Advising CEOs on content strategy at Principals Media. Former Global Head of News Product at Bloomberg.
New York City
Joined October 2008
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a friend got a DM from someone who invited her to a networking dinner in NYC. She was enthusiastic and agreed. Afterward, she got an email asking for payment, which had not been discussed with the invitation. That struck me as unusual. Has that happened to anyone else?
The View from the Office
I met up with Megan Kelley, who leads research at Fidelity’s Center for Applied Technology (FCAT), at Slate Cafe in Midtown Manhattan. I had yogurt and granola. She had lox on a bagel.
We first met almost a decade ago in Colorado, at a tech conference called Big Boulder. It turned out to be one of the best events I’ve ever attended. Years later, Megan saw my posts online, remembered me and hired me for a project.
That was one of my first jobs after I started Principals Media. It taught me something foundational and it’s advice I now repeat to everyone looking to build their career: You should meet people in person and then stay connected by posting online.
Megan is one of my favorite people to catch up with because monitoring the tech landscape and anticipating change is literally her job, especially when it comes to finance and wealth management.
She started her career in natural language processing and knowledge research. She joined Fidelity about two decades ago and has led FCAT’s research team since 2019.
Her current project is a report on what she calls the context layer. Models and agents may become commodities, she said. She believes firms will stand out through the knowledge graphs and collections of information their agents can access.
The hard part is figuring out a company’s “aboutness,” that is to say what it does and why it does things a certain way. Companies have always had to explain that to new employees. Now they need to do the same for every agent working on their behalf.
Megan sees companies building context frameworks for safety and fraud, but not doing as much to explain the why. For now, she said, the common approach is to stuff more information into the context window.
One goal she has is to get everyone on her team to build a personal knowledge base.
We talked about Future Proof and how I regret not going this year. Megan has spoken at the event for the last few years. At this year’s festival in September, she spoke about how a generation raised with AI may change what clients expect from financial advisors.
I told her about how frustrating it can be to see social media being gradually overrun by bots. We agreed that many people are trying to solve that issue by using lowercase when they write to signal that they are a human.
You can connect with Megan on LinkedIn or DM me for a warm introduction.
I got this idea from @venturetwins to ask ChatGPT to make a bookcase of books I would want to read based on my interests. The weird thing is most of them look real but the top row on the left about Bloomberg is the title of a real book but the author listed as Joe Florio and that is hallucinated. I asked Chat and it said - yeah - I made that up it's wrong. Wild times!
This point from Tanay's list hit for me because so many execs are a) metrics driven and they miss an opportunity b) anti media that they underestimate what they get from doing interviews
2 years ago, i had done zero marketing. i'd been an engineer my entire life.
when i told a founder friend we were building a consumer product, he told me, "tanay, you don't have that consumer dna. you don't know how to build a brand. you shouldn't do this."
it sounded like a fun challenge. game on.
2 months after we pivoted Wispr from hardware to Flow, our first launch did millions of views and hit #1 on product hunt for the day and the week.
what i've learned about marketing since:
1/ take almost no inspiration from others. standing out means doing things your own way. be unique and bold in your decisions.
2/ pick your first users by who will cause PLG. hundreds of avatars of people loved wispr flow. we focused on 2. developers, because they post about tools they love everywhere. founders, because they roll them out to their whole team.
3/ make every user feel it was built for people like them. most tools assume american english. in wispr you can pick british english, swiss german, or simplified vs traditional chinese
4/ build small moments that make people feel seen. in india, after you've spoken 1,000 words in an indian language, a banner says congratulations in that language, with the flag
5/ do pr even if you can't measure it. if i put its roi in a spreadsheet, the column would be empty. but asking what i'd pitch a journalist about every new feature gives us a lot of our ad ideas
6/ make the message something you can see, touch, feel. have fun with it. we said we'd kill the keyboard, so i sawed one in half in our office for a launch video
7/ treat word of mouth as a science, not an art. after we hit product-market fit, the first thing we optimized for was getting every user to tell their friends
turns out you don't need consumer dna or to be the most creative. you just need to treat marketing like a science.
this is the most valuable and insightful post I read on X today
~14 hours ago, 𝕏 updated the algorithm (again).
There are a few new things worth noting:
• New "user debias" model: adjusts engagement based on how "generous" each viewer is
• Likes from people who like everything will start counting less
• Engagement from "picky" users who rarely interact will count more
• Engagement pods and "like for like" groups got weaker
• Some general search improvements
• Media (video and image) are now tracked as their own signals
What still matters most:
• Posting high-quality, original content
• Replies (5x) and quotes (5x) are weighted far above likes (0.5x)
• Shares via DM (5x) and copy link (20x) are the strongest positive signals
• A predicted follow is worth 4x
• Reports, mutes, blocks, and "not interested" are heavily negative
• Posts older than 48 hours drop out of For You
• Posting too much in a row decays your reach
TL;DR: regardless of algo changes, just focus on producing content that is unique to you.
this is identifying one of the biggest trends unfolding rn. and it's not just for ads but all kinds of videos
A few thoughts on agentic video editing I’ve had over the last few days:
1. 99% of ads should be edited agentically now. If your editors are still editing in the timeline, they’re falling behind. I got a message from my senior VE saying that he’s putting out 5x edits/day now at the same quality he was before.
2. The conversation with video editors will be uncomfortable because the timeline is all they’ve ever known. Some will be hesitant and some will be fearful for their job. I think the best way to address this is head on. The tech is inevitable, but having taste is still going to be incredibly valuable to train and give feedback to agents. Those who have this will become more valuable, those who don’t will struggle.
3. Opus 5.5 can natively edit all of your ads without needing any MCPs or plugins. I’ve tried the alternatives and couldn’t find anything that was significantly better than doing everything inside of Claude.
4. Have your senior editor(s) build skills for each style of edit (e.g. mashups, UGC, AI animations…). You can build these by feeding 4-5 inspo edits to Claude and tell it to make a skill out of it. I prefer building lots of mini-skills to one big video editing skill, so that the context stays as relevant as possible.
5. Once you have a base skill (e.g. ugly ads edits), the best way to train it is through feedback loops. Have the skill re-edit the last 25 ads each senior edited then put them in an artifact, and have the senior VE give feedback on each. Keep doing this until the skill is refined and it understands what a good edit is.
6. If you do this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to make edits that need little/no feedback. Most of ours are approved after v1 or v2, sometimes v3.
7. Only A-player editors should be training the skills.
8. Re adoption in the team, the AI champion builds the v1. Then get out of the way. I’m not the best editor on my team, so my job is to build the harness that lets the best editors train the skills, not build the skills myself.
9. If you want to supercharge this process, have your top editors record their screen as they edit. Turn on Gmeet or loom and get them to narrate the reasoning behind their process. E.g. why they chose this cut, pacing or b-roll clip…this is all context that gets fed into your skills.
10. It takes time to build, train and refine these skills. You have to go through the dip to get out the other side. Budget time in for senior VEs to work on this - otherwise you’ll end up with skills that put out subpar edits and don’t save you much/any time.
11. Operate under the assumption that this is the worst video editing is ever going to be. Opus 5.5 can do most of our editing today…what will Opus 6/Fable 6 be able to do? The editing skills you build are only going to become more valuable as the tech evolves.
I still don’t think people realise how big video editing being unblocked is. Things that I thought were 3-6 months away are now on the table.
Will continue to share more as I learn. CRAZY, crazy times.
One thing you have to admire about MTS and TBPN relative to legacy media is the hustle and speed.
On Friday less than an hour after the Dessa voice model tweet drops, Brent Liang is on X trying to get them booked for that day.
@liangsays @MTSlive @tbpn
I like how this magazine stand in the Lower East Side sells the standing influencer selfie sticks with light rings.
Agententischreife — A German word which means the point when AI agents have moved from tech circles into dinner-party conversation.
I went to a dinner this week in Manhattan and everyone impromptu went around the table and talked about how many agents they have and what they do.
It seems like we have reached a point of no return.
I love comparing notes with people creating content.
Phil Rosen publishes a newsletter and does a podcast. Eric Pan is a financial content creator. Mila Che does PR. I ghostwrite and do comms work for CEOs.
We met for coffee at Felix, the chic coffee shop on Park Avenue, to compare notes on how AI is transforming our businesses and how to keep up.
The conversation focused on AI agents, which we all use to gather information, connect with people and draft content. Eric and Phil argued strongly in favor of Grok Bot.
I have been using Muse and Instinct. They convinced Mila and me we have to try Grok Bot.
The basic difference is that Muse and Instinct are built to be one assistant. Grok Bot lets you spin up as many agents as you want, creating a team. You can give each a separate job, and run them at the same time. It costs about $30 a month.
Phil and Eric use theirs for research, posting and video editing. Phil showed us how he easily clipped a TV clip into vertical video for Instagram. Eric used Grok Bot to create animations and charts from nothing but raw footage.
The other observation was speed. Three months ago agents were hard to set up. Eric said his first one took three days. Now they take minutes.
It's hard to keep up with the change.
@philrosenn @milache5
The View from the Office
I met up with Maya True Wasik for breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien at Columbus Circle. She had tea and an egg, cheddar and avocado sandwich. I had the yogurt parfait.
Maya is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an aspiring documentary filmmaker. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Ryan Cheah.
Maya is finishing her degree remotely from New York so she can work as an intern at NBC. She spent the past summer assisting the network’s documentary team. At the end of the summer, her internship was extended into the academic year.
The incredible part of the job for Maya is getting to work with people who have decades of experience, at NBC and other outlets such as Vox and Vice Media.
On the side, she shoots photos and videos for restaurants, startups and events to generate revenue that keeps her afloat. At events, people often ask how she got the gig. “It’s actually the camera that keeps getting me connected,” she tells them.
She’s worked on documentaries covering the environment, arts and culture. She produced a short film, Buckets and Boots, about local recovery efforts in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. The film placed fifth in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program’s Multimedia III Enterprise Story competition.
Maya grew up in North Carolina. Her mother is a professor at Elon University who wanted her children to be citizens of the world, so she sent Maya to a school where half the day was taught in Spanish, and later a year of high school in Costa Rica, and then United World College in New Mexico. Maya also lived in Hong Kong for a stretch.
We talked about how much journalism has changed and how different it is to try to land a job as a journalist. When I started at Bloomberg, people typically looked for an entry-level job at a news organization, where someone more experienced would teach them the ropes.
Maya, by contrast, started making content, and job offers have followed.
You can connect with Maya via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm introduction.
A meetup in midtown NYC of Old Timers from Bloomberg this week reminded me of three big things:
COMPANIES CHANGE. The Bloomberg of today - the established media giant - bears little resemblance to the place we worked in the 1990s when it was defined by the intensity of start-up energy and hustle culture.
PEOPLE CHANGE. Whatever beef you had with anyone you worked with 30 years ago has been (or should be) forgotten. Everyone is happy to just show up and reminisce.
TIMES CHANGE. Fewer and fewer people retire from corporate America these days. Many are let go - often earlier than they would like.
If you are early in your career it's worth anticipating and preparing for all three of those scenarios.
The View from the Office.
I met up with Lydia Winkler, a founder, investor and advisor, at Slate Cafe in NoMad. She had black coffee; I had a latte.
Lydia co-founded RentCheck, a New Orleans startup whose software lets property managers have residents document a home’s condition on their phones when they move in and move out. The photos helps residents and property managers avoid disputes by creating a record to see whether repairs are needed.
The idea came from her own experience. A landlord refused to return her deposit, so she sued. She hired two private investigators and prepared for a courtroom presentation by practicing with a retired judge in his 80s who lived across the street. After 18 months, she won, recovered her legal fees and used the money for a trip to Southeast Asia.
RentCheck raised a $1 million pre-seed round, with Jim Coulter, founder of TPG Capital, among its first investors and went through Techstars. When the pandemic hit, property managers needed to inspect units but couldn’t send people inside. RentCheck let tenants do the inspections themselves. The number of properties on the platform grew 1,000%.
This was the first time I'd seen Lydia in perhaps 25 years. I first met her when she was elementary-school age at Bloomberg’s annual company picnics. She is the daughter of my former boss, Matt Winkler, Bloomberg’s founding editor-in-chief.
There’s something extraordinary about seeing someone you knew as a child and later learning about the remarkable things they have accomplished as an adult.
Lydia told me three stories that shaped her life:
➡️In August 2020, she crashed a paraplane into a tree in Chesapeake City, Maryland. She was left hanging 110 feet in the air for eight hours as gasoline from the aircraft soaked her body, causing severe burns. A fire truck couldn’t reach her, so a state trooper called an arborist named Rick, who climbed a nearby tree and saved her. She was airlifted to Johns Hopkins and made a remarkable recovery. She tries to visit the tree each year and calls Rick on the anniversary.
➡️In law school at Tulane, she joined a program that sent students to Louisiana State Penitentiary to represent older prisoners at parole hearings. She later started a program matching law firms’ pro bono work with parole cases.
➡️Landing her first "dream" job took grit and persistence. In 2011, during the NBA lockout, she decided she wanted to work for the Golden State Warriors. She moved to the Bay Area in 2013 and called human resources every two days until they agreed to meet. That led to a job in corporate partnerships.
Last year, Lydia left her full-time role at RentCheck and moved to New York City. These days she mentors startups at Oneday, an MBA program built around starting a revenue-generating business. She also builds apps and works as a performance artist.
If you are building something you should reach out as she can probably help. @lydiarwinkler
Anthony Bourdain said the solution to any problem is to move.
In New York you can change your landscape just by getting out of your apartment and going to one of the dozens of events in your field that happen every night.
Last night I attended a panel called: "How We Connect Now: AI, Socials, and Brand," which was organized by a group called The Marketing Meetup.
It was timely given the backdrop of how AI is forcing marketing professionals to rethink how they show up on social media. A lot of the discussion focused on how the platforms promised a certain kind of connection but delivered something else.
There were three panelists:
➡️ Ramin Beheshti, CEO of Caliber, whose creator-led brands (The News Movement, The Recount) reach more than 100 million people a month. He used to run product and technology at Dow Jones, including WSJ.com.
➡️ Ben Moore, who runs the U.S. market for BeReal, the once-a-day photo app. He came from TikTok, where he led global media partnerships.
➡️ Caroline Turnbull Doran, a design researcher at PA Consulting.
➡️ Mila Che hosted and moderated. She co-created this event with El Etherington and The Marketing Meetup.
El has put on a bunch of these meetups in the UK already, and she and Mila have a number coming up. The next ones are Montreal on Nov. 10, Geneva and Dublin on Nov. 12, and Lisbon on Nov. 13, booked to coincide with Portugal Tech Week.
The format is low-key. Pizza in boxes and wine on a conference table before you sit down to listen to the panelists. It’s a good way to allow people to network without an agenda.
I tell everyone I know that they should be attending more IRL events, especially if you are between jobs, were laid off, or want to get better at what you do.
I remember visiting Foursquare over a decade ago while I was a product head at Bloomberg.
they showed us this analysis they had done which used location data to accurately predict the number of iPhones sold at every store - info that previously only apple would have known.
I remember thinking - damn this product is going to change how wall street analysts do their jobs.
it didn't work out that way and maybe I was wrong. but I still think they had a product there that was either never developed or built or marketed.
Foursquare was acquired last month. The outcome was disappointing. It's taken me a while to write this, but I think I'm finally done grieving it. Here are some thoughts on our final years, an effort to honor the team who helped build & maintain FSQ's legacy, and my attempt to finally get some closure. teendrama.substack.com/p/som…
how do you get to dress like the NFL commentor in the middle? it seems like each broadcast someone gets designated for that role. but there can't be more than one
