3 ms·

"Five years is not enough time to think about how we should make any money in a way congruent with our founding values? That just doesn’t compute." Sure it doe

"Five years is not enough time to think about how we should make any money in a way congruent with our founding values? That just doesn’t compute." Sure it does. "they sweat the details like nobody else" It sounds to me like they focused very aggresively on user satisfaction / user experience based on DHH's quote above. Figuring out how what pricing / service model looks like, what sales should look like, etc. obviously takes some amount of effort > 0. It would appear based on the above that Medium focused on the one side of the pendulum more than the other side in the balance. That would've been their undoing regardless of VC money (as without VC money they would've had to put focus on a revenue model earlier which would've led to a different experience than the one he had). This is typically why folks talk about Product Market fit. Both sides of that _very_ complicated relationship are important.

snarf21 10y ago
It also doesn't seem like they tried to fix the real issue. From all accounts, their platform is easier to create content on but was that really the pain point? There are lots of people who enjoy creating content but would like there to be some ability to have the chance to grow into their full time gig. Additionally, there is so much content out there that discovery is a real problem. But they took a direct approach and just put ads on the page but you need huge scale to get big money. I wonder if people would pay for a Medium "subscription" if what their site did was recommend three articles each day that you are likely interested in. (Obviously using some kind of ML to slowly learn your areas of interest and writers you prefer). The content creators get a cut based on views and ratings (maybe?), which circles back to better content. Once you have tons of awesome content, people will always pay. The above is not fully baked, just thinking aloud....

snarf21 10y ago

It also doesn't seem like they tried to fix the real issue. From all accounts, their platform is easier to create content on but was that really the pain point? There are lots of people who enjoy creating content but would like there to be some ability to have the chance to grow into their full time gig. Additionally, there is so much content out there that discovery is a real problem. But they took a direct approach and just put ads on the page but you need huge scale to get big money. I wonder if people would pay for a Medium "subscription" if what their site did was recommend three articles each day that you are likely interested in. (Obviously using some kind of ML to slowly learn your areas of interest and writers you prefer). The content creators get a cut based on views and ratings (maybe?), which circles back to better content. Once you have tons of awesome content, people will always pay. The above is not fully baked, just thinking aloud....