Content delivery route, the sell and the unsub
I have a folder called ‘blogs and content and  newsletter not yet read’.
My regular reads are in there. I will write ‘why them’ in a separate post but in short the Venture Capital list of authors include Sramana Tom Tunguz Fred Wilson Paul Singh Mark Birch Fred Destin Brad Feld Ben Horowitz and many others. About twice a month I look for their posts in particular and read through like the Sunday Times.
There is however a Limbo avenue train station that I operate. These are the relics of reckless subscribing. Although I can’t be sure with each, I assume that many I had found like a prowler might find an unlocked home.
As one might sort a sock drawer, with purpose and melancholy, I dig deep into the folder.
Curated news and content makes up about 2% of my incoming email. The rub:
The greatest problem is there is no relationship between me and the curators.
Here’s a quick example of a curated content Road to Rome. If you have included Tom Tunguz, there’s a strong chance you’ve been unsubbed. I already subscribe to Tunguz and if you sent me the post I read last week I am an ungrateful recipient.
A better model:
Sell. Wally Beaver had a nice job. He was a newspaper delivery boy and was responsible for transport and occasional remittances. The newspaper was the same one delivered to each home. His labors were to connect on the last mile.
Too many curators today are ‘time stuck’ pedaling an old and unsustainable model (or hobby). They should unburden themselves this notion of a business. There is separation anxiety, a distress like the one I experiences when I finally resolved that mine was not the Brady family.
Today his job must be different. He must shake everyone’s hand, get to know them, sell them on an efficiency of a compete content surveil, assemble their content preferences and then press send. 
TrunkClub is a great company. Its founder Brian Spaly is visionary and fashionable. TrunkClub has an amazing service and I am an ideal prospect. Very busy male, discretionary income, willing to pay above market rates to gain convenience.
To engage with them, first I did a web checklist that identified rough preferences in colors and materials and such. Then, in the signup sequence I had a call with their personal shopper. Clearly she was trained to be the bartender to my talkative patron. She got to know the particulars of my life well beyond what was essential to her to make good clothier suggestions. Within about a month my first trunk arrived. It was approximately $2000 consisting of only a few shirts, slacks, a blazer, a sweater. What I don’t like I ship back. The clothes are not discounted, perhaps for the merchant it is but the savings are not passed onto the consumer. Their value proposition is not cost savings. It is precision and intimacy.
Trunkclub is a marketing company that sells clothes.
Google knows me (really well) and TrunkClub knows me. Each company has acquired their insight through a much different mechanism. Both are chin deep in the sell.
The curated content does not know me.
Yes I am interested in investments and technology venture capital, but I am also interested in politics, policy, workforce issues, open data, big data, and different sciences. It’s an eclectic mix. You have to get into my head. Market and sell.
I am getting too many emails of curated content when I would like to only get one. One that selects precisely what they expect I will like based upon knowing me, on an initial checklist and then a phone call with their personal shopper of sorts (read salesperson) and an occasional check up call should my preferences change.
That’s worth something to me. Is it $5 a month or $50. I don’t know. Maybe someplace in the middle.