We The Builders E16: Mike Solana, architect of new media on building Pirate Wires
Media Is A Daily Exercise
- Media requires daily creative exercise; past success doesn't sustain you.
- Tech seeks escape velocity, while media demands constant production to survive.
Marry Platform Reach With Creative Control
- Use platforms for distribution but keep creative control over your property.
- Plug into Substack's growth while retaining your own site and autonomy when possible.
The War Is For The Inbox
- The inbox is the last free distribution channel for media today.
- Social platforms revoked free traffic, forcing media to own email lists or pay for discovery.
Twitter/X is a battleground where you defend your ideas and murder the ones you don’t stand for (as you will hear in Mike’s own words). There is little room for nuance as I too have observed and so the Twitter/X persona of people you see often wouldn’t be the right way to categorize the person.
As I prepared for this episode, I discovered how Mike has changed his opinion on topics throughout the years after discovering new information. He is one of the most independent minded people out there and it was fun to sit down for a conversation on media, Pirate Wires, Founders Fund marketing, state of advertising, charter cities and more.
Mario Gabriele did a four part series on Founders Fund a while back and described their marketing strategy as soft power initiatives. Some of these included Peter’s book Zero To One, Hereticon and Pirate Wires to name a few. Mike Solana has been at the centre of this strategy which made him a billionaire media tycoon (iykyk). At Founders Fund, he has been able to stay ahead of rivals with a team only four full time people on the marketing team compared to teams of fifty at other funds of similar size. Now he helps us make sense of the world of tech, business and politics through Pirate Wires.
Friend of the pod Christopher Lochhead🏴☠️ would probably agree that Mike has been able to build new categories around ideas he stands for representing important problems of the time. Some of these are limited standalone brands, others are cultural movements. One example of this is Hereticon, where he was able to create the category of “Thoughtcrime” which went mainstream after Elon bought Twitter. There were two editions of Hereticon (2022 & 2024) and it looks like it won’t make a comeback.
Mike’s strategy is to be different. Once you have created a category and are not unique anymore, you move on. In true Zero To One fashion.
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction03:06 - Building a media company vs building a tech startup05:41 - Building culture in a company11:36 - Substack vs having your own website17:51 - The utility of advertising 29:24 - Building a large audience vs. building a quality audience35:55 - Twitter strategy and evolution in the past 5 years47:10 - Pirate Wires master plan and inspiration from Walt Disney53:16 - Charter cities in America 1:03:03 - The podcast experiment1:15:03 - Mike’s information diet1:29:18 - Working on Zero To One with Peter Thiel and marketing at Founders Fund1:38:05 - Rapid fire and closing thoughts
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