Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q This leads me to another one of my spicy takes, which is open rate. Doesn't matter to me. Open rate is like when you think of valuing a company, open rate is revenue. I don't care what your open rate is. I care about clicks percent because that shows me how engaged it is. What do you think about that?
A It depends on what your business model is. Email specifically, if you are doing Brand awareness ad campaigns. That's your model for monetization. You don't need anyone to click. All you need is people to open and look at the ad. It is increasingly harder to do that as advertisers get more data-driven and direct response oriented. If you have direct response advertisers, then you absolutely need clicks. The whole point is how do you drive the ROI? A lot of people talk about founder market fit or product market fit. I think about content advertiser fit. An audience advertiser fit. If you look at Bay Area Times or any of our other media properties, we turn away advertisers all the time. I sent an email this morning. Somebody wanted to offer us a ton of money for a media property as an advertiser. And I just said to him, look, I don't think this is going to convert. It's more important to build a long-term relationship with the right people. And for word to spread throughout an industry that every time I advertise in that specific newsletter, it works. That is way more valuable to me than a single ad campaign that might be worth, you know, 10, 20,000 dollars. And so I think it's, it's really just asking yourself, based on content audience and the business model I'm pursuing, what is my metric? Who's the best in the game? I don't know, maybe Agora. Like they didn't even care about c…
AI assessment note: “It depends on what your business model is.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q So who are you looking up to these days in the high leverage, high revenue, uh, world?
A I don't really look up to anyone in that world. The people I spend the most time studying are like the goats of, uh, you know, last 50 years who did it in the legacy world. What lessons can I learn from the deal that they did, the strategies they pursued, et cetera. And then how do I morph those for the modern world? Look at Rupert Murdoch, built a massive business. News Corp. If you are in the media world and you don't understand how news corp works, if you don't know the story of how Rupert was able to go from basically owning a newspaper in Australia to literally owning Fox news, like go study, right? You haven't done the work yet to really understand how that game got played. And so the way he did it is not the way to do it today. But a lot of the lessons, a lot of the insights he had can be applied today. For example, when he went and acquired some of these, uh, less journalistic publications that were more like the tabloid type stuff, he understood eyeballs pay the bills. He understood where the eyeballs were. Doesn't mean that you or I or anyone else should go out and buy tabloids, but you know, it'd be really simple takeaway. Where are the eyeballs today? And maybe you should go try to either build or buy those types of properties. Too many people that they're a student of now, and you can learn a hell of a lot by going back and looking at people over time.
AI assessment note: “I don't really look up to anyone in that world.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q Can you talk about what impact you wanna make and how you think about coming up with what that is for yourself?
A One example, we've got a business in the employment sector. We've helped over 3000 people get a job in the last two years. Like, wow, we changed 3000 people's lives where they were able to go get a job, make more money, like do all this kind of stuff. We didn't start it out. We're gonna make an impact in people's lives. Right. But very much it was aligned with, okay, we can create a capitalist driven business where we make money, but we are doing it because we are serving both companies and these potential hires. And so that's like a great way of like jobs and employment is a problem. Let's go try to solve that. We are making a positive impact, but we also have aligned it with revenue and a sustainable business. But there's another way to look at it, which is every time we partner with someone to create a business, We are essentially giving them the option for freedom. Uh, take a media property. We have a media property we recently launched. There was somebody working at a big media company. Now they're not. And guess what? They're gonna make a hell of a lot more money doing it solo than working inside of that big company. We are going to make sure that it is successful. In some weird way, positive impact could simply just be one person getting into the game of owning their own business where they have more unlimited upside than inside of a corporation. And then there's also im…
AI assessment note: “We are making a positive impact, but we also have aligned it with revenue”
Redirected raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q One of the most powerful feedback questions that you can ask any friend or anyone is What would you do if you were me? I'm running Bay Area Times. I'm looking to grow it to 500,000 subscribers within the next four months. What would you do if it was me?
A I'm actually more careful now than I used to be about giving straight up advice. Maybe it's maturity. Maybe it's just like, uh, uh, a lack of, um, self-awareness, uh, or like social awareness previously. But Now I'll ask a lot of questions. Hey, what do you think about this? Or have you tried this thing? What do you think would happen if you did try it? Like get them to just think. And usually what you find is they already know the answers. And one of my favorite conversations is where you're basically telling someone like, dude, let's go. You gotta speed this up. And you realize they just kind of been bullshitting themselves. Right. And then they're like, oh yeah, you're right. Okay. I gotta get to work. See ya. What people should be doing is motivating each other and keeping everyone focused in a world full of distractions.
AI assessment note: “I'm actually more careful now than I used to be about giving straight up advice.”
Redirected raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q Are you a media guy now? Is that how you describe yourself?
A My entire life was always the combination of two things. How can I create things or provide things that generate money? And then how do I invest that money? Right? I understood there are certain sectors I have a unique advantage in because I either understand how they work or understand things that other people don't. The second thing is there are industries that I am very interested in and willing to do the work on that other people are not. And then the third thing is my track record from an investment perspective is good enough for me to continue to invest the capital in the way that I have been for the last decade. It will be a very positive outcome. We know the playbook. Let's just keep doing this for the next 30 years, um, and do it in a way that, um, we are well positioned for resiliency. If we don't shoot ourselves in the foot, we could build something pretty special.
AI assessment note: “My entire life was always the combination of two things.”
Redirected raw tape
D 1 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 2.95
Q grocery store and you have to bring your own bag. I bought a ton of stuff and didn't realize that I had to bring my own bag. And I asked the cashier, why do I need to bring my own bag? And they go, um, well, we don't want to hurt the environment, which I understand. But the question is plastic bags. How much is that really impacting climate change?
A The thing with data and the scientific studies is it depends who you ask. One of the skill sets I think is going to become incredibly important in society over the next, I don't know, 10, 2030, 4050 years is can you critically think and have independent thought? Those two things are related. Many people say, oh, critical thinking is important is because they're worried about AI and fake content, all that. But if you look at Public narratives and go and read source material and actually do some of the work yourself. You start to understand there is a disconnect between some of that source material and public narrative. So you also have to be careful. Sometimes it doesn't matter what the truth is. The public narrative is actually the thing that prevails. I'll give you a great example. Financial markets show this all the time. A company can be bad, not worth buying. But the public narrative is that the company is great. And so for long periods of time, the stock price can go up. If you find a company and you're like, this company sucks. Everyone else thinks it's amazing. I'm going to short it at 20 dollars a share. Well, if it rips to a hundred, you're going to lose money. You're short. And yes, maybe eventually you are correct. And the company goes to zero, but the public narrative was more important in the run from 20 dollars to a hundred than actually quote unquote true. If you…
AI assessment note: “The thing with data and the scientific studies is it depends who you ask.”
