How Sarina Virk Torrendell went from employee #12 at Postmates to founding YouPop. On monetizing expertise and building creator economy infrastructure after a nonlinear career.
Loved this piece! The part on advice for those starting where they have the expertise but no audience yet hit home. That’s me. I can overthink so much what to post, but at the end of the day, when I sit down to simply right about what I’m going through, is where I feel that my best work comes out. I can get so in my head that I don’t even want to tell my friends that I’m doing this. I needed that reminder to get over the cringe.
The line about monetization coming from somewhere other than the content is the part worth sitting with — it means the content is doing distribution work, not sales work, and those two get built very differently. A piece that's trying to close usually fails at the thing it's actually good at, which is being remembered when the budget appears.
Hey Hannah! Loved this one. The line about people seeing your work even when they don't engage with it, and thinking of you later, is the part I keep coming back to.
I'm a couple of months into publishing, and the numbers say nothing is happening, which makes it very hard to tell the difference between invisible groundwork and just being invisible.
Crucial nuance: "The data fluency still matters though. You learned how to read financials and turn them into a story, which are skills that are valuable even if you’re not building the models yourself."
Great interview and super interested to see what comes from YouPop
Loved this piece! The part on advice for those starting where they have the expertise but no audience yet hit home. That’s me. I can overthink so much what to post, but at the end of the day, when I sit down to simply right about what I’m going through, is where I feel that my best work comes out. I can get so in my head that I don’t even want to tell my friends that I’m doing this. I needed that reminder to get over the cringe.
i hear you! I find it’s useful to have one person you’re writing for in mind as a filter
The line about monetization coming from somewhere other than the content is the part worth sitting with — it means the content is doing distribution work, not sales work, and those two get built very differently. A piece that's trying to close usually fails at the thing it's actually good at, which is being remembered when the budget appears.
Hey Hannah! Loved this one. The line about people seeing your work even when they don't engage with it, and thinking of you later, is the part I keep coming back to.
I'm a couple of months into publishing, and the numbers say nothing is happening, which makes it very hard to tell the difference between invisible groundwork and just being invisible.
This is a great reminder to keep going.
Yes!!! Keep going
This newsletter was amazing, thanks for sharing!
this is soo helpful, I just started writing on Substack and was feeling stuck
Such a good read! Sarina is the GOAT!
Crucial nuance: "The data fluency still matters though. You learned how to read financials and turn them into a story, which are skills that are valuable even if you’re not building the models yourself."
Great interview and super interested to see what comes from YouPop