John Coogan on Selling TBPN to OpenAI, Sam Altman & the Future of Tech Media

**Eric Newcomer** (0:00)
People keep saying this is around a 200 million-ish deal. Is that right?

**John Coogan** (0:04)
We haven't commented, I don't think we ever will. It's hundreds of millions? I don't know.
I don't know. I was trying to do it on April 1st. What? I was trying to do it on April 1st. Yes, yes.

**Eric Newcomer** (0:13)
On TBPN, are you playing a character, or is that the person that you're like family and friends would meet? Where are you on the make Sam Altman sound more human effort? We are live from the Newcomer newsroom, from the Sanctum of Scoops, the Cathedral of Cap Tables, the last honest man in venture capital. I didn't write that tagline.
I'll take it though. Where are you here with John Coogan, one of the co-hosts of TBPN, to understand why the heck OpenAI wanted to buy his podcast for a couple hundred million dollars? What could I learn?

**John Coogan** (0:45)
Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world.

**Eric Newcomer** (0:49)
We have a great conversation about media, tech, and all things AI model companies. This is the Newcomer Podcast.
Do you think you would do a separate style show under TBPN?

**John Coogan** (1:08)
So, yeah, we would not. We've thought about line extensions. We can talk more about that generally, of where the rest of the stuff goes. But in general, when we started the show, it was called Technology Brothers, it was just me and Jordy in a room. I mean, we had one producer, producer Ben, who's still with us, but there was an episode where Ben was traveling and it was just me pushing the record button, me and Jordy. So it was just us and we had this idea that there's this barbell effect in media where you either want to be a platform, like Spotify, YouTube, Instagram Reels, or you want to be a creator, an independent influencer. For some reason, we still sort of violated that by having two people, but it worked out because we were equal business partners on this thing. And then once we had two people...

**Eric Newcomer** (1:59)
It's very Silicon Valley because you're co-founders, which is such a Silicon Valley thing. And then the fact that you treat the whole show like it's really a company that you're building, which then allows you to lean into marketing.
Some of it, I'm sure, you can take credit for in retrospect in some of it.

**John Coogan** (2:15)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of it's happy accidents. I mean, the suits are a great example. These were put on originally, sort of ironically, as just like a funny thing, like who dresses up in a suit for their podcast, for tech podcasts, certainly not tech podcasts, because tech people don't wear suits, they wear t-shirts, right?
And so we put them on just as like, oh, this will be a fun sort of gag. Like we're almost like poking fun at the tech people that we're talking about. And then yesterday we interviewed Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, and it was very good that I was in a suit because otherwise I would look like an unprofessional interviewer.

**Eric Newcomer** (2:49)
That actually gets us to where I really intended to start this interview, which is on TBPN. Are you playing a character or is that the person that you're like family and friends would meet?

**John Coogan** (3:01)
I am playing a character for sure in the level of energy that I'm bringing to things. That's for sure real. When I'm off air, I'm tired, I'm on my phone, I'm distracted. When I'm on the show, I'm locked in and there's no dead air because that's broadcasting 101
If Jordy's looking something up or a guest is long winded in a question, I might try and jump in and keep the conversation moving, add more context, justifying how much context I need to add for the listener in the question. You know this stuff, but it's still interesting. I'm still learning.

**Eric Newcomer** (3:36)
I'm a newsletter, I'm a print guy figuring out broadcasts.

**John Coogan** (3:40)
You really mastered it.

**Eric Newcomer** (3:42)
You have to play a character because definitely, on a podcast, there's energy. And the question is, once you say, okay, admit to yourself, it is not your natural being, then how much do you find a character is layered on top of that or not?

**John Coogan** (3:57)
I think probably the deeper question, less about the performance is, is the comedy a character? And I think it's absolutely not.
It leaks out from the real personality, and it needs to be controlled down sometimes.