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Comment by aborsy | Hacker News Reader

I am curious: how does this guy Friedman make a living?!

His full time job seems to be running this podcast interviewing people. Every few days he publishes a 2-hour long interview.

He distributes ads, I am not sure how much that brings in.

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A semi successful YouTube video with less 2m views can easily bring in several thousand dollars in ad revenue.

He is way more successful and has multiple sponsors.

https://www.atomic14.com/2022/07/27/successful-youtube-video...

Several thousands for what time duration?

That’s one month of rent.

I would be interested in some estimates of revenue per audience.

I would assume he gets to charge a much higher rate from sponsors due to the prestige of his guests and the quality of his audience.

We’ll of course - that is the trick - you need to repeat it consistently. There are people who do it and make a lot of money doing it (have a look at MrBeast as an example).

Lex will he making an awful lot of money from his sponsorship - which is also where the big channels on YouTube make the majority of their money.

If you can go to a marketing department and say “I’ll get your product in front of a captive audience of X-million people with this demographic” you can charge a lot of money.

You didn’t answer the question.

Also has a Patreon with nearly 1000 subscribers.

I remember Lex saying he gets 300K-400K listens per episode, so making a living is surely not a problem because the sponsorships will be priced accordingly.

Also, he's a research scientist at MIT, which I'm also sure means making a living is not a problem.

It brings millions of dollars.

The same way Joe Rogan does, just on a smaller scale. 1/100th of what Joe Rogan makes is still an extremely comfortable life.

Lex seems to be on a trajectory to really make it big. It is amazing what kind of guests he is having. Perhaps if he turns it more mainstream he will become the next Rogan?

He doesn't have the personality necessary to be mainstream like Rogan. Rogan is to podcasts what pop singers are to music. Lex is like a fledgeling indie band, he will carve his niche but that's pretty much it. Mainstream audiences by definition don't have the intellect or curiosity for 90% of his content

An indie #1 tech and #74 all-included podcast in the US.

The comparison to Rogan is of course wrong, there are levels to this, but that doesn't really make his audience niche as in small despite all the robot comments since the start.

https://chartable.com/podcasts/artificial-intelligence-14342...

Lex is too cerebral, as are his guests.

Rogan, being a comedian, has a completely different energy. He will discuss serious topics too but his most iconic moments are usually him and some comedians/fighters shooting the shit about drugs or chimps.

He’s a lecturer at MIT

What does he teach?! He does not seem to have papers on AI and machine learning.

Update: As commented below, he does have papers.

Looking at the MIT directory, he's a research scientist and isn't teaching anything this trimester, but has previously taught a few courses on deep learning. He has 78 papers published. He has an office in the Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT.

Not sure thats still the case.

You answered the question yourself. He runs a podcast. Even tiny podcasts can bring in enough to make a living and he's huge. His Patreon alone probably gives him enough to live comfortably (1000 patrons).

He gives lectures at MIT, I think.

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