Jessica Lessin

Founder & CEO, The Information · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderjournalistexecutiveinvestorhost@Jessicalessin ↗theinformation.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗

Jessica Lessin is the founder and CEO of The Information, a subscription-based technology news publication launched in 2013. Prior to founding the company, she spent eight years reporting on the technology industry for The Wall Street Journal.

15statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 3.8/5average certainty → 2.13/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources → 22said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 3 opinions · 6 insights · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Jessica argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up

The Information Will Not Build Products for a Billion-User Audience

“I think if you're writing a publication or building a tech product for a billion people, you know, that's going to look a certain way, and we don't want to build that product.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 17:54 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.5 / 5 directness 5 · coherence 5 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.8

answered every one of 23 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

226 words/min while actually speaking · 7.1 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,372 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10

setup questions received 75%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 5:26“Marc Andreessen made an assertion that print journalism is converging in quality and technique with blogs and Wikipedia. Do you agree with that statement, do you think?” ▶ 17:09“were you concerned though by the, by the slight barrier to entry on consumers with the subscription fee, obviously with, you know, your mediums, which I know are very different, uh…” ▶ 7:28“Is it a kind of 20 to 35 male San Franciscan?”

when Jessica pushed back ▶ 6:14“When I hear a statement like that, it exposes no one's thinking about who the audience is.” ▶ 17:26“Look, I think it's a good thing that we're not writing for every person.”

What they said15 What others said22 Episodes1

Everything Jessica Lessin said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

The Wall Street Journal Has Shifted Away From Exclusive Reporting

“And I think the journal and other publications have broadened their focus away from that kind of journalism, but it's something that I've certainly taken from the journal”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 3:43 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Assertion Not checkable as stated

All Top 10 U.S. Tech Unicorn Founders Subscribe to The Information

“Our subscribers range from Entrepreneurs who are just starting out on their first Y Combinator company, to executives in the management teams at the most highly valued public tech companies, to 10 out of 10 of the founders of the most highly valued U.S. Privat…”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 7:38 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Insight

Original Tech Journalism Is Not a Zero-Sum Market

“If you're writing stories that have new information about business and technology, it's not like our audience will only read one of those. They literally have a thirst for as much that's valuable to them as humanly possible. It's not like there are only X hour…”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 9:42 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Opinion

Digital Publications Waste Great Reporters on Trending Twitter Stories

“So many other publications are having their great reporters spend their time on less than great stories. Again, on these stories that are real-time, regurgitation, written because, you know, they're trending on Twitter, and God forbid a publication doesn't hav…”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 11:57 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Insight

Media Companies Lacking Must-Read Content Will Fail Long Term

“And if you're not writing stories that people feel like they have to read, you know, you may get blips and traffic here and there. You may even grow your audience for a couple of years. But you're not going to be around years and years and years from now.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 15:56 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Insight

Subscriptions Are the Only Media Model Aligned Purely With Readers

“And I think if you're in a world where you're dependent on advertising, you're going to serve multiple masters. You're going to serve the traffic master, the advertising master. You know, if you're dependent on events, you're going to serve the sponsorship mas…”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 16:23 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Prediction Held up

The Information Will Not Build Products for a Billion-User Audience

“I think if you're writing a publication or building a tech product for a billion people, you know, that's going to look a certain way, and we don't want to build that product.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 17:54 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Opinion

The Digital Media Industry Is Becoming Increasingly Broad and Shallow

“I think most of it comes down to the fact the industry is getting very broad and shallow. And what I mean by that is there are more publications by the day, but they're all essentially covering the same kind of news for mass audiences.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 4:19 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Insight

Media Quality Is Defined by Audience Value, Not the Medium

“Quality isn't something that is abstract. It's based on the value of that information to a particular audience.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 6:30 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Insight

Media Outlets Compete With All Time-Occupying Content, Including Instagram

“Anything that takes our subscribers time that they find valuable from Instagram to The Economist is in some ways competitive, right? I mean, I think that is actually the bar for anyone in the media business.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 8:49 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Insight

Subscription Media Scales on Product Value, Not Sales Capacity

“It's also insanely scalable, right? That doesn't tap out at how, you know, many business development deals you can cut or how many ad packages you can sell, right? It taps out based on the inherent value of the product.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 16:43 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Assertion Not checkable as stated

The Information's Early Growth Was Organic and Eerily Linear

“So actually to date, our growth has been The organic word of mouth side and incredibly linear, sort of eerily linear.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 19:29 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Assertion Not checkable as stated

The Information Has 10x More Email Contacts Than Paid Subscribers

“I think, you know, we have orders of magnitude more than emails and we have subscribers right now, maybe one order of magnitude more, just from people who have expressed interest in the information.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 20:42 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

What-if

Founders Should Make Early Operational Decisions Like Payroll Providers Faster

“I'd make early decisions faster. Sweated a lot of decisions, like what payroll provider to use that Turned out not to be that important. I would have made those a lot faster.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 21:52 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

Assertion Supported

Half of The Information's Early Reporters Came From The WSJ

“Half our reporting team you know, spent decades collectively at the journal as well at the information.”

Jessica Lessin May 27, 2016 ▶ 3:43 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

The other half of the tape: Jessica Lessin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 12 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 7 Sam Lessin 5 Matt Mazzeo 5 Scott Belsky 1 Mike Volpi 1 Jason Calacanis 1 Alex Mittal 1