21 Comments

As was the case with your previous writings on this subject, this essay was very insightful and well structured. Thanks for sharing, it helps Passion Economy entrepreneurs like me, a lot!

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Thank you!

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May 14, 2020Liked by Li Jin

Mind blown: "Though paid newsletters may be “not as good” as traditional media/journalism on the dimensions of comprehensiveness or brand trust, the basis of competition shifts to quality, curation, and trust in a particular writer."

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Hi Li, awesome analysis and depth, we are creating a platform in this space, would love to chat...

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Great piece

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This was a great read, Li! Fantastic to see Prof C's Disruption Theory being applied to the Passion Economy; certainly a lot to think about w.r.t your point on matching non-consumption with non-production; perhaps, a new class of digital aggregator for the Passion Economy?

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Maybe in a way that Shopify is trying to aggregate their merchants in Shop app!

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Yup - Shop app is a great analogue; though, my experience is that Shop app doesn't support the "discovery" element of a marketplace/aggregator.

If you think about it Substack operates as the "Shopify" for writing (& other parallels) but I think there's a missing "Shop" app that tells me - you read XYZ newsletter, have you considered listening/watching XYZ channel on Twitch etc.

At scale, if you aggregate this - you create a lifestyle "newspaper" - which is *real* personalization that newspapers have been trying for 5+ years with features like "MyFT" etc

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I agree that as passion economy grows and more creators are enterprized, discovery will become a real problem. Although I think social media will do the discovery part for a long time.

P.S. On Substack and new age of journalism, I highly suggest reading this book which gives a very interesting historical perspective on the roots of journalism:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119964

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"Although I think social media will do the discovery part for a long time." Agree! I think social media has been the discovery engine for many creators, and what's needed is monetization.

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Great read. Came across the Passion Economy term in your article about it the context of The Future of Work.

I currently writing a newsletter about the Future of Work and how it has the potential to make work more fun and rewarding for the workers while it is also a big step in creating more equality and income distribution in societies. Interested in hearing your thoughts on this?

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Thank you, that was a brilliant read. The trouble is agriculture supports everyone's life but is linearly scalable. Manufacturing generates value non-linear and information technology is a different kind of infinite. For someone passionate about working on the farm, his 8 hour workday should be valued in terms of usefulness of his product compared to someone passionate about creating mobile games that millions of people play. Its probably not far-fetched to say that probably man is the virus and corona the vaccine. Because of how we value nature and how we value code like FB that makes consumers of advertising out of unsuspecting human beings only to traffic them to advertising bidders. All that has driven mindless consumption at a cost to nature and soul. I'm working on LOCO - love cons for local communities. It encourages people to a. treat work as a means to be useful b. to themselves (body and mind) family, society (local community) c. equally during the day, every day d. exchange work for work (or produce) only when necessary e. everyone in the community agrees to 8 hours of socially useful productive work. People can earn love coins by being useful and they need to redeem it before earning the next one. No hoarding. Its an alternative to people who want to be happy every day and who want to wean themselves off money, and reduce their burden on nature, do more of their own work themselves. That way they'll be conscious of what they're consuming. I'd love your thoughts here. :)

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Li. Nice post. What's the best email to reach you?

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i wonder what the earnings of passion economy workers vs non traditional workers are? The kool-aid here seems to be very potent.

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Hi Li,

How do see marketplace vs SaaS play out here? For example, Teachable is more SaaS and Outschool is a marketplace - these have direct implications on margins for the creator.

Or do you think - especially with kids, an intermediary trusted institution/platform will always be needed?

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Hi Aditya! I talk about marketplaces vs SaaS at the bottom of this post - "Marketplaces bring value for creators looking to be discovered and attract customers over time. SaaS tools often make sense for more established creators who already have a customer base. In response to this dynamic, many startups are building SaaS platforms that aim to poach large creators from existing marketplaces." https://a16z.com/2019/10/08/passion-economy/

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Based on your definitions, would DrawingSearcher fall into your Passion Economy as a disruptor of manually searching for technical drawings? A 2-min explanation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfsWfFeDLzA

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Hey Li, I loved your post. I am aiming to write you at li@li-jin.co but seems the email is not right. Where can I send you an email?

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Hi Li! Do you see this Passion Economy becoming a more horizontal play in the near future? Like it happened in E-commerce? Also many examples which you mentioned do not solve the 'discovery' problem for creators, and hence they are forced to use intermediate platforms liek YT, Insta, FB as well. How do you solve for both 'discovery' and 'monetization' through a single platform?

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Can you elaborate on what you mean by horizontal? Feel free to email :)

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