Owning Your Own Media Stream (from Collison Conf with Garry Tan)

Ben Gilbert (0:00)

Hey, Acquired LPs, it is Ben. We wanted to share with you today an interview that I did with friend of the show, Garry Tan at Collision Conf recently. When we set this up, I asked the folks at Collision Conf if it would be okay if I shared our interview with LPs because I thought it would be really neat to be able to share that more broadly than just the conference, especially as this topic very much relates to a lot of the things we talk about on the show. And the good people there were kind enough to say, of course.

So, here is an interview between myself and Garry about owning your own media stream. And as a lot of folks probably know, Garry started at a YC company back in the day, Posterous, or I think maybe Posterous, I don't quite remember, and then was a partner at YC and is now the co-founder and partner at Initialized Capital. And so it's a fun interview where we talk about how he thinks about a direct relationship with audience as a VC and as a YouTuber and how he sees that playing out for startups that have their own sort of owned media channel with their audience too. So hope you enjoy.

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SPEAKER_2 (1:26)

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Ben Gilbert (1:48)

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Ben Gilbert (2:34)

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Ben Gilbert (3:07)

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Our thanks to Quartr.

Garry, great to see you.

Garry Tan (3:36)

Ben, it's so great to hang out with you as always, and especially on a super cool topic like this one.

Ben Gilbert (3:42)

I know, no kidding. I'm imagining us in big armchairs on a stage somewhere in Toronto, but I'll take on Zoom for today.

Garry Tan (3:51)

Yeah, it'll have to be Poutine next year.

Ben Gilbert (3:55)

For sure, for sure.

Well, Garry, it's funny, as we were preparing for this, we had a lot of different topics in mind, and I got to sort of thinking and in our prep conversation, I realized you're really one of the best people in the world at talking about what it means to have an owned media channel and an owned media stream and a direct relationship with an audience versus say earned media or paid media. And I just want to start off sort of with an introductory question.

How do you think about the differences between those things and how do you sort of define it?

Garry Tan (4:29)

Well, I guess Andreessen talks about it as going direct, right?