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Good morning everyone.
Last night while I was cleaning my kitchen, I listened to the most recent episode of Founders about Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Canes. Today he has over 800 locations, 50,000 employees, and owns 90% of a business that's worth at least $10B — he’s the 274th wealthiest person in the world. I don’t think the takeaway from the episode is that VC is the enemy, but I do think it’s sick that at 53-years-old, he owns as much of the company as he does. “Lock in on what you do exceptionally well, and then execute it every day, day in and day out, that is how you win.” That thing for Graves is chicken fingers. At about 1:02:48 , David Senra also breaks down his version of Founder Mode — he works on every aspect of his podcast — and it made me smile.
Today’s letter includes: a conversation with
, co-editor of The Drift, about why the five-year-old literary magazine is joining Substack; why all the blonde influencers are going to UMich this week; the Upper East Side diner with a burger named after Roger Stone; the average age for a facelift is getting younger; and why “The A24 of _______” is the new “The Glossier of _____.”
I first met Kiara Barrow six or seven years ago. She was at my apartment for a dinner party — the same apartment I live in now — and she was explaining the print magazine she was launching later that year.
At the time, I wasn’t able to imagine what
would eventually achieve —as of today they’ve published 14 print issues, they famously threw the last great party at The Jane Hotel (I went with my downstairs neighbor at the time, ), and now they might go down in history as being the first great literary magazine to figure out Substack.Kiara and I spoke last night about the magazine’s launch on Substack, and we also cleared up that rumor about the party they threw earlier this year where, “everyone was making out.”
What’s the game plan for publishing on Substack? And why now?
“Twitter was an important engine of growth for us going back to the first day we launched, when our inaugural Editors’ Note generated a lot of curiosity, and a little controversy. That was in June 2020, when so many were still indoors, online, and eager to read and talk about (and argue about) something new. In our first few years, we loved watching the conversation around our issues unfold in real time — we’re convinced it helped make us a better, more engaged magazine. And it was fun: as an editor, there’s nothing more exciting than hitting publish on a piece you’ve worked on for months and watching it take off across the internet.
We’re still on “X” and have a soft spot for the very specific culture it produced, but with Elon at the helm, the platform no longer provides the kind of experience it once did. We’re not sure what its future holds (though we’re hosting an event with NYU’s journalism institute in April to discuss — stay tuned). In the meantime, we’re eager to find new ways to pick up the conversation with our readers, especially in between issues. The Drift only comes out three times a year, but our writers and editors have a lot to say on a much more frequent basis. Our expanded newsletter will allow us to share of-the-moment commentary, criticism, updates, Q&As, pieces from the archive, peeks behind the scenes of the mag, party invites, and other special features. Plus, launching on a new platform felt like a fitting way to celebrate our five-year anniversary, and look ahead to the next chapter.”
“There aren’t a lot of literary parties left in New York, much less ones that anyone can show up to.”
I’m curious what role you think Substack will play in the lives of people who like to read by the end of the year.
“We publish a print magazine in 2025, so we’re bullish on reading and the people who like to do it (or we’re hopeless optimists). The growing popularity of Substack has bolstered that optimism, providing more evidence that, against all odds, reading and producing good writing remains important.
As individual newsletters make up an increasingly substantial part of all of our media diets, though, we’re still believers in the practice of editing and the value of bringing together a group of writers under the umbrella of a single publication with an established point of view. We’re interested to see how the magazine and newsletter forms continue to evolve on Substack — and whether new models emerge for clustering writing and ideas.”