Sid Jha started a weekly newsletter in May 2019, while he was in college, sharing his observations on books and academic papers, unique business stories, and a few niche parts of the internet. He sent the first few editions to his close friends and over time has built a base of 3000+ subscribers. He's since met some very interesting people like David Perell and Packy Mccormick and learned a ton of lessons. These days, 30% of his articles are based on stuff shared by his readers, which is quite amazing. Ever since I interviewed Dickie Bush a few weeks back, I wanted to interview someone in the newsletter space again and Sid is one of the most interesting people I've met online. His tips on starting a newsletter and building distribution into the content are really valuable. We talked about a lot of interesting things - more in the show notes below. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Happy Sunday :)
SHOW NOTES
01:40 - Introduction and College
02:48 - Sunday Snapshots and why I started writing the newsletter
04:01 - The habit of reading
05:41 - The American and Indian culture of entrepreneurship
07:07 - Entrepreneurship is an investment with unbounded upside
08:05 - Taking notes and breaking down the Starbucks loyalty system
10:48 - My process of writing and the value of consistency
12:55 - My process of crafting an edition of Sunday Snapshots newsletter
14:36 - When I realized people outside my friend circle had started reading the newsletter
17:05 - David Perell and Packy Mccormick
18:28 - Building a personal monopoly and the infinite leverage of the internet
20:15 - Accountability is underappreciated and why super-rich people are fit
21:27 - How I'm building my personal monopoly with observation-based writing on tech, history, or people
23:40 - How I'd grow a newsletter from scratch if I started today
26:31 - Building distribution into your content and why you should never write about Mark Zuckerberg
27:56 - Your Chief of staff would be an extension of your abilities and should complement you
30:30 - How I made sure my breakdowns of Lyndon B. Johnson's went viral
32:02 - Narvar and controlling the post-purchase experience of e-commerce
33:50 - LBJ book series and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
34:43 - My favorite newsletters - The Generalist, Femstreet, Remains if the day, Sari Azout, Eugene Wei, and Venture Desktop
36:24 - Asking users to share my content and managing scale
37:36 - I'd rather have fewer subscribers than a low email open rate
39:04 - Success according to me
39:54 - Ideas I'm playing with for the next editions of the newsletter
40:57 - Start your newsletter today, set a deadline, and commit to it
I share all the articles/podcasts/books I consume during researching my guests as well as other stuff I find interesting in the newsletter (https://stealmymarketing.substack.com)
You can also follow me on Twitter for similar stuff. My DMs are open (https://twitter.com/AbhishekLpd)
Sunday Snapshots (https://sss.substack.com)
Sid's Twitter (https://twitter.com/sidharthajha)
Sid's Longform Essays (https://www.sidharthajha.com)