Fell in a hole, got out.

[Tony Stubblebine at Medium]

This account of Medium’s resurgence is remarkable on multiple levels: the transparency of Tony Stubblebine’s account is rare, but the story itself is astonishing. This kind of turnaround almost never happens, and it’s a testament to Tony that it worked in this case.

“Ev had two eras here. The first was the design era where the team reinvented what a writing platform could look like, both simplifying and beautifying every part of the experience. The second was the invention of a new business model, moving away from the toxic incentives of ads and instead offering a single bundled subscription that any writer could share in.”

I’ve spoken to a few other people who worked at Medium in one of its earlier eras. For the folks who were around during the business model era, it feels a bit weird that much of their work was to dig the “hole” as he describes it here — but it’s also not wrong (and, to be clear, not their fault). Building Medium with a Twitter-scale sensibility was the wrong thing; building it with profitability in mind, and with a no-nonsense approach to promoting really interesting writing, was always the way.

I think Tony’s self-described superpowers were really key here:

“One is that running small businesses gave me a chance to see how every part of a company operates, often because I had to be the one doing it. Two, there really is no such thing as a social media platform having a bigger power user than I was with Medium. I had been a prolific user in every capacity, from hobby writer, to thought leader, to promoting a business, to daily newsletter writer, to building three of the biggest publications here. Nearly 2% of page views on Medium were going to my publications and writing.”

There’s a lot here for startup founders and anyone who cares about tech and media business models to digest. This account is generous in its transparency and detail, and it deserves to be read and understood by everyone in the space.

[Link]