Reversing Medium’s brain drain problem

Notes from 9 years of writing at Medium

After 10 years of leading Medium, founder and CEO Ev Williams is stepping down. I’ve written there for 9 years (Ev actually hearted my first post!), and I’ve made some observations. First, an analogy that serves as the spine of this piece:

Former TikTok chief executive Alex Zhu likens building a social media platform to building a country; TikTok was an emerging country that essentially needed to draw in immigrants from Europe — namely, Instagram and Facebook. (It has done a great job.)

There’s a term for this, known as “brain drain.” Oxford defines it as, “the emigration of highly trained or qualified people from a particular country.” (I’m Canadian, so I’m deeply familiar with the experience of friends leaving for greater opportunities in the U.S.)

Since its inception, Medium has had a fundamental brain drain problem. People leave Medium to join another platform. Medium actually very much succeeded at drawing in creators and readers; the problem is it never figured out how to get them to stay.

It’s difficult to remember, but Medium used to be really exciting. The Ringer — which was acquired by Spotify for nearly $200 million — started at Medium. Sarah Cooper’s journey as a creator really accelerated with a…