The Paywall Is Here

An update three months into launching Newcomer

Jan 27, 2021

We’ve just concluded our first full financial quarter here at Newcomer.

It’s time to take your seat at the cap table.

Starting this week, many of my published articles will be available to subscribers only.

If you subscribe, this wonderful friendship we’re building together is only going to grow. You’ll be making independent journalism possible.

If you don’t subscribe, well, you’re going to start hearing from me less often.

If you’ve already subscribed, thank you!

There are a couple things to look forward to beyond what you’ve already come to expect: I’m going to start publishing succinct investor profiles. There’s a lot of demand from startup founders and employees to understand venture capitalists before taking their money, so I’ll tell you what I know about different Silicon Valley investors. I also have some high-profile interviews in the works, so you can expect to hear directly from some tech industry titans.

I’m going to keep digging into elite venture capital firms, analyzing emerging startup trends, breaking news, and deconstructing narratives about the tech industry. I’ll put information behind the paywall that you can use to make money.

The 40% launch discount will conclude at the end of this month, so this is a great time to subscribe. You can lock in a monthly rate of $9 a month for a year or save yourself even more money and buy the annual subscription for $90. Starting in February a monthly subscription will cost $15 and an annual subscription will cost $150.

This is my full-time job. I’m not running any other grifts. I’m not investing in startups. I’m not shipping these articles off to other places. You pay for a subscription and you get truly independent journalism. That’s the deal. I like the simplicity of it.

My publishing schedule is going to remain contentedly chaotic. When I get good stuff together, I publish it. I’m committing to a weekly paid post (except probably four weeks of vacation a year). I’m hungry to write more often than that and I aim to publish at least one free post a week. But I think the quality is best when I send you good stories as I have them. Think of it as a weekly newsletter that usually exceeds your expectations.

If you’ve subscribed recently, I hope you’ll read through the archives. Most of the stories are still relevant today. I’ve written probing features on Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. I’ve told the story of early investments in DoorDash and Affirm. I’ve published pieces based on interviews with Ellen Pao, Keith Rabois, Laurence Tosi, and Chamath Palihapitiya. I’ve chronicled the return of consumer investing and the bubbly multiples in enterprise. And I’ve scooped several billion dollar valuation funding rounds, including Databricks’ $27 billion valuation.

I’m extremely proud of these first few months and couldn’t have done it without you. I feel privileged to have public company CEOs, top venture capitalists, startup founders, and people from all stripes in the tech industry as subscribers. This newsletter is getting referenced in news outlets around the web and is driving the conversation in Silicon Valley.

I’m looking forward to seeing where we can take it from here.

Thanks for all your support so far.

Best,
Eric Newcomer