Then again, I know very little about running a startup; patio11 has a track record. Maybe this works as a strategy.
That's a number which is trivially calculable. I don't know what it will be yet, but if you asked me to pick the over/under, I'm in for 80 out of 16k people on our list at present. An unsubscribe is not "I hate you guys and wish you would die in a fire"; it's the email equivalent of a browser's back button. "Not for me, not right now." Many startups let each unsubscribe punch them in the gut. Don't do that. The only way to avoid unsubscribes is to avoid email. You profoundly don't want to avoid email.
We've sent ~2 emails since... March? If I were a consulting client of myself, I'd have written somewhere between one and two dozen.
Is this email going to produce business results for the company? Hard to say. Wild guess? I get a contact in the next hour from one of the companies who has a stalled LOI saying "Oh great you're shipping let's get that signed." Depending on which company that is, the economics are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Many professional email marketers strongly disagree with writing long emails. I will chalk that up to a respectable professional disagreement. They work very well for me, by any trackable metric and by most of the intangibles. I've never felt like I created much value with the little 125-word-and-a-picture squibs that the industry blasts out by the hundred million; I know (because people tell me) that some people like my writing rather a lot and are disappointed that I don't hit them with 8k words every Friday. As it happens, a portion of Starfighter's list is folks who are in exactly that bucket.
Does that answer the question? Not trying to be very defensive about this, just trying to help other startups out. The modal startup sucks at email marketing. It is, far and away, the highest ROI channel you have and probably the easiest to use well. You should send more email. You should send better email.
Of course writing them is a pain so it's an investment. Considering I just gave a friend the "you must write long articles and build an audience" advice, it's amazing how badly I take my own advice...
He's on my very short list of 3 or so people who do email marketing particularly well.
One of the other people on that list, incidentally, writes 200-ish word emails every day. I read everything she writes too. There's not a single optimal solution here.
(I'm also very much looking forward to playing the game after reading that post. Given I'm not a professional programmer, I have very little desire to become one, I'm very happy in my current jobs, and I suspect Stockfighter is going to kick my ass until I can wear it like a hat, that's of dubious business value to Starfighter, but I guess I'll probably also recommend it to some folk who may be of more value...)
I may not be the target audience (novice coder) but I also feel the writing style would greatly benefit from greater focus.
A sentence that stands out in that regard is "Although my co-founders Thomas and Erin have done substantial work with securing real stock exchanges over their career, I have no particular background in finance." This sentence could be refined to "My co-founders Thomas and Erin have substantial experience securing real stock exchanges". This kind of editing would help the author avoid 8k word essays without a significant loss of content value.
My advice to Patrick would not be to change his style, which is clearly very effective, but to also throw some shorter update emails into the mix so people can keep tabs with less of a time investment if they so choose.
To improve the wording, I'd suggest something that doesn't imply intent on behalf of the author and solely reflects your own personal views. For example: "I wish the emails were shorter as I don't have time for long-form content". It gets your point across that you have limited time and would prefer concise emails, but doesn't infer anything regarding respect (or the lack thereof) towards you.
I do wish your original comment had been a little less snarky; I’d like to contribute more to HN but it’s not so easy when replies seem to assume entitlement/bad faith/etc.
I think the difference is that people give authors advice prior to writing an article which amounts to "be mindful that your readers will have to read this". And given that authors have a broad range of readers, it's perfectly fine for an author to consider this and still go ahead with something that's long form and detailed because there's a good chunk of their readership who actively appreciates it (and possibly expects it given patio11's typical article length).
Essentially, claiming the author shows you a lack of respect is disrespectful of the author for the work they put into it. Who has the greater onus to offer respect: someone who actively works to put out free in-depth articles that nobody is under any obligation to read, or those who passively consume those articles? Those who wish to read short announcements can simply say "Great post with lots of details, but is there a channel I can subscribe to which gives me short announcements?" That demonstrates respect.
While patio11 may not follow this particular suggestion for potentially valid reasons that he may or may not have, it was good feedback either way.
[1]-It mostly referred to his or her experience negatively, not the text itself. This seems superficial, but it does matter anyway.
[2]-The RSS point validates the experience, and makes it easier for the author to understand.
[3]-The tl;dr bit was a specific suggestion to improve his or her experience.
I think the long email is a great example of how it's better to have 1,000 people who love you rather than 100,000 people who like you.
I'd personally be fine with first finding out about Starfighter itself well after launch. I'll probably check it out, but it's not like I anticipate spending hours on it every week. On the other hand, your blog takes only a few minutes to read, and has great signal:noise.
I might venture an opinion that this is likely because they don't write as well or as interestingly as you do. By a long shot.
That's not universally true ;)
I hadn't heard of this, or microcorruption, before the prior blog post regarding writing the emulator. Then I started microcorruption, and it clicked, and then I spent the next few days talking about both microcorruption and starfighter to anyone I thought might understand my eager rambling.
Let's just say I'm looking forward to reading this...
I signed up for a tech-heavy game-ish thing, so I expect (and welcome!) tech-heavy content.
I read everything Patrick (and Amy Hoy and Brennan Dunn and Ramit Sethi and a few others) emails me. All tend to be long form (typically x,000 words) essays and/or sales letters.
My ROI on time spent reading has been totally positive and I have no plans to stop.