Tag: Business Interviews

What It Really Takes to Build Staying Power in New York’s Frenetic Food Scene

A candid look at modern bakery economics from one of NYC’s most watched shops. Alexander Stein

This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In a New York food scene defined by relentless turnover and algorithm-fueled hype, Radio Bakery stands out for a different reason: it has built genuine staying power.

Led by chef and co-owner Kelly Mencin, Radio Bakery has become one of the city’s most consistently buzzy—and influential—bakery brands. With locations in Greenpoint and Prospect Heights, Radio is known for its seasonal pastries, savory-forward menu and lines that seem to materialize regardless of weather, press cycles or platform trends. The bakery has earned praise from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and daytime television alike, but its real achievement may be cultural rather than critical: Radio feels embedded in its neighborhoods rather than extracted from them.

At a moment when many food businesses chase virality, Mencin has built Radio around repetition, rigor and restraint. Menu innovation is constant, but never at the expense of execution. Scarcity exists, but as a function of space and process, not manufactured exclusivity. Social media plays a role in visibility, yet the brand’s identity is grounded in what happens on the floor: the rhythm of service, the confidence of the team and the reliability of a loaf of bread that tastes the same every day.

In this conversation, Mencin unpacks the business of running a modern bakery at scale—what it takes to sustain demand in a trend-saturated market, how systems and leadership protect creative integrity and why community collaboration remains central to Radio’s growth strategy. From managing hype and seasonality to navigating post-pandemic shifts in consumer taste, Mencin offers a pragmatic look at how durable brand equity is built in hospitality, one batch, one service and one neighborhood at a time.

Chef and co-owner Kelly Mencin oversees Radio Bakery’s culinary direction, with a focus on systems, seasonality and long-term sustainability. Courtesy Radio Bakery

Radio Bakery has become one of those rare New York spots that consistently draws a line around the block. Beyond great pastries, what are the key ingredients that create that kind of sustained enthusiasm and loyalty?

Consistency and passion. One of our neighbors down the street at our Greenpoint location comes in every single day for a loaf of our seeded bread. Every day. He has come to expect that the bread will be the same, if not better, every day, and if it’s not, he will let us know! I say passion, but what I am really trying to convey is energy. When you walk into Radio, the energy from the bakers, sandwich cooks and servers is palpable. You can feel the heat from the ovens, smell the croissants, watch the cookies being scooped. The music is on, the staff is chattering. It just feels good to be in the space. People want to be around what makes them feel good.

Radio is known for its seasonal “drops” that feel both curated and consistent. How do you balance creativity with consistency, especially when developing new or seasonal items that customers now expect to sell out?

We have a few factors we look at. The two biggest ones are scalability and execution. Anyone can make something perfect once. The biggest test is making 60 to 180 of that same item, perfectly, every single time—and not letting it wreck service. Then, that perfect execution needs to be taught to our bakers. Can they all pipe perfectly? Maybe not. Can we teach them to? We’ll try our hardest. If it can’t be executed at a high level, we won’t run the item.

New York’s food scene moves fast, and trends turn over even faster. What’s your strategy for staying relevant without chasing every new flavor or format that pops up?

Simple, delicious food will always be relevant. We focus on seasonality more than anything else and let the ingredients speak for themselves.

From your vantage point, how has the business of bakeries evolved post-pandemic? Are there lasting shifts in consumer behavior, operations or expectations that you’ve had to adapt to?

I am still in awe of how many bakeries keep opening up every season since the pandemic! New York City has no shortage of sweet tooths. The biggest shift, in my opinion, is in people’s taste. More and more, I am seeing bakeries put savory pastries on the menu or sandwiches. We have been lucky enough that our model has worked for us extremely well. From the start, we were making savory croissant-based pastries and different focaccias and sandwiches. People want to come in and get a savory item and a sweet item, more often than not.

Social media has played a role in Radio’s visibility. What’s your philosophy around online storytelling? How do you translate something as sensory as a pastry into digital moments that resonate?

I knew from the start that I wanted our Instagram to be a platform for inspiration, not only for industry vets but for food lovers in general. I think our page resonates with so many people because it isn’t too manicured. There’s a good range of professional photos, behind-the-scenes videos of our processes and staff faces.

You’ve built a model that embraces scarcity without leaning on exclusivity. How do you think about managing hype, especially around holiday drops or social-media-driven surges in demand?

To be honest, the “hype” aspect of radio bakery is still a hard pill for me to swallow. We didn’t create Radio Bakery as a “hype” or “viral” bakery. Radio’s intention has always been to create simple, craveable food. The scarcity aspect only comes from the fact that our baking spaces are so small—there is a limit to how much production (or people) we can fit in each space. When it comes to managing the hype, we try to remind guests that most items take three days to make, we are making as much as we can and that if they miss out on one drop, there will always be another. We will never sacrifice quality for quantity.

Radio Bakery has become a cultural touchpoint as much as a culinary one. How intentional has that been, and what role does community play in your brand strategy?

Community has always played a huge role in how radio functions. Radio started as a pop-up. We reached out to industry friends who ran our favorite businesses (Mel the Baker, Bonnie’s, Claud) and literally popped up in their spaces selling what we were testing. It created an amazing community pocket in each area of the city. Once we opened Radio, we decided to make it a point to continue to do pop-ups and collabs with other like-minded people. It allows us to connect in a meaningful way with other people and businesses we’re excited about, keeps us learning and it keeps our guests engaged.

Many hospitality founders talk about the challenge of scaling without losing soul. As you’ve expanded from Greenpoint to Prospect Heights, what have you learned about growth and maintaining a distinct brand identity?

Radio wouldn’t be able to grow as successfully as we have if we didn’t have a strong management foundation. Each bakery relies on a “Bakery Chef”—think of it as a Chef de Cuisine—that runs the back-of-house operations at each location. They each bring their own management style, ideas and culture to each bakery. We learned early on that I, personally, cannot help radio grow and thrive if I am deep in the day-to-day operations. Instead, I’ve taken on the role of culinary director, essentially working with the bakery chefs side by side, creating new menu items, dialing in the current menu and looking ahead. Nina, our general manager, also goes back and forth between both bakeries, helping to oversee the FOH operations and the overall growth of the bakeries. It’s true what they say—teamwork really does make the dream work!

nside Radio Bakery’, where compact production spaces, open kitchens and steady rhythm shape both the guest experience and daily operations. Alexander Stein

Consistency is a constant challenge in high-volume bakeries. What systems or team philosophies help you maintain Radio’s quality and creative integrity at scale?

The biggest lesson we learned this year was creating SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for everything! From how we build our sandwiches to how we create a weekend special. Even then, we look at all of our recipes and SOPs as “living documents.” Some of our recipes have three to five different versions of them all saved in our library.

Having updated recipes is only the first part of the consistency challenge. Proper communication between managers and staff is the other part of it. We’re all learning and teaching in real time.

The holiday season also puts a spotlight on leadership, especially in a high-pressure, high-visibility business. What practices help you lead your team through those peak periods effectively?

It’s going to sound simple stupid, but I am so big on getting enough sleep, eating healthy meals throughout the day (instead of just snacking on sugar) and making time for myself to either run or go for a walk. I am lucky that I am able to carve out time for myself during the workday to step outside, get some sunshine and go for a run. It gives me a reset during a busy day and lets me keep showing up positive for my team.

It’s been a learning curve, but I have also come to realize that leaders “bring the weather” with them. I try to hit the ground running when I come into work, exude high energy and positivity and give out a LOT of affirmations.

From menu innovation to brand identity, what’s your process for deciding when to iterate and when to hold onto a core classic?

We are constantly iterating, refining and tasting our menu, from the core classics to our seasonal items. Radio’s menu was designed with several aspects in mind: flavor (a cinnamon item, a citrus item, a vegetarian savory, a fruit item), texture (chewy, crunchy, soft, sticky), and shape (pinwheel, claw, round, square). So, whenever we choose to change an item, it has to fit into its specific category. As far as seasonal items, we retest and taste and tinker with whatever we ran the previous year before deciding that we will run with that again. If we want to try something new, it has to be better and more craveable than what we have previously run.

Looking ahead to 2026, what does thoughtful growth look like for Radio Bakery? Are there ways you’re thinking about expanding the brand—or protecting its essence—as demand continues to build?

Right now, I am trying to focus on two big-ticket items: one, mentoring and growing our team and two, developing systems that make everyone’s job more streamlined. As unsexy as that sounds, the team and our systems are a big reason for Radio’s success. Having a team that loves to teach and mentor translates into bakers and servers who are knowledgeable and confident. Having the right systems in place allows us to scale up production while still making crazy delicious product. Tangible growth-wise, I am so excited that we are expanding our production space at our original Greenpoint location with the hope that we can have more diverse offerings throughout the day.

A classic croissant from Radio Bakery, where laminated dough is treated as both a technical discipline and a foundation for seasonal variation. Alexander Stein

Sonia Rubeck

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December 26, 2025
How Twelve Labs Teaches A.I. to ‘See’ and Transform Video Understanding: Interview

Soyoung Lee, co-founder and head of GTM at Twelve Labs, pictured at Web Summit Vancouver 2025. Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images

Sure, the score of a football game is important. But sporting events can also foster cultural moments that slip under the radar—such as Travis Kelce signing a heart to Taylor Swift in the stands. While such footage could be social-media gold, it’s easily missed by traditional content tagging systems. That’s where Twelve Labs comes in.

“Every sports team or sports league has decades of footage that they’ve captured in-game, around the stadium, about players,” Soyoung Lee, co-founder and head of GTM at Twelve Labs, told Observer. However, these archives are often underutilized due to inconsistent and outdated content management. “To date, most of the processes for tagging content have been manual.”

Twelve Labs, a San Francisco-based startup specializing in video-understanding A.I., wants to unlock the value of video content by offering models that can search vast archives, generate text summaries and create short-form clips from long-form footage. Its work extends far beyond sports, touching industries from entertainment and advertising to security.

“Large language models can read and write really well,” said Lee. “But we want to move on to create a world in which A.I. can also see.”

Is Twelve Labs related to Eleven Labs?

Founded in 2021, Twelve Labs isn’t to be confused with ElevenLabs, an A.I. startup that specializes in audio. “We started a year earlier,” Lee joked, adding that Twelve Labs—which named itself after the initial size of its founding team—often partners with ElevenLabs for hackathons, including one dubbed “23Labs.”

The startup’s ambitious vision has drawn interest from deep-pocketed backers. It has raised more than $100 million from investors such as Nvidia, Intel, and Firstman Studio, the studio of Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. Its advisory bench is equally star-studded, featuring Fei-Fei Li, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Alexandr Wang.

Twelve Labs counts thousands of developers and hundreds of enterprise customers. Demand is highest in entertainment and media, spanning Hollywood studios, sports leagues, social media influencers and advertising firms that rely on Twelve Labs tools to automate clip generation, assist with scene selection or enable contextual ad placements.

Government agencies also use the startup’s technology for video search and event retrieval. Beyond its work with the U.S. and other nations, Lee said that Twelve Labs has a deployment in South Korea’s Sejong City to help CCTV operators monitor thousands of camera feeds and locate specific incidents. To reduce security risks, the company has removed capabilities for facial and biometric recognition, she added.

Will video-native A.I. come for human jobs?

Many of the industries Twelve Labs serves are already debating whether A.I. threatens humans jobs—a concern Lee argues is only partly warranted. “I don’t know if jobs will be lost, per se, but jobs will have to transition,” she said, comparing the shift to how tools like Photoshop reshaped creative roles.

If anything, Lee believes systems like Twelve Labs’ will democratize creative work traditionally limited to companies with big budgets. “You are now able to do things with less, which means you have more stories that can be created from independent creatives who do not have that same capital,” she said. “It actually allows for the scaling of content creation and personalizing distribution.”

Twelve Labs is not the only A.I. player eyeing video, but the company insists it serves a different need than its much larger competitors. “We’re excited that video is now starting to get more attention, but the way we’re seeing it is a lot of innovation in large language models, a lot of innovation in video generation models and image generation models like Sora—but not in video understanding,” said Lee, referencing OpenAI’s text-to-video A.I. model and app.

For now, Twelve Labs offers video search, video analysis and video-to-text capabilities. The company plans to expand into agentic platforms that can not only understand video but also build narratives from it. Such models could be useful beyond creative fields, Lee said, pointing to examples like retailers identifying peak foot-traffic hours or security clients mapping the sequence of events surrounding an accident.

While A.I. might help a Hollywood director assemble a movie, Lee believes it won’t ever be the director. Even if the technology can provide narrative options, humans still decide which story is most compelling, identify gaps and supply the footage. “At the end of the day, I think there’s nothing that can replace human creative intent.”

Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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November 4, 2025
Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe on the Carmaker’s High-Stakes Return to Formula 1

Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe says the company’s 2026 Formula 1 comeback reflects a broader strategy linking performance, EVs and brand power. Jay Hirano/Honda Global

Honda has moved in and out of Formula 1 multiple times over the past 60 years, depending on the state of business. “Business is going good sometimes, and going bad sometimes,” Honda Global CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a roundtable of reporters, including Observer, in Mexico City last week, ahead of the F1 World Championship Grand Prix. “So, sometimes we quit [racing] to focus on the core business,” he said through a translator.

Next year, Honda will return to F1 as a standalone team in 2026, as F1 grows in global popularity and the Japanese auto giant navigates shifting consumer appetite for EVs, hybrids and internal combustion engine vehicles. As F1 grows in global popularity as the world’s most elite and expensive racing series, Honda’s comeback isn’t just about chasing podiums. It’s a calculated business move to merge performance, electrification, and brand relevance at a time when both automakers and consumers are redefining innovation.

Honda’s approach to racing has always centered on building brand recognition. The company began its racing journey with motorcycles in the 1960s, when founder Soichiro Honda believed that entering F1 was the only way for the small Japanese carmaker to be taken seriously on the global stage. At the time, Honda had barely begun building cars—let alone the powerful machines needed for F1.

Honda won its first F1 race in 1965 with the RA272, a car it brought back to Mexico City last week to commemorate the 60th anniversary of that victory. Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda took on the challenge of driving the vintage F1 car around Mexico’s 2.5-mile track ahead of the race on Oct. 26. Though the car stalled twice and needed a push out of the pits, it was a sight to behold.

In the 1980s, Honda established the Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) to focus on motorcycle racing and prove its engineering prowess. Its racing technology eventually trickled down to consumer bikes. In 2022, HRC absorbed Honda’s four-wheel racing programs, including IndyCar and F1, to “provide some stability” for car racing and investment, said Mibe.

Honda officially exited F1 at the end of the 2021 season to focus on EV development. But the company is now preparing a full-scale return in 2026 as the power unit supplier to the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team.

“The reason we decided to participate in F1 is that our business is concentrated in North America, and because of Netflix, F1 has taken off,” Mibe said. “With the new homoglation, and our strong relationship between F1 and the U.S., we can use that for our business.”

Honda’s largest market is the U.S., where it holds roughly 9 percent of the automobile market. This week, American Honda reported strong October sales, with total U.S. deliveries up 3.6 percent year-over-year. Growth was driven by demand for internal combustion vehicles, including the Accord and Passport, as well as electrified models like the popular CR-V hybrid. Notably, Honda sold a record 30,471 electric cars in October.

The Honda RA272 at the Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix. Jay Hirano/Honda Global

The race track is a sandbox for new tech

Racing has always been a proving ground for automakers to push the limits of technology. F1, known for its blistering speed, high thermal loads and extreme engineering precision, is an ideal environment to test advancements in everything from batteries to engines.

The demands of F1—extreme acceleration, punishing temperatures, and ultra-efficient energy recovery—push performance, packaging and durability to levels far beyond what consumers experience. Yet, many of those lessons eventually find their way into everyday vehicles.

Honda’s decision to return to F1 was driven in part by upcoming regulation changes, said Ikuo Takeishi, general manager of HRC’s automobile racing division. Beginning in 2026, all F1 power units must be 50 percent electric and 50 percent internal combustion, powered by sustainable fuel. That balance aligns with Honda’s long-standing focus on hybrid and battery technologies. At the same time, it underscores how Honda, like many major automakers, continues to rely on internal combustion technology amid headwinds for EVs and shifting consumer preferences.

“The technology we’re using in F1 won’t show up directly in consumer cars,” Takeishi said. “But much of what we learn on the track can show up in consumer cars,” he added, citing improvements in battery technology and efficiency gains from high-powered magnets.

Abigail Bassett

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November 3, 2025
Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia’s Plan to Reboot the Neighborhood App: Interview

Nirav Tolia, who co-founded Nextdoor in 2010, has returned as its CEO. Courtesy Nextdoor

The heyday of Nextdoor saw the neighborhood-focused social app thrive as a hub for connections, local recommendations and coordinated responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. But after years of slowing growth and accusations of toxic content, the platform began to falter. Now, returning CEO Nirav Tolia is on a mission to revamp Nextdoor not by restoring it to its former glory, but by pursuing an entirely new path focused on hyperlocal news and A.I. features.

“The reality is you don’t bring a founder back to incrementally change something, you bring a founder back to reboot something,” Tolia, who co-founded Nextdoor in 2010, told Observer. “And rebooting, in many cases, is more difficult than booting.”

Tolia stepped down as CEO in 2018 shortly before Nextdoor went public. The company, which connects more than 100 million neighbors and had 21.8 million weekly active users as of August, has since struggled to regain its footing. Its stock price has fallen more than 80 percent since its IPO.

Returning to the helm required Tolia to adapt to a very different challenge: rebuilding rather than creating from scratch. “You first have to stop the momentum, which takes a ton of energy, and then you have to actually start the momentum in a positive direction,” he said.

Rebooting Nextdoor

In July, Tolia unveiled a reimagined version of the social network, designed to make Nextdoor more local and more useful. A new alert system warns residents about emergencies like severe weather or power outages, while partnerships with more than 3,500 local publications bring geographically tailored news directly into users’ feeds.

A.I. sits at the heart of Tolia’s turnaround strategy. A new Nextdoor A.I. agent draws from the platform’s vast archive of posts to provide contextual responses to user questions. The technology also powers personalized feeds and offers writing suggestions, including “kindness reminders” to encourage civility when users draft posts.

Curbing negativity is a major focus for Tolia’s team, which aims to counterbalance complaints with more uplifting or informative content—such as community events and local news. Although negative posts make up less than 1 percent of all content on Nextdoor, Tolia said they “punch above their weight” by dominating the tone of discussions.

“We want to make sure that, with things like the kindness reminder, they are expressing themselves in a constructive way,” said Tolia. “But the real solution for us is to consistently introduce content types that are not about complaining, but that are about delight.”

As A.I. becomes more deeply integrated into daily life, Nextdoor sees this as a pivotal moment to strengthen real-world community ties. Encouraging users to connect with their neighbors and engage in local life is “something that I think can have really lasting impact, particularly in a world that’s losing its connection to the physical world,” said Tolia.

Early feedback on the redesign has been largely positive, according to Tolia. Still, he acknowledges that Nextdoor—which has yet to turn a profit—faces a long road ahead. “We’re in the early stages of a big turnaround,” he said. “We’ve now created a good foundation, but we’re very far from cracking the code.”

Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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October 31, 2025
Reimagining Nail Care: Turning Self-Care Into an Engine for Equity

With an equity-sharing workforce and medical-grade hygiene, MiniLuxe aims to set new standards for the beauty industry. Photo by Josh Campbell, Courtesy MiniLuxe

This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In an industry long associated with toxic fumes, exploitative labor and narrow definitions of beauty, MiniLuxe is reimagining what luxury means: clean, ethical and empowering from the inside out. Founded more than 15 years ago with the goal of professionalizing nail care, MiniLuxe has become a case study in how design, technology and purpose can elevate even the most everyday rituals into meaningful acts of self-care.

As CEO Tony Tjan explains, MiniLuxe was built on the belief that true luxury isn’t about exclusivity but intentionality, an accessible “everyday luxury” that celebrates both client well-being and employee dignity. By investing deeply in its workforce through training, equity participation and career mobility, the company has achieved over 85 percent annual retention among hourly workers—an anomaly in beauty and personal care. MiniLuxe’s model has proven that ethics and economics can reinforce one another. From its proprietary clean lab and non-toxic product line to its use of A.I.-enabled pricing and predictive scheduling, the company’s innovations extend beyond aesthetics. Tjan sees the future of self-care as a balance between technology and humanity—where personalization, community and creative expression remain core.

At a time when conscious consumers are reshaping the definition of luxury, MiniLuxe offers a blueprint for how modern brands can scale integrity as effectively as growth. The company’s success suggests that the next generation of prestige is defined by purpose, transparency and the people behind the polish.

The nail care industry has long been fragmented and informal. What business strategies allowed MiniLuxe to professionalize the space while still remaining accessible to clients?

We founded MiniLuxe to radically transform the nail care industry, beginning with clean and ethical work practices and the empowerment of our team members— through a better and healthier work environment, practical training, economic mobility and creative self-expression. We have been able to do this with the belief that clients want a brand that stands for quality and consistency, and are willing to pay a slight premium for cleaner and better-for-you services and the ethical and empowering treatment we provide to our workers. By investing in our team members, we get long-term loyalty with over 50 percent of our hourly team members having five years or more of service (and with that are granted equity options) and an annual hourly worker retention of over 85 percent.

Luxury is often defined by exclusivity. How do you reconcile that with MiniLuxe’s positioning as an “affordable luxury”?

When we started this business 15+ years ago, my co-founders and I wanted to find something that was “Starbuck-able”—a small ritualistic personal luxury that made people feel good but was accessible to a broad base.

The price point of a coffee, lipstick or manicure makes these goods and services more recession-proof and “everyday” luxuries. Luxury is a term that goes well beyond “exclusivity,” which is a somewhat dated and narrow notion of what luxury truly means. Modern luxury is more intentional and increasingly about experiences, self-care and emotional well-being.

We were also, I believe, the first to recognize that the nail care industry was bifurcated between a very large number of mass, lower cost, traditional “corner nail salons” (think the nail salon equivalent of independently-owned quick service restaurants) and very high end and expensive day spas where you might have to spend hours wearing a robe to get your nails done (think fine dining for nails). Our belief was that there was latent consumer demand for an affordable prestige experience in the form of a new “fast casual” experience that we ended up calling MiniLuxe.

Employee retention in the beauty industry is notoriously difficult. What lessons can other service-based industries learn from MiniLuxe’s approach to talent development and equity participation?

Purpose and people are everything. You need to have clarity of your purpose or “why,” and you need to inspire your people with a job and a north star that gives intrinsic meaning. It’s key for your team members to be maniacally aligned around that north star. The lesson that I have learned over the years is that people ultimately stay or leave a company more because of the intrinsic meaning that they feel for their job. That said, we complement our efforts to deliver on our purpose with a belief that our economic success—our extrinsic rewards—needs to be shared throughout all levels of our team. When you combine a strong purpose with a commitment to share these rewards, there is strong alignment. There’s nothing magic about it, but not enough businesses do it: marrying significance with success.

One of the most fun ways that we get to celebrate our employees is when they hit certain milestones in their careers. We are proud to acknowledge our team members with equity rewards at each five-year anniversary and complement those equity option grants with other recognitions, such as having a custom nail polish color named after team members who have been with us 10 years or more. It’s great learning about the stories of why 10-year anniversary members pick the color they pick and the name for that color. One designer named a color Yun Tree, and another one Ruth. They were named after a tree in the person’s home country, and in the other case, Ruth was a lifelong client who had passed away, and the color was her favorite.

The number of hourly-working nail designers who have been with us for 10+ years is around 10 percent of our team and those who have been with us for five-years plus represents about 50 percent of our team.

As consumers become more conscious of the ethical footprint of the products and services they use, how does MiniLuxe turn “ethical and clean” into a business advantage rather than just a marketing claim?

Clean and ethical nail care was the founding principle and strategy of differentiation for MiniLuxe. When we started the business, we pioneered elements like a proprietary Clean Lab with surgical grade sterilization, we utilized our founders’ backgrounds in science from Harvard to help develop better-for-you products; built the pedi stations with no whirlpools (to avoid bacteria risk), created immaculate waxing rooms with strict clean protocols, and we committed to the ethical and fair treatment of our workers. Since founding MiniLuxe, we have paid out nearly $150 million in fair and ethical wages to our nail designers, and we also decided from the outset not to offer acrylic nail services (which were and are a popular segment of nail services, but are simply not good for you and our workers’ health). Other large company investments included when we decided to pull all OPI and Essie and develop our own line of MiniLuxe 8-free polishes and nail treatments, including our Environmental Working Group (EWG)-certified and best-selling cuticle oil, all made in the USA to ensure full oversight and transparency at every step.

What is most rewarding are the memories and stories that we have heard from our clients and team members about what our clean and ethical standards have meant for them. One of the most common comments from first-time clients is, “Oh my God, there is no smell!”

One memory that still moves me was the first time a client told us confidentially that she was going through cancer treatment and that this was the only place that she and her doctor felt safe for her to go for a mani-pedi, which meant that much more to her during a challenging period. We have since heard similar testimonies from various at-risk patients. The disclaimer here is, of course, that patients should check with their doctors what is safe or not safe for them to do while undergoing treatments, but to be seen as the better-for-you and safer choice for many is meaningful.

Another surprise call once came from the head of one of the most prestigious hospitals in the Boston area. One of our nail designers had recently joined their team as a newly minted phlebotomist. The director wanted to personally call me to share how amazed she was that we had nail designers with such depth of knowledge of key hygiene protocols and how personable this particular worker was with her infectious hospitality. We’ve also had our designers tell us that they feel very safe while pregnant, versus how miscarriages are a common risk in several salons that don’t follow hygiene protocols.

Technology is at the core of your model, from A.I.-enabled pricing to digital-first booking. How do you see technology shaping the future of luxury personal care services?

A.I. has many applications in personal care and candidly will likely have its largest impact in more staid and archaic industries. Within the world of personal care, we see A.I. having a role in predictive yield management, dynamic pricing, training and the overall client experience, especially in the area of personalized recommendations.

At MiniLuxe, we are big believers in using technology to give our nail designers greater autonomy and more time to focus on what they do best, honing their craft. Technology also eases the stress of scheduling and coordination, allowing our designers to work more efficiently.

MiniLuxe operates at the intersection of wellness, beauty and luxury. How do you differentiate in a crowded beauty market that increasingly blurs these categories?

Our biggest differentiator is the clarity of our purpose—to empower our communities through self-care and self-expression, with an anchored purpose that allows us to create differentiation across our brand, culture, technology and overall platform systems.

Overall, the types of businesses and business transformations that have intrigued me are where capital and entrepreneurship can be used as a force for good and where you can apply design and technology to archaic industries. The nail industry is only beginning the birth of its innovative phase.

On a personal level, I have a deep appreciation for Japanese- and Scandinavian-inspired design with pops of whimsy. We have tried to have the MiniLuxe brand echo some of that aesthetic, and it has been equally important to have a view of simplicity for the technology that we are bringing into the business, from our app, to our booking systems, to digital payment and inspiration mood boards for nail designs.

A people-first model and clean innovation are the first steps toward transforming the $10 billion nail care industry. Photo by John Horner, Courtesy MiniLuxe

In a time when some consumers are cutting back on salon visits, what makes the nail care category resilient, and what does that say about the evolving definition of discretionary spending in the luxury market?

As long as modern nail care has been part of the American landscape (since the early to mid-1970s), nails have shown incredibly resilient and steady growth outside of “black swan” events like Covid-19, which temporarily shut down the industry. Nail care is the most democratized entry point of beauty and self-care services, making it an affordable luxury like a movie ticket or lipstick (e.g., the lipstick index) in good times and bad. And in some cases, it can even have the contrarian impact of increasing sales during a recession as consumers shift spending from more expensive self-care and beauty services to more affordable experiences such as nail care.

MiniLuxe has developed proprietary clean products alongside its salon business. What role does vertical integration play in building a defensible and scalable brand?

Vertical integration is an important part of any defensible and scalable brand, but it usually comes at a later stage of development for companies. We are being selective where we vertically integrate and are most focused at this time on delivering 10x betterment of our client experience.

Today, we integrate proprietary MiniLuxe products seamlessly into the overall brand experience, prioritizing better-for-you, clean formulations in-house. We maintain control over quality, innovation and consistency. For example, we have been early in the identification of ingredients that we don’t believe should be in nail care products. None of MiniLuxe’s branded products has, for example, TPO, which has been a hot topic in the news. Any time we evaluate a third-party product, we make sure that it meets our internal standards of safety by being toxic-free or only trace (i.e., non-harmful levels) of anything we have on our ingredient watch list.

The clean beauty market can be murky, with many products claiming to be “clean.” By pursuing EWG certification, one of the most rigorous standards, we ensure that our clean beauty claims are backed by real, verifiable standards in products such as our Cuticle Oil. We scale thoughtfully, ensuring new products, like our recently launched hand cream, are naturally incorporated into our nail care rituals, enhancing the client experience at every touchpoint.

How has digital and social media marketing changed how luxury beauty brands like MiniLuxe connect with customers compared to a decade ago?

No different than any other brands. End-users have shifted to their phones and other screens for the “social proofing” of their choices. With that said, nail care is a fairly intimate experience where the provider is touching and holding your hands (and waxing even that much more) so there is as much influence in the moment with what a trusted provider might recommend for healthier nails, color selection, nail art design or post-waxing care.

At MiniLuxe, we embrace digital shifts by using social media and online video to highlight our artistry and tell stories that are authentic and in a personal voice. From showcasing our designers across different markets to sharing nail art and wellness routines, we create content that both inspires and educates, while reflecting the trust clients experience in the salon. We focus on original ideas, not just pushing products, making the social media experience feel more personal. This approach brings the intimate, in-person experience online, letting us connect with audiences in real time and show visually what we do best.

Scaling ethical values—whether wages, benefits or hygiene standards—can be difficult when expanding. How do you ensure consistency across regions as MiniLuxe grows?

One of our board members once said, “Show me a good studio/store and I’ll show you a good studio/store leader.” It again comes down first and foremost to having as many A-leaders in our studios. We don’t always get it right but we are intentional, patient and very greedy about who we hire, promote and develop as our studio leader, operating or franchise partners.

In addition to getting great people who can lead in the studio, we do everything possible to build a strong culture and systems. Our systems span the range from how to properly shape and color a nail to monitoring key performance indicators of the business to how best to position and execute on a new product or service for launch. When you pair a strong leader with strong systems, you don’t guarantee success, but you sure increase the probability of it. Furthermore, none of these systems is static, and there is an interdependency between developing great systems and great people. What do I mean by that? Our team of operating partners, studio leaders and nail designers acts as a neural learning network to improve our systems. It’s like a living and breathing Slack learning channel that shares ideas, provides feedback, hacks and ways to improve on any system or aspect of our business.

Do you see your employee equity and ownership model as a template that could transform other low-wage, high-turnover industries?

I see broad employee ownership as an economic tool that goes well beyond retention and the potential, if used more broadly, to narrow the income inequality gap that we have in this country. There are two great financial innovation tools for the broader base of Americans to generate wealth.

One, the home mortgage, which allows one to have a leveraged way to build long-term equity value that outstrips the cost of the borrowed capital. And two, equity ownership that complements a W2 check. The latter has long been used as a tool for executives and higher-ranking employees, but in my vie,w should be used more broadly across businesses that have liquid stock appreciation potential.

Imagine if just a fraction of the successful big-box retailers and large retail chains that employ hundreds of thousands of hourly workers shared just a little of their equity gains with those floor workers. Even if a very small portion of that equity pool was reserved for special or emergency needs of the core base of hourly workers (at MiniLuxe, we have a small but important emergency resiliency fund), that would be a positive advancement of overall workforce engagement and security.

What consumer trends—whether in wellness, sustainability or design—are most likely to reshape the beauty and nail care industry over the next five years?

Increasing integration of A.I., technology and design into more human-centric elements of wellness that cannot be digitized will shape the future experiences of self-care. While there are exciting developments in robotics and other technology, which will take some share from the marketplace (no difference from home-based massage chairs), there will, for the foreseeable future, be a market for human-to-human connectivity and real-world experiences. In fact, as technology and A.I. become more pervasive, the luxury of self-care may be that which is done IRL by real humans in an intentionally well-designed space.

Tjan is on a mission to build a scalable business model rooted in equity, not exploitation. Courtesy MiniLuxe

Many luxury sectors are exploring personalization powered by A.I. and data. Do you see a role for hyper-personalization in nail care, or is consistency and standardization more valuable?

The two are not mutually exclusive. There is no one use case for getting your nails done. For example, if there is a special event, one might want to have highly customized nail art or an expression of nail design that reflects their fandomship for a team, character or other affiliation, but day-to-day, that same person might value super consistent standardization of their go-to simple classic nude or neutral nail look.

Again, as stated above, hyper-personalization is reshaping luxury beauty, and Paintbox’s custom press-ons are a direct response to the growing demand for bespoke experiences. Each set is handcrafted by a designer, using techniques like freehand drawing, 3D elements, gradients, intricate patterns and gem work, turning nails into wearable, reusable works of art. As elaborate press-on nail looks make waves on red carpets, Paintbox brings that same level of luxury and personalized creativity to everyday clients.

Looking ahead, what does the “future luxury salon” look like, and how might MiniLuxe be shaping that vision?

The future luxury salon will consider nail care across its multiple dimensions of consumer value: self-care, self-expression and community connection. I see nails as the “new face” with endless possibilities and spaces that elevate nails from what may be viewed by some as trivial beauty to a new category of accessory, identity and expression—a safe space (that 1×1 cm canvas of a nail plate) to make a statement about your individuality.

In addition to individual expression, the future nail studio will equally embrace the role that nail care has played over the decades as a mini-moment of joy and self-care. What will change is the form factor in which we deliver both expression and care, whether that be reimagined chairs, cocooned nooks or areas that use A.I. to digitally inspire one’s creativity. We will also be more expansive in our view of nail trends, bringing more east-to-west trends and catering to a modern global citizen and more conscious and intentional consumer. Exciting times ahead!

Tony Tjan

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October 28, 2025
John Deere CTO Jahmy Hindman Is Turning A.I. Into a Farmer’s Tool

Jahmy Hindman, SVP & CTO at John Deere, is leading the agricultural giant’s AI transformation, including the development of See & Spray technology that reduces herbicide use by up to two-thirds and a 2026 initiative to connect 1.5 million machines through satellite connectivity. Courtesy of John Deere

Jahmy Hindman, featured on this year’s A.I. Power Index, oversees the integration of artificial intelligence into John Deere’s agricultural equipment, transforming the tractors, combines and tillage machinery that generations of farmers have relied upon into precision-guided, autonomous platforms. Under his leadership, John Deere has developed A.I. solutions that address the unique challenges of agriculture, where technology must perform reliably in harsh rural environments and deliver measurable results for farmers who get only one chance per year to maximize their yields. Hindman is spearheading John Deere’s ambitious 2026 initiative to connect 1.5 million agricultural machines through satellite connectivity, enabling real-time operations in regions lacking cellular coverage and accelerating the company’s A.I. model training capabilities. With global food demand expected to rise as the population approaches 10 billion by 2050, and the average farmer now 58 years old working 12-18-hour days, Hindman recognizes the critical role A.I. plays in addressing agriculture’s demographic and productivity challenges. His work extends beyond traditional farming applications to predictive maintenance engines, digital twins and advanced analytics that transform each piece of equipment into what he describes as a self-operating intelligence platform, designed to help farmers “make every seed count, every drop count, and every bushel count” in an industry where precision and reliability are paramount.

How is the application of A.I. in agriculture different from the way tech companies use it? What does this enable for farmers?

Our customers operate in predominantly rural environments, with changing and often harsh weather conditions. This is the place our technology must perform, which is why we deploy A.I. on the edge in agricultural equipment. While models are trained in data centers, they must run efficiently on GPUs operating in the equipment. These models perform tasks beyond human capability, processing data from various sensing modalities, like camera arrays, to make real-time decisions, such as applying herbicide only where needed. They also make decisions about the environment around the equipment to enable autonomous operations.

Improving the precision of crop inputs allows a farmer to turn a highly varied, dynamic environment like farming into a more manageable and predictable one. This is what differentiates A.I. in farming from the digital-first applications more common in tech companies. That said, the equipment operating in agriculture collects a significant amount of operational and agronomic data. This data lays the foundation for digital-first A.I. insight solutions, which is then created to enable farmers to make better management decisions through their crop cycles.

Computer vision and machine learning are two specific types of artificial intelligence that enhance observation and decision-making for farmers. These technologies help farmers “see” beyond human capacity to observe what’s happening at critical junctures and make precise decisions in real-time throughout the growing season. Take autonomous tractors, for example: Camera arrays can be installed on tractors for a 360-degree view of a tractor’s surroundings, enabling high-quality depth perception to eliminate false positives like shadows. This precision allows farmers to turn a highly varied, dynamic environment, like farming, into a more manageable, predictable one. This is what differentiates A.I. in farming from the digital-first applications common in tech companies.

How does Deere build A.I. products that deliver efficient, measurable benefits to improve a farmer’s bottom line?

With global food demand expected to rise as the population nears 10 billion by 2050, the need for efficiency and sustainability in agriculture has never been greater. At John Deere, it’s our goal to provide farmers with the tools and technology they need to produce the food, fuel and fiber we all rely on. Our approach to A.I. starts with solving real problems that impact a farmer’s bottom line and productivity in the field. Our products are designed and tested with farmers to ensure they meet their needs.

One way we’re meeting this challenge is with See & Spray, which uses computer vision and machine learning to detect where every weed is in a field and precisely apply herbicide only where it’s needed. This plant-level management technology gives a machine the gift of vision, allowing it to “see” more closely with 36 cameras attached to the machine’s 120-foot carbon fiber boom. Processors determine if an individual plant is a crop or weed and send commands that deliver a precise dose of herbicide where the weed is. This See & Spray technology can reduce the amount of herbicide needed by up to two-thirds, which allows farmers to grow healthier crops. This also saves farmers money, reducing the amount of fertilizer and herbicide needed.

The global population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, while the average farmer is 58 and working 12-18-hour days. How is John Deere using A.I. to address this demographic challenge before it becomes a food crisis?

John Deere delivers highly efficient, automated farm equipment that maximizes productivity throughout the growing cycle to make every seed count, every drop count, and every bushel count. For example, our latest combine harvesters are packed with automated technologies designed to optimize harvesting efficiency. Using stereo cameras and satellite imagery, the machine continuously analyzes field conditions in real time, adjusting the speed of the machine as it moves through uneven terrain. This intelligent automation ensures every bushel is captured from the field and allows farmers to focus on other value-added tasks across the farm.

Barron’s predicted Deere’s stock to grow by 50 percent due to the success of its A.I.-enabled solutions. Deere hit all-time highs in May. Which A.I. capabilities are driving that momentum, and how are they impacting farmers?

The edge A.I. solutions we’ve deployed are aimed at helping farmers do more with less. See & Spray reduces herbicide applications while protecting, and in some cases improving, crop yields. Predictive Ground Speed Automation improves the performance of the harvesting operation while reducing the skill level necessary for the operator. Autonomous tractors allow the farmer to get necessary work done at the time it needs to be done when available labor is being used on more valuable tasks.

Our momentum is driven by A.I. solutions that create tangible value for farmers, saving them time, reducing costs, and improving yields. Today’s farms generate vast amounts of data. John Deere Operations Center, the operating system for the farm, allows farmers to set up their equipment, create work plans for each field, monitor every machine in real-time as it completes work, and analyze the data for smarter and faster decisions on the farm. These capabilities are reshaping how modern farming is done.

John Deere is expanding satellite connectivity to reach farmers worldwide, including regions like Brazil. How are these connectivity solutions helping farmers overcome infrastructure gaps to unlock value in their operations?

Brazil is one of the world’s top exporters of agricultural products; however, roughly 75 percent of the country lacks secure and reliable connections. This makes it challenging for farmers to take advantage of the latest technology, some of which requires reliable internet. Satellite communication services, like Deere’s SATCOM service, fill this connectivity gap and allow farmers to improve productivity, profitability and sustainability. With improved connectivity via satellites, farmers can work more efficiently and productively, reduce downtime, and coordinate among machines for more efficient use of resources.   

What’s one assumption about A.I. that you think is dead wrong?

A.I. will replace farmers. This isn’t the case. Rather, A.I. enhances and complements the work of the farmer, automating repetitive tasks, reducing variability in the process and providing tools for smarter, more efficient operations. Deere shares farmers’ commitment to protecting the land for future generations. We see A.I. as a tool that empowers farmers to do more with less, leading them into the digital era while solving decades-long challenges from limited skilled labor to managing weather variability.

Was there one moment in the last few years where you thought, “This changes everything” about A.I.?

A.I. is really about compute, algorithms and data. I’ll highlight two examples. For compute, Deere charted GPU performance over time, looking at CUDA cores and clock speed. When we plotted our own embedded GPU performance alongside current state-of-the-art and projected roadmaps from our compute partners, the curve was clearly exponential—even in embedded GPUs. That’s significant because compute has traditionally been a limiting factor for embedded A.I. applications, and now that constraint is disappearing.

The second example is data. Deere recently began streaming 150 Mbps with 70 ms latency over satellite connections. For our applications, data is generated on the edge, and collecting it in sufficient volume is challenging, often constrained by seasonal growing cycles. With a persistent, high-bandwidth connection, we can move that edge data more quickly, which accelerates the model training flywheel and leads to faster, more robust improvements.

What’s something about A.I. development that keeps you up at night, that most people aren’t talking about?

In farming, the stakes are high. Farmers get one chance a year to do it right, so every decision and every action matters. We’re responsible for developing consistent, always-on A.I.-enabled technology that farmers trust. Farmers need to know that when they invest their hard-earned dollar into precision technology on our machines, it will perform exactly as expected every time. Making trustworthy A.I.-enabled tools for the people who need it most is what drives us to keep developing more innovative, cutting-edge technology.

The Editors

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September 18, 2025
Hugo Larochelle Succeeds Yoshua Bengio to Lead Canada’s Top A.I. Lab: Interview

Hugo Larochelle assumed his new role as head of Mila on Sept. 2. BENEDICTE BROCARD

Hugo Larochelle first caught the A.I. research bug after interning in the lab of Yoshua Bengio, a pioneering A.I. academic, during his undergraduate studies at the University of Montreal. Decades later, Larochelle is now succeeding his former mentor as the scientific director of Quebec’s Mila A.I. Institute, an organization known in the A.I. field for its deep learning research.

“My first mission is to maintain the caliber of our research and make sure we continue being a leading research institute,” Larochelle, who began his new role yesterday (Sept. 2), told Observer.

Larochelle will oversee some 1,500 machine learning researchers at Mila, which Bengio founded in 1993 as a small research lab. Today, the institute is a cornerstone of Canada’s national A.I. strategy alongside two other research hubs in Ontario and Alberta.

Larochelle “has the rigor, creativity and vision needed to meet Mila’s scientific ambitions and accompany its growth,” said Bengio, who left the institute to focus on a new A.I. safety venture he launched in June, in a statement. “Our collaboration goes back more than 20 years, and I am delighted to see it continue in a new form.”

After his early work with Bengio, Larochelle completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Montreal. Bengio, Hinton and Yann LeCun went on to win the 2018 Turing Award for their contributions to neural networks—a field once overlooked but now central to the A.I. revolution.

Larochelle’s own career reflects that shift. His first paper was rejected for relying on neural networks, but as their applications became clear, the field’s importance skyrocketed. “We felt like we were at the center of what’s important in the field, and that was exhilarating,” said the Larochelle.

He went on to co-found Whetlab, a machine learning startup later acquired by Twitter (now X), before leading A.I. research at Google’s Montreal office in 2016. While most of his eight years at Google were highly productive, Larochelle noted that growing competition and a stronger focus on consumer products made publishing more difficult—a key factor in his decision to leave for Mila. “My passion was really scientific discovery, and simultaneously, I heard that Yoshua was going to find a successor,” he said.

In his new role, Larochelle wants to build on Montreal’s tradition of scientific discovery. “I want to set the condition that we make the next one in the next five years, and that’s really the foundation of everything else we do,” he said. He also highlighted interests in advancing A.I. literacy, developing tools for biodiversity and accelerating scientific research.

More broadly, Larochelle hopes to ensure that innovation moves faster—both across the industry and within Mila. “There’s definitely an interest in also making sure that our researchers, who might be interested in taking their own research and doing a startup based on what they’ve discovered, are well equipped in doing that,” he said.

Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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September 3, 2025
Q&A With Patreon CEO Jack Conte: Social Media Giants Are Getting the Creator Economy Wrong

Patreon CEO Jack Conte in Austin, Texas for SXSW 2024. Hutton Supancic for SXSW

As social media platforms grow into profit machines, many of them have stopped building up their content creators, according to Jack Conte, the co-founder and CEO of Patreon, a creator-focused subscription and membership platform that seeks to change that.

Conte closed out this week’s SXSW conference with a keynote presentation today (Mar. 15) about how social media companies are working against creators in favor of profitability. Conte spoke about how major platforms like Facebook began ranking posts based on user engagement, which eventually changed the nature of these sites from a place to discover creators to a recommendation machine that only promotes content that the ranking algorithm thinks users should see. As a result, creators now have a harder time gaining a following and building a dedicated fanbase.

“We only saw it in retrospect, but now I think of the 2010s as the decade of ranking, the decade when the original promise of the creator-led community, the true follow, was broken for the first time,” Conte said during his keynote today.

Patreon provides a platform for creators to sell subscriptions to audio and video content. Conte, a musician in two bands named Scary Pockets and Pomplamoose, co-founded the platform in 2013 with developer Sam Yam as a way to monetize his own videos.

Earlier this week (March 12), Observer spoke with Conte about his thoughts on the problematic trends in the creator economy and how his company is working to build a better future for content creators. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Observer: The title of your keynote is “Death of the Follower and the Future of Creativity. What do you mean by the “Death of the Follower?”

Jack Conte: TikTok was one of the first platforms that came around and basically said, “We’re not even going to worry about follows and subscriptions aren’t a thing we care about or work on. And that’s why I think you see creators on TikTok getting millions of views with one video and then a thousand views the next video. And you sort of bounce up and down like that because you don’t really have a direct relationship with your fans on that platform.

Your distribution is up to the whims of the platform and the distribution algorithms that govern it. So the shift that happened was toward that style of content feed. Specifically, YouTube followed with Shorts, and Instagram followed with Reels. But it wasn’t just short-form vertical video, it was an emphasis on recommendations and algorithmic curation because that drove really strong engagement on the platforms.

If you look at the way the internet is organized, it’s shifted from a follower-based, creator-led community based organization to curation and recommendations and personalization that I think is really bad for creative people. It’s harder to build a business, it’s harder to energize your fan base, it’s harder to have a community, it’s hard to manage your community. It’s hard to tell your community new things that’s happening in your life.

It doesn’t have to be like that. The shift to curation and personalization is not the way it must go down. There needs to be a way to reach those people and build an energized community as opposed to just having communities die off as the shift to personalization precipitates across the web.

Have you talked to creators lately? What kinds of things have they expressed that they need from these platforms?

I can’t think of a creator that I know through Patreon or just in my personal life who hasn’t felt this shift over the last four years. It started even before that with post ranking. Ranking algorithms were focused on engagement and ad revenue, which was great for their business and the right decision. But what it meant for creators was our posts are getting pushed all the way down to the bottom of the feed and we’re not able to talk to our fans anymore.

There was a group of creators whom I met with once a week for 12 weeks as part of a creator club that I did where we just talked about what’s working and what’s not. One of those creators emailed me a year later and was like, “I’m hanging up my hat. Overnight changes to the way Facebook distributes content, reduced traffic to my pages by 80 percent, and I have to sell my house.” I wish that was an exception to the rule, but that’s actually what’s happening now.

What is the argument for these companies as to why they should care how well creators do on their platforms as long as people are still visiting their sites and they’re getting ad dollars?

I don’t think they do, and I don’t think they have a business reason to, and that bothers me as a creator. Their customer is the advertiser, so why should they prioritize creative people and their work? Well, because it’s the right freaking thing to do. But is that their job as corporations? Clearly it isn’t.

I think they are making the right business decisions for their revenue models. The vast majority of their revenue, 90 plus percent of it, is coming from advertisers, and they have to maximize engagement on their platforms to sell ads. It just so happens that that’s not the best thing for creators. I think the argument is that there ought to be a better way for creators to build communities and fandoms.

Do you see a parallel to creators in the media landscape, like Big Media or corporate media?

Yes, the parallel between creators and media companies is real. Actually creators and media companies want similar things, which is to provide utility to the audience they’re serving. Big Media feels kind of thrashed around by social media platforms over the last four years. That’s how creators feel, too: it’s hard to reach people.

What is Patreon doing to solve this problem?

Patreon is a media community and business platform for fandoms and creators as opposed to just a membership platform. Not all creators want to do memberships, and not all fans want to pay for memberships. So we started to expand outside of membership into more holistic media and community and business tools for creators.

A lot of fans aren’t yet ready to pay, but they consider themselves true fans of the creator. They want to see what the creator has to say and they want to have a tight-knit relationship with the creator in that community. And so we’ve found a way to do that. We call it free membership: It’s kind of like a follow, but it’s gated behind an email. What that does is it puts the control in the creator’s hands and they can build a community of free members that they have a direct line of communication to.

We also built a community product called Chats, which allows creators to set up a community where fans can talk with each other and with the creator, in an effort to help creators build what we call energized fandoms. I think the problem with the way it exists on other platforms is the fandom doesn’t get energy as the fandom gets older. The fandom is sort of zapped of its energy as it progresses through time, because those fans aren’t seeing the work of the creator. Those posts aren’t rising to the top and they’re not getting a chance to hang out with other fans and build their enthusiasm.

Do you think that we are past the days of online public forums, especially now as individual or group creators can kind of create these spaces for themselves?

I don’t know if those days are over, but it’s certainly changed and it certainly feels like we’re starting to break apart into smaller, more manageable, in my opinion, more healthful groups of people. I don’t think the big open spaces will go away. Those maximum broadcast channels will continue to be there, but I think people will likely want to spend more time with smaller groups of people that they have deeper connections with.

Why do you believe smaller groups are more “healthful?” Can you expand on that a bit?

I think having a smaller group of people that we have really intimate deep relationships with is a much more pleasant experience as a human being. You can be more vulnerable, you can share more, you can be more of yourself without feeling worried that people are judging. You can find it’s easier to find belonging instead of constantly being subjected to people whose values you don’t share, yelling at you while you’re wrong. You’re among a group of like-minded people, which is how our brains are designed. So, something about all that feels a bit more healthy to me rather than just kind of being in the big mosh pit.

With all the changes and disruptions going on in the social media business, what do you think the future holds for creators?

I actually think the future is very, very bright for creative people. If you look at over the last two decades of the internet, where we came from and where we are now, 11 years ago, there was no paying creators. There was no way to make money, no tipping, no subscriptions. Now, all of that stuff is like table stakes in the industry. If you’re a platform, there’s a cultural expectation that creators deserve to be paid for their work. But then there still needs to be the actual community building and business building that happens.

I think we’re moving into a world where there will literally be hundreds of millions of people as full-time professional creators building communities and businesses. And that’s the world I want to live in.

Nhari Djan

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March 15, 2024