Every quarter, I like to do a little update just to give our readers a behind-the-scenes look at what is happening. Oftentimes, there is a big difference between what folks see publicly and the inner workings of STH, so I like to peel that back. In this edition, I wanted to share our Q1 2024 update, and also talk about a new project we formally launched this month. I also have an ask of our readers.
Previous Updates
If you want to check out how this series has evolved, here are the links to the previous ones:
- STH 2019: Q1 –Â Q2 –Â Q3 –Â Q4
- STH 2020: Q1 –Â Q2 – Q3 –Â Q4
- STH 2021: Q1 –Â Q2 –Â Q3 –Â Q4
- STH 2022: Q1 –Â Q2 –Â Q3 –Â Q4
- STH 2023: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4
We now have been doing this for five years. It is amazing how time flies.
2024 STH Tesla Cybertruck Addition
This quarter, the studio went through another reconfiguration in preparation for adding another set (or two) later this year. In the photo, you are probably going to notice two things. First, on the white tables to the right, there are 20 switches for our 2.5GbE series update video that Alex is working on. Second, you might notice in the center rear a massive Tesla Cybertruck.
It turns out that with STH, I end up hauling big boxes 4 to 5 times a week between picking boxes up, dropping boxes off, getting supplies for the studio, and so forth. In November 2019, I put my $100 down for the Cybertruck. A few weeks ago, after more than a four-year wait, I took delivery.
For those who will say a Rivian R1T is a better option, we already have a Rivian R1S Launch edition, and I wanted to have cars from two different vendors.
While hauling stuff is not notable, the Cybertruck is an unexpected experience at the moment. Every time I drive it, I see phones out taking photos or videos. Every time I stop, people come over and want to talk about it. This was the most shocking example. Here is a Ford GT where a black one like this sold at Barrett Jackson in 2020 for over $1.2M. The crowd, however, is in the background looking at the Cybertruck.
I bring this up because I am probably losing more than an hour a day with folks wanting to see and talk about it. I hope that these become much more common so this happens less, but after more than two weeks, my only reprieve has been travel to NVIDIA GTC. Still, over the past two weeks, it has been a challenge for productivity.
On the STH side, things are chugging along as we would expect.
The STH YouTube Update
This quarter, the big milestone with the STH YouTube channel has been hitting 500,000 subscribers.
The slope of the channel’s growth has really started to shallow recently. In Q2, we are going to try a few format changes to see if that helps kickstart the curve again.
Right now, we are in a bit of a production pothole. We have a video that is almost done, but I just do not like it yet. The new 2.5GbE switch update suffered scope creep. We were planning 12 new switches, but now we have more than 20. The plus side is that we are using this period to test my theory that publishing fewer videos is better for channel growth.
I would expect us to get to the other side next week, but we need to work on a few process items in the meantime.
The New Axautik Group Project!
Earlier this month, we unveiled our next new project. We are calling the new analyst arm the Axautik Group. This is something that we have been talking about for some time, but recently it became time to make a change.
Something I had no idea about 5 years ago was that STH has quite a few readers at investment firms. Whether those are hedge funds, investment banks, mutual fund managers, stock pickers, private equity funds, and so forth, many use STH to inform investment decisions. That is in addition to the many companies that use STH reviews for their own research purposes.
The Axautik Group will be the analyst arm, where we will produce content designed more for those communities. Often, the asks are tangential to STH content but require more work to produce such as our PCIe Gen6 and CXL retimer research short. We had many folks reaching out to ask about the differences between the Astera Labs and Broadcom announcements, especially given the Astera Labs IPO, so we put that into an Axautik Group document. It may seem like more work, but it ends up becoming more scalable than answering many e-mails and phone calls.
Make no mistake, the vision right now is that the AG content will be paywalled for and priced more for those communities. This is not a replacement for STH in any way. Instead, it is just going to be designed to take a lot of what we learn by doing STH and turn it into forms more digestible for certain groups.
STH Labs: The Shorts Channel Update
This one still needs a bit of work, but late last quarter we launched our STH Labs shorts channel here.
The nice part about the shorts channel is that it allows us to have an outlet to make short video content, as we did with our AMD EPYC 7C13 is a Surprisingly Cheap and Good CPU piece.
While growth and posting frequency has been slower the last half of the quarter, we still managed to see the STH Labs shorts channel more than double this quarter.
Subscribe to the STH’s Newsletter and YouTube
Did you know STH has a weekly newsletter that comes out on Saturday with curated “Top 5” pieces from the week? We know you cannot visit every day, so we can deliver our picks for weekend reading directly to your inbox. Subscribing to the newsletter is easy. Here is the form.
We are not selling your e-mail addresses and MailChimp is managing everything at this point so you can subscribe and unsubscribe from the list as you want.
We are not promoting the newsletter via overlays and pop-ups. Those are very effective, but they are bad for readers. I do not like them, so as long as I have a say, we are not going to have newsletter signup overlays. I run STH as something I would want to visit daily even if I did not work on it.
Finally, subscribe to our YouTube and check it out here. Since that is a big focus at this point.
Subscribing to STH’s newsletter helps you see my favorite pieces of each week and a preview of the next week. Subscribing to the STH YouTube channel also helps us demonstrate our reach beyond just the website. Sometimes, doing things like showing power consumption or fan noise is easier than writing about it. This has also been something important for STH over the past few months. We have to demonstrate reach, and simple things like subscriber counts help explain reach.
Final Words
Again, thank you to all of our readers and the STH team for making this all possible. We probably do not talk about it enough, but the reach of STH is wild these days.
Next quarter is going to be a big one for change. STH will turn 15 years old in June. While that is a big milestone, perhaps a bigger one for me personally is that my wife and I are expecting our first at about the same time. That is kicking off many discussions on how we scale STH to continue to grow even when I have new demands well beyond just a new truck. The good thing is that we are staying busy!
It’s great that you’re getting more subscribers but it seems like you’re trading quantity for quality.
In previous years your posts would really focus on the “why” and “how” whereas now it seems your posts are just describing the “what”; plenty of facts but light on analysis.
It seems like you understand that as you’re building out your analyst work to do more of the deep insightful work that got you where you are today. But instead of rewarding the readers/viewers that got you here you’re pulling that to a paywall’ed site.
It’s discouraging to see another tech journalism site chase increasing view counts at the expense of the quality that made the site unique.
*smh*
Hi John – We will end March 2024 with less than half of the videos, albeit you are right, shorter than in March 2023.
The analyst side is really going to replace taking several calls per week and putting the common themes from those into the AG reports. Right now, the model of taking calls is not scalable and the questions are different.
On increasing view counts, it is pretty hard. We look at generating 100K views for every piece of content web or video these days. On the video side especially it takes a lot of effort to do that.
With all of that, the STH Labs concept is 100% to have lower quality. The goal is to have fast content to produce because there are some things that can use video, but that do not need a 15-20 minute video.
In the above response Patrick states “the STH Labs concept is 100% to have lower quality.” Did I understand that correctly or is there a typo?
Congratulations on your milestones, especially personal!
But do you actually like the truck!? I want a truck review please :)
Hi Eric – Yes, that is correct. STH Labs is the shorts channel, so we generally post sub-1-minute quick vertical videos. They do not fit the main STH channel, so that is the idea for the shorts channel. We need a format that does not cost a few thousand dollars to produce each piece. As a result, it is going to be lower quality. It may change in the future but that is the idea for now.
Thanks Y0s. Big changes in an 18-month span.
data003 – It is absolutely great. MKBHD and Doug DeMuro did solid reviews. I have like half of one recorded but I am not sure it fits the main channel, and too long for a STH Labs short.
Patrick! Open your eyes, believe me, your article quality is suffering or going downslope.
Yeah i know youtubers is up, but at costs of quality.
would be great to see you raise quality bar for next years.
Bu no matter what . we proud of you
Patrick, first I would like to say that congratulations on the personal life stuff (we celebrate your success). I have to agree with John and LaughInGMan here. I hope this comes off as constructive criticism. As another long time reader of STH, I find myself visiting less due to the reduction of quality of STH’s content which coincided with the push towards video content. When you had first announced the pivot to YouTube, I like many others was optimistic that STH’s written content would stay intact, which would create two complimentary mediums to share information, but I have been disappointed.
For many years, STH was my go-to resource for homelabbing, with many interesting articles and scenarios discussed. As we know, for IT professionals, the homelab is both a hobby and an extension of our learning experience that is applied directly to our professional life.
The quality of the written articles have fallen drastically, approaching the point of feeling like the written article is a low effort attempt, complete with copy-paste that constitutes the majority of the article, basic editing errors, and so on, to drive readers towards the video content on YouTube. That may be all fine and good if the YouTube content is actually informative (it’s not). In the end, both the article and the YouTube content is largely a rehash of the product’s official spec sheet, a few “benchmarks” that have nothing to really do with the practical use cases nor applications, then a lot of anecdotes that wouldn’t fly in any requirements/analysis/design meeting I’ve ever been a part of in the last 20+ years in the enterprise world.
I understand that creating video content is resource intensive, however, that should not be at the expense of written content, which in theory can be extracted from the video content as long as the video content actually had “content.” Patrick, you are unique in the tech journalism world because of your deep industry knowledge, both through connections over the years and actual experience in the enterprise, and it’s the reason why your readers are here in the first place. It’s been a long time since there has been interesting content here on STH, and I miss it.
While I appreciate that there is a cost to running something like STH, and thus the need for revenue, which YouTube provides and now the AG analyst arm may provide, there are major concerns for your core audience. I fear that once STH is catering to the “LTT” type crowd that passively listens to long-form video content that is vapid and information scarce, that is more of a aspirational topic, or catering to analysts that a chasing shareholder value rather than the practical applications of the actual topic at hand, STH is entering a new era. I dearly hope STH doesn’t become yet another techinfluencer channel, because there are many already who can monetize better.
I don’t watch the video so I don’t care about that. STH’s written is the same as it has been for many years. Maybe a bit more on the how to side would be good but you’re reviewing more than ever. I remember when STH would do 1 review, 1 how to, and then 12 news posts in a 2 week span just a few years ago. Now there’s maybe 2-4 hardware reviews a week. I think your focus on doing more networking is really great. You’ve probably contributed to 2.5GbE pricing we’re paying going down by 80% in 2 years. Your Tomahawk 4 switch breakdown was great at the other spectrum.
I think you’ve run into an issue with getting too big when it comes to used deals. Even the new ones are selling out too fast. It sucks but the STH effect is too big now.
I’d say more how-to would be good if you can. Don’t listen to the haters though. STH is jammin’
Congratulations on your success. I’m in the same boat as many commenters and don’t watch the YouTube content or shorts, preferring written articles. Apparently you don’t want or need to monetize those.
I would also caution against making content that just feeds the YouTube algorithm where viewers feel tricked into watching it instead of something people would genuinely seek out. It seems to me that the Shorts that YouTube is trying to force on users to compete with TikTok are not conducive to building an audience organically, it may in fact work against you in the long run since you’re damaging your brand by spamming the algorithm. That being said there might not be a lot of overlap between people with 60 seconds or less attention span and those who prefer to read articles.
I’ve been reading for years. I’ll sometimes watch a video when I’m working in the garage but that’s infrequent. It’s more like I’m listening to the video and maybe glancing over sometimes.
The articles are consistent. So I don’t know what its about.
I’ve noticed a change maybe in 2020 where you’ve been authoring less, but I’m real on it. You’ve got a team. I’m hoping Will does more SSD reviews since those have fallen off.
I know most publishers are losing money and I like that STH doesn’t have spammy ads everywhere. What I don’t think many here realize is that even if the written is 2 times the size of the video, STH’s main revenue would be the video. I’m just happy there’s a written STH still
Ugliest truck ever made. Bar none.
I eagerly anticipate your article(s) detailing third party firmware for your electric trucks, as well as overclocking results. Benchmarks are needed!!
Oh. Reread a bit slower. Axautik Group. Well, good luck with it. What sort of money do you think the paywall will be? Semiaccurate used to be in a similar position, it was a great source of industry info but then implemented a $2000/yr paywall, which might have dropped to $1000/yr. Now Semiaccurate is a barren info desert and all the interesting articles end in “the following is for paying customers”. $2000 is too high a barrier to entry. I pay Barrons/WSJ and also Bloomberg for access but it is more like a few hundred dollars.
So for you guys, it will depend on the price.
I should add that concentrated IT market wisdom from the likes of STH would be as valuable to me as the (different kind) info Barrons and Bloomberg sell.
Tesla is love-hate for both style and its leader. Personally, I think it looks like something I drew in 3rd grade and some of the stuff Musk says is really off putting to the brand. We can see that reflected in latest sales numbers and the valuation of twitter. To each his own though. I will consider an electric car when I can “refill” it as quick as a gas car.
Elon is a terrible person. The Model 3 and Model Y are generic enough but the Cybertruck is so directly connected to him. Are you really ok with being associated with something so representative of him and crave the attention? If so, you’re not the kind of person I imagined you were.
Wow. That truck really is polarizing! People getting all ad hominem over it. Amazing. Personally I don’t really give a damn about vehicles. FWIW, I still love you Patrick. I do hope, though, that your new project is priced so mere mortals and not only Wall St can afford access.
It’s great that you’re expanding. I don’t know if you need to keep up posting daily, but I don’t run a content site so maybe there’s something I don’t know there.
I rode in a Cybertruck that belongs to a dad at my kid’s school. It’s slick. If you’ve got to move servers I understand why you’d want a pickup and one with an enclosed space like this. I don’t get these trolls talking about Musk. There’s been plenty of cars some like and some don’t. If AMD makes a great CPU, like they do, do you decide not to buy one because you don’t like Lisa Su? You don’t like Jensen so you’re clutching your ARC GPU instead?
If you’re concerned about how fast EV’s fill, and you don’t drive hundreds of km in a day regularly, then you’ve lost the plot. Charging overnight makes filling up at petrol stations around town look old. There’s something to say if you’re in an apartment that doesn’t do charging infrastructure because that’s bad. If you’ve got a charger for overnight, then it’s so easy.
I don’t think you should do a subscription. Sell per report or do a model like an IDC selling seats to big co’s for all of it. I’d agree don’t do a SemiAccurate model because that doesn’t work. Just keep main STH free please.
To those who believe there is great insight and foreknowledge to be gain. In general, and specifically might I present the prognostications of yester-years: Intel Ponte Vecchio is a Spaceship GPU, YouTube, Aug. 28th, 2021
Do take note of the predictions made. After all you want to know the future, yes? The very detailed soon to be future of an once again ascendant Intel riding the tide of 2-Phase liquid cooling, its farsighted inquisition of Habana Labs and the edge bought by a mere $2billion purchase, the new found dominance of, “the spaceship,” that is to be Ponte Vecchio and the prince that was promised, Intel’s, “totally right direction,” and ,”better strategy than AMD,” against CUDA (ie Intel was about to unleash something better than ROCm) and of course the smash hit, Sapphire Rapids. Aged like find milk in the sun.
The utter exuberance in the face of the obvious was at worse the prattle of someone on the outside who thought he was in, or some latent fanboyism. Now, it is spit in the wind. Careful where you stand boys.
I’ll leave you with a quote about the then soon to be rising Blue: “These types of innovations are the big step functions that really help human innovation hit the next level….”