In the mid-2000s, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte had a wild idea: what if every child in the developing world had a computer? And this wasn’t some smoky gaming cafe or a school computer. It was a machine that the child owned and could use every day. I twas connected to the nascent internet, had a simple operating system, and was rugged enough to survive any conditions.

The result was the One Laptop per Child project and one of the strangest, most ambitious computers ever put into mass production: the OLPC XO-1.

Most people knew it by another name: the $100 laptop.

Launched in 2007, it never really became a $100 laptop. It didn’t transform global education in quite the way its creators expected, either. But the XO still mattered. More than 2.4 million had shipped by 2011, according to the Computer History Museum, and some estimates eventually put total distribution around 3 million machines. More importantly, the project forced the computer industry to reconsider some basic assumptions about what a laptop needed to be.

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Hi, again. I took the month off from the podcast but I wanted remind you that I’m working with founders, CEOs, and industry experts to turn what they know into an audience and, more importantly, real influence.

I’ve been doing this with a handful of founders already, mostly through informal coaching. The setup is simple. We talk once a week for about 30 minutes, figure out what you should be saying and where you should be saying it, and then work on making it happen.

That can include Substack, blog posts, press releases, media training, SEO/GEO, social media, media outreach, and general marketing. The point isn’t to throw content onto the Internet. It’s to make sure the right people know who you are and why your work matters.

Let's Meet

I’m doing this with my friend Neeraj Bansal, who handles the operations side. Between us, we have more than 60 years of experience in startups, media, and entrepreneurship.

So far, I’ve helped people build newsletters with 25,000 readers, grow Twitter accounts to more than 500,000 followers, create huge Discord communities, land international press, and host dinners with journalists at major industry events.

I’m not trying to become your PR agency or your full-time CMO. Think of me as a coach and an extra set of experienced eyes. I’ll help you figure out what works, what doesn’t, and what you should be doing next.

The introductory package is $1,000 per month in which we do a 30 minute consult and build you an Substack and media strategy with one post per week. Given what most marketing and PR firms charge, I think that’s pretty reasonable. More importantly, I want this to be useful for founders who are still building.

There’s also a more complete option for people who want us to handle much more of the actual content production and posting. That includes roughly 22 pieces of content each month, including newsletter articles, LinkedIn posts, and short videos for TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

The introductory rate for that package is $1,500 per month.

Let's Meet

That option is for founders who know they need to be publishing regularly but simply don’t have the time to do it themselves.

The bottom line is pretty simple. I want to use what I’ve learned over the years to help smart people get noticed, while also making a living as a freelancer.

If either package sounds useful, email me at john@biggs.cc. I’d be happy to talk.