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That is B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com/trb. And you can meet with Beehiiv's team of growth and newsletter experts today. Again, that is beehiiv.com/trb. Thank you to Beehiiv. Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey.
I'm just back from a great way to start the year, which is a week in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. I didn't see many robots, but we did hold a, a couple of events there.
We did a innovators unscripted event with our friends at Index Exchange. We talked a lot about agentic advertising, which whether you like it or not, you're gonna hear a lot about in the year to come.
Andrew Casale, the CEO of Index Exchange, and Ant McDonagh, the chief trading officer from Dentsu, joined me to talk about what was real and what's not yet real in agentic advertising.
It's a good overview if you are wondering what exactly agentic advertising is and what it could become. I'll, I'll leave a note or a link to it in the show notes. And we also did a series of video podcasts with Xco.
I spoke with Xco CEO Tom Packiss about the year ahead in streaming advertising.
We did other year ahead video podcasts with Josh Schiller, the CEO of Vox Media, about talent partnerships, and Mark Floriani of Flow Sports joined me to discuss niche sports. I love niche sports.
And Manas Mital of Uber talked about mobility advertising with Uber ads. You can now see those on the Rebooting's new YouTube channel, my belated pivot to video. Maybe this podcast will get there someday.
I'm, I'm still not totally sold on it. So I wanna bring in Justin Smith. Justin Smith is the CEO of Semaphore.
Last week, news broke that Semaphore raised thirty million at a three hundred and thirty million dollar valuation. This is its first price round. Started in October twenty twenty-two.
Think it's noteworthy for many reasons, but one is that, you know, media has been treated in some ways as an uninvestable category recently.
So that, you know, it was a good shot in the arm to, to see, to see the faith in the model there. Semaphore also said that it, it is now-- it did thirty million dollars of revenue last year and, uh- F- f- forty. Forty.
Forty million. Sorry, Justin. Thank you. [chuckles] See, this is why I have you here other than- See this misinformation- Other than to interview you too [chuckles]... misinformation. Thirty million.
I took, I t- I took- Jeez... twenty-five percent off it. Okay. Two million in EBITDA, is that correct? That is correct. Okay. Well, you know, that's the most important number I think. [chuckles] But I don't know.
We'll see. Anyway, o- one of the things I really li-- there's a couple things I really like about Semaphore. It's, it's aimed at, like, a global elite. This is the area you wanna be focused on.
You wanna be focused on people that have money.
At a time of great inequality, it is better to build a media business focused on rich and powerful people than it is on people who are not rich, or neither rich nor powerful.
The other is that events is a important part of its model. It's about half its revenue. Is that correct, Justin? About half, yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm getting most of them correct. And it's a global model. It operates...
It is not... Look, the US is great. It's a massive market. We end up just focusing on ourselves because it's such a massive market, but it is actually a larger world out there.
Semaphore operates in the Gulf and also in, in Africa. And soon, I believe, Asia. Yes? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. We'll talk about it. All right.
So, and also it's got, it's got a couple flagship events, the World Economy Summit and the Three Billion, the Next Three Billion franchise. I wanna get into all of those. Justin, thanks for joining me.
Th- thanks for having me. Uh, this is... I don't, I don't think I've been your most common set of guests. No, we're like four. But we, but we, but we, we go, we go way, we go way back. Yeah. We go four.
Yeah, four or five, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I, I'm a big fan, as you know, of your work because it's really nice talking to a journalist who actually understands the media business. You know, that's a...
I'll, I'll let you read between the lines there. You... You're too kind. You're too kind. But it is the only thing I do. The other journalists, they do, [chuckles] do other things. But all right.
So let's start with, you know, I always go back to one time when we, we, we were going on stage at a Digiday event.
I was saying, I was saying to you, "You know, all these people out here wish they had a terminal," 'cause, 'cause you were the CEO of Bloomberg Media. I was like, "And I wish I had a terminal."
And you said, "You do have a terminal. It's your events business." [chuckles] And I was like, "Not the same, Justin. Not the same." I didn't know you were serious. Well, that was, that was said slightly in jest. I mean,
the, the, the... They would...
A terminal business is of such a scale and stability and depth that it, it's, it's, it's unparalleled in the, in the history of media business models, which makes Bloomberg so strong and so powerful. Right.
My quip, it was a quip, it was just that-I, I do believe, and this has been a lesson that I've taken from, you know, several decades running global and domestic quality journalism brands, is that convening businesses when run the right way, when focused on the right audiences and the right commercial categories, and executed to perfection,
can be a very, very helpful revenue stream for paying for what is expensive, what is ultimately expensive, which is, you know, really great journalism.
And, you know, I at, at The Economist, where I first started, at the, at The Atlantic, we built The Atlantic's first events business, and then in Bloomberg introduced, uh, really sort of revamped the Bloomberg events business.
And it, you know, in all those instances, it's definitely not the terminal. And let me just- Right... be serious.
But it is, it is a, a valuable and, and meaningful revenue stream, and more importantly, profit stream, because this is what is interesting about this, this, this diversification is that they can be more, the events businesses can be, can be more profitable than many other activities in journalism.
And if you, if you can build that flywheel of having that profit driven off an events business, it can, it can be a very helpful diversification from subscriptions, advertising, and other sources. Right.
But for most of those companies that you mentioned, they are a revenue stream. They're not, they're not fifty percent of revenue. Now, events are, they're a great way to get to revenue more quickly.
I mean, building a media brand takes a long time. It just does.
And events, you can scale the revenue almost, I don't wanna say it's a cheat code, but you can, you can scale it a lot quicker on the events side and almost, like, ahead of the brand, if you know what I mean. Yeah.
Like, you, you, you can do that, like, if you're just going to go, let's say, on a subscription model, it's gonna be a long slog. I mean, like, the information- Yeah... has done a, a amazing, an amazing job.
That's a long time. Yeah. Well, you know, let me just step back, Brian, because I do think that sort of there's, there's a slight mischaracterization- Mm-hmm... of Semafor as being, you know, a, an events only business.
It's, I mean, I think the, the truth is, is that Semafor is a global news brand focused on this audience that you describe, the, the, the global leadership class, delivering intelligence.
Intelligence in the form of phenomenal journalism, sophisticated journalism, cerebral journalism that connects dots for their readers, that does pattern recognition, provides insights,
but also delivers intelligence through another platform, which is events.
And it's, and the events business at Semafor is different than others because it's so much more deeply integrated into our journalism activities than most news companies, that it's effectively another channel for, of distribution for our journalism.
And that has, I think, been the, the significant differentiation of the Semafor model versus other models that exist out there. And, and frankly, it was a lesson that I took from, from all the places I was.
You know, the, the traditional e-events model for new, for global premium news brands at many of the places I've, I've worked and mentioned was, you know, the red-headed stepchild, you know, the, the, the sidecar to the business.
And es-especially as, as relates to the, to the content of the events, you know, very rarely did the star journalists or the star editors in the newsroom really pay attention to the programming of events- Sure...
to the moderation of events.
And that just seemed like a, and that was just, it was a, it was a legacy media, cultural sort of relic of the past, you know, tied to, you know, maybe some, some version of church and state, you know, history or whatever.
But it just, it, it seems nonsensical because if you actually change that whole outlook and put the, the, the events business, the convening business
into the heart of the newsroom and integrate it really closely with your, your regular journalistic activities, the actual events products get much better, get, become more differentiated. They break news.
They are more interesting to audiences. They, you know, create, you know, create more buzz, build the brand, and, and therefore they, and they become different and differentiated.
I, I, I, I know that you did a podcast recently with the president of The Economist who was talking, I think, about Semafor's events business specifically as relates to this point, which is that, and he was saying that The Economist, you know, historically, the events business is really not, not part of the, the, the journalistic enterprise.
Mm-hmm. And that he was, you know, he, he was very flattering, and thank you, thank you if you're listening.
But he, he'd said that actually The Economist was on some, some level inspired by what they saw us do in terms of this shift to, to potentially, you know, integrate their events business more closely to their newsroom.
Yeah. It's a nerdy, it's a nerdy media point, but it is, it is quite profound. And it's, it's... And that's, I think, has what has led our business.
'Cause, you know, historically, I think the main news organizations that events may be fifteen percent, twenty percent, twenty-five percent of, you know, for the best of them of total revenue.
The reason why Semafor has jumped from that standard of twenty to twenty-five percent to fifty percent is because, uh, because of what I just said. Because- Yeah...
the, the, we've, we've, we've made that a very intentional strategy.Also, I would say that when we started Semafor in effectively the beginning of '23, late twenty twenty-two, you know, you look out at the sort of the landscape of revenue opportunities and profit stream opportunities, you know, and advertising was really, really looking, looking rough.
Subscriptions, as you say, takes a very long time and requires a brand and a lot of capital and patience and so on. And the convening business, especially if you're focused on the leadership audience, which we are,
really was a, was an at-attractive way to start. And so- Th-that's what I wanna get at. So is this...
And, and when I say this, like I know that Semafor is more than an events brand, for sure, but the business is more heavily events than the, the, the companies that you compare yourself to.
Like if you look at The Economist- It is, but that doesn't, but it's also, but it's, it's, it's, it's a half, h-half the business is advertising. And when one day, as we will, introduce subscriptions, which is- Okay...
obviously an inevitability in this, in this world, when we do choose to do that, then all of a sudden we'll have a subscription revenue stream and, and- Sure... that'll further dilute. So y-you...
I think it's, it's, you know, we are a, a, a multi-platform m-multi-modal, you know, global media brand that is started with, with two main distribution channels.
Digital news briefings we call them, newsletters, web, obviously, in addition to that, and then, and then the convening business.
And but these are really well thought out as the, the initial revenue streams of what over time will become a, you know, a, a m- even further diversified set of revenue streams.
It's just, we just sequence them because- Wow... of the economic realities of each of them, given the moment in time we're in in the industry, right?
So I think this is what, you know, I think a, a lot of people have been asking, "Well, how did Semafor get to forty million in revenue in three years? How did Semafor generate a two million dollar profit?"
Well, you know, we set out at the very beginning, our, our North Star as a company was, number one, build a global world-class independent journalism brand for the leadership audience around the world that can, you know, and we also talked a lot about restoring, restoring trust through innovation, et cetera.
And but the second North Star was let's as rapidly as possible build a profitable, sustainable business. And that became, you know, a, a really, really urgent objective.
We did not wanna build Semafor on the back of round after round after round of investment.
We wanted to find quickly and urgently and responsibly the places and the, the, the business and revenue opportunities where we could generate profit to fund the business. And I think that's...
And i-if, if, if some may view our valuation as on the higher end, I think the answer to that is, well, the, I think people see that in a very short period of time, unlike any of our competitors, including our historical competitors, this group of, of entrepreneurs at Semafor d-designed and built very rapidly a profitable, sustainable model, which is a great foundation, you know, it, for, for going forward.
And, and the fundraising was designed to, you know, to, to, to generate more capital to, to further build out this, this, this model that was so well thought through and so well executed.
So I think that's a great point, and I, I wonder, like when y-y-you raised, you know, with the funding that you raised, what is that necessarily for? 'Cause you did get to profitability.
Is this that you wanna pour gas onto the events, or is this in order to build the other planks where you get to a one-third, one-third, one-third situation?
Like I could see, you know, one-third events, one-third advertising sponsorship, one-third, say, subscriptions. That, that seems like a balanced [chuckles] meal. Yeah.
I mean, I think that, you know, as, as the results have shown, we are planning to deploy this capital
the way we deployed the original capital, of which there's actually some left, which is very strategically, very responsibly, and in very focused ways that can, can deliver a, you know, against our goals.
And the two ways, the two significant areas of investment that, that this, this latest round is gonna fund, number one is more journalists.
And this is probably the, the, the singular most important source of inve- area of investment for us. More journalists, first of all, in Washington, DC.
Semafor DC is a rapidly growing disruptor in the Beltway as a news briefing newsletter, taking on all the, the, the legacy players that you know have, have been in this market for a long time.
We're gonna be doubling the frequency of Semafor DC in a few months' time, hiring more journalists in Washington. We've already got... It's already our biggest, biggest part of our newsroom.
We're gonna be hiring more business journalists working for Semafor Business and Liz Hoffman, and also taking that property to five days a week. It was previously three days a week.
So DC goes to 10 times a week, business goes to five days a week, and then our Gulf, Semafor Gulf property, which is now three days a week, we're gonna be also investing in more journalists there to bring that to five days a week.
So and, and I can't, can't overstate the importance of this and the centrality of journalismAnd these journalists to the heart, to, to everything we do.
It is literally the, the core source of value because it connects with au- the audience, engages the audience at really high levels, it builds co-content that is shared and consumed around the world, which builds the brand, and it, it-- these journalists are directly responsible for designing, architecting, and executing the live journalism activities that we do as well.
So you know, that, that large journalism investment, it's probably gonna be a, a dozen journalists, maybe, maybe even more, which is a, a big number.
It is, is, is gonna-- is going to pay and provide a return to Semafor in so-- in all these different ways. So that's num-number one area for deployment of capital.
The second area we'll de-deploy capital is in our live journalism activities, in particular the Semafor World Economy platform.
We've dropped the summit, by the way, so it's, it's gone from, from West to SWE, S-W-E, Semafor World Economy, which is really our, our, our largest and most important convening, leadership convening.
It's anchored in the, in, in Washington, DC, and in-- it's, it's gonna be...
It, it's April of twenty twenty-six will be its fourth year in, in, in, and, and is, is grown from, you know, what was quite a small event in year one to now the largest CEO convening in America.
We had two hundred Fortune five hundred CEOs last April.
This next April, we expect over four hundred Fortune five hundred, seven fifty, one thousand CEOs to come, which really puts it in, you know, pole position behind Davos in terms of global CEO convenings.
And it's remarkable that a, that, you know, that our young company has been able to seize that, that territory in the largest economy in the world.
And, and so there's l- tons of, of opportunity to invest there in that property, which is a, which is a, it's, it's actually it's, it's, it's...
We do, we did ninety-seven events this year, so the Semafor World Economy is our largest and the area that's gonna get the most investment, but we also, you know, have a, a lot of other events activities.
We're, we're gonna be looking at events across the US, more events build-outs. We're looking at, you know, Silicon Valley and then the technology space, which we think is quite interesting.
And we're also looking at, at investing in our events around the world, in the Gulf, and also we're, we're gonna be doing our first event in twenty twenty-six in Asia.
So that's where we're gonna, that's where we're gonna spend the money responsibly. So are you... Is, is this a growing market or are you taking market share from others? Like, is this...
I mean, on the event side, please, like, to leave it there. Like, I mean, is this, like, is just more money going into this area or?
Because, like, a lot of people are now talking to me about events, particularly if their audiences touch upon influential, powerful people. Well, the first thing I'd say is it's, these are not separate budgets, right?
I, I'd say, I'd say a vast majority of our events, I, I, I don't know, don't, don't quote me on this, but I would guess more than eighty percent of our commercial partners do events and advertising together.
So you can't really say, you know, is the events market growing versus the advertising market. They're sort of one...
They're, they're one integrated market and, and maybe there's dollars flowing from advertising into the events segment. That's a possibility. I don't, we don't have the data to, to, to, to justify that. I think...
But I, I would say that overall, you know, Semafor's commercial business is focused on corporate affairs advertising, which is both corporate brand on the one hand, but also advocacy, especially sort of in, in, in Washington.
And that has been, as you've talked about a lot, that's been just a, a, a very kind of robust and, and, and, and high growth segment for the last, you know, decade or so.
What's changed, of course, is it's become incredibly crowded. Semafor being, of course, a, an additi- a, a reason for the increased crowdedness.
But our bet was that, you know, that innovation and new formats, and particularly our focus on, on news and content that was more transparent and more balanced, more ideologically balanced in the Beltway.
We thought that was such a big differentiator that, you know, despite the crowdedness, we, you know, we, we jumped in, you know, s- very aggressively and enthusiastically.
We're doubling down now, as I mentioned, because we found that the leaders in the Beltway, turns out that, you know, even though it's this terribly polarized debate and conversation in country, it turns out that, that l- the leaders in this, in, in Washington really do want information that is reliable, that is not ideologically
generated or tainted. And so that's been a b-big differentiator with a lot of the, the legacy media players here. So I would say it's... But, but back to your question, is it growing?
I think it still is growing because the role of Washington and the US government and business is, is growing.
It's, that's obviously been an exponential growth under the, the second Trump administration, but it was a trend that began before that.
And, you know, what we saw with the World Economy, Semafor World Economy platform is that CEOs were flocking to Washington, DC, and, you know, and, and we saw it w- in the early days, we thought, "Wow, this is an interesting new phenomenon."
CEOs used to hate coming to Washington, DC, but all of a sudden, these, they're, you know, they're testifying, they're lobbying, they're talking to senators, they're in the White House.
And we made, made the bet four years ago that, well, actually, this, this is not a short-term trend.
This is something that's gonna continue for a long time, and we should anchor and base of the world's biggest CEO convening, which is our ambition.For Semafor World Economy in, in Washington, DC.
So when you focus on corporate affairs spending versus, say, brand advertising, you're not in performance, right? Like, what are the-- how did, how is that different, like with the, the KPIs?
Like, I'm like I'm not tell- like, so I'm used to B2B, right? Where you're matching up a buy and a sell side, and it's pretty like, it's kinda straightforward.
Like you get, you get the people with buying power in a room, and you, sometimes you do like matchmaking on the, [chuckles] you know, the very grimy level. Lead, lead generation.
Hey, look, you know, I, if I learned anything in media- Hey, listen, I-... there's more money. The more grotesque an area is, the more money there is.
[chuckles] And what's, yeah, there's nothing grotesque about lead generation. You know, that's part, part of the- I proudly do lead generation, Justin... part, part of capitalism. Yeah.
You know, I mean, you, see the question is how does that, how do those metrics translate into corporate affairs and- Well, yeah, what I get, I guess what I get at is like there's a lot of...
Look, I think of protected categories in some way, and protected is in quotes, because like there's, it's really difficult to find leverage in media these days- Yeah... right? And nowhere is easy.
Corporate affairs budgets were, I don't wanna say discovered, but like, you know, you, you saw they powered the rise of Politico, they powered, you know, Axios to a large degree.
It powered, it powered The Atlantic when I was there, you know, and that was my first exposure to it. And so what I'm, what I'm wondering is what you need to deliver, right?
Like, so you, you're able to get, like you said, the CEOs like in, in a room, and you're able to do li-live journalism. Is that enough? There's a lot of people out there who are, who are focused on this.
Well, so we, so we have this, you know, we, we, we have this term, and well, it's not, it's not, you know, our kind of own proprietary term, but w- which we, we describe Semafor as a stakeholder media company. Mm-hmm.
We, you know, we sometimes we also joke, there's another word that we use internally, we call it the sniper media company,
which is that we, we just are not in the business of, you know, delivering, you know, large numbers of eyeballs that may or may not be relevant or that, that represent a sort of a, a, a very large ambiguous community.
We, our journalism is designed for leaders and for sophisticated readers and decision makers who need to understand the incredible and increasing complexity of the global economy, of the US economy, of Washington DC, of Wall Street, of Silicon Valley.
You know, there's never been a time when, you know, this, this information landscape has been more complex and, and more urgent to understand.
And I think, and, and this is also, I think, a tailwind for us, Semafor's journalism has really, really broken through as a, a voice of, of clarity, intelligence, and, and reason in, you know, this quite cacophonous and, and busy world.
And so that, that, that type of content is appealing to CEOs, it's appealing to senators, it's appealing to a, a cabinet secretary, it's appealing to a, you know, a civic, civic leader. And
that's, th- and that's, and that, that's the audience that we're looking, looking to go after.
Corporate affairs advertisers come to us and s- they say, "We don't wanna reach everyone who's, you know, over the age of, you know, tw- between twenty, twenty, twenty-one and fifty-five, and likes this or likes that."
They know, they're like, "No, no, we want to reach specific stakeholder segments in these different communities." Yes.
It could be a stakeholder segment in Silicon Valley, it could be a stakeholder seg-segment in, in, in Wall Street.
It could be a stakeholder seg-segment in the Gulf, in Riyadh, or in Abu Dhabi, or in Africa, or over time, when we, you know, when we get to Asia, and we get to China, and we get to Europe over time, which is, you know, I'd love to talk about our international expansion if we have time.
Sure. There are stakeholder segments of business leaders and public sector leaders, i.e. government leaders, policy makers, that our content will attract, and we will...
And, and, and that is, that, that engagement with these very, very influential decision makers in the public sector and the private sector
is the currency of our, you know, effectively our, our commercial business, our, our advertising business, and our convening business. Yeah.
At the risk of being like a Justinologist, I, I kinda feel like there's a lot of different bits of like places you've been in Semafor.
Like you mentioned being, you know, in your caree- over your career, like you mentioned The Economist, you mentioned The Atlantic. I think there are parts of Qu- of Quartz in, in Semafor.
I mean the next three billion, I mean, you, you were doing like a, a next billion- Semafor Africa, yeah. Yeah, Semafor Africa. That was Quartz Africa. But also breaking media, because you- [chuckles]...
you're rare a- I believe, I will say this. Thank you. And, and- I hope merely in good ways...
when I talk with usually consumer media CEOs, like, and I go back, I think with the conversations I would have on B2B, they'd be totally different.
But you get B2B media, and you get the power of when you're talking about segments, that to me just, I'm like, "Oh, I get that completely."
Because like that's, I mean, that's like what my business is, that's what B2B businesses is. It's like, you know, I don't need to have 100,000, you know, it'd be great, I guess.
But like the most important thing and what, you know, my clients work with me is, is how they can connect to specific high value segments, whether that's CROs or heads of product, et cetera.
And so that's very similar, but you're just doing it across a kind of almost like globally, right? In, in, in where business and technology and the power centers meet. Yeah.
I mean, you know, think of the whole world, right? And then just imagine an overlay of bifurcation.
Private sector leaders, CEOs, and C-suite, and public sector leaders, heads of state, leaders of government, leaders of policy, legislators.Then, um, then, then do another overlay of the, let's say, the top G20 capitals, economic capitals of the world.
That is Semafor's market.
And over time, as we, you know, right now we've got incredible penetration in Washington, in Wall Street, in American C-suite, in Silicon Valley, incredible penetration actually in African business decision makers, African government leaders, and since then, remarkable penetration in the Gulf.
But when you add Asia, and you add China, and you add Brussels and Europe and Latin America, which is not gonna be that far away, I mean, we're, we're, we know we-we're, we're three years into this only.
So imagine three years from now, I think we'll have probably blanketed the whole world. Yeah. And but, but focused on these segments, then you can, you can envision the business that we're building, which is
a, a corporate affairs advertiser or, or partner who's got global operations, global headaches and problems, trying to fix different things with different, different stakeholders that they're dealing with, governments, businesses, partners all around the world, and th-they will be able to partner with Semafor to solve their problems, you know, their communication problems, their brand problems, their corporate reputation problems, their thought leadership dissemination problems.
They'll be able to work with us across the globe in this very, very targeted stakeholder media way.
And you know what's exciting about it, and I learned this actually first at The Economist back in my twenties, 'cause this is where I started, is that then when you've got the whole world covered with a model like this, you, you know, all of a sudden the Europeans are buying the, the Beltway out, uh, the Brussels folks, Europeans are buying, buying the, the Beltway, and Americans are buying Brussels, and then the, the Americans are buying China, and then China's buying Brussels, and then- Hey...
everyone's buying the Gulf.
And, and so you have these, this, these, these cross currents of revenue opportunities from all these different segments, which, which, it, which in another, another, another way to say it is that's a much, much larger addressable market, much more larger, what's the, what's the, the b- the NDA term?
TAM? Yeah. The total addressable market, than, than, than anybody, I think, understands or could see, and again, I think that's, that's, that's perhaps what some of our investors understand- Yeah... alongside us.
And let's talk about the global piece of it, because, like, I think you guys have been, just from the outside, been very disciplined about, like, sequencing, to use your word, right?
In that, you know, the product has remained, it, to me, it's b- it's remained very focused on newsletter/digital and the live, the live component.
There's, there's one podcast, but you haven't gone and built a podcast network. I think in the beginning there was more video. I don't see as much video.
Maybe there's some video like- We're, we're launching a couple, a couple more podcasts. Yeah, but- Okay, you're launching more podcasts. Yeah. So I don't know, is that like a growth area? Like what...
A-a-but like let's just stick on, on because you didn't sequence global. Yeah. Like 'cause I think that there is- No, we, we, we did sequence global because we- Well, let me just, let me just like, like so...
And by that I mean that like, you know, yes, but you, you've been very ambitious with, you know, going, uh, Africa and the Gulf, and I think there's a school of thought saying, "Hey, master what you're doing in, in one location and then go to other locations," but this product as such
s-sort of needs to be a global product. Yeah. Is that it?
Well, listen, uh, you know, I think that we've been very disciplined on our global sequencing, and I'll tell you why, because when we launched in late twenty twenty-two, we launched in America and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
People were scratching their heads. "Why are they launching in Sub-Saharan Africa?"
The truth was, was that about ninety-five percent of our investment was in the US market and, you know, slightly over five percent was in Africa.
It was very important, but it was very, very important for us to be born global. Okay. It was important for our brand. It was important for our inter- our culture at Semafor.
We chose the, the brand Semafor 'cause it's the same word in thirty-five language. We designed Semafor so that it had a global, international, cosmopolitan appeal.
You know, we get teased all the time for our, our hotel clocks on the, um, on the top of our homepage that say, you know, Lagos, Brussels, you know. That's good. It's a little old school. [chuckles] But...
No, but it's, it's signaling of a, you know, that we are, you know, w-we- our, our surface as a global news company from day zero was the world, and
w- but we knew we couldn't take on the whole world at first, and so we decided to go to Africa, which was the least competitive market in the world, where, where a lot of our traditional competitors, the FT, The Economist, Bloomberg, where they have the least amount of resources.
Mm-hmm.
And yet actually where there's a very vibrant economic story and business story to be told, and we put in, you know, a, a, a whole cadre of journalists in Lagos and Nairobi, and actually, we built a profitable African news business in twelve months.
Only then, only then did we then contemplate, okay, so we've, we've, we've sort of fine-tuned the model in Africa. We've gotten it to profitability. Okay, now we're ready to go to the Gulf.
And so it, it's very methodical. I mean, from our, from our perspective, we're not, we're not, we're not...
And, and, and, and frankly, the opportunities around the world are so, you know, are really vast and exciting and, and urgent.Uh, there are many days I think, "God, we should be everywhere right away."
But we, we, we, we hold back from that because I think that, you know, the single-- one of the s- one of the largest risks for, for any company, but particularly for a high-growth startup company,
is the, the balance of, of opportunity with, with, with execution capability. How much, you know, can you i-- h- how, how, how broad of a portfolio can you execute exquisitely at once?
And, you know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting question and, and, and, and it's one which we are constantly asking ourselves.
So, so three, you know, three regions in, in three years was methodical and relatively and very planned out.
And now finally, you know, w-with, with the Gulf now doing extremely well and growing, and we're building an events business in the Gulf, which is very exciting, which is we put our first events team in the Gulf.
I think we're the first international news organization to put an events team into, into the Gulf. We're, we're now launching Semafor China in,
in February next month, and that's gonna lay the groundwork for Semafor Asia, hopefully later this year. We're doing our first event in Asia in, in October of twenty twenty-six.
And then we'll, you know, then we'll, we'll loop back around to, to, to, to Brussels, the EU, continental Europe and the UK, and then, uh, and ultimately Latin America.
And it's-- So we're, we're, you know, we're being-- I think we're being careful and, and some days I, you know, I wish we were moving faster, but I'm, I'm glad that we're, you know, we're focused on, on ex- ex- exquisite execution first and foremost.
Yeah. And it's, it is kinda telling that Europe comes last, I guess. [chuckles] I mean- Well, you know, that's- 'Cause, I mean, it was normally, it was like, you know, you expand to E-Europe.
I mean, Politico is like, you know, they, they built up a big Brussels bureau, and then that was, it was normal. I think. That, that's very...
I mean, I, I posted something on LinkedIn the, yes- yesterday on this exact subject. Like, people s- scratch their heads and say, "Why, why are they launching in Africa?" You know, "Why are they going to the Gulf?"
And, and it, again, we look at the future. This is a twenty-first century global news brand.
We are looking to be the leading independent global news brand for, you know, for the twenty-first century and beyond, and we're looking to, to be the heirs to brands like The Economist and the Financial Times.
Now, if you're doing that in twenty twenty-three, you've gotta look at where the global economy is going. Where, where's the energy? Where's the, where's growth?
And seventy-five to eighty percent of future global GDP growth in the world i-is in the next, you know, between now and twenty fifty, is gonna be in the Global South and the Global East. It's not gonna be Europe.
It's actually not gonna be the US. The US will cont- continue to grow. Europe, not so s- so certain.
But the, the big economic engines of the future of the global economy are the Global South and Global East, and we wanted to be the, as a twenty-first century news brand, we wanted to be leaning in that direction, and we wanted to chronicle the growth of the Global South's and the Global East's economy as sort of our core capability because that's where the, that's where the action is, that's where the capital is going, that's where the, that's where the future is.
So that means Europe does come, come last, unfortunately. Yeah. So I mean, you guys mentioned The Economist and, and the FT as competitors. I mean, these are...
I, I look at it as it's very aspirational in some ways, and that's why I think Semafor is really interesting in that it is, you know, a big swing. I mean, the, The Economist's been around since eighteen forty-three.
I believe the FT has been around since, it's the young one at eighteen-- eighteen eighty-eight. [chuckles] You, you're like three years and, like, a few months in.
So you know, like, as I said, it takes a while to build these brands, and I think what's interesting when I...
When you think about the events business at a lot of these, these business news brands, they, they're high octane events businesses, and that can be very good.
And, and by that I mean they do a lot- What do you mean by high octane? Yeah. They do a lot of events. Yeah. Like the FT, I think, uh, they did... In twenty twenty-four, they did two hundred and forty events.
It's, you said you're doing, like, ninety-seven. Ninety-seven, yeah.
I think the question with, with events always comes down- But, but the FT is probably only twenty percent of the revenue or something, twenty, twenty-five percent. Yeah. Yeah. Um- I mean, Economist does a ton of events.
Again, it's, it's a different unit with a- Yeah... Economist Impact. It, it actually isn't. It didn't do great last year.
But, like, what I'm wondering is, like, how do you view getting leverage out of an events business? 'Cause the knock- Yeah... on events is always they don't scale. They're incredibly handcrafted. They're a pain.
You need to, you need to keep running them again and again and again. You know, I think Forbes does, like, three hundred events a year. It's very easy to get pulled into a, a business that is extremely services heavy.
Now, event franchises, I just got back from Las Vegas, right? Consumer Electronics Show, I'd like that business. [chuckles] That's a really good business.
Listen, it- I, I notice that publications never ha- media brands never have the massive events. Like, you know, Cannes is not... I always say, you know, Cannes is not, was not done by Adweek.
So, well, you know, I, I mean, on your last point, I'd just say no comment- [chuckles]...
because I think if anyone looks at what we're doing, they'll see that we're, you know, we're very inspired by the, you know, by the, by the, the large tent pole opportunities and, and seats, the repeatable ones.
But let me- Well, the world economy platform is, is Davos. Is- I mean, it's go- it's going after- Well, it's...
I mean, listen, it's, you know, Davos was, will always be Davos and, you know, but there's, there's lots of opportunity to...
You know, the, the fact that there's not a singular global CEO gathering on American soil, the, the largest economy in the world, is, is pretty remarkable in twenty twenty-five, and we wanna own that space.
We're, we are well on our way to owning that space. But let me, let me just go back to your point about the FT and The Economist.And also our ambition.
I mean, first of all, like you have to understand pretty much everyone at, at Semafor, starting with me, are like the biggest brand fans of the-- in the world of the FT and The Economist.
I mean, we've worked there, many of our... We've worked there, we've been readers, we are readers. We love what they do. We're inspired, you know, we've...
And but the question i- and the question-- so the question is, is, you know, is, is there an opportunity for
a, a group of people who, you know, have s- you know, who see the same editorial vision and opportunity, but actually want to recreate a new version of that in the twenty-first century?
Is there an opportunity to modernize h- and to, to shift the product thinking, to shift the digital sort of innovation thinking, to shift the business model design?
I mean, look at this whole conversation we just had about the, the new world economy and the Global South and Global East. Well, that's, that's very different than The Economist and the FT, right?
I mean, the, The Economist and the FT are giving the, the view from London. And, and so the q- so the, it-- the world's a very big place.
By the way, those two businesses are doing incredibly well- Mm-hmm...and are profitable and, you know, and, and, and actually, you know, are, are, are seeing, seeing great growth, and they're not, they're not, you know, dependent o-on, on, on events in that way.
They're, they're, you know, they've just got great, great content and many different channels of distribution. But we think the world is changed, uh, so much.
The c- the, the, the sort of the centers of gravity of the planet have shifted so dramatically. The consumer audiences of the leadership class is totally different than it was in 1842 and 1888.
It's no longer, you know, smoky rooms in London and New York or whatever.
It's now, you know, people in, in, in, you know, leaders in Singapore and Nairobi and Jakarta and Beijing and Brussels, of course, and London and to-- London too. But you know, Riyadh, Dubai, uh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha.
I mean, so it's--
that is the opportunity, is to not directly compete with those incredible brands that we all love and have worked for and respect and read and subscribe to, but to actually create a complementary model that is more modern and that is more designed for the global economy and the global leadership class of today.
Right. That's the opportunity we see. So but, like, how important are... You have to develop, like, large franchises for, for this business to be very big, it seems. Like, I mean, there are a lot of...
Like, Washington, D.C. has a lot of, like, small events that people put on, and you can build, like, a good business around them. I, I, I think but one- You're gonna be doing a ton of them...
I mean, but one of the things that you miss, I mean, and this, I'm just- Mm-hmm... saying this because you are so knowledgeable about the- Okay...
the kind of the micro details of the, of the media biz, is that a lot of the reasons why people do a lot of scaled events, you know, a lo- like, a lot of smaller events, is because it's actually tied in with an ad deal.
Right.
And so, you know, of- i- it's, it's often you can't necessarily judge it as just like a, you know, oh, that's a, that's a crappy small event that took, you know, so much effort and is just, you know, so hard to scale 'cause you're doing fifty of them and so on.
A roundtable dinner or a luncheon, a small panel discussion, whatever it may be, that might be tied in with a, with a multi-million dollar ad deal, you know? And how do you...
And so it's, it's, it's, it's the-- that's, this is the thing, is it, at least for us, our events business i- is integrated into everything.
Our journalism powers it, and our, and the commercial partnerships are deeply integrated between the two.
That having been said, of course, it doesn't take a, a genius to say that, you know, if you can, if you can own the repeatable big tent poles for valuable communities, those are gonna be better businesses.
And, you know, you can be certain that we're s- you know, we're scouring the world for those, and we're sc- you know, we're looking to innovate, uh, and build more and more and...
But, but our first job to do is to build the Semafor World Economy platform into- Mm-hmm... the largest CEO platform in the world, and that's a very, very, very significant opportunity. It's a journalistic opportunity.
It's a business opportunity. It's a, a profit opportunity. And, you know, and so we're, we're gonna be focused on that. So anyway, those are, those are just some- Yeah... some quick thoughts.
So final thing is, is subscriptions, right? I think when you guys were launching, there was talk about a really pricey subscription offering. I... You mentioned The Economist- Ooh. I don't think... Uh, yeah...
and, and the FT, and, you know, each has a million, million three paying subscribers, and, you know, they're, they're very expensive, actually. Yeah. I mean, but, but- I subscribed to both.
It hit my credit card for a while. But do, do the, do the math.
A million to a million three at, like, let's say, I mean, with discounting three hundred to four hundred dollars, you know, maybe three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty dollars a piece.
That is, you know, three hundred to four hundred and fifty million dollars of revenue, of subscription revenue. Like, is that not an exciting opportunity to pursue over time? My God, if you- Absolutely...
es-especially if you're producing journalism at a, at a similar standard with, with, you know, great journalists and great insights and, you know, and, and but actually that's more sort of oriented to this modern new global economy that I just described.
Mm-hmm. Like, like certainly Semafor is, has the appetite to s- to, to build, you know, a multi-hundred million dollar subscription revenue stream down the line.
The thing is, is that we just decided not to do it first because we wanted to get to profitability quickly and build a sustainable model- Right... as I said.
And subscriptions, you know, and, and honestly, w- if you can, if you can not have a paywall and build a profitable business early, build the brand, fine-tune your journalism-Connect with the right audiences, build deeper engagement, build up your talent culture.
It's, you know, it's, it's, it's actually, in my view, it's better not to have a paywall because it, frankly, it allows you to, to expand more quickly to, to the aud-audiences you wanna reach.
And, you know, like we realized at Bloomberg, you know, this is the, probably the single best example, because when I was at Bloomberg, it, the, the website had been free for over a decade. But it was such a
di-differentiated and, and brilliant, excellent global business and financial content product that the minute that we put up the paywall, boom, it was a huge, huge business.
It wasn't this idea that, oh, you train people for free, and they've got other sources, and they're, you know, when you put a paywall down on brilliant, amazing, differentiated content, they're gonna go somewhere else.
Nope, that didn't happen. And so what, you know, I don't know the exact numbers now, but, you know, four or five years later, Bloomberg's got a very, very large and growing consumer subscription revenue stream.
And, and, and so I, I was ins- I am inspired by that model- Yeah... for Semafor. It was decades in the making though, right? Like, I mean- Uh, maybe not decades 'cause there was a paywall at one point. Okay, that's true.
I don't know the exact, you know, this is, this is... We could do some historical- But would have Bloomberg had like- Maybe... a thousand journalists?
So I mean, like, I think the question ends up becoming, and then the reason I ask it is it's, it is also, and I think it's a brand question, right?
Like, when you get to the point where you're completely essential, like people need Semafor- Yeah... to operate. They're i-and- Yes... you know, that's basically where you wanna get at.
And I'm just wondering, I understand- When do I... Yeah. Yeah, there's two, there's- I mean, I think that's- It's sequencing... that's, that's a totally fair question. Like, do you come out immediately?
That's a, that's a totally fair question, and- Or do you build a top of the funnel? Do you build habit? Do you build loyalty? And then do you say, "Hey- Yeah... you know, we're, we're, w-we, we're charging."
You know, I t-think it's a totally fair question. I do believe that our editorial is, is indispensable for many people. It, the original breaking news that we do is, is indispensable for many communities.
The quality of our analysis from our incredible journalists is great. It's just, it's a smaller newsroom, as you point out, and so this is gonna take time. This is gonna take time.
And then, and that's why the plan is not to roll out subscriptions tomorrow, [chuckles] but rather to continue building out this successful model that we've, that we've architected these last three years.
But with a, you know, think of it as sort of a subscription sort of rollout plan in your back pocket at the, at the right moment when, when the content does feel like it's gonna, you know, reach that level of indispensability and when the global reach and the global market coverage is, you know, is, is, is, is significant, so significant.
So that's- So that sounds like not, not this year. Definitely not this year. Okay. No, definitely not this year. But, you know, flexibility is, and, and adaptability is the name of the game, as you know. Yeah.
So never say never. I think, you know, we'll see what happens with the global economy. We'll see what happens with the competitive landscape. We'll see what happens, and, you know, we'll, we'll adjust accordingly.
And who are your biggest y- Last thing is like, who, who are your biggest, like, advertising partners, just partners in general, corporate partners? You know, I would say, honestly, I'd...
Rather than list any of them, I'd say we have a probably a very significant portion of the Fortune 100 as our clients.
[upbeat music] So, you know, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of big clients from a range of different sectors. Cool. Justin, let's leave it there. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Brian.
I love the, the intelligent conversation, and let's continue it over a mojito in Miami. Yeah, let's do it. [laughs] All right, Justin, thanks again. Okay, thanks. Bye. [upbeat music]