Life has settled into a fairly routine routine. So I guess I’ll kick this post off by talking about my most recent / prized purchase:

Salt Fork

One year ago, Ben Walker posted his first ever YouTube video titled What if forks were made of salt?​

In this 8-minute video, Ben documents his multi-week journey of doing exactly what the title of the video alludes to — making a functional fork entirely out of salt. In the year that followed, the video racked up 9.7M views. And that was that. Ben didn’t post another video. He came. He made salt fork. And he left.

That is until three weeks ago when Ben popped back up with a new video titled What if many forks were made of salt?​

It turns out, Ben had quit his job as a software developer to manufacture salt forks full-time. After six months and countless failed prototypes, he figured out how to produce salt forks at scale. And he’s selling them online for $25.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve found my energy going toward the creator economy, and Salt Fork is a fun example of what excites me about the space.

Creative people make clever, original content. And then, they can build fun businesses out of doing so. Some create products that are fairly flash in the pan-y (like Salt Fork probably is, or Airrack’s sauce that makes anything taste like pizza).

But some are really great businesses with staying power! MrBeast’s chocolate company Feastables is set to make $500M in revenue this year. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime will do over $1.2B in sales. And in the software space, Mark Hyman’s Function Health recently raised $53M for personalized health testing while YouTuber Doug DeMuro brought in $37M for his car auction site.

Lately I’ve been in talks with some large creators about full-time roles, exploring opportunities in sports, travel, and true crime. But I’ve also been freelancing with some fantastic creators as well.

One I want to give a specific shout-out to is Rodger Sherman, who is posting the best content out there about all-things Olympics. He recently left The Ringer to strike out on his own and his newsletter subscribership has grown from 1,300 to 2,200 over the past 30 days. Subscribe here for his fantastically fun, witty, and free daily Olympic recap emails 😊

Actual Life Updates

I spent the first two weeks of the month in Chicago, where I hung out with my parents, celebrated my friends Ben & Ellen’s wedding, and dog-sat Mahzi while my parents went out of town.

I then spent the last two weeks in Austin where I got back to my typical routine of sand volleyball, yoga, SoulCycle, poker nights, and hanging with friends. Photos from the month below:

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Til next month,

Ben

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