Emily Sundberg on Feed Me's seven-figure Substack, California expansion, and why both Substack and Patreon should stop poaching each other's creators

bring in Emily Sunberg and let's also tell you about getbessel.com. Shop over [music] 26,500 luxury fully authent.

Yeah, good to have you here.

How's it going?

Um, it's going great. Last night we were at a uh an event and uh and the interviewer was asking us a bunch of questions about the business and stuff, but one of the questions that it didn't phase me at the time, but then I talked about it with someone later and I'll give you the question and I want to see how you interpret it. It was uh if you are on a desert island, you're stranded on a desert island,

what are three Twitter accounts that you would follow?

Oh,

maybe do that for Substack.

Yeah,

three Substack accounts. [clears throat]

You can do anything. I I I wound up listing a Substack as well.

It was just technology analyst. John's just on a desert island just like reading Tom Twitter. Um need need uh Joe Weisenthal. We definitely need Joe Weisenthal. Yes.

Um [clears throat] and then a third probably like a like a Frank O'Hara bot or something that just like automatically gives you some poetry. You answered the question exactly how I answered the question. And then someone came up to me after and was like, "No, like if you're stranded, you need to be h you need to be following like alert services or like the Coast Guard or like

Oh, right. You know, pilot a pilot like someone with a plane,

but also don't stop analyzing technology. You're just waving you're waving the Joe Weisenthal

post. What is Joe Weisthal going to do to get you off that?" Joe would figure out.

He's not going to help you.

He would know that I was missing though and have like task force.

Okay. Okay. And you want to know that he's coming for you.

Yeah. Yeah. He would give me about

Wait, speaking of Joe Weisenthal, he recently uh made an appearance on your new podcast.

He did.

Expense account,

right?

And he had a take that I thought crossed journalistic lines. I thought he

Let's hear it.

He said that Malaysia has the best food in the world.

Have you been?

No.

So, how would you know? cuz I'm from America and I know America has the best food in the world.

I went to a a birthday party at a Malaysian bar last night.

Okay. Was it the best food?

It was great.

Is Malaysian food actually that good?

What is Malaysian food?

It's like

Name every name every green. It's uh Do you like spice?

Yeah. Yeah, I like spice. I'm just saying that like like Malaysia has one type of food.

It's delicious. You should have beef sauté. Beef sauté. I love beef. I love beef sate.

And then like sausage,

but we have pizza. We have McDonald's. We have the Doritos Locos Taco.

Do you have pizza in LA?

No, but in New York, which is again in America, he he was saying on a country bycountry basis, we have Las Vegas.

We have San Francisco. We have French We have French Laundry. We have all sorts of restaurants.

Have you guys had any great dinners while you've been here?

Uh we had a pretty good dinner last night.

Where we go?

We went to a steakhouse. It was delicious.

Which one?

Hawk something.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Uh but I just think that the variety that you get like I I will give Joe Weisenthal. I've never been. But let's give him Malaysia is an A+. It's an A+. Yeah. It's like, well, then America has got to be B+ in steak and B+ in French and B+ in sushi and B+ in uh, you know, Italian and all the different all the different genres of cuisines. Awesome. And you add all that. Okay. Okay. You're defending really probably saying was like a great this like like probably one or two specific great Malaysian places in New York cuz he has his stops. No, no. He was talking about going to Malaysia physically and saying that that being in Malaysia, that's the best food in the world.

Yeah, we went to Hawk Hawkmore.

We went to it. It was good. You're not You're not

I mean, I haven't been yet, but I'll make I'll make a trip.

Okay. Well, uh how how is Expense Account going as a new podcast? Are you excited about it?

It's great. It's a blast. You know, it started um Jason, my restaurant columnist, he started writing a column for me a little bit over a year ago called Expense Account. And it's sort of about like business guy restaurants, like places where somebody slams the car down.

Yes.

And it was a great column. And I was reading one of them. He joked about having a podcast. I called him and I was like,

"Are you making a show with someone else?"

And he said he he wasn't.

Yeah. Yeah.

But then I said, "Do you want a show?"

And we made it and Substack and uh Silver Oak Wines

sponsored season one.

That's a great sponsor.

Yeah, they're great. to Substack.

Congratulations. I like that.

Great. Substack sponsored.

They are the presenting sponsor of season one.

Very cool.

Love Substack.

Yeah. What I liked about it was uh the fact that I am not really a foodie as you can tell from my

You guys say that, but you've been having more um culinary conversation.

Yes. But my example of good food in America was the Doritos Locos Taco.

Baja Blast. I like I like a I like a Baja [laughter] Blast. I like a Diet Coke. I like a Red.

Same. We're on the same page.

So, but but so, so I was worried that I was going to open up the RSS feed and see a bunch of names that I didn't recognize. And when I saw Joe Weisenthal, I was like, I'm in

and he has great takes on food. Yes. And it was great because he's one of New York's best food.

I'm used to him in one context talking about me about the markets, about what what's happening with the latest news in the Fed, talking to founders, talking to entrepreneurs, CEOs. Uh it was really cool to see uh just a different side of him. So, I think if you can keep doing that, like I'm I'm hooked. That's the That's the idea.

Yes. Yes. And I think a lot of people will jump and honestly a lot of people should be trying to get on the show because it shows them a different side of them and I I don't know. It just seems like it's it's a recipe for success. I love it.

Uh what about the West Coast expansion? You're looking

I need your advice here.

So I I found out Subsack is very limited analytics. They're great for other reasons, but in terms of like the demographics of my readers,

Sure.

it's limited, but I do know that about 20% of my readers live in California.

Yeah. Um it it feels like a loss to not it it feels like a miss to not do some sort of or California product. Uh when I was there on my last trip, everybody was saying like we want something like we read Feed Me religiously, but we want something in California. So I decided next year I'm just going to go out there more like there as a state. Um, and I I think it will probably start as like a monthly letter, but all of these readers of mine, they like have tips for me. They have stories they want to tell. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to focus it, but I really I was I was putting together like a small newsroom or thinking about people to help me with it. And then I realized I can just go and do it. I think that's what people want.

Yeah, for sure.

So, I'm going to San Francisco at the end of January.

Great. I asked my

I wonder how we need we need a prediction market on how long you're going to actually stay in SF.

Right now it's three nights.

Okay. You're making it sound like it was going to be like 3 weeks. It could I mean maybe I'll never leave.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're going in January, not for January.

In January. My husband would not want me to go for that long. He would miss me.

Um and my readers would miss me in New York. But uh yeah, I I'm not sure where to start, but my my Twitter community of my like reply people in SF have been very welcoming and generous and have invited me to a few people

dinner parties and bars.

You'll probably leave with a scout fund.

I'm looking for like some hidden doors.

Sure. Sure. Okay.

So, I mean that sounds like sort of restaurant focused, but are there other cultural touch points?

All kinds of establishments have doors.

Okay. go to Sand Hill Road and just start trying doors like against the side of some of the buildings.

I think the Feed Me Report on the Sand uh the Rosewood Bar on a Thursday night would really go

that would go great.

I think that'd be a great piece.

Definitely go definitely go there. I'll do that on a Thursday night.

Um but there's a lot that I don't I mean the only other time I went to SF was for WWDC. Thank you Apple for bringing me earlier that this year. Got a selfie with Tim Cook.

Yeah, but Certino is a very different environment than San Francisco. I know you probably spent some time

in a neighborhood called

What's the neighborhood that you don't that not everyone always likes to see?

The Tenderloin.

Oh, yeah. I live there. That's rough.

Really?

Yeah.

We walked we walked through there uh at night after dinner.

The the Twitter headquarters for a while were there.

It wasn't fine when we were walking through. I had John as kind to uh to take a trip to the the Hamptons of San Francisco

which is Tahoe.

Oh, Tahoe.

I would say Tahoe, right? Or maybe Martha. Wait, no. Uh not Martha Vineyard. That's what's the Martha's Vineyard of San Francisco. I don't know.

I said Marin.

Marin. Yeah. One country. But I think Tahoe is more of the Hampton cuz I when I think of like the Hampton's of I think like 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours.

Skiing.

Yeah. You can ski, you can do a bunch of different things. You guys ski

occasionally. I'm not super into it. It's fine.

And we're into the track right now. We're in very much in a in a race car phase. Uh less of the skiing phase. I I the most recent experience of being on the track just completely reset my expectations for what's possible with recreational sport. So, uh I'm I'm find me in thermal, not you know, uh Jackson.

You're getting um ad deal ideas also from F1, right?

Oh, yes. Love F1. always.

He's the best. Um, back to Substack.

Yeah,

Jack Ki at Patreon is trying to poach Substack writers.

What do you think he's thinking? What do you think he needs to do? How do you think about the positioning of Substack versus Patreon? Just like from a vibe and cultural perspective maybe first, like how how do you interpret like a Substack creator versus hi, I'm a Patreon creator? Yeah. I think the medium is like you think Patreon, you think news or you think Patreon, you think podcast model, right?

Yeah. Otherworld. Do you know my favorite podcast? Otherworld.

Jack. Uh Jack.

Yeah. From uh Yeah. He was originally

Tamagotchi, Versace, whatever. Yeah. He rocks. I think if they keep him

with Well on that show. Yeah.

I love Other Worlds. I listen to

I've never listened to I never I I I've never watched a full horror movie

and I'm not into any of this. You're not into that.

He just turns into a ghost. He's he's too afraid.

You're missing out. It's a world. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a scary guy. A scary guy.

Um Okay. I think if they keep them, you know, they keep some of the big hitters like Red Scare, whatever. But I I don't think I think what both of these platforms are doing wrong is when they try to do like the sports team trade thing like

and I was feeling [clears throat] a bit of FOMO.

Why not go try get new people on your platform?

Yeah. Yeah. Incubate if you're Patreon. Yeah. If you're Patreon, don't go poach from from Substack. Go find someone who's working in legacy media way under way underpaid relative to the value they create. Have them come over and do their new thing. And and that was the lineage of some of the early Substack deals was we'll we'll help you get set up. We'll we'll give you enough money that you can pay for healthcare, pay for the first thing, and then get your business up and running,

right? Um I was feeling a lot of FOMO that I wasn't getting the email from the Patreon team saying, "Come over here check." And then I got one the other day and it had the um

it had the term I haven't even responded yet.

[laughter]

post poached me trading card attempted poaching happening.

You're way too You're way too loyal. I I genuinely think you're I feel like your audience would have a mutiny. They would be like

it wouldn't work.

I think you're Substack coded. That's the thing. I think you're a Substack writer,

but also when you see certain terms like

we're rolling out new features that we want to tell you that roll is like a slow thing. It's not like we're launching this and that the email kind of just fuzzed out after that and then he followed up or they I won't I won't out I won't out who emailed me but um

this is amazing.

Yeah,

I love it.

Uh but I think I think like it's okay for Substack to be a newsletter platform and it's okay for Patreon to be

podcast platform and I I would I'm very curious to see what an email CMS on Patreon even looks like.

Do you have Netflix? Do I have Netflix? Sure do.

Are you like lo cuz I pay for it but I'm not logged in on my phone. Like I'm not like a regular watcher.

Phone.

Yeah. If you ever watch

watching on the plane?

Yeah. On a plane. I won't do that. I won't do that.

Apple TV maybe.

Okay. There you go. So, uh, but do you think you'd ever watch a podcast on Netflix? You've seen that they're doing this?

Yes.

They're starting to buy podcasts and put them on Netflix.

Yeah. More like distribute them.

Distribute them. They got The Ringer.

I would not, but these kids are really watching a lot of podcasts. They're into podcasts on TVs on on the wall. Throw it on for a couple hours.

I just messed up my mic. No, I think you're

um

wall podcasts.

Yeah, I they're all watching podcast like people are watching expense account as much as listening to it

and and and do you think they're also watching it on like smart TVs basically like they throw it on on the TV the way they might throw on uh you know reality TV show or a movie or

with all the like working from home. Okay, it's the close [applause] here. They're closing the stock exchange. Who is it? It's Wells Fargo. Well, man,

we got one tower still up here. We got one to Wells Fargo. We're holding on. We're holding on to one.

Yeah, we got one. We got one left. There we go. [screaming] We're here live. shopping.

Let's give it up for Wells Fargo.

Yes. Yes.

Wow. She is going for it.

That was great.

Maybe future fem sponsor there. Who knows?

Who knows?

Uh anyway, you were saying people watching Netflix shows at uh

I think more and more people are sort of using their TVs as like that always on thing in the office but in their house. So, it's like a you know like the Harry Potter moving picture frame almost. It's just like the TV is on, the podcast is on while they're doing whatever [clears throat] else they're doing.

Yeah, that makes sense. Uh holiday gifting.

Yes.

Uh are gift are are are do gift guides matter in a world where you can tell the LLM uh describe the person and say generate a gift guide at you know every possible price point all the way through.

Did you guys see the gift guide that I wrote about that um Evercore sent out to everyone. It's like what to buy the I think last year this I

you wrote it for somebody at Evercore sends it to

I feel like that's that's a premier product.

That's great. I'll forward it to you guys.

I looked up the person who makes it. They've been doing it for many years. Last year it was like what to buy the women in your life and this year they changed the subject to what to buy the people in your life. But it's like luxury

items men.

Love it.

Yeah. So I I like the idea of sort of like this word of mouth kind of gift guide. I think becomes a little bit more secret.

Sure. Um, Substack has become a storm of gift guides this time of year and it's a lot of clothes. I didn't realize that like that's what people want. So much

what do you do you are you guys going to make a gift guide?

Yeah, but we're going to strict no clothes, more hardware, more like what track car to buy.

No, no, no. We don't love the game. Love of the game.

Oh, yeah. Shop my We got to have the Shop on Shop My

Yeah, I think Shop. They have a lot on there now.

Okay. Yes.

Yeah. If they if they get Ferrari challenge cars on there

will be our word of the year.

Word of the year.

DB needs a word of the year. Every publication has a word of the year. The economist has a word of the year. The economist word of the year.

We haven't disclosed it yet.

The the the economist word of the year is slop,

right? I saw that.

And that feels like appropriate, but also potentially could have been last year's word of the year. We were talking about slop as a term that was sort of, you know, I think you called the top on slop in February,

but so it really

became it became the word of the year.

I think the economist did a good job picking and then Oxford had rage bait.

We Oh, yeah, they did. Rage bait.

That's two words.

Uh term of the year.

Yeah. One one word put together, I guess.

I want to say our word so much, but we need to introduce it in the right way. You can you can

Have you been hearing everybody saying flow state now? That's like the very hot flow state. I like that's like such an old I feel like that's like a 2018 era.

Slump is negative. Range dates negative. Flow state. Yeah, we're moving our word.

I remember I remember when I was like in college when I was in college listening to uh like Tim Ferrris,

he was always trying to get in flow state. I was I was

say like Whiz Khalifa. [laughter]

Flow state's good.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I would encourage you to to drop FeedMe's word of the year. Okay.

I think you should think about

I've been thinking of doing um some sort of list at the end of the year like

the I was going to do a man of the year thing after GQ did theirs and left you off.

Oh yeah.

Crazy.

Well, uh didn't they give it to Sydney Sweeney instead?

Yes.

She was at the event. I It's funny. You said

Did you get the invite?

There was another

No, we didn't even get the invite.

No, there was another

You guys would be at my man of the year party.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad we'd make make a list.

Uh what do you have?

Um

are you having a holiday party?

I I mean I

No, we we've really like dropped the ball on events like since the event we did. Uh

yeah, we had it's impossible.

Um do you

you knew with our event we were like we're doing an event we picked like a rough time and then did nothing else until the day of but you pulled it off. So

did you It was It was fabulous. Um, did did you guys ever go into any to any like 2016 awesome SF World holiday parties? Like I feel like the budgets have kind of vanished and things have changed.

Vanished? What do you mean?

Holiday parties don't really feel the same.

Wait, how so?

Maybe I'm talking about the media ones.

Oh, okay.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, cuz I mean, so that does make sense. Like the biggest

more money than ever and stuff.

Yeah. So, so like we're like the next two weeks like basically the the holiday holiday parties have begun.

Uh tech has obviously like taken the they saw the media companies with their big holiday parties and they said like that that's actually our money like we're going to take that and now um but I was wondering uh how you would how you would handle uh room blocks for uh as as like feed me if you were going to put on a big event. How would you handle room blocks? Cuz there's been a big

hotel room.

Well, you have a very big team.

Yes.

So, you're saying how do we transport the team if something was happening in New York?

Yeah.

So, we travel light. We travel light. There was just four of us. There was four of us.

Yeah. I mean, do people do there's like two questions here. One, how do you how does a who has to put up that many people like in a different city? Uh like like if a media company is doing uh if they're if they're doing uh I'm I'm somewhat doing a bit

I think you guys need to open a New York office.

We should Well, this is our New York office. We're partnering with the New York Stock Exchange now.

But I'm just saying if you were doing an event in New York and you were inviting people and you were like, I'm going to pay for your accommodation because you're speaking at my event. What what what would what hotel would you choose?

We need a high low strategy. We need a high low

strategy. We what we need is a sleeping bag on the floor of this booth. When we come to New York, we crash in the booth and we're like, we are grinding harder than anyone in Manhattan.

Or like a Vice Warehouse strategy. Do you guys know the media company in DC, Punch Bowl? Like they own a brown store.

Oh, yeah. That's cool. Their office is there and I'm sure someone has slept there before. Um, but you might need to, you know,

look check out like the real estate.

Where would Punch Bowl go on uh my media map, which was the map? And I think I got to talk.

We still We still are getting We still are getting notes from people saying like, "You didn't put me on.

We did this actually event last night."

People thought that was like the Magna Carta. It was like [laughter]

together. It was so crazy.

It was so crazy cuz Tyler put it together. We like glanced at it. We're like, "Oh, it looks pretty funny." And you and then we're like, "All right, we'll have Emily basically to be the heat shield and put this out to the world." So

yeah, that was great. and then people [laughter] tried to make their own and it didn't hit the same obviously.

Okay. Well, yeah. I mean, I I think that these formats they they when they hit, they hit really well and they're very sharable. I I would I I would say that

stuff can get overdone, but I would be excited to read the FeedMe holiday gift guide. Also, just the recap of the top 10 moments from the year, pieces that I might not have read or snippets that I missed, things like that, like the the scoops that you've gotten or interviews, things you learned. I have a question for you guys.

Predictions for next year. All of this stuff like the formats are they they they they're played out but they they work still. They work and it's just a good way to enjoy information. I like seeing a market on a map.

I like seeing a list of top things whether it's people or companies. Like people like ranking lists and stuff to digest.

Yeah. And you need a little bit of heat shield, but you know,

um can I ask you guys a quick question? I was at Dealbook this year and interviewed Mr. Beast.

Yeah. and he was playing the videos that he made 10 years ago with like camcorders, like early stuff.

That video that went viral this week, me in 10 years or something.

Yeah.

And I'm curious, are you guys

I I got like a pain and regret that I'm not capturing more like how I built this style stuff. Are you guys capturing that as well? Like are you guys getting behind the scenes stuff?

Yeah, we have a little bit of behind the scenes stuff. Um we we we've seen it.

The thing is we put our entire studio on the stream,

right? And so like it's in some ways like you get a behind the scenes look every episode

more like back in the car on the way home like

get some of that stuff crazy about it because

like like you could tell like if you were trying to just make the documentary about we actually thought it would be hilarious to make a 2-hour documentary about TVN and and release it in one year like and just because you could just put a documentary on on Amazon Prime if you want. Yeah. Um, but but you could you could tell the story through the show pretty effectively and we have ISOs for everything and we often have meta conversations like this one about the show on the show. And so right here we're talking about the decision to put to do behind the scenes. There aren't that many there aren't that many discussions that we're like, "Oh, we should have captured that off off camera." Uh, may maybe there's a little bit more where we should be doing stuff. I think that the the the lower hanging fruit for us is just uh like

I think you should become one of those live streamers that just spends all day long walking around and be like, "Yo, no, no, Emily." All around New York, you just have somebody following you with a camera. You're just doing stories, scooping.

I could I mean that like photo in the New York Times where I'm in the back of the car is kind of that vibe.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. May maybe maybe we should do more uh behind the scenes shots, but it's just hard to figure out like how would we productize that because it's a lot of effort. I think it's more for the time capsule.

Yeah.

But I think for us, like think about the time capsule in 30 years from now, you'll be able to do a second from every single show forever and you'll be able

photos and memory.

Yeah. There are a lot of stuff. It's not exactly like bill building silently like it's very much public.

Um anyway,

building very publicly.

Well, uh very excited. Massive year for you. Congratulations.

Yeah. Congratulations.

Thank you so much for coming.

You're going to come to New York more?

Yes. I mean, that's exactly a lot of IPOs next year. This

New York Stock Exchange partnership is all about.

We got Adam over here. He's suited up in suited up. But thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining for me. This is so fun. I'll see you guys soon. See you soon. Great to see you.

Bye.

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Can't share that one.

Okay.

Um but um

Varta is flying its fourth mission home to Earth. That's exciting. Varta has been on an absolute tear. Brewy sharing a photo of the uh Seun Kuniba. Go W4. Uh, somebody was joking about how Varta names their their uh Varta names their missions W- the number. They're now they're now on four. Someone was making the joke that eventually it's going to start sounding like tax forms like W9 like you know 1099. I mean that would be a funny bit.

Uh, does the W stand Winnebago? I know that they have this whole like Breaking Bad theme internally that they like to joke about, but I don't know. Um, where were we at?

TJ Parker is quoting uh Granola. Granola did Crunch, which is a great name for their version of rap.

Oh, that is good.

Uh, TJ Parker says, "You're 2025 deposed."

Deposed.

What did you mean by this?

That actually I mean uh a wrapped style product for all of your meeting notes is extremely interesting uh for the corporate athlete out there. Really, really if you're if you're a corporate athlete and you put up historic numbers in I love how he is like I did 3,200 hours in a month [laughter] just like you can't possibly work 3,000 hours in a month. There aren't 3,000 hours in a month cuz I know I know in full a full work year is is 2,000 hours and if you're working 80 hours a week that's 4,000 hours. Uh, but it's uh, yeah, it's that's

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