How Overlap Helped How I Write Reach 3.1M Views and Generate 50K New Followers

Introduction

Before How I Write, aspiring authors had few glimpses into how great writing is done. David Perell started this weekly podcast to fix that, interviewing top creators like Sam Altman, Robert Greene and Tim Ferriss about their processes. New episodes drop on Apple, Spotify and YouTube, and his half‑million‑strong following helps amplify the show, making it a must‑listen that aligns with Write of Passage’s mission to teach online writing.

🚨 The Challenge

As a deep‑dive interview show, How I Write features hours of rich conversations with some of the world’s most creative minds. However, transforming those nuanced discussions into engaging short‑form content—and getting it in front of new listeners—proved difficult. Some of their key limitations were:

• Limited reach beyond the core audience. Without new channels and strategies, growth stalled.

• Slow repurposing of long‑form episodes into short clips. Manually turning thoughtful conversations into social‑ready snippets delayed timely promotion.

• Maintaining quality in condensed formats. Condensing in‑depth dialogue into bite‑sized posts risked losing the depth and authenticity that define the show.

• Managing distribution across multiple platforms. Publishing across multiple channels and formats stretched the team’s bandwidth thin, impeding the ability to scale.

💡 The Solution: Overlap AI

To tackle these challenges, the How I Write team partnered with Overlap to implement AI-driven clipping agents that automatically turn their long-form interviews into compelling short-form content. Overlap’s autonomous video marketing agent identifies the most engaging moments, edits them into viral-ready clips, and posts them across social channels without human intervention

Within weeks, they had deployed dozens of AI clipping agents, automated editing and publishing across all podcast and video channels, and built a scalable 24/7 workflow that delivers highlight clips directly to social media. 

📈 The Results

In just six months, How I Write transformed its content operation from manual and slow to automated and scalable. By embracing Overlap’s AI‑powered clipping and distribution agents, the team unlocked millions of views and rapidly expanded their reach—without adding staff or sacrificing quality.

Since adopting Overlap in March:

• Generated 3000+ plus clips 

• 3.1 million video views have been generated on clips created from the show’s long‑form episodes.

• More than 50 thousand new followers have been added across social platforms by consistently posting engaging highlights.
  
  

What started as a single podcast has become a viral content engine. The ability to automatically clip, edit and publish highlights freed the team to focus on storytelling while Overlap handled the 24/7 distribution.