Oct 10, 2022 · 1h 9m · how-i-built-this
Wirecutter: Brian Lam
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, journalist and entrepreneur Brian Lam shares how overcoming severe burnout and disillusionment with clickbait media led him to found Wirecutter, a meticulously researched product recommendation site that revolutionized digital journalism before its acquisition by The New York Times.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 41.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.1 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 0.9 Guy pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 32:44 Refusing Steve Jobs' demands
Brian recounts telling Steve Jobs he was ready to go to jail over the prototype iPhone 4 rather than give up the story, prioritizing editorial impact over corporate intimidation.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:05:12 Guy challenges consumerist impactGuy directly questions Brian on whether Wirecutter is fundamentally conflicted by encouraging people to constantly consume more unnecessary products.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 47:47 Explaining the cumulative testing processBrian explains the proprietary logic behind Wirecutter's testing method, showing how blind tests against established 'kings of the hill' turn subjective gear reviews into an objective archive.
Guy holds their own ▶ 4:47 Guy connects latchkey youth to entrepreneurial gritGuy draws an insightful cultural comparison regarding how latchkey childhoods in their generation created early self-reliance and problem-solving skills.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Childhood Independence and Early Tech Fascination in Hong Kong | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy relates closely to Brian's generational upbringing and shares memories of vintage tech from Hong Kong trips. The exchange is warm, nostalgic, and completely collaborative. | |
| College Struggles and Finding Comfort in Well-Made Objects | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Guy asks about Brian's college aspirations, prompting Brian to reflect vulnerably on academic and social difficulties, explaining how perfect objects provided emotional safety. | |
| Life After the Dot-Com Crash at a Muay Thai Gym | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy questions why Brian gave up white-collar jobs to mop floors at a Muay Thai gym. Brian corrects Guy's assumptions about his pay and career ambitions, describing the pursuit of mastery. | |
| Transitioning to Tech Journalism at Maximum PC and Wired | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy tracks Brian's entry into tech journalism at Maximum PC and Wired. Brian shares stories of intense work ethic driven by fear of falling behind family expectations. | |
| Mid-Show Break: The Steve Jobs Confrontation Teaser | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Mid-show teaser and transition segment where Brian describes the cultural mismatch and lack of management skills at Wired. | |
| Leading Gizmodo and Mastering the High-Traffic Blogging Race | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy draws parallels between early blog culture and early podcasting, as well as Brian's gym discipline and blog hustle. Brian explains how Gawker's equity traffic bonus worked. | |
| The Leaked iPhone 4 Scoop and Clash with Steve Jobs | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Brian recounts the legendary iPhone 4 scoop and his phone standoff with Steve Jobs. Brian notes his unapologetic commitment to the story even when threatened with jail. | |
| Severe Burnout and Conceiving the Wirecutter Concept | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Guy asks about Brian's transition from burnout to founding Wirecutter. Brian critiques traditional review models that force readers through endless subjective articles. | |
| Launching The Wirecutter and Structuring Early Partnerships | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Brian details the initial partnership with The Awl and his strategic decision to negotiate majority equity over early cash. | |
| Mid-Show Break: Scaling Wirecutter Slowly and Carefully | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Brian educates Guy on how Wirecutter reinvented testing by compounding blind tests with experts over time rather than re-testing everything from scratch. | |
| Adopting the Affiliate Model and Parting with The Awl | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Guy explores how the affiliate link model worked in its infancy. Brian explains why traditional media companies failed to adapt to low-volume, evergreen review cadence. | |
| Organic Growth, Ethical Media, and Rapid Profitability | 3 | 4 | 2 | 0 | Brian passionately denounces traditional digital advertising as an evil race to the bottom, explaining why affiliate returns create direct editorial accountability. | |
| Acquisition by The New York Times and Advisory Transition | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Brian reveals that the widely reported thirty million dollar acquisition figure by The New York Times was leaked incorrectly, though he clarifies it was still a fair sum. | |
| Reflections on Consumerism, Craftsmanship, Surfing, and Luck | 5 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Guy raises an explicit ethical pushback, challenging whether Wirecutter ultimately fuels rampant consumerism. Brian readily acknowledges the conflict and describes shifting his personal life toward slow craftsmanship. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Brian Lam: Perfect objects represent how you wish the world was
“It always pushed me to like this perfect object, which is like a little, it's like perfect objects are like examples of how you wish the world was and how wish you were in a way.”
Brian Lam: Advancing at Wired required fitting a specific corporate mold
“I kind of feel like it's just like most of America, where you have to look and be from a certain background or way to advance. So for me, like, I didn't smell like an editor there. And you know, like, frankly, I'm not that smart. I'm not that intellectual. I'm…”
Brian Lam describes Wired editors as inexperienced and hostile managers
“I would say that I learned how I don't want to manage people there, to be honest. People were not experienced managers. I remember asking one editor a question about, like, how the magazine was made, and I got thrown out of the office for asking that question.”
Gawker ended traffic bonuses after Brian Lam rapidly earned 1% equity
“Within a couple months, certainly less than four or five months, they shut the program down because I had exceeded the traffic so much. That I ended up owning in two months, like over one percent of the company.”
Brian Lam claims Gizmodo generated the majority of Gawker Media's revenue
“Gizmodo probably made most of the revenue of that company.”
Gawker Media was built into a $300M company on AOL Instant Messenger
“We built a three hundred million dollar media company on AIM.”
Gizmodo pre-planned its legal defense before publishing the iPhone 4 leak
“Yeah, we went to our lawyer in-house and said, can you look this up? What would happen? How we can do this safely, legally? And we discovered these laws about returning stolen property. You can't get in trouble for it, basically, and the person who claims the …”
Wired and Engadget hesitated and passed on the iPhone 4 scoop
“I know he contacted Wired, and he contacted another publication, maybe Engadget, and they all started just kind of like, not sure what to do. They didn't have a plan, and they were slow.”
Pre-Wirecutter media models incentivized fragmented, clickbait tech product reviews
“The information is out there. On the tip of the tongues of the editors covering those beats. But the formats that were common in the business models attached to them encourage you to click on, like, 40 different articles about, say, TVs, for example. And then …”
Wired and multiple other media companies rejected the Wirecutter concept
“I pitched it for Wired, I pitched it to a lot of places, and nobody wanted to do it. And like so many good ideas, you can't get people to take it for free.”
Brian Lam warns against 50/50 founder equity splits to avoid paralysis
“Which is not advised, because then no one can make a decision. Someone should be a majority owner.”
Brian Lam traded Wirecutter's launch sponsorships for 65% equity and buyout rights
“So I negotiated to give up all the launch sponsorship for 65% of the site, but I also had a clause in there saying that if I didn't feel like things were going well, I could basically leave and take the entire company with me.”
Wirecutter paid reviewers thousands per review instead of standard flat rates
“Say instead of a front of the book, a couple hundred dollars for review, we were offering several thousand dollars to do the same work.”
Wirecutter scaled product reviews by testing newcomers only against incumbent winners
“Now that you've got the top two or three, the next time you can introduce another 40, and you don't have to compare the new 50 to the previous 50, you just have to compare it to the current kings of the hill and see if they get dethroned. You now have tested a…”
Retail affiliate programs were originally designed for small mom-and-pop blogs
“The affiliate program was, like, super cheap marketing for them, and it was designed to live on mom-and-pop Blogs. So they would have all these, like, cheesy widgets. If I'm, if like, some blogger wrote about something they like, and they could link on Amazon …”
As Wirecutter CEO, Brian Lam ignored web traffic to focus on quality
“And as a CEO, I never checked anything, like traffic, or I knew the size of the checks coming, but I didn't pay attention to anything except the quality of the work.”
Brian Lam calls digital advertising one of the world's great evils
“I think advertising is one of the great evils of the world, because it gets in your brain no matter what, and the metrics they use are basically what has made media what it is today, like really shallow, fast cadence”
Wirecutter generated seven figures in annual profit by its fourth year
“By the fourth year, or the third year, it was making seven figures of profit.”
Wirecutter had 60 employees at acquisition, but cultural alignment peaks under 30
“When we sold about 60, and I think the sweet spot was under 30 in terms of everyone being on the same page culturally.”
The New York Times acquired Wirecutter for more than the reported $30M
“Is that number is actually wrong. It was a leak that was incorrect, but the times published it. It was more, but it wasn't an extraordinary amount.”
Brian Lam regrets not negotiating a formal role during the NYT acquisition
“If I could do it again, I would have negotiated a job for myself because I thought I'd be hovering like an owner does.”
Brian Lam argues the highest quality creative work cannot scale capitalistically
“The best podcast, the best books, the best everything is not capitalistic at scale. It still needs to be capitalistic. People need to afford their way of life and their tools, but that scale is something I'm really allergic to now.”
Surfing ocean waves directly inspired Wirecutter's slow and deliberate publishing cadence
“The cadence of surfing too and like waves is really what informed Wirecutter's cadence, which is slow and clean and like impactful, as opposed to a bunch of like tiny little waves knocking all over the place in a messy way.”