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The Accidental Flywheel

The Story

The Not Boring business model “reads like a well-operated machine.” But according to Packy McCormick, “it was all an accident” (Source 1).

The flywheel works like this: Packy writes an article about a company or trend. The article gets shared because it’s in-depth and interesting. New people join the newsletter. Some of those people are founders, accredited investors, and VCs. A percentage of those people sponsor an issue, post on the job board, ask Packy to invest in them through his syndicate, or pay $50K+ for a sponsored deep dive. This spreads the word even more, and the cycle restarts (Source 1).

The sponsored deep dives are the most elegant part. When Packy does a company deep dive, he goes through financials, press articles, and “pretty much anything he can find.” This means he knows the business inside and out, including whether or not he wants to invest. The deep dives are “almost like getting paid to do your due diligence on a company, and then getting paid again after you invest and they turn a profit” (Source 1).

Jake Singer, writing in The Flywheel newsletter, captured it: “Packy is a better investor because of his writing, and he’s a better writer because of his investing. You can’t make up a better flywheel even if you tried” (Source 2).

The flywheel helps McCormick do three things: pick the right investments (he spends all his time thinking about trends and strategies), convince founders to let him invest (they can read his work and know what they’re getting), and help portfolio companies succeed (through Not Boring’s distribution and storytelling toolkit) (Source 2).

Lesson for Creators

The best business models for creators aren’t designed on a whiteboard. They emerge from doing the work authentically and paying attention to where the value flows. Packy didn’t plan to build a flywheel. He just kept writing deeply about companies, and the investing, sponsorships, and deal flow followed. The lesson isn’t “build a flywheel.” The lesson is: do one thing exceptionally well, and let the business model reveal itself.

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