Thinking Things Through Thursday - Episode 4: The Creator 401k

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Building Public University Overview

• Daily livestream focused on building autonomous memetic marketing system
• Goal: Create an institution that people can rely on when needed
• Core focus: Minimizing information asymmetries between creators and platforms
• Current project: Setting up pipeline for live video transcription with AI-powered live tweeting
• Platform aims to separate creators from dependency on existing platforms

New Business Model: Creator Equity Program

• Creators can pay monthly sponsorship fees to receive equity in the media platform
• Model converts cash flow into long-term security for creators
• Tiered service structure:
  • Entry level: AI tools only
  • Progressive tiers: AI tools + intermediate/advanced features
  • Top tier: Direct platform access and teaching opportunities
• Creates “Creator 401k” system for long-term value accumulation
• Partnership with Fairmont for potential equity tokenization (meeting scheduled)

Idea Supply Chain Framework

• Non-linear network for information sharing and validation
• Bi-directional information flow between creators and platform
• Focus on cross-validation of information across network nodes
• System designed to scale while maintaining individual creator value
• Introduces “BUMS” (Building public University Media Services) concept for backend support

Current Development Status

• Platform development timeline: 5 years in progress
• Testing transcription services with Granola as potential partner
• Initial closed launch planned for existing advisors
• Waitlist system planned for general creator access
• Daily livestream schedule established with themed days:
  • Thursday: “Thinking Things Through Thursday”
  • Friday: “Friendship Friday” (in development)

Sponsorship Strategy

• Currently reading “Sponsor Magnet” by Justin Moore ($9 investment)
• Targeting companies including:
  • Anthropic
  • Granola
  • Creator-focused platforms
• Value proposition: Access to growing creator network and media platform
• Focus on transparent, trust-based partnerships

Technical Infrastructure

• Using Sublime.app for content organization and collection
• Implementing automatic transcription through Granola
• Developing AI-powered content distribution system
• Building moderation tools for community management
• Creating automated marketing system based on livestream content

Transcript

Introduction to the Concept

Welcome to Building Public University! Today is Thinking Things Through Thursday, which I chose for a couple of reasons. First, it's wonderfully alliterative and fun to say. Second, it follows my Thursday morning writing practice, which I use to work through ideas.

Today we're going to explore some deeper thoughts and more long-term thinking. While much of the week has focused on tactical, in-the-moment approaches, this episode is about zooming out and connecting bigger dots.

The Definition of an Institution

Building Public University is meant to be an institution for the internet. What is an institution? An institution is something you can count on when you need it. That's ultimately what I've settled on – it's something you can trust to be there when you need it.

The goal with Building Public University is to build an infrastructure that allows us all to flourish, thrive, and achieve great things. I see so much negative content in the world, and this is my chance to create a brighter spark that people can take and run with. I want to create a nexus of content that people can draw from without having to build everything themselves.

Using Sublime for Idea Collection

We're going to use Sublime today, which is my first official partner with the channel. Sublime is something that's hard to describe, which is a great way to start when you're trying to sell something, right? But that's what makes it so powerful.

I've been following Sari Azut, the founder of Sublime, for several years and have been a supporter since before Sublime was Sublime. I love her approach – it's very human, creative, and non-algorithmic. Everything is carefully thought through and implemented, nothing has been rushed.

A good way to think of Sublime is as a digital garden. It's not social media. It's not note-taking. It's where you can craft inspiration gardens, taking ideas and putting them into different formats. You have collections, which are essentially memes – they represent a larger group of connected things.

Building a Sponsorship Approach

I've been working on a sponsorship pitch for the livestream. One of the companies I'm talking with is Granola, whose note-taking app I use to take notes during streams. When discussing with them, I explained that I'm launching a daily livestream where I share original research while building an autonomous memetic marketing system.

Recently, I was working on my sponsorship approach and reached out to Justin Moore, founder of Creator Wizard and author of Sponsor Magnet. He's been helping creators figure out how to better negotiate with brands.

One thing he emphasizes is positioning yourself with three key attributes: surprising, transformative, and promise. This got me thinking about how I position Building Public University and my human insurance model.

The Creator 401k Breakthrough

As I was thinking about sponsorships, I had a breakthrough. What if creators that I've learned from could sponsor the show, and in exchange, that lets them build equity in this media company?

This is very cool because it lets creators convert cash flow into security. Creators are saying, "I don't necessarily want to be a creator forever. It's a lot of work to maintain an audience." Especially early on when you don't have a team, it's really hard to sustain.

What we can do is set up a model that converts monthly payments into equity. Right now, there are two things I need to get this stream off the ground: money and attention. If I partner with creators who are paying me and have an existing audience, they can provide both. As a founder, that's incredibly valuable because it helps me survive and also shows trust.

These creators I've been following have built their work on transparency, sharing their journey, what works, what doesn't, and having fun with it. They set a great example for others and often build communities around what they're doing.

What this coordination network does is allow us to more accurately share information across platforms without running into the "I don't want to aid my competitors" mentality. It restructures the game as creators versus algorithm, creators versus companies.

Creating a Common "Other"

I was listening to a podcast yesterday about how to build a flourishing group of humans, you always need an "other." But how do you do that when you don't want to other any humans? You have to other the memes – the ideas that are bad – because it's not people, it's systems.

The two "others" I've been focusing on are:

1. The algorithm
2. Companies/industries (particularly finance)

The financialization of everything has really hurt society. I'm saying no to financialization and yes to humans. I'm positioning against attention-mining algorithms. The "Make the Internet Weird Again" campaign is a way to coordinate against the algorithm – creating this other entity we can bond together to fight.

The Bidirectional Knowledge Flow

What I realized is that we can create bidirectional pipes of knowledge. If I've got a creator connected to me and sponsoring me, I can also send content back to them. I'm creating a lot of content that can be parsed by AI systems into more consumable formats.

We can allow people to filter what information comes to them so they only receive what they care about. Everything I share is tightly coupled, based on years of research, and I'm trying to get it out there as fast as possible.

By livestreaming myself talking, I actually make myself more legible to the world because people can hear me make connections between ideas in real time. This is something AI can't quite compete with because I'm taking in information faster than it can and integrating it immediately.

The BUMS Acronym

I realized this whole concept is essentially a creator 401k. I turned it into an acronym: BUMS (Building public University Media Services).

The idea with BUMS is that they're the people and tools who aren't worrying about the credit – they're just supporting their creative vision. That's what I want Building Public University to have as part of it.

The most important thing is getting eyeballs on work that deserves attention. With everything I'm doing, I'm focusing on how to direct attention to things that need it.

BUMS is about scale. The creator is about the thing that doesn't scale. Systems scale, people don't. As a creator, your job is to be a storyteller. We look at creators as simply the content they create, but really they're observers. They're observing the world around them, adapting their model based on what they're seeing, and reporting to an audience.

Supporting Creators at All Levels

This system can support creators at all levels from absolute beginners to full production teams. It understands that creators are the valuable part, while projects have limited time valuation – some things will be popular now and not later.

When popularity fades, that's fine. You go back to the lab and start working again. It's all learning, exploration, and research. Whether it's AI or art, it's all the same and should be valued the same.

We've created a system that completely overvalues the wrong things. Through the experiments we run with this system, we'll show how we can support people at scale, solely through the communication network between them.

Next Steps

The one thing I don't have figured out yet is the equity implementation. There's a company called Ferrament that's been working on tokenizing equity, and I have a call with them next week.

I'm thinking about opening a waitlist for general creators but doing a closed launch for the people I've literally been building off of – the ones listed as advisors in my PhD repo.

Conclusion

Creation is a messy process. You don't know how long it's going to take or exactly what it will look like in the end. All you know is that there's something ahead of you in the fog that you're grasping at. It's what your taste is aware of, but there's a taste gap.

Building Public University is my chaos. It's my place to do all the things I'm doing in a messy way, and then I let the AIs clean up the mess – because that's the part I don't want to do. That's the engineering work.

I can teach AIs to do engineering much easier than I can teach them to think about things the way I do and process them as quickly as I do. So I'm going to focus on being me, and I'll let the AIs handle the rest.

As this idea supply chain grows, as the network grows, it becomes more valuable. And as it becomes more valuable, it becomes more secure. That's how networks work, and that's how we'll create lasting change.