What's up everybody? This is Cortland from AndyHackers.com and you're listening to the

EndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot

of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these endy hackers to discuss the ideas,

the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of, so the rest of us can do the same.

All right, I'm here with Sonal Chokshi. She is one of the biggest experts of building a media business that I know.

She's the editor-in-chief at A16Z, also known as

Indreason Harwitz, a VC firm in Silicon Valley. She was formerly a senior editor at Wired Magazine

and the head of content and community at Xerox Park. Sona, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Cortland. I'm super excited to be here. I'm a huge fan of indie hackers and especially of you. I think we were talking about this. We met a few years ago when I think Mike Solana had brought together like a group of podcasters. That was so much fun. Yeah, it was great. And it was like the perfect sized group too. I think it was just six or seven of us. Which is small enough that you can just be completely frank and honest and not have to worry about anything

and everybody gets a chance to talk but it's enough people where there will always be something

interesting that somebody is saying so I wish there were more groups of this size that got together

and kind of just shared info I agree and there was a special energy in the room which I can't

quite pinpoint what it was like it was definitely like the group that

was there. First of all, everyone had such a diverse set of podcasts. Like, there was that gentleman who

had a podcast that was stories from prison. But the other thing that I loved is that there's just not

enough trading of tips among experts in the community. And to be able to share that was so fun. I just loved it so much.

Yeah, and it feels like media today just moves so fast that by the time, like, people have

written books on how to do things and like blog posts and guides, like it's all old school. It's all

old news. People are on to like the next big thing. They're on Clubhouse or whatever it is.

And so having these sort of smaller, more agile groups is just better for exchanging information faster. And so it's cool that we were able to come together and do that. But then the pandemic happened. We never met again. But it was great. We should do it more often. And you know, by the way, to your point about there not being those gatherings, I actually think it's fascinating because there's been such an explosion of people doing podcasting and written

content and tweets and newsletters. And there are like these big conferences for organizing things

or there's like these tiny, tiny little niche groups of people who are very like-minded and get

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