Marginal Revolution University

The blog came first as practice for a textbook. Alex Tabarrok proposed a textbook; Tyler Cowen said to write a blog first. Marginal Revolution launched in August 2003 and passed 10,000 visitors within weeks.

The early posts were practice, and they didn't know anyone was reading. They hoped for 5,000 readers, mostly academics, and now have 50,000 to 100,000.

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Each product feeds the others, so the audience compounds. Years of explaining ideas on the blog improved the textbook, the textbook sends readers back to the blog, and Marginal Revolution University adds free videos on top.

Tyler describes intro economics as a first step toward the truth; many students then move on to the blog, where they are confused every day, which he is happy about.

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MRU is free on YouTube with no ads, aiming for wide school reach. The goal was to be in 25% of American high schools by 2025.

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Two opposite thinking styles make the material both rich and clear. Alex starts from the stark version and adds detail; Tyler starts from the most complicated version and cuts back. Alex writes clearly because if something isn't obvious to him, it won't be obvious to a first-time student.

Alex's test: if you are confused by a post, it is Tyler's; if you understand it and are furious, it is Alex's. Each textbook chapter goes to about 40 referees, and the two write every part themselves, with no research assistants or junior authors.

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The videos started bare bones and grew only once funding arrived. At first it was the two of them with a narrated PowerPoint made with a $5 iPad app. Funding later paid for filming, animation and sound.

Roman Hardgrave manages the project, and much of it is made in the same studio.

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Scripting was easy; performing on camera was the hard part. They wrote most early scripts themselves, but it takes many cuts to get 30 seconds to a minute of usable material.

Tyler says he isn't natural on camera and doesn't like to smile. Alex compares breath control over ten minutes to singing.

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The biggest audience grew abroad, with India now the number two market. India is expected to become number one, and strangers there greet Tyler as "the MRU guy" at every talk.

Students in South Korea, India and Pakistan email to say they passed their class. Tyler calls the recognition in India a very hopeful sign that the project is getting somewhere.

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Unplanned auto-subtitles turned the videos into a language course too. Google adds subtitles in about 100 languages once a video is online, and students use them to learn English and economics at the same time.

Subtitles were never part of the plan; they came with the technology, with DeepMind doing the translation.

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Tyler avoids analytics so the work isn't steered by what gets hits. He deliberately does not look at blog or YouTube analytics, because once you know what gets hits you start chasing it, even subconsciously.

He wants the process to be fun every day and expects that to win over time. People still tell him things now and then.

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Enjoying the work is a competitive advantage that lets small steps compound. They have not missed a day in almost 20 years, posting four to five times daily, and Tyler reads four or five books a day to stay original.

The tagline is "small steps toward a much better world"; Alex insisted on "much", which Tyler first thought was crazy.

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