.
I mean, we've, I know we've talked about it a bit, but what
is what's the story behind founding newcomer?
I mean, when did you make the decision to to leave and go
independent? Yeah, so I, I launched it in
October 2020 during the pandemic and covered startups and venture
capital. And here I see finally a trend
that applies to me, right Sub stacks, you know, coming up,
it's an opportunity to start your own business.
So that was really exciting to me.
I think I launched like I can't, it was right around the New York
Times trend story. So I was either right before,
right on top of Yeah, I think you were.
I was ahead. You were ahead of the curve.
Please give. Yourself some credit.
And the other piece of it was that, you know, when I left the
information, the two places I was thinking about going were
Gawker and Bloomberg, you know, Valley Wag.
And, you know, I went with Bloomberg and, you know, it was
just like a pretty conservative direction.
And I definitely wanted, well, not to be like, mean and snarky,
like Valley Wag. I wanted, you know, some of the,
like, voicey, sort of first person writing, you know, I'd
really come up through traditional newspaper
internships and wanted some, you know, more bloggy, I guess, type
experience. And I was very jealous of, you
know, Ben Smith's column in The New York Times at the time where
he was really doing great reporting but writing with his
perspective. And that's really what I tried
to emulate when I started Newcomer.
How do you feel like the media environment's changed since
starting Newcomer? I mean, I feel like this sort of
voicy perspective is much more popular and you were a
trendsetter in this, but how has it changed?
What have you seen? Yeah, I mean, I clearly, you
know, well, you know, big advocate of the collision
between the influencer and the journalist and journalists are
clearly realizing that they have to compete with influencers.
I think, you know, even at Bloomberg, after I left, Mark
Gurman, their Apple reporter has been allowed to have a much
freer reign to sort of give his own personal opinions about
devices and everything. So even sort of my old employer
I think has chilled out a little bit.
It seems like our. Competition is not as much, you
know, other publications themselves as it is also, you
know, like TikTok and personalities and hosts on these
kind of social platforms too. Right.
I mean, tech Twitter and yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's not clear that if they're not reading, you know, I think a
lot of our readers are fit us into what, I don't know, reading
pirate wires and cobbling together information from
Andreessen Horowitz podcasts and sort of a mix of alternative
media. Leaving an established
publication, I mean, even, you know, nowadays, but especially
four years ago, was a pretty big risk in the media world.
I mean, what made you want to take that leap?
Well, yeah, literally the day I had to tell my editor that I was
quitting, I like, chickened out on the first call and my now
wife had to be like, do it, you know?
So, I mean, at least you can always be like, oh, I need a
better plan. I haven't decided what day I'm
going to launch, you know, whatever.
I mean, my my, you know, wife and friends were extremely
supportive. So I think that helps.
I mean, I do credit sub stack for making it sort of much
easier to see a path to doing this thing.
They did not offer me the pro program.
They offered me like a tiny advance that I thought wasn't
worth it. So, so, yeah, I mean, it was
just sort of felt like I wanted to take the leap.
I do think it helped that it was the pandemic.
So the cult of the workplace was, you know, much diminished.
You're not going in to an office.
And I was really hungry just to write for our audience, you
know, and to write directly for startups and VCs.
I mean, I always, I think often about covering the Zenefits saga
where Parker Conrad was ousted and just how like, you know, I
sort of wanted to write the counter narrative to the zenfit
story. But as a reporter for a big
outlet, you know, you sort of have to write, I don't know, the
1st order story. Anyway.
I, I, and I had like, you know, I, I wrote my unauthorized
story, The Unauthorized History of Andreessen Horowitz.
Or some I forgot. What I Yeah, the.
Unauthorized history. Of Andrews and Horowitz, yeah.
You know, I, I had these pieces sort of that I was hungry to
write that I felt like, you know, Bloomberg doesn't love
like the sort of media self absorption, which obviously I
lean into here. And so, yeah, I felt free to do
the meta story. And, you know, it was just
exciting. And I felt like, you know, I'd
be able to get another job if it all blew up in flames.
You know, we talked about, you know, influencer journalism and
the rise of this trend, right? But it seems like, you know,
there's this kind of fascinating thing going on in the media
environment where the the very biggest are succeeding, like New
York Times size publications and then the very smallest seem to
be succeeding. You know, there's there's us,
there's platformer, you know, Taylor Lorenz just launched her
own sub stack user mag. But then there's kind of the the
messy middle right where that seems to be where the biggest
fallout in the media industry has been coming from.
And I'm curious, just how have you been thinking about that?
As you know, we am I. Growing the same mistake many
companies have made before. I think it's a great question.
To me, the issue with a lot of companies is they lose sight of
who their customer is. When I launched, you know, one
of the refrains I always has, I don't want to explain who like
Bill Gurley is anymore. You know, it just felt like
every Bloomberg article, there would be sort of a sort of
parenthetical phrase, you know, early Uber, investor, whatever.
When I was a Business Insider, it was always like we had to
write out LP parentheses. Limited partner, which does.
This, you know yeah, exactly exactly that so I we wonder we
want to write for the insider and I have absolutely no
intention of moving away from that.
Really what I'm saying is the customer that I saw when I
launched we still like are under penetrated in that market and
then there's much more we can do to serve them with events or
whatever. So it's less like, oh, now that
I have a foothold with one audience, I'm going to go go go
to a broader audience. I think that would be a big
mistake. Like I think what I want to do
is have every VCV obsessed with newcomer and subscribed and
have, you know, great stories that they care about an event
that they can go to. And then I don't know, maybe
someday data or something else, but I'm extremely focused on the
same customers. I think there's obviously an
opportunity to continue monetizing them.
And I think the mistake would be if I drifted to a broader
audience and started chasing clicks or something like that,
that that would then end up hurting me with my, my core
audience. And so I think what a lot of
these publications do is they lose sight, You know, they just,
they get big enough that they're like, oh, we need to go after
more people. And I, I would not want to get
so big that I would ever think, oh, start up founders and
venture capitalists aren't enough for us.
And so I think as long as there's plenty, plenty of money
and attention to to be gobbled up in that area, then we can
hire more people. Knowing your customer always a
good strategy. I mean, I know it's the Amazon
customer obsession, you know, customer obsession.
And I think the thing I've continued to learn is like,
actually, you know, what good reporters do is they talk to
their sources. They're in our, you know, our
sources are our customers. So I'm talking to our customers.
That means that, you know, I can get them to speak at events or
sponsor events. And, you know, it's relationship
building and understanding the world we inhabit.
And so I think those things are actually much more symbiotic
than, you know, I didn't go to journalism school.
I knew I wanted to be a journalist, but then my
perception of journalism school would be like, ah, separate, you
know, the business and the media arm.
And I think what we've discovered is that as long as
you're sort of honest and transparent, you know, and
thinking about your customer, both in your coverage decisions
and how you monetize makes makes a lot of sense.
And so we're going to continue to lean into that.
I, I got into reporting because, you know, I want to learn a lot
about the world. It's sort of like fast way to
sort of insist that people answer your questions.
I think one thing that sort of surprised me is that building a
business is sort of another way of learning about how the world
works because you're sort of like, oh, why do business,
especially when you cover business, you're like, oh, why
do business people do XY and Z? And, and so, yeah, it's fun.
It's fun to learn about the world this way too.
And you know, I want to keep doing doing both.
What do you see for the next year going forward with
Newcomer? First and foremost, you know our
North Star will always be great writing and reporting in the
newsletter. I do think that is sort of the
heart of everything we do. And I think part of that is
hiring another reporter who can help us get scoops and keep
things fresh. And then, yeah, I think for the
business, it's really a matter of, you know, we have two great
Cerebral Valley events. We had a banking summit in March
that was good, but not great. I'd say.
I I think good in terms of who we got there.
But we didn't have as much of a story for sponsors, which is I'm
learning to build an events business.
It's like sponsors are a big customer.
And so I think we'll find two more sort of anchor events that
that really sort of resonate in Silicon Valley.
And I think that will be a big piece of their business.
And there's lots, you know, I, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I was. Going to.
Say I mean. Do you have any?
Do you have any topics that you're thinking about for those?
Summits. Oh, yeah.
Well, and I won't be able to weigh in.
I mean, we surveyed subscribers. I mean we're, we're thinking
fintech is making a comeback and given we did banking, there's
definitely a logic there. We're considering Frontier to
wrap in sort of defense and space and some of those
companies I have toyed with a VCLP focused event, but that has
a little bit, you know like I feel like a Frontier event or
Fintech has a similar story for AI, whereas VCLP is sort of a
different strategy. So I'm trying to get my head
around whether that will make sense or not.
So we did our first event, the first Rupal Valley we planned in
six weeks. So we're definitely willing to
sort of, I don't know, blitz these things once we have a
great idea, but trying to do a little bit more big company, big
company, you know, big company trying to do a little bit more
planning. But so yeah, we're thinking
about it and would love, love input from anybody.
If there's there are things where you think there's a real
gap in the market right now. You've started the newsletter,
it the kind of the the beginnings of the boom times of
venture capital. So what you how has it changed
over the last four years? What have you?
What have you seen? Yeah, who who knew that the
pandemic would turn out to be like this.
Great. The best period for start of
investing lots of manic behaviors.
So that was super enjoyable to cover.
You know, now we've had a couple years seemingly of a downturn,
of course, that's been covered up by these big AI rounds.
I'd say. I mean, the boom is fun to write
about because there are deals to cover.
Like if you think about getting scoops, it's like things
happening is easier than things scoops.
Left and I. Mean to cover and scoop a.
Day, You know, every time there's a new deal that closes
you. Can and you know, I, I wrote
like a bear case on Rivian and like, it's fun.
You can still be sort of skeptical of things even in the
boom times. You know, now we have the sort
of tale of two worlds or what do we keep calling it?
It's the best of times in AI and the worst of times everywhere
else. And so that's that's sort of
created this mix mix storyline of the moment.
I mean, you just got to, I guess, move away from reflecting
on the glory that is newcomer. You got some data on the venture
market today. What?
Yeah. How would you describe where we
are today? Yeah.
We mean we're really seeing a consolidation around, I would
say the the mega funds, you know, the Lightspeed A16Z index
being able to still raise even though they're sometimes cutting
their targets back, but other times meeting them, but raising
these multi billion dollar funds.
And then for everyone else, it's kind of a different world.
And the same goes in the startup world, right?
Like you see Anthropic Ilya's safe super intelligence raise a
billion dollar round and then you see startups shutting down
or quietly, you know, merging, if they can possibly find an
exit at all. So it's really what I think is
the most fascinating point that we found in the data last week
was the number of unique venture investors in US startups has
fallen just really dramatically since the boom times.
Obviously there were a ton of these tourist investors that
came in, people, you know, got excited, thought they could
start their own fund, did start their fund, but then, you know,
have failed to raise a fund too. And it's, we've seen this
consolidation of funding to really just come from the big
firms and then kind of everyone else is sort of left out in the
lurch unless you have a super, you know, specific value add or
you can really market yourself as doing something different.
But the bar for that is just getting higher and higher like a
lot of these. Merchants yeah, we put the chart
in our Friday newsletter. We'll probably include it with
this podcast post, but it is quite dramatic to watch the fall
off and a little a little sad. I mean, it's it would I I liked
all the new managers and like, you know, there's always some of
the best funds are early funds of new promising VCs.
But we've clearly the downturn is sort of enabled this pivot
to, I don't know, venture capital becoming a lot more like
private equity and big firms ruling the day.
And so, yeah, it's been good news for Andreessen Horowitz and
Lightspeed and a few others, and not good for the anonymous
manager who isn't gonna raise their second or third fund.
Yeah. I mean, obviously we did get to
touch on some positives, a couple notable exceptions.
You know, a Crew Capital announced that they closed 700
million in new funding last week.
And then also last week a friend of the pod, Harry Stabbings
closed, you know, his third fund at 400 million to invest in
early stage startups and you know, everywhere, but also
especially in Europe since he's based there.
Really exciting, got to catch up with him about that.
And he's, you know, also doing, he's leaning into his podcaster
angle and his media company as a cell to LP's about access around
deals that he has which. Is we're not doing that right
now. We're not doing that.
I, I have no judgement anymore. I feel like I used to.
There was a day where I would have been such a purist, but we
are very focused on the media business events.
Yeah, I, I stirred on LinkedIn that I'd done like 2 sort of,
I've done 3 investments sub Stack, which obviously I talked
about in the newsletter was effectively marketing for sub
Stack. I invested in Volley who I Co
Cerebral Valley with. So they're like a part of, you
know, and then protege, my friend Bobby Samuels.
But it was like, that was just sort of like the friend who, if
they ever served a company, I wanted to.
Your friend, your friend that if you know whatever you'll do,
I'll back you. I got you.
Yeah, exactly. You know, I feel like that
anyway. I don't, I, I want, I just want
to be transparent, but it's just inevitable.
I feel like the savvy person, you know, you hear?
Oh, Sir, Harry Stephens is doing this big fun that that is,
that's not sort of on our minds at the moment.
Yeah, stay tuned or not for that, but they're.
Like Eric's whims? No.
See. Why do you think he was able to
raise now? I mean, honestly, it doesn't
feel like the. Yeah, it doesn't feel like this
season, I guess, for new funds anyway.
I mean, this is his third fund going to 400 million.
But yeah. What was your take on why
Harry's sort of succeeded where others have failed?
Truly, I think I mean, the biggest thing without a doubt is
I'm sure the podcast is just an incredible asset for, you know,
meeting talent, meeting founders, meeting investors and
just, you know, as you meet people, you get clued into the
network and you get kind of a, an advantage on what deals you
should be tracking if you're, you know, talking to these
people all the time and building these networks.
But then he's now at this point raised a third fund.
The biggest Cliff, I feel like for emerging managers is going
from fund one to fund 2. So if you can pass that, you're
that's certainly a positive signal.
And also in his first fund, he's got these.
Uncomfortable then you're too big to fail and your IPS are
like, oh, not this fun. You know, it's the classic like
we we pulled out and we didn't hit excels fund where they had
Facebook. So we can never pull out again.
And we'll just, and then and then you become General Catalyst
and you buy a hospital. So.
That's. That's the journey.
But he no, I think he, he really, you know, has some track
record. He's invested in some, you know,
promising companies, including 11X and the AI startup, you
know, really bullish on having an advantage in the European
market and especially at the early stage there, there's a lot
of good AI talent coming out of there, which he's, you know,
clued into. So I think that I think that,
you know, focus having a media product as a selling point to
differentiate yourself is really important.
And now he's also, you know, starting this scout fund.
Additional additionally from the 400 million main fund where
investors are all, you know, VPS or, you know, chief officers of
some kind in other startups that, you know, can pull their
network and they get they get to keep all of the carry on their
investments. He, you know, can just use it as
an incredible funnel. You know, if the scouts make a
deal that you like, you can follow on and invest in bigger
check, you know, so it's it's pretty savvy, you know, for deal
flow to, you know, finding deals.
He's he's certainly thinking about venture differently than a
lot of people, which is appealing.
All right, well, let's the our the bread and butter.
Let's wrap up with what what was the most notable recent deal for
you? Start us off.
For sure, one deal I noticed last week that came to the top
of the list was X energy nuclear reactor and energy company.
They raised a $500 million round led by Amazon's climate pledge
fund. And then Ken Griffin was also on
the cap table, among some other strategics.
You know, people are just looking for energy, energy
resources to power AI moment right now the the AI wave is
going to take a lot of power. So seems like people are making
the bets on nuclear now. Yeah, mine's, mine's another one
on theme where investors are excited.
Right now we've got Path Robotics raised $100 million
from Matter Venture Partners and Drive Capital, also Tiger
Global, an investor. It's interesting to see them
back. They're.
Not leading and and basis set another firm, a new firm that
we're tracking. So we've got sort of old and
new, Yeah. But I think, you know, nuclear
robotics, two big themes in the world of generative AI and will
be interesting to see where they go.
Cool. Well, that's this week's
episode. Thanks for listening to the
Newcomer Podcast. See you next week.