Startup Media

Startup media is the organizing theme of Kyle’s essay The State of Startup Media and his 2017 reading inventory: the ecosystem of writing, newsletters, and content that covers and serves the startup world. The essay traces how, for “almost the first decade” of Kyle’s career, this consisted of “some great blog posts that got passed around, some expert analysis here and there, and a mishmash of tech journalism” across TechCrunch, The Information, and occasional larger publications. Around 2019–2021 it “exploded” — Packy McCormick’s Not Boring (April 2020), Lenny Rachitsky’s newsletter (April 2019), Mario Gabriele’s The Generalist (August 2020), Molly O’Shea’s Sourcery (September 2019), and Gergely Orosz’s The Pragmatic Engineer (2021).

A recurring thread is the VC-firm-as-media-company model. The essay cites Benedict Evans describing a16z in 2015 as “a media company that monetizes through venture capital,” and Paul Smalera’s “The Next Great VC Firm Will Be Built Like a Media Company From Day One.” First Round Review — the editorial/content arm of First Round Capital offering long-form operating advice for founders — appears in Kyle’s 2017 inventory as an early example of exactly this VC-as-media pattern.

Where this appears

• First Round Review — listed in Kyle’s 2017 startup-media inventory as an early VC-as-media-company example.
• The State of Startup Media — the essay where this thread is developed, tracing the 2019–2021 explosion of newsletters and the VC-firm-as-media-company model.