Packy McCormick

Packy McCormick is an American writer and investor best known as the creator of Not Boring, a newsletter of long-form tech and startup analysis that grew from about 400 readers to more than 250,000 subscribers. McCormick writes it largely solo and used the audience it built to start Not Boring Capital, a small venture fund.

McCormick grew up in Philadelphia and went to Catholic schools. After graduating in 2009, McCormick took a finance job at Merrill Lynch, then spent about six years at Breather, a venture-backed startup that gave people private rooms to rent by the hour in Manhattan, leaving as VP of Experience. McCormick quit in late 2019 to explore startup ideas and, along the way, took David Perell's Write of Passage course.

The newsletter began as Per My Last Email and was renamed Not Boring in spring 2020. At the start of the pandemic it had roughly 400 readers; at its Product Hunt launch in June 2020 it had 1,885. Deep dives on companies such as Ramp, written in a casual, optimistic voice, took it past 125,000 subscribers by June 2022. It earns from sponsorships and paid sponsored deep dives, and today also has not boring world, a paid section where founders and researchers co-write essays with McCormick. The Weekly Dose of Optimism goes out every Friday.

The audience became the basis for a second business. McCormick made a first startup investment in July 2020 and has since raised funds and a syndicate as a self-described solo capitalist, backing only companies worth writing about, such as Ramp, Base Power Company and Astro Mechanica. Part-time research analysts help, but the writing operation stays tiny.

McCormick is one of the clearest examples of the creator-founder flywheel: a solo writer using a newsletter as the product, the marketing channel and the deal flow for a second business.