Q1 2025 investor letter

If you’re reading this, you’re one of the 46 investors in Thought Liters. You haven’t written me a check, but you’ve given me your time and attention as I build these extremely humble beginnings of the Hot Ones of the business world.

You may have seen one of the first few episodes I’ve cobbled together (latest: The biggest early mistake this entrepreneur made). You possibly read the master plan (for now). Or, perhaps you just saw a LinkedIn post and thought, “hey, that’s interesting.”

No matter your investment: the fact that you’re here is keeping me going. Thank you — and in response, I want to hold myself accountable to what’s going on over here.

Here are the primary developments for Q1 2025:

1. The show launched. The debut of Thought Liters was massively delayed (more detail in The Real S*** ), but it finally went live on January 22.

2. Videos began to roll out. Slowly, but consistently. 4 main videos are out + 11 clips. The H1 2025 goal is 10 episodes out + 30 clips, so the pace will have to pick up in Q2.

3. Guests like it. I can only say so much for the audience, since it’s cozy. But the guests really enjoy the experience, which is what I can directly control.

Beneath the hood: here are some per-platform numbers and quick takes:

• YouTube: 60 hours of watch time since launch; 91 total subscribers

  • Monetization begins at 3,000 hours of watch time and 500 subs. I don’t anticipate this to be a major source of revenue in 2025.

• LinkedIn: avg 15,037 impressions / 2.67% engagement rate on TL posts in 2025

  • I have a feeling this is going to be my best platform for engagement and revenue — but doubt it will be the audience builder I need to get TL to critical audience mass.

• TikTok: 4,032 views / 180 engagements (4.4% rate) since Jan 23 launch

  • tbh don’t really care about this yet as I mostly post clips, and clips rarely drive long-form views, and long-form views drive marketable audience.

• Instagram: 883 views / 16 interactions (1.8% rate) in March

  • I haven’t cracked IG yet. Possible that I need to make it more personal building content, because the clips are just not it.

Here are the opportunities for Q2:

• Time efficiency. The time put into the content vastly outweighs the total “consumption time” from the audience. Obviously that’s just how the math works at first, but there are opportunities to increase my speed to market.

• Revenue. This show makes no money. While I have a plethora of ideas, the audience is not yet large enough to entice sponsors.

• Guest gravitas. This show is born and bred in Pittsburgh. There are great people to interview here, but I need to take this show to other locations if I’m going to land big hitter guests more nimbly.

• Personal health. Somewhat related to the show — the time input is so dense that I’ve stopped going for walks or taking the time to cook good food for myself. I work until I can’t see straight and begin immediately again when I wake up. I’ve spent weekends (and the 1 day off I took in Q1) gripped with anxiety about how behind I feel. No quick fix for this, and it doesn’t serve you the investor, it’s just something I need to work on.

As ever: I appreciate you continuing to invest here with your time and attention. Thank you. I hope to continue bringing returns on that in Q2.

Adam