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Thank you so much to Beehiiv for their support. Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey. Looking forward to this conversation with Robin Thurston, who is the CEO of Outside.
Outside, to me, is one-- is a really interesting case study in media, because I always say that media is incredibly valuable right now, but the tricky part is [laughs] finding out how that value can actually be extracted.
And usually that is through other businesses that are not just putting ads next to words on pages or, you know, selling subscriptions to get access to those words. It has a lot of leverage in a lot of different areas.
So right now, Outside Interactive, it is a, it is a portfolio of different endurance sports titles and also a platform of forty brands. It's got mapping apps, fitness trackers.
It's got a travel booking engine festival that's gonna be like the South by Southwest of outdoors. Why not?
And it has also raised a hundred and fifty million dollars back, back in twenty twenty-one, which is a completely different time.
I don't know if anyone remembers twenty twenty-one, but, like, people would, like, DM me and be-- and say, "Can we buy ads in your newsletter?" I'm like, "This is easy. This is great."
[laughs] I was like, "Why do people make it out that media is so hard?" I'm like, "This is wonderful." I was doing consulting at the time, Robin, and people were like, "We just grew thirty percent last year."
And I'm like, "You know, everybody I talk to is telling me this." [laughs] I'm like, "Congrats," but... So I wanna talk about all that because Outside has-- You know, it's like any of these things are an adventure.
It's been ups and downs, right? And now Outside is, is profitable. I think you did what? A hundred and, uh- Twenty-five million in revenue... twenty-five million in revenue. Yeah. That's substantial, right? Mm-hmm.
And it-- the business has flipped from an ads business primarily to a recurring revenue business, and that's great. Yeah. So congrats on that. That's, that's what I like. Yeah. Let's get into the details of it, Robin.
[laughs] Awesome. This is a long time coming. We were supposed to do this in twenty twenty-one or twenty twenty-two. It would've been a different podcast. Definitely would've been a different podcast. [laughs] Yeah.
So I wanna get at your theory of the case, right? Because your background is, is different than a lot of people who I talk to.
I mean, you're in the, the sort of, the, the media business, but really your, your background's, is different.
And I wanna go back to, to MapMyFitness 'cause you s-- you, you, you founded MapMyFitness utility, right, around those of us who like to get outside. Even though I'm in New York City, I don't g-get much outdoor time.
I spiritually, I-- [laughs] Spiritually, I'd rather live in Boulder, to be honest with you. And it, and- We can get you out here, Brian. Come on. Yeah. We get you, we get you out here. It's, uh...
[laughs] And, you know, you ended up selling that 'cause I remember at the time it was, it, I, I-- 'cause it was a really interesting deal. It went to Under Armour, right? Mm-hmm.
And what was the theory of the case with that, with marrying a suite of utility apps with an apparel company? Yeah.
I mean, the-- there was a couple, there, there was a couple really clear things that even when I met Kevin Plank for the first time, and, you know, we, we were in the process of raising a Series D for MapMy.
We had a big strategic partner in somebody like Casio that had, and out of Japan, that had invested capital. We had obviously traditional VCs. But for Under Armour, it was really two things.
It was, they didn't have a digital footprint at all, and if you-- At that time, Nike was sort of taking off with, you know, training and run, and Under Armour didn't have a digital strategy for how you could connect with that consumer.
There was a bit that it was global, like MapMy, like there was lots of places in the world that Under Armour was starting to expand to, and, and MapMy had a very global footprint. Like we were...
You know, you could use the tool everywhere in the world. But probably more importantly, what we-- the thesis was that if we built the connection to e-com as an example...
So Brian, I know you're a runner, so, like, let's say you went out for a run on MapMyRun, and when you got back, I could send you a personalized email from underarmour.com that's like, "Here's a head-to-toe shoes, shorts, jersey" that says, "Hey, Brian, congratulations on five K of running.
Here's your head to toe, and it's forty percent off," thirty percent off, whatever it was. And most people didn't understand that, that, that actually really worked.
That personalized newsletter against your actual running or whatever activity you were doing, and the ability for Under Armour to sell, 'cause I was also running e-com at the time, and it really was working.
We were seeing that connection from consumers going from, they downloaded the app, they registered, they started doing runs, and then we started doing personalized e-commerce emailsThe transaction ROAS was better.
Like there was a whole bunch of things happening in the core business that was like, "This is working."
But it really was about having the first digit-- Like what Kevin would often say when he was out speaking was like, it could be that the first touch with the Under Armour brand is through these products, because we had so many users around the world, and again, they were just getting into this space.
And so it was really tho-those were the building blocks of the thesis. Part of the reason it's so relevant to Outside was that when I was-- Like we then bought my f-- I mean, we did a big roll-up there too, right, Brian?
We bought MyFitnessPal, we bought Endomondo in Europe, we bought eight other companies that like in different sort of verticals and categories.
But one of the reasons, you know, I would say was like Under Armour's business was changing in two thousand and sixteen, but I went to Kevin and I was like, "Kevin, I think we should get into content."
Like, "I think we could be the next Red Bull media house. The brand's amazing." It was on Fuego then, Brian. Like- Yeah. Under Armour's brand was flying.
And, you know, Kevin obviously, you know, we had already spent a lot of money, like close to a billion dollars on acquisitions. I think he knew there were other challenges in the business that maybe I wasn't as aware of.
But I was-- He was like, "No, we're not gonna build-- Like, we're gonna put all this money in content."
But I really thought that was the next step for the platform, was not only sort of unifying all the data, leveraging it into e-commerce, but was to get into content.
He said, "No," I left, and, you know, that's part of the-- was part of the thesis for like r- how I thought about the world.
Like that was the connection of like I felt like we needed to have content, we needed to have utility, we needed to have commerce, all of those things together.
But the content like the-- and, and the utility we're going to give leverage to, you know, I mean, Under Armour is, is an apparel company.
It was to sell- I mean, this is a time also- To be, to be clear, it was to sell shirts and shoes. Yeah. Let's be clear. So Nike- Yeah...
Nike at the time was getting, you know, they, they, they've gone through a little bit of a rough time. Although, you know, they just got a nice like... I don't know what they-- I mean, whoever did the PR was great.
They had a great piece in The New York Times with the, the new CEO, Ivy. Oh, yeah. That was like run as pitched, you know? But whatever. [laughs] Good for them.
But, you know, at the time, you know, N- with Nike+ and Nike ID, and I'm sure there was like some of that w-within that, it was this idea, we're gonna create this, this ecosystem. We're gonna be a technology company.
This is what, you know, Wall Street wanted to hear. And look, at the end of the day, it, it's, it's difficult running multiple businesses.
But you're, you're saying that the thesis worked, 'cause they, they, they sold, you know, the assets back to you, right? A-and- Well, they sold, they sold MapMy back to me. Yeah. They sold MyFitnessPal. I, I think
my, my f- my theory, Brian, obviously I left in two thousand sixteen, so I haven't been around for a long time.
But my theory is that once the leadership, digital leadership left, like Mike Lee from MyFitnessPal left, I left, there was a bit of a, you know, like vision gap, right? Like how all this stuff was gonna keep...
And then I also think Under Armour just had some like the core challenges that they had to figure out, and they, to me, they made the right decision, which is revert back to- The core.
We gotta get shirts and shoes right. Right? Yeah. So yeah, I mean, from my perspective, you know, it, there's no question it was working from a
having more information on the consumer to personalize for them to, you know, to, to go into transaction and prove like the... I mean,
MapMy, I mean, even today, Brian, like the or-- we don't spend a lot on marketing and, you know, the organic growth, the number of net registered users every single month is, it, it's, it's really solid.
Hundreds of thousands of people are still registering every single month for free. That's not mar- Right. That's no marketing, right? So they were getting all those emails, right? That was all part of the sort of story.
You know, again, I'm, I haven't been there, so I can't say specifically, but my guess is they kind of had to make decisions to get more focused, right? Right. So spin that forward to what has become Outside.
I think at the, at the time it was Pocket, but like what- Mm-hmm... how that informed this thesis? 'Cause I think it's almost, I don't wanna say it's like a reverse of it, but it's a different like twist.
We were joking before about like, you know, most people having like one playbook, just about everybody has one playbook, and they run it differently a- based on the environment, based on what they've learned, and I think that's, that's the smart thing to do.
W-what is, what was the sort of thesis going on here with also, you know, do-- executing any roll-up is like incredibly difficult. You know, I always say like- Yeah, I mean, like roll-ups-...
roll-ups are one of those, they're great at, they're great at on, in a PowerPoint, but then, you know, it gets, it gets pretty messy pretty quickly.
Yeah, I mean, and I think most of the companies had a lot of like what I call sort of vision alignment.
In other words, like every single brand we own, I think has the same core mission, which is to get people outdoors, right?
The, the, the sort of thesis or playbook that you're talking about, to me, there's a couple of unique things in, I think, our category specifically, which I would consider sort of like outdoor activity.
Let's just sort of, you know, an activity in general. Mm-hmm.
The difference is like if you are, I'm gonna use an example, if you, you know, and I do think there's close analogies, like I know you just had Yahoo on and, you know, like the, the, the, the connection from, okay, I'm gonna read a ton about sports or I'm gonna watch a ton of sports, and then I'm gonna go do fantasy to me is there are parallels there, right?
But the di- the distinction in our categories is that when somebody's like reading or watching content, say they're watching a show on Outside television about, you know, like Tahoe and going outdoors and culinary and all this stuff, they're gonna actually go do that.
They're gonna, they're gonna go from watching or reading about a marathon to going out for a run.
Like, you know, you'll, you'll read some content, you're looking at gear, and then you're gonna go for a run.And to me, that's what's u-really unique is there's a lot of data around these categories where people are voluntarily putting it in, whether it's to a fitness tracker, mapping app, like we connect to Garmin and all these third-party utilities as part of your login
and that-- th-to me, that's where in our category, it's sort of unique, is that you go from, like, as an example, from content, say like you're again reading about the top ten ski destinations, well, how do I get you as fluidly as possible into going to do and booking that trip?
Because that to me is the real connection.
It's like people want to go do these things, and we just wanna make it easier for them from the point of discovery or inspiration, as we call it, to actually going out and doing that activity.
There's noth-- I mean, we have a big internal stated goal, Brian, that like we wanna get two hundred and fifty million people globally a day doing the actual activity. I don't care if that's a dog walk, Brian.
I just want them outdoors because I believe it's good for their health. But that connection to the content- Mm. -through to actually the activation, to me, is what I think is unique about our category. Yeah.
But what's unique about that is when you start to think about media, right? Because, like, media people think about media as the end goal, right? And my...
if I have a thesis, it's that media is in service of other goals, right? And- A hu-a hundred percent. That's where things are going.
And like, y-you know, i-in two thousand and nineteen, I mean, you guys acquired like things like VeloNews, which I always, I was always reading VeloNews during the, like, the Tour de France.
I was a thirty-five-year subscriber, Brian. [chuckles] I was less as like, you know, Yoga Journal I'm less into, but like, you, you, you, you acquired- Well, yeah, right now, but maybe later, I don't know. I don't know.
Maybe, you know. We don't know. We don't know where things are gonna go. But like then you acquired Outside, right?
Uh, you, you raised a lot of money in twenty twenty-one, you acquired Outside, and it's like good news, bad news. It's like good news is Outside, amazing brand. Yeah.
Like I was always reading Outside even though I was living in New York City 'cause I was, like, imagining a different version of my life in Boulder being, going i-into the mountains and whatever, instead of just on the subway.
[chuckles] But you know, Sebastian Junger wrote, wrote for it, Jon Krakauer has, like, you know, so many, like, great, like, writers, and that, that creates a really great brand, right?
But, you know, the, the role of these great magazine brands is different nowadays. Yeah, I mean- What do you see with, with...
what is the-- what, what did you-- what was sort of, with all of that, like, thesis, what did you see as the thesis as the future for a, quote unquote, "magazine brand" like Outside?
Well, I mean, I certainly growing up in Colorado and even, I mean, I, I tell this story about when I was, it probably was the late seventies, my dad threw an Outside magazine at me, and he said, "This is where we're going," and on the front was Arches National Park.
And, you know, I cut out every article and picture and, you know, I, I was obviously very young, and I, I think it's, I think it's chan... The part that I don't think has changed is I still believe it's inspiration.
Like, your point about you're living in New York, you're still reading Outside is because you are thinking aspirationally, "I might wanna go do that thing.
Like, I might want to go to that place, or I might want to try that piece of gear, or I might want to explore this," and I, I don't think that's changed. I do think what the customer is asking for is, is changing.
Like, and what I mean by that is, like, attention spans and what's happening, like, there's a huge demand of video, you know, f-on our platform as an example, and so how we decide on those things.
But what I, what I believe about the Outside brand is it's certainly the best brand in the category, the most well-known, and, and, and I also thought had the most scope.
And what I mean by that is under the Outside brand, I thought we could go into everything from water sports to, you know, climbing, to backpacking, to, you know, even over-landing, like, or fishing.
I felt like the Outside brand,
knowing that our customer does at least three activities a year and maybe over a lifetime, they do twelve to fifteen different activities, I just felt like the Outside brand was the most inclusive. It was the...
And the other thing I felt about it was if you think about the, you know, I'm talking about the, you know, long time ago, I think that most of the imagery and the storytelling was quite extreme, right, Brian? Mm.
It was like, if you, you know, the imagery was, like, a guy on Everest in a North Face jacket, right? Like, that was the primer.
And, and I go, today, the fastest growing customer segment and where all the spend is, is in a much more casual outdoor person. Much more casual. Like, they're, they're not...
And so, but I still felt like the Outside brand could do both. I felt like it could stretch to the extreme, but all, go all the way down to the customer who's just learning. They're, you know- Yes.
I always, I always use it, I always use this in this sort of like view, Brian, like I'm... Most people come to me for like cycling recommendations 'cause I've been cycling my whole life.
But like, if I get into kayaking, Brian, I'm lit-- I don't know how to paddle, man. Like, I gotta start from scratch. I don't know what gear I need. I don't know where to go.
I, like, so we wanna try to accommodate that person who wants to get into the category, and I felt like the Outside brand versus all of the other brands.
Like, I think we have, I mean, Backpacker and Ski and, you know, Yoga Journal and these, I think they're great brands, but they couldn't necessarily encompass all of those things. Yeah. It is tricky though, right?
Because- For sure.
I think of Runner's World as like a runner, like, and no offense to Hearst, it happened before them, but, like, Runner's World sort of lost its tie to me to like the, quote unquote, "heart," like runner runners, you know?
Yeah. Like, and it, it, it... and, and running itself became so democratized. You know, running a marathon is now like, you know, ten times more people run marathons now than, than- Yeah... twenty-five years ago.
So it becomes less for like the hardcore, but you wanna expand the category.Well, the, I mean, the interesting thing like about like the MapMyRun data, and I used to say this all the time, is like the average person in MapMyRun, Brian- Mm-hmm...
ran three days a week, three point one miles. So they literally would look at the app and they're like, "Oh my God, I made it three miles. I'm done." And then it would be like a walk back to the car, right?
Like, or, you know- Yeah... to wherever they were.
So like, the vast majority of runners are extremely casual, and it's really, they don't even think about themselves as runners, they're just doing it to like have some fitness, right?
To like stay active at some level, right? Right. So talk about re-re- like sort of re-architecting the business, right? Because like how-- and also how, how different that is from th- twenty twenty-one thesis, right?
Yeah.
Because like it's a very, it's-- these things always change along the way, and it seems like, you know, from the, you know, getting to profitability with, you know, substantial, not just substantial revenue, but a lot of it in recurring revenue.
And I know it has not been, been easy to get to that point. But what's changed about the thesis? 'Cause it's a very different environment from twenty twenty-one, as I said. I don't get those DMs.
Maybe my DMs are off, but like- [laughs]... I'm out there selling. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, I have this, I have the literal... and, and I can send you a picture of it.
I have this napkin where I had originally drawn, dr- you know, drawn the flywheel of like how to get somebody from content- Oh, it's a literal napkin. It's literal. I liter- I'll send you a picture of it.
I drew it- Okay. God, I need, I need evidence for this one. I'm gonna send, I'm gonna send you. [chuckles] It's too crazy. In two thousand nineteen, I drew this flywheel of like what this was gonna look like.
I think what, you know, when I... But, you know, I don't think people largely understand how hard the operating environment has been twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, how hard it was.
Like, just everything that was going on, inflation, you know. And so what I would say changed, so in twenty-one, I mean, I've told people before, Brian, we were burning forty million bucks a year, right?
Like I was, I was investing heavily like in everything. And I mean, we didn't, you know, in thirty acquisitions, we didn't-- like normally in an acquisition, you know- Yeah... you cut people right on day one.
You're like, "There's synergies." Well, we didn't do that. We like literally- Yeah... was like, "Everybody's got a job." Then you can, you can put it on the old, the, the old management. Yeah.
You start, start with a fresh... Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I think while the, you know, we've-- obviously we had this goal of shifting the, the old business being seventy-five plus percent in advertising.
It was mostly endemic advertising, so it was like the REIs and the North Faces and the Patago- like it was in our category.
And I knew that once we aggregated it, that I'd have, I'd have a much bigger audience to go to auto and insurance and travel as an example. So we knew we had to make that switch, and that switch has happened.
Like, uh, you know, over fifty percent of our business is non-endemic, large strategic categories: auto, you know, financial, travel. So that switch was a big one.
But I also knew, like, I mean, I mean, I think it was pretty evident. I, I mean, like I said, I di- I didn't create this, Brian.
Like I think it was pretty evident fifteen years ago that advertising was just getting gobbled up by the large technology players. Yeah. And I was like, "We have to get into reoccurring revenue."
Like, we have to get the subscription business really going, and we have to get, you know, other forms of revenue, like could be events, which obviously we can talk about Outside Days, you know.
And, and I, I really did believe in SAS. I mean, one of the first visit when the, the-- so when we bought Outside Magazine and Television, we closed on four other acquisitions the same day. Literally the same day.
We did them all in one day. We had six acquisitions closed on the same day. So it was Outside Magazine, Outside Television.
We bought a commerce company, which, you know, subsequently we did shut down 'cause it just wasn't working, called Cairn, like spelt like the rocks, the rock stack. That was a box subscription company.
I mean, we all know- Yeah... how that went, right? You know, we bought Gaia GPS, which was very much on the utility side.
Like again, the idea of bringing people from outside in top ten hikes, how do I download those hikes? How do I go do those hikes? And Gaia was the original solution. And we bought an event registration business.
We bought Athlete Reg that owned things like Run Reg and Bike Reg and things like that. And so we had that theory in twenty-one of like these things are all gonna bolt together.
But to your point, yeah, I mean, it was, first of all, once we had to start really thinking about how to change the burn rate of the business, we had to scale back things that we-- like I wanted to do.
Like we had to not do some of those investments.
But it really was about getting to single sign-on, which by the way, none of the media publications, including Outside, collected email addresses other than for newsletters, which was pretty sparse, right?
It wasn't like getting people to sign in and like really connect with the platform. And so we, we added single sign-on, we built a new CMS that all of the platforms moved to. We launched the bundle, you know.
So those things all started when, you know, in twenty and twenty twenty-one, 'cause we had that thesis of like bringing them all interconnected together. Single ad platform, single financial stack.
I mean, to your point, that was-- I mean, I will say, Brian, like I'm the f- Mm-hmm... it was way harder.
Even though I had done a lot of M&A, I mean, I did M&A at, at Under Armour, I'd done M-M&A at Reuters, like I-- it was way harder than I thought it was gonna be. Yeah.
A-and the shape of the business now, I mean, we talked about advertising being close to like three-quarters of the business now. I, I- No, no, it was, was three-quarters of the business Right. It was. Yeah.
That's what I mean. Yeah. Like, and, and now it's down like what? Around like forty percent? Fort- it's forty percent now. Yeah.
And then- And again, it's, it's mostly non-endemic because of the scale that we have, the number of people we have on the platform, right?
So-That to me, that switch in some ways is as important as getting to more reoccurring revenue.
And so, you know, then thirty-five percent of our revenue is in digital consumer subscriptions, and twenty-five percent is in SaaS platforms. Okay.
So when you're counting SaaS platforms, you're talking about like Athlete Reg and like Intopia or is that- And Intopia. Yeah. Okay. Where, where does... Which, does it, does that count events too, like Outside Days?
No, no. So events, we, we have some ticketing revenue, so that that's sort of it- Yeah...
but it's still within our media group, and then the sponsorships that we get for the, for Outside Days, they are bundled into our advertising bucket, that forty percent essentially. Okay.
So i- within this like larger bundle, 'cause we, we see this with like The New York Times, you know, people say, "Oh, it's actually a gaming company with, with a newsroom."
And some of this makes particularly journalists like uncomfortable, right? Outside has definitely gone through that. I can remember someone in like twenty twenty-two like writing me, like they were angry at you.
[chuckles] So I'm just gonna be honest with you. Like, you should look at this. Uh, and there are people out there. There was like an open letter from, you know, you, you're ruining Outside and whatnot.
And again, like people come at things from totally different like perspectives. I think, you know, nostalgia is very difficult in this industry- Yeah... just because it is compressed to such a degree.
What is the role then of the media? Because as I said, in a lot of models now, the, the, the media is to provide leverage in different businesses, whether it's in, whether it's in events, whether it's in SaaS.
For a while, it was gonna be in commerce, you know. I think that the bloom is a little bit off the rose there with all the, the churning group investments and, in there that didn't go anywhere. So
this is a different type of model, but how do you end up gauging? 'Cause I mean, you cut... Y- y- a lot of people got cut, right? And that's why there's the, that's why, you know- Yeah...
but there's always like, you know, a way to do the like, you know, we spoke to thirty people because, you know, you cut enough people, you're gonna find thirty people to, to say- Sure. Of course... say some things.
How do you think about like what the, the role of the content assets in this bundle? Well, I mean, first of all, it's still our largest department in the company. It's run by Heather Dietrick, our chief media officer.
She was the CEO at The Daily Beast. Mm-hmm. And, you know, she's been around the industry for a long time. So she runs- Ex-Gawker too. Ex-Gawker, yeah. Yeah. She runs our, you know, all of our media brands.
She runs the TV business, the, you know, experiential, the physical events business, and it's still the largest department.
I mean, editorial is still, again, even relative to the mapping teams, it's still the largest department in the company. And I still view the storytelling part of...
And I'm saying for our customer, like the, the runner, the cyclist, the hiker.
You know, I look at some of the original content that we're producing on Outside television, shows like "The Road Less Eaten" or, you know, we just did this show with Alex Honnold that was sponsored and paid for by Nevada Tourism, you know, in the state of Nevada where he's from and, you know, basically him going around the state and doing these adventures.
That just launched this week. Things like park sessions that... But these are, these are great, these are great stories, right, Brian? And so video, video and film and TV is sort of one part of it.
I still believe there is a very critical s- space to, to encourage people to get in these categories that's about them learning where to go, what to do, how to do it, what gear you need.
Like that part of it to me is really important. And I know... I- I mean, to be clear, I really respect the people that unfort...
You know, we, we had changes and we had to go through and we had to really figure out how this business was gonna get self-sustaining. That was really painful.
But at the same time, it's not like we're still not investing in storytelling.
I mean, the, the, like, you know, the fall issue with Lindsey Vonn on it, you know, we're still, we obviously still have one print publication that's Outside Magazine. Mm-hmm.
You know, extremely well sold through at all Barnes & Noble. Like, you know, w- we're, we're clearly still putting ener- energy there and, you know, yeah, are we doing as much long form as we used to? No.
We've had to make trade-offs with like we need to do more video because that's what some of our advertisers and certainly what the consumer is, from a just consumption perspective on the pages, is telling us that they want, but we're still trying to create that balance and still investing in this area, and I think it's just a really important part of like the, the whole flywheel.
It's like, I don't think that, you know, hey, just having Gaia or just having Trailforks is as good as having h- you know, someone telling the story of, "Here are the top ten hikes. Here are the greatest rivers to see.
Here are the, you know, the, the, the best snow conditions to see." I don't think it does as well without the media, right? So while I, I...
Certainly we've had to make very hard decisions, I just, I, I, I believe in the long run, and as we-- now that we're self-sustaining and as we start to grow some of these things, I think we will invest more there over time, you know, as part of that overall bundle.
I do believe that. Right. But it needs to serve this, this flywheel, if you will, right? It has to serve the flywheel. It has to. So I mean, like a...
So it's basically like someone, someone reads like best ski resorts, you know, article. It-- They go to Gaia GPS for trail maps. You can connect to Intopia.
I mean, this is like sort of the, [chuckles] you know, the Fitch deck version, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the... And they go to like Intopia to, to, to booking. They book the trip.
That- They, they book their ski tickets. They book their ski rentals, the ski instruction. Yeah. You know? That, that data gets fed back into the content and, and that is the...
And then, you know, Outside Days becomes the sort of the, the IRL expression of the ecosystem, and you've got a basically a B2B platform for the outdoor industry. So they're not coming to you just for ad pages, right?
You're actually, you're a business partner, right?
'Cause I think one of the big things, sometimes this is lost within this, the, in journalism, is like that-A lot of time, you know, people don't look at you know, your advertisers are looking for, like, business partners.
I mean, they're just looking for c-- they're not just, but they're looking for commercial transactions, and if you can if you can be a business partner rather than an ad seller, that's a much better position to be at.
Oh, I, I mean, you know, obviously, whether, you know, even at Under Armour, we were still selling advertising. I mean, when I was there- Mm-hmm...we were s- we still had an ad platform for MapMy, MyFitnessPal.
We were still selling... You know, e- we couldn't sell in category. I couldn't go sell to Nike, right? But I was still selling to auto partners and all- Right...kinds of people because the platform was there.
And, you know, if I g- if I go back to Reuters or, you know, like, w- and I think about other places that I've been, like,
I believe these partnerships and sort of the ecosystem of partnerships, and especially I feel like this in the outdoor category, are just really important.
Like, I look at our partners right now for Outside Days, like REI Cap One, they're the title sponsor, and, you know, we have a much stronger partnership with them because we're not just doing one thing.
We're not just doing affiliate. We're not just doing advertising. We, we have the festival. We're looking at other parts of the business that they can get involved with, membership, things like that.
And I think that that is the key to self-sustaining and building businesses over time are these partnerships and how you bring them in. E-explain to me why you're, you're looking at advertising in non-end-endemic.
Because I could see the case being, you know, you'd be more valuable to go, like, deeper with endemic categories, with like, you know, the REIs, with the North Faces bec- you know, rather than, like, Nissan or Subaru or whatever, you know, ever, like, you know, there's...
They always have... They have, they have gigantic budgets, right? But, like, they... Talk to me about how you decided on, on that approach with the media assets. Well,
I mean, there's, there's a couple things that I, I would say. The, the, the first is certainly as you just mentioned, like, the budgets are larger.
The sort of, like what I'd say the, the, the number of people in those teams and the agencies they work with are thinking about a whole bunch of different ways to activate.
And as we thought about our ecosystem, like, it wasn't just about putting an ad on a page or getting affiliate. It's like, how do they get involved with Outside Days? How do they do something on the mapping side?
How do they do something with membership? Larger brands, to me, have the capacity to think about those different verticals and will try them, right?
Because they're thinking, they're, they're kind of thinking about all the customer channels that they can get to. And I'm not saying the endemics are not doing that.
Again, I think REI is, like, a great example in our portfolio right now of someone that we have a big partnership with around. Obviously, they're, they're big, Brian, right?
Like, they're thr- I think three and a half billion of revenue or something. It's a big company, right?
But when you start to get down into the niche of, I'm gonna use an example, like it could be a, a specific component, you know, on a bicycle, right? Yeah. Type thing. I think you start to get into...
Think about, like, uh, I'm gonna use an example.
If you're a small company in the camping space or the hiking space or the cycling space, if they have a very limited number of resources, Brian, like at one time, we were the only place to go to get access to customer.
VeloNews was like the only place to go- Mm-hmm...to get access. But today, it's much easier for their one marketing person to go and just, like, spend money in Facebook and Google.
So to be clear, we were losing those budgets over the last fifteen years. Like, I'm saying well before we bought these businesses- Gotcha...right?
We were losing the ability to get that one marketing person to think about, okay, they also wanna go do this thing in the endemic. And I'm not... To be clear, Brian, we have an entire endemic team.
These partners are really important to us, so I don't wanna like, give any impression that, like- Mm-hmm...we, we trying to service them the best that we can, right? To get those dollars in. But it has changed. Right.
It really has changed. So one, one thing that I want to get onto, like Outside Days, is operating, this seems like a very complicated business to operate, I'll be honest with you. Like, [laughs]
because, like, media i-itself is, is, is complicated, I feel like, because you've got this like, you know, church and state divide, you know, the, the kind... Media people, I love media people.
Like, I'm gonna be hanging out with a bunch later t-tonight. I got a, we got a mixer next week. Maybe next time you're in New York, you come to one of the mixers. I, I can't wait.
But, and so I love hanging out with them, y- but they're also very difficult. And, you know, this business is compressed to begin with.
You're operating, like, it seems like to me, like a, a few different businesses in one. I mean, it's one thing to get everything, like, on, like a single sign-in platform.
That alone should get an award, like, you know, with all these different- [laughs]...to be honest with you, non-trivial tasks. Non-trivial. Non-trivial.
But, like, completely different metrics, and we've seen before with content and commerce, right, about how difficult it was for a lot of media businesses to go into other areas.
And that was just, like, Food52 making pots and pans and stuff [laughs] like, you know?
It wasn't like operating technology, like a consumer technology business, a SaaS business, a media business, an experiential business. Am I missing any? [laughs] No. No, I think you covered them all.
[laughs] TV business. We're in the TV business too. Yeah. So it's terrifying. Still, we still have a li- we still have linear channels, Brian.
Like, we're still running linear, like twenty-four seven, three sixty five linear channels. So how do you, how do you suck some of the complexity out of, of this, or is that, is that the mode? I...
Well, in some ways, I would say it's the mode, so I think that's a good, you know, sort of view. I, I would say that we didn't get this right all along either.
I mean, we started it in this, what I would call very complicated matrix model where, you know, we were trying to like-I'm gonna use an example, like the marketing that-- the, you know, chief marketing officer was like, "I gotta handle all of these businesses," right?
Or you know, the chief technology, "Oh my God, I gotta handle all these businesses, so should I focus over here or should I focus over here?"
And I, and I would say, like, that probably was one of my bigger mistakes, and I think it, it was painful, Brian.
Like, I think as we went along, like, there was definitely some challenges with that framework of like- You mean like what to centralize? Yeah, we centralized everything. Okay.
We were basically like, "Look, we're big enough," four hundred people I'd argue were not really big enough to centralize, and that's why we made the big switch.
But, like, a year ago, I basically just said to the team, like, "This isn't working." Like what it-- something about the framework that we have right now.
So what we need to do is we need to really go into three verticals, because that's really what we have. We have... And again, I put experiential with our media business because it's so tied together. Yeah.
But, you know, we basically said, "Okay, Heather, you're gonna control your engineering team, you're gonna control, you know, your marketing, your-- all of the pieces within that division."
Se- you know, Trevor, who runs our SaaS businesses, "Trevor, you, who was the CEO and founder of Intopia, you're gonna run the SaaS businesses."
Lauren Bertolini, who is running our consumer apps, and then we have a head of maps, Klaus Moberg, who came from Roblox, "You guys are gonna run the P&L for the consumer apps," which is largely mapping at this point.
We have a few other things, like, you know, happening there, but general- it's, like, consumer travel will sit in that consumer apps division too. Mm-hmm.
But, like, we, we really bucketed down into three P&Ls that operate, yes, in some silos, but they are, you know, they are working together.
They have motivations to, like, get somebody from content into mapping or content into, you know, travel.
Like they-- we, we have set up a framework where those three business leaders are, you know, they benefit from, like, getting some of these synergies to happen.
But we're already seeing, like, I mean, I would argue that we made the change roughly last summer, and I would say that we're already seeing the benefits. Like we, we, we had a blowout Q4.
Like it was, I mean, December, we were up fifty percent year over year. December year over year. I mean, we just had a blowout Q4. Mm-hmm.
And we're already ahead of plan right now for twenty twenty-six, and I think it's because of this new structure and the, the, like, the real ownership. So it isn't that it isn't complicated, Brian. I, I agree with that.
Like, there's a lot of moving pieces, but now that we have these three sort of divisional, you know, leaders running their business in totality, I think we're starting to see the, the fact that the matrix organization was just way too complicated, and frankly, a lot...
People were waiting a long time to make decisions in the old framework, and that was really slowing us down and making it quite difficult to hit and achieve what we wanted to do.
So is the media, is the media division like a loss leader in this, or, or the, is that profitable? No, they're gonna make, they're gonna make money. They're gonna make money. Okay. So it's not like...
'Cause I think that is always the question about, and a-a-and is, is what, what role the media assets play, particularly next to, to... Look, SaaS, SaaS businesses are, are, are, have, uh, just have different dynamics.
Consumer apps have different dynamics. Media, you have to recreate the product, like, every day. I mean, it's not, [chuckles] it's not- Yeah...for the faint of heart. I sometimes, I wish I had a software business.
[laughs] Right? If you use a software, sell it to a bunch of people. Although these days- We gotta come up, we gotta come up with your utility, bro. We gotta come up. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Mixers.
[laughs] But like, okay, so it's not like, it's not like the media assets are just, are, are- No, every, every division will make money this year, and the whole goal is every single division having, being cash flow positive.
Like, actually generating cash for the business so that we can continue to build the balance sheet and be even more self-sustaining, and then, and then start to decide as we really get in a good spot where we're gonna make those new investments.
Now, you know, I know we're gonna talk about Outside Days, but, like, Outside Days was a big investment, Brian. Like, if you look at when we- So wait, like, so just, that's a good segue.
So like- Yeah...explain what es- explain your bet with, with Outside Days, 'cause it's a big, it's like in the festival category. Yeah. Yeah.
So the original, like if I w- if I go back to year one, I, I had, my f- I, all my kids were born in Austin. I lived in Austin for seven years, and I don't know how many South Byes I've been to.
But when I got to Colorado, I was just like kept, like there was things like Outdoor Retailer, which was really a B2B event.
There were a bunch of B2B events, but I was like, "I just don't understand in a category that is about participation," like it is literally like you as a runner, you'll go to a marathon.
You're gonna, you want to participate, you wanna interact, you wanna connect with people. Yeah. I was like, "Why isn't there a consumer event?"
Like, there's no consumer- The expos are always, like, insane before marathons. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not an expo guy, but, like, yeah, I got it.
I was, like, too nervous for the race to, to be shopping- To, to be shopping for shoes [laughs]...the shopping groups. No. Too late. [laughs] Too late, yeah. But you know, I was like...
So we went to Colorado, we went to the state, we went to the city, and we said, you know, like, "What if there was a," you know, they, obviously Outdoor Retailer had moved from Colorado to Park City, and that change had happened, and I was like, "What if, what if we create, like, you know, something that looks like South By, but for the outdoors for consumers and has a B2B component to it?"
But when we first launched it, to be clear, like, I felt like it was more of a marketing brand initiative. Like, the first year I was like, "I don't know how big this thing can be. I don't... I mean, let's see.
We'll sell some tickets to the music. We'll add the music in." We had a film festival.
We had great speakers the first year, and we had all these experiential things, climbing walls and, you know, like, I mean, saunas and cold plunges out in the middle of the outdoors and, you know, we had all this stuff there.
AndWe-- There was this energy the first year that was like, "Wow, we might really be onto something here." And then last year, we just went big. We got much bigger bands. You know, we did much bigger experiences.
We had even, you know, a-- the speaker lineup was, was bigger. The film festival was bigger. And now I think we were like, "Oh, this is real business."
Like, this is something that, you know, we can really invest in here. You know, when Outside Days in three years is gonna be close to an eight-figure business, right?
That-- and but it obviously took a lot of capital to get there, and we'll, we'll make money this year on Outside Days. But, you know, we had to invest the first two years, so it was a bit of a gamble, right?
It was a bit-- especially at that scale, right? I mean, last year we had thirty-five thousand people. You know, we expect this year to be bigger. You know, so it was a gamble for sure.
Now I think I look at it and go, "No, this is a real business, and we wanna figure out how to keep growing it."
Yeah, and the idea around South by Southwest is like, you know, South by Southwest began in, in, in film, right? And then it added interactive. It was about film, but it was about more than film, right? So- Yeah. Yeah...
and I think that's like a kind of interesting, 'cause where-- I think where you're going with Outside is, is you can't just be for like the hardcore climber- No... you know? Like it- No, no.
I mean, if anything, you now need to think about this, you know, person that doesn't actually see themselves as an outdoor person, but they're outdoorsy, right? They're- Yeah...
they're-- they, you know, and so we have to broaden the number of people coming in.
And, and me-- God, I could talk for hours about the health benefits and the clinical work that's going on and all the things that are so important to spend time outdoors.
But I do think we're thinking about that customer, that customer that how do you get the next base of customers into the outdoor category, and that's really what's growing, and so that's really what Outside Days is about.
Again, we had people there like, I mean, I would consider, you know, Alex Honnold is pretty extreme, right?
Like, I mean, he just climbed Taipei one-on-one, and he'll be there, you know, speaking, and, you know, his foundation is involved, and, you know, we have the TV show with them, et cetera.
So there will be some hardcore people that come out to want to see- Yeah... Alex.
But he's also like, you know, he's very approachable, and, like, a lot of people will, you know, get into climbing because of someone like Alex, right? Yeah.
Like I saw with running, like, you know, running when I started, you know, doing like long distance running, it was still like sort of, you know, a fringe-- I don't wanna say, like it was a little bit of a fringe activity, you know.
And then, you know, the corporate five Ks and whatnot, you would like, you know, if you're like a quote unquote real runner, you'd sort of look down on, on the run walking and all of that stuff.
But, you know, the reality is, you know, these categories like expand and particularly outdoors, I think it, it-- it seems to me it will be like a really great category because of the phones.
Like everyone wants to get off the phones. It's, it's the, it's the antidote, Brian. It's the antidote. Like go spend, you know, a day in nature away from your phone. I promise you, you're gonna feel better.
I mean, you know, or even if you go for a run and it's for forty-five minutes, you're gonna feel better, right? And so I mean, that's our theory is that it, it, it is the antidote.
Like people are gonna want to spend more and more time away from technology just to get a break. Yeah. So final thing is, does this still make sense as a VC-backed enterprise, right?
Like, I mean, normally, like, you know, i- if you go down the VC path, you know, you're getting on the train. I mean, that's usually it. Like, you know, you've gotta- Mm-hmm...
you've, you've mapped it out, and it's, I don't wanna say ride or die, but it, it- No, there's only-... kinda has those dynamics... there's only three outcomes, Brian.
There's only three outcomes when you take venture capital money. There's only three outcomes. I know one is not good. No. One is you go bust. [laughs] Right? One is you sell to a strategic, and three is that you go IPO.
There is no other-- So I'm ve- I've been very realistic with the team. I've been like, "These are the three outcomes." Now, I think we're-- I mean, a-again,
you can never say never, Brian, but I do think we are beyond the bust. I think there were definitely challenging times in the last four years where even I maybe was like, "Shit, this is really hard," you know.
But I think- So you're to fall alive... we're def-- yeah, we're, we're here, and we're- That, that's first... thriving right now. Yeah. Like, I'd say we're thriving right now. I can't predict the future.
I mean, we have SaS- SaS-pocalypse, is that what they're calling it?- Yeah... like is going on right now 'cause of AI.
You know, so I mean, there are certainly many, many challenges on the horizon that we have to figure out how to navigate.
But, you know, there are some really like, and this is where I'm a big believer in this category, like, you know, there was a big, big merger recently between EGYM and Playon, which owns Playon, owns ClassPass and some other things.
That, that was like an eight billion dollar merger that just happened. Strava's gonna go public this year. You know, y-you, you got, you know, certainly Peloton's had their fair share of challenges. You got Oura.
You got Whoop in the space. I'm a big believer in this category, and I think that our model is defensible. I think if we can continue to grow, I think we have many opportunities.
So, you know, at this point, what I'd say is we are VC-backed. We are, you know, growth venture-backed, and, you know, those are the-- those to me are the eventual outcomes.
I personally would like to grow it to the point to get IPO and have it be a brand like Outside as a brand that, you know, people can look to, you know, a hundred years in the future.
But, you know, again, I mean, to me, there's three outcomes and, you know, I think hopefully we've at least gotten past the first one at this point.
Again, many tricky things on the horizon but, you know, it could be that someone buys us down the road. Who that is, I c- I, I, I couldn't speculate right now.
But- If you go the IPO path, like would you have to raise more?I don't, I don't know yet.
I mean, the answer is, I think we can grow organically faster even than we are right now, and we're-- I think we're setting up to do that.
I think we could get back to thirty, forty percent growth rates, you know, in the future. And, you know, if you think about that expanded out five years, you could see an IPO path just for organic growth.
But I also think, Brian, our model was set up to continue thinking about the user journey. So I go back to what are we trying to do?
We're trying to make and, and reduce friction for the consumer to ultimately go from inspiration to the activation to community.
Like, how do we bring these people together, whether it's the climbing community, whether it's the running community, whatever it is. And, and so there's a lot...
It's-- this is still a highly, highly fragmented world in our space. Like, there are just lots of utilities, there's lots of SaaS platforms. They don't necessarily work together that well.
So, you know, I-I'm not counting out that we will not raise more capital. It's very possible that we will.
And, you know, two of our, I mean, two of our, in my opinion, two of our big acquisitions, Brian, have been in the last twelve months.
I mean, we bought MapMyFitness back from Under Armour, so I got my first company back, and we bought Intopia.
And those two strategically, like MapMy is doing incredibly well, subscription's growing, the product is doing great, lots of net new registered users, downloads organically.
And Intopia's, I mean, we've just signed two seven-figure deals in the last two months in Intopia, like big, big strategic deals for us. And so like, I mean, we just did those acquisitions in the last year.
And so, you know, I'm, I'm-- I still believe we have one of the only platforms that is thinking about the consumer in this way and ultimately is a,
a, a place where we can bring that fragmentation together for the consumer to have a better experience. Got it. All right. Thank you so much, Robin. Hope to see you at the next mixer. Really appreciate you coming on.
I'm gonna come. I mean, you tell me when it is, and I promise I'll be there. [laughs] All right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you. Thanks, man. [upbeat music]