Sam Parr interviews Camille Ricketts from First Round Capital

TL;DR

First Round Capital’s content blog, the First Round Review, succeeded by publishing long-form (3,000–4,000 word), interview-based, highly tactical articles written entirely in-house by a team of two. The strategy was launched by emailing ~30,000 contacts with a “you will never hear from us again” pitch, yielding 8,000 initial subscribers.

Key insights

• The content team writes all articles in-house (no freelancers) because freelancers are hard to train and consistency in voice is critical.
• Line-by-line editing for the first three pieces, spending ~2 hours per piece, is the primary method to train a new writer to match the publication’s voice.
• Long-form articles (3,000–4,000 words) provide “outsized value” to founders; the team found that the more tactical the detail, the more popular the article.