Creation, Distribution, Monetization: How 3 Big Things Changed Business & Storytelling Forever

“Telling stories that haven’t been told…”

From day one, our mission was simple. Tell stories. Do great work. Do it together. 

This year we reached the 25-year milestone, and while we’re not wired to spend too much time thinking about the past, we’ve been struck by this number and grateful for all it’s meant to us. I’ve had a chance to do what I love every day for 25 years. And we’ve done it together as a team of people who love, respect, and work for each other every day. 

At the heart of our story is storytelling itself. It’s the connective tissue of our organization. Our approach to storytelling has largely been heroic in nature — the hero’s quest to take us from the world we’re in to the world we imagine. 

We’ve had the great privilege of telling stories about the heroes that brought us the Internet, social media, self-driving cars, cloud software, direct-to-consumer retail, streaming media, quantum computing, edge computing, biological software, and on and on. We’ve been front row for all of these magical moments in human history — all in the past 25 years. As my son’s friends might say, “that shit is fire.”

Storytelling is a permanent fixture. It will never go away. It is fundamentally human and sustains us in all ways. Stories nourish our hearts, brains, and arguably our existence, from the time we're infants until forever. And storytelling today is as vibrant, essential, incredible, and world-changing as ever. Truly. This is the age of storytelling.

It’s an interesting thing, 25 years. Reflecting on this, I thought this post might say something like: “Here are the most important lessons for the last 25 years and here’s how we’ll apply them moving forward.” But that’s not exactly how it shook out.

I did reflect on the changes and the seismic stories we’ve had a chance to tell. Change is a constant, and the way the media has changed has shifted our work alongside it. At the same time, storytelling is also a constant. It narrates our lives, our companies, our growth, our achievements, and our reality. 

At a basic level, the innovation of the past quarter century drove radical change in the surrounding structures for who tells stories, how they are distributed, and how they're monetized. 

To simplify, the big ones are:

1. Internet: connected everyone, everything, everywhere
2. Social: open access and connection for anyone/everyone to storytell
3. Smartphone: made it easy, accessible, immediate, and therefore amplified everything 

These three are the drivers. 

More specifically, the impact of these technologies can be distilled into three essential components for the business of stories, content, and storytelling. They are the same for every business — how you create, distribute, and monetize. 

1. Creation / Generation (from institution to individual) 

New technologies gave us the power to create in ways we never could before, from simple graphics to elaborate design (thank you, Canva) to 6-second videos from our phones. New platforms gave us a way to publish. All the socials opened the world to creators, writers, makers, etc., and phones amplified the effect as you could do it from anywhere. 

We’ve witnessed a massive shift from institutions that previously owned expensive ways to make and distribute, to anyone and everyone with a phone and a social media account. Regardless of the platform (MySpace, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, TikTok, Youtube, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Substack, Medium, Podcasts, etc.), the movement remains the same: individual voices creating and generating stories, ideas, and content in massive volume, speed, and impact. 

Today’s generation is associated with AI, as in generative AI. Generative storytelling will become more and more common. This generation’s arc has progressed from "user-generated content” to “machine-generated content.” And for writers who came up at more traditional institutions (the good ones), they can now go direct. They can make their own stuff, get it out, and make a living off it. 

2. Distribution (from paper to digital)

This is a simple thing, but it changed everything for all forms of media and content. It changed consumption, but also economics. Craigslist, for example, had a massive impact on the media. It took out daily newspapers completely as it eliminated their primary source of revenue: classified ads.  

Even during the early days of the internet, we had huge, thick paper magazines filled with ads. This enabled large editorial teams under brands like Red Herring, Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, and the like. All buoyed by venture capital dollars and ads. 

Digital distribution transformed all forms of media and took down their institutional and economic structures—all of them—newspapers, magazines, music, movies, etc. Blockbuster had 9,000 physical stores, chose NOT to buy Netflix for $50M, and the rest is history. The iPod eliminated albums, then Spotify and streaming supplanted albums, and on it goes.  

3. Monetization 

There are a million examples of how monetization reimagined the economics of digital distribution. Every movement is essentially the redistribution of and recalibration of money and value. 

A few examples:

• Influencers making millions of dollars per post
• Overnight billionaire beauty empires
• Ashlee Vance’s Core Memory substack
• The FaZe Clan gaming team going public on the back of massive ad revenue
• Streaming services like Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc.

Ridiculous volumes of ad/subscription revenue are making ridiculous volumes of individuals wealthy. It's also supporting amazing talent who, in previous eras, would either have had zero voice or would have had to be a voice for another owner. Today, they can be the owners of their own voice, media, and impact. 

So in summary: 

Three technologies (internet, social, phone) changed everything that would define a business, including these essential pillars:

• How you make 
• How you distribute
• How you generate revenue

As I expressed above, all the changes in the past 25 years have only served to amplify human creation, connection, and creativity. And therefore, storytelling. We have removed the institutions that get in the way of direct engagement between individuals and the world. Everything is open, and I don't think we truly appreciate how astonishing this is. I can go to YouTube and find a very specific video on how to change the light bulb in my 2017 VW Passat R-Line. That's incredible and only possible in the age we're in. 

AI, in my view, is underrated. We’re in the 14.4 modem phase. What’s remarkable to me about this, as it was when I heard that unmistakable sound of a modem connecting to the Internet for the first time, is that even in this early day one phase, generative AI is mindblowing. And the next 25 years of storytelling will be shaped by it. Not just the story of companies but the story of everything: humanity, economics, civilization. 

We will see more storytelling that inspires us to see more and more of what makes human beings imaginative, spiritual, ethical, and magical. I predict greater diversity of perspectives, deeper perspectives, more raw, real, and open storytelling, and agentic frameworks creating, distributing, and telling stories along with us. 

I have a hard time imagining all that will come, but I have a strong feeling it will make the seismic shifts of the past pale in comparison. And storytelling will never go away — even if agents accelerate the creation, generation, and monetization of media and storytelling to a level we can't imagine today. It's going to be a whole new world, and I am so excited to be part of it.

AI isn’t a tulip. AI is the most important innovation in my lifetime and maybe in all of humanity’s lifetime. For the first time, we have created technology that thinks and makes things on its own. Generative is the word. Agentic is the future. And we’re in it right now. 

25 years of storytelling, development, culture, and worldwide change. We are so grateful. And we can’t wait for what’s next.