Laden...
Join the 450+ members of our paid community to support Big Technology’s independent reporting and gain access to our Discord server + extra coverage on tech’s most pressing stories. Sign up today for just $8/month. Big Technology Turns Five: Here’s What I’ve LearnedA half-decade in, Big Technology is alive and kicking. Journalism leads, it takes a village, and YouTube and ChatGPT are surprising new sources of growth.
In the fog of Covid in 2020, I quit my reporter job at BuzzFeed News and started Big Technology here on Substack. This was before a wave of journalists and opinion writers decamped from mainstream publications to ‘go independent,’ but the time was right for me. I had a new book, solid sourcing within big tech, a desire to write only my own stories, and a feeling the business of journalism was changing. The move was risky, but I felt staying put would be riskier. So I jumped. Sure enough, BuzzFeed News closed three years later. And today, Big Technology is sustainable and turning five. To mark the occasion, I’m going to share what I’ve learned over the past half-decade as an independent journalist. But first, I’ll note that Big Technology wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you for being here and giving me permission to do this work. I’m grateful to have such an incredible audience. Just Go For ItBig Technology’s toughest moment was the day before launch. I agonized over whether to do it, replaying the worst-case scenarios over in my head. Five years later, I’m glad I didn’t listen to the fear. I’ll always remember a fellow media entrepreneur sliding into my DMs at launch and assuring me I’d never regret the choice. “Allies will surface, ones you never realized you had,” he wrote. He was right. Getting ‘out there’ often opens up opportunities that don’t exist when you’re working within an organization. The Journalism Is the Most Important ThingUnearthing new information, providing ‘analytical scoops,’ and landing big interviews are the key ingredients to making this work. I’m reminded of that lesson every time I let my attention drift. It’s sometimes hard to let business opportunities go by in service of spending time calling sources (and writing), but it’s a must. Better stories and better interviews lead to a larger audience, which is good for business in the long run. Good journalism is good business.
Building Brick By Brick Is Pretty IncredibleWhen I started Big Technology, I wanted to create a publication with as little dependency on social media algorithms as possible. So I picked a newsletter and a podcast, two formats delivered via subscription — not feed ranking — where audiences build slowly over time. My theory was if I could put out regular, high-quality work, people would keep opening the newsletter and listening to the show, and that growth would compound over time. Well, it’s working. The newsletter has 165,000+ active subscribers. The podcast has grown steadily over time and is currently setting its all-time record for monthly downloads this June (see monthly download chart above). I keep thinking about how the trend might continue over the next five years. I’m hopeful this will be my last job. Paid Subscribers Really MatterThe biggest mistake I made running Big Technology was waiting to turn on our paid product. My plan was to run ads as long as possible and only go paid once 100,000 people subscribed. Then, in 2022, my ad strategy ran into an ad pullback and this publication entered its deepest period of uncertainty. Ads come and go (we haven’t run any the past few weeks), but regular support from paid subscribers means this newsletter won’t go out of business. I also think our paid subscribers get a great deal, with access to additional reporting and membership to our private Discord server (the best new product I’ve launched here in years). If you’re subscribed, thank you from the bottom of my heart. And if you’d like to consider joining, here’s a discount. ChatGPT Is Sending Real TrafficIn 2025, ChatGPT is Big Technology’s No. 5 referral source, and has sent this publication multiple paid subscribers. ChatGPT-referred visitors are also converting to paid at a higher rate than Google-referred visitors. The ChatGPT traffic numbers aren’t massive yet, but I imagine they’ll become much more important over time. The ‘One Person’ Publication is Kind of a MythI am definitely not doing this all on my own, and believe the ‘one person’ publication isn’t really a thing. I’m so lucky to be joined on the podcast each Friday by Ranjan Roy, who brings wit and a deep understanding of the tech and AI business to our weekly news recaps. I’ve also been fortunate to publish some great contributors over the past few years, including Kristi Coulter, Mike Shields, Louise Matsakis, and David Kiferbaum. Fellow Substackers Gergely Orosz and Alex Xu have generous in recommending Big Technology to their subscribers and instrumental in our growth (thank you!). We’ve had two excellent reporting fellows contribute a ton of reporting here, Owen Lavine and Douglas Gorman. Jeremy Briggs is the master behind our YouTube strategy. EZ Newswire is a great partner running our press release section. And Nancy on the sales side is incredible. This is a team effort. YouTube is A ForceAfter ignoring YouTube for a while, I’m all-in now. Once you get some momentum there, it can be a massive source of reach and a good source of revenue. You must play the YouTube game: Thumbnails, clips, shorts, and regular publishing. And again, I hate depending on tech giant algorithms. But there’s no greater force than YouTube in media today, especially for AI conversations. We’re on track to add 40,000+ subscribers there this year alone. Much More to ComeIn some ways, these first five years have been a warmup. Getting the publication stood up, learning how to put the pieces together, figuring out how to edit audio and video, and getting a great team in place has been a lot of work. But things are finally humming now. Expect more big stories (including a massive profile in July), new features on the podcast, and deeper community and paid products. Thanks again for being a part of this, and here’s to the next five years. What Else I’m Reading, Etc.Meta scoops three OpenAI researchers for superintelligence purposes [WSJ] Scale AI “flooded” Google’s AI work with “gibberish”; “They just hired everybody who could breathe.” [Inc.] Claude is a good friend, according to Anthropic [Axios] Steve Huffman is focused on “Human verification” amid AI “arms race” [FT] Lawsuits, Land & Loose Tongues: How the super rich duke it out in The Hamptons [Curbed] The chip ban is delaying DeepSeek R2 [The Information] Omead Afshar, a top aide to Elon Musk at Tesla, left the company [WSJ] Number of The Week30-50% Salesforce CEO Marc Benioffclaims AI is doing as much as half the work at his company This Week On Big Technology Podcast: Is AI Actually Saving The Stock Market? — With Tom LeeTom Lee is the chief investment officer at Fundstrat Capital and head of research at FSInsight. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether generative AI wave is actually holding up the stock market and what would happen if it stalled or fell apart. We discuss what an AI 'Black Swan' event would look like, whether the bubble would pop, and what happens if AI gets too good. Tune in for the second half where we discuss how Lee predicts stock market movements, why the market is holding up well, and whether bitcoin has room to grow. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast app of choice Thanks again for reading. Please share Big Technology if you like it! And hit that Like Button to ring in the next five years of this publication. My book Always Day One digs into the tech giants’ inner workings, focusing on automation and culture. I’d be thrilled if you’d give it a read. You can find it here. Thank you for reading Big Technology! Paid subscribers get our weekly column and plenty more. Please consider signing up here.
© 2025 Alex Kantrowitz |
Laden...
Laden...
