Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

As Wirecutter CEO, Brian Lam ignored web traffic to focus on quality

Brian Lam · Wirecutter: Brian Lam · Oct 10, 2022 · at 55:07

Brian Lam explains his leadership and operational approach while building Wirecutter.

0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 12.0s
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“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.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Brian Lam

Opinion
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”
Brian Lam Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 58:47 Wirecutter: Brian Lam
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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 Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 26:13 Wirecutter: Brian Lam
Disclosure
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 …”
Brian Lam Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 30:23 Wirecutter: Brian Lam
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Brian Lam Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 31:02 Wirecutter: Brian Lam
Assertion Contradicted
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 Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 1:02:07 Wirecutter: Brian Lam
Insight
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.”
Brian Lam Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 1:06:29 Wirecutter: Brian Lam
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