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November 2, 2021
This morning I published How The Sample drives thousands of newsletter subscriptions. I feel like the title makes it sound cooler than it is, but I mean, we...
Why I changed my mind about advertising
October 4, 2021
I just published Why I changed my mind about advertising (here's the Tweet for any discussion). Also a few days ago I published Curating the curators. I'm...
Looking forward to buying my first yacht
September 5, 2021
Hey everyone. My habit of writing regularly has completely disintegrated, and I'm in the process of developing a new workflow, but in the mean time I thought...
Finishing up Findka's grand scheme
August 3, 2021
Future of Discovery 3 August 2021 – Jacob O’Bryant Over the weekend we visited LA for my brother-in-law’s wedding reception. First time flying with the baby....
The Findka API
July 27, 2021
Future of Discovery 27 July 2021 – Jacob O’Bryant We made a handful of updates to The Sample’s algorithm last week. One nice thing about having a small...
The Sample Roadmap
July 20, 2021
Future of Discovery 20 July 2021 – Jacob O’Bryant I finally finished the big refactoring for The Sample. Now its recommendations are generated by the same...
The Sample: from 1,100 to 3,000 subscribers
July 13, 2021
Future of Discovery 13 July 2021 – Jacob O’Bryant Something good happened this week: The Sample’s subscriber base tripled (yay). I wrote an article (with the...
The Substack Narrative
July 6, 2021
After the Show HN last week, someone evidently submitted one of my essays. It hit #1 on HN and got about 20k views. It’s not really that great of an essay,...
Highlights from Show HN: The Sample
June 29, 2021
I posted The Sample on Hacker News yesterday and there was a good discussion (about 30 comments, half from me). Since I spent all day responding to comments...
Why I'm excited about newsletters
June 22, 2021
This week I’ve written yet another explanation of my business. Most of the time I describe the short-term/current version of it, since that’s what potential...
App idea: casual curated newsletters
June 15, 2021
The Sample reached an important milestone today: (That's a dynamically rendered page; I happened to catch it at the right time.) We also got a couple shout-...
What I'm trying to do
June 8, 2021
I've almost finished the API server migration and getting Findka Essays back up; ETA is a couple days. My article for this week is basically a personal...
1-click subscribe for newsletters
June 1, 2021
Happy memorial day (or day after, by the time you get this). I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was planning to set up an API server that will provide the...
Protocol-based social networking, today
May 25, 2021
Future of Discovery has a new look—I've switched from Substack to Buttondown, which I discuss below. I'm also going to try inserting stuff at the top of the...
Protocol-based social networking, today
May 25, 2021
Future of Discovery has a new look—I've switched from Substack to Buttondown, which I discuss below. I'm also going to try inserting stuff at the top of the...