How To Curate Content That Works For You

What's up everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Founder's Journal. Today I am revealing what content I put in my brain that allows me to build great businesses and create thousands of pieces of content every single year. Let's hop into it. There is an absurd amount of content that is created on the internet Every single day, with 5.18 billion people connected to the internet and platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, Substack, and others that allow you to create content low cost, finding high signal information has never been harder. And it's not only hard to find high quality info, but the time needed to search for it just continues to go higher and higher and higher. And this is why I am obsessed with curation as an invaluable skill that any knowledge worker needs to not be over. Overwhelmed by the internet's abundance. If you don't believe me, maybe this stat will change your mind. 90%, and I repeat, 90% of the world's data was created in the last 2 years alone. And that trend is only accelerating. This is why I think curation is so wildly important. I think it's so important, in fact, that for the longest time I have said that someone should build a platform that offers curation as a service. Think of it as Pinterest for knowledge, where individuals can bookmark the best content they've consumed around the internet. They can categorize those bookmarks by topic, and then they can share it with people who follow them. Ultimately, I see a world where the best curators, not just creators, curators can actually monetize their curation by charging their followers who want to subscribe to premium curated lists that they create and update. Now, I want to share with you who I curate and how I curate in my life. I have a note on my iPhone, and that note has a list of the best content creators I have found on the internet. Now, if you shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com with the subject line list and you introduce yourself briefly, I will share the full list with you because I'm not sharing the full list on this episode. And the purpose of my note is is simple. It is the product of years of curation that I have done manually by myself. This list includes my favorite writers, my favorite YouTubers, and my favorite podcasters. These people all have a spot on this sacred note. When I am bored or I'm thinking about procrastinating, I have trained myself to go to this note, randomly pick one of these content creators I love, and consume something that they have written. I tend to place emphasis on the bloggers in this list because this is the content format that gives me the best bang for my buck. Tweets and social posts I can read quickly, but they don't give me nearly enough content to learn a lot. And books or podcasts, I learn a lot, but I don't find them to be super efficient from a time spent perspective. Essays and blogs and sometimes newsletters strike this perfect balance of time spent to knowledge acquired. So I've been building up this list of knowledge that fuels everything from business ideas to smarter ways to run my businesses to things that have nothing to do with business. And I want to share a few of my favorites. First creator is Ben Thompson. Ben is one of the best technology and media analysts in the world. I will say Matthew Ball, who's another great creator, he's a close second, specifically in the world of media. Now back to Ben Thompson. Ben has a newsletter called Stratechery. It's free with a paid component, and he also has a podcast called Sharp Tech that he hosts with Andrew Sharp. Ben has single-handedly accelerated my ability to think deeply about the media industry. Second creator is Drew Riley. Drew is a former software engineer who writes an amazing newsletter called Trends.VC, which which is basically expert-level market research for free. Each newsletter breaks down a different trend or technology into a 5-minute report that includes what the trend is, why it matters, who the players in the space are, what his predictions are, and opportunities for builders who want to build in this space. And Drew's reports have included everything from AI agents to niche job boards to online courses. Outside of Drew, two other resources in my iPhone note in the category of business ideas and trends is Exploding Topics and Exploding Niches. The third creator is Polina Pompliano. Polina is a journalist and the former writer of Fortune's newsletter Term Sheet. She has a newsletter and community called The Profile, where she, as the name implies, profiles the most successful people and companies. And she does this several times per week. Her profiles include The Rock, The mind behind Formula One's meteoric rise, Alabama's only billionaire, and Oprah Winfrey. Now I want to move on to the fourth creator, but first a quick break. The fourth creator is Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway is a friend of Morning Brew. He's a successful serial entrepreneur, marketing professor at NYU, and podcast host with Kara Swisher. Each week, Scott writes a newsletter called No Mercy, No Malice, which highlights his thinking about business. The current state of the world, or just lessons from his life. And the reason I like his newsletter so much is he thinks differently than most people. He's irreverent and has Larry David curmudgeonly vibes to him, and he's a great writer. His newsletter topics have a ton of range, with business-focused musings about Instagram Threads, Apple's VR headset, and the state of venture capital, all the way to his introspective and nostalgic life reflections like his view on friendships as he reconciles a close friend's sickness and mortality. And the 5th creator is Sam Altman. There was a close race for this 5th spot between Sam, Paul Graham, and Marc Andreessen. But what I love about Sam Altman's blog is the range of topics and his ability to abstract business experiences into non-business lessons. Sam was the president of Y Combinator, and he's the current CEO of OpenAI, which is the artificial research lab that's responsible for ChatGPT. And his essays range from the promise of fusion energy to caring what people think and generating great startup ideas. I will include everyone I just mentioned in the show notes. And again, if you want the list of the other 50 creators that I've curated onto my iPhone note over the last 5 years, shoot me an email at alex@morningbrew.com. Put the word list in the subject line and briefly introduce yourself. So this part of the episode was me giving you the fish. But before we finish the episode, I feel obliged to teach you how to fish. How can you separate the signal from the noise across the internet so you can curate your very own iPhone note that caters to your interests and your needs? The first step is setting an intention to be a great content consumer. You have to know why you're consuming content in the first place. My buddy Dickie Bush had a great tweet about this idea recently. He said, reminder to self, no matter how productive it feels, 95% of content consumption is procrastination. Unless you can pinpoint the exact reason you're consuming something and what bottleneck it is helping you remove, there is a better way to spend your time. The second step after you've set your intention is to start with one creator who you trust, who gets you closer to that goal or intention. So for example, If I want to go deep on healthcare, I'm starting with Andrew Huberman. If I want to go deep on food and nutrition, I'm starting with Justin Maris. The 3rd step is copying what that one creator curates in their life. Look at who that creator follows on Twitter. Look at who that creator recently liked or engaged with on their social platforms. Does that person write a newsletter? Who are the sources that they referenced? Do they host a podcast? Who were the guests that they curated onto their show to have an interview? The best way to curate is to copy an authority who you trust to curate for you. The 4th and final step is to evolve what you curate once you start consuming the curated list that you have copied. As you come across new original thinkers that elevate your knowledge and get you closer to the intention for why you are consuming content in the first place, add them to your list as well. And that is my very thorough deep dive on curation. Why it's a skill every knowledge worker needs, some of my favorite creators that I've curated, and how you can build the curation muscle yourself. As mentioned, shoot me an email if you want my complete curated list of writers, podcasters, and YouTubers. Put the word list in the subject line, share a little info about yourself, and send me an email at alex@morningbrew.com. As always, thank you so much for listening to Founders Journal, and I'll catch you next episode.