Founder Update #1

Unifying paid subscriber benefits (online and offline) to create a singular REMORANDOM community experience

Jul 03, 2025

Greetings from North Bondi! Today, in place of our regular Friday post, I was inspired to provide you with an update on a couple of fronts – including the announcement of a major change to paid subscriber benefits. Every once and a while I will be letting you know what’s happening behind the scenes, and also sharing my thinking regarding the development of our REMORANDOM idea and its community.

Remo

REMORANDOM on Substack

As most of you are aware, REMORANDOM is a serendipitous curation of everything interesting, drawing on a broad range of topics. Uncommon knowledge for curious minds. Designed to entertain and inspire.

We’re on the hunt for interesting – and that’s what this platform is partly about. We’ve had REMORANDOM up on Substack for just over six weeks now. Some of you are freshly arrived. Welcome General Thinkers!

If you’ve been with us for a while, you would be aware that one of the things that contributed to my feeling that this platform would be right for REMORANDOM was the TED talk delivered at the 2025 conference by Hamish McKenzie, one of the Substack co-founders … a Kiwi as it happens, and that’s also a good thing. You can find that talk HERE or at the base of this post.

REMORANDOM at the TED2025 Book Store > 20x TEDster > Hamish McKenzie at TED

I'm excited about the potential of Substack for REMORANDOM. It feels like the right place for it. Less frenetic that some other places, and part of a network that contains many curious and thoughtful people – perfect new recruits for REMORANDOM.

Our Substack is a bit different to most. The posted content is not meant to be an end in itself, but rather creative content that is a referential sampling of the collectible printed books that are really the heroes of our story. More about our books HERE.

And this raises an interesting issue that I wanted to run past you all:

At the moment there are effectively two REMORANDOM subscriber communities: the subscribers to the printed book series that order via the primary REMO website HERE, and subscribers to this platform, most of whom are “free subscribers” (probably you) but some of whom are “paid subscribers” (thank you).

For paying subscribers, this doesn’t feel right for the longer term. Whether or not you come to REMORANDOM via the REMO online retail path or via Substack, I’d like to think that you would be part of a singular and global community of the curious, sharing similar benefits and entitlements. So, whether you’re paying your A$80 per annum (or whatever that number turns out to be) via the book subscription or via your committed support here on Substack you would receive:

All of the email posts … daily doses of uncommon knowledge
Full access to the RR archive and interactive PDFs of the books
All REMO discounts currently available to all paid subscribers
A copy of the most current physical REMORANDOM book

Currently: book subscribers receive 3 and 4 … but not 1 and 2; substack paid subscribers receive 1, 2 and 3 … but not 4.

So (drum roll), what I’m thinking henceforth is to unify and integrate such that:

For as long as you’re a REMORANDOM printed book subscriber you are GIFTED a paid subscription to the Substack community
If you’re an annual paid subscriber to this Substack, you are annually GIFTED a copy of the most current printed book

TL;DR
All paid subscribers to the REMORANDOM Substack will be sent a promotional code in October 2025 entitling them to a free copy of REMORANDOM 5 (A$40 value), and this will apply retrospectively to all current paid subscribers. Bonus!

You’ll note that I’ve already added this benefit to the subscription table … so it’s ready for you should you be interested in having the physical book form part of your REMORANDOM experience.

REMORANDOM 5 is Coming in October

It’s down to the wire on the remaining content for RR5. I have researched and written 84 of the required 90 chapters. The last couple of months have been quite punishing, as some international travel earlier in the year put me behind on my typical monthly quota of 15 topics. I do love it though: casting about for the ideas (got any?), curating the mix (the most fun part), doing the research, writing the story, parking it on the REMO website HERE, having Aivi, my designer of 37 years harvest if from there for the book’s inDesign file, and then sharing access to those dropbox files with her while I (and others) copy edit and tweak. RR5 is due with Jade Productions our longtime print brokers in just over two weeks, so we’re at the pointy end of the process!