[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey. We are into August. We'll have episodes throughout the month.
Hope you are going somewhere warm and nice. I'm actually heading out to Italy for a couple weeks, and I'm really looking forward to it. But again, we'll still be podcasting. I actually already recorded them.
In September, we are kicking off a series sponsored by Piano that will feature top CROs and top publishers discussing how they're reorienting their revenue strategies for a very different landscape.
My goal with the show overall really is to figure out, you know, the path ahead for these publishing businesses to get to sustainable business models.
Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done, but I think the contours are s- are starting to come into view. And, you know, one of the biggest shifts that I see happening right now is moving from volume to value.
And I know that sounds simple, and many of these changes, like being audience-focused, do often fall into the no-duh bucket. But shifting businesses is hard. There's ingrained processes, infrastructure, and people.
And one of the areas where I'm seeing a shift is in subscriptions. The rush to subscriptions was, in some ways, a counter to the scale era of accumulating lots of page views.
Yet the strategies often pursued by publishers were mirrors of the page view strategies.
It generally was to pile up tons of subscribers on cheap intro deals, and then hopefully, maybe down the road, move them up the price curve and retain them. You know, that's proven a difficult proposition for many.
Gannett, for instance, recently said it was overhauling its subscription strategy to de-emphasize short-term intro offers in favor of annual subscriptions.
And instead go to a pay-per-article option for those who are on the low end of the price curve.
And l-let's be real, most publishers are not going to convert a large percentage of their audience, and that means that you need to focus on ARPU, on average revenue per user.
This is something that constantly comes up and, and is important. You know, when you, when you go down in volume, you have to make up for it in value. You have to end up making more money off a smaller audience.
It's not perfect with my more with less mantra, but it basically fits. And that's just for, for newspaper assets with Gannett.
I think publishers in lucrative niches have a lot of advantages, and one of them is, you know, there's greater pricing flexibility.
Just as airlines make far more money selling seats in the front of the plane, publishers with these high-value niches can do the same with their audiences.
For example, you know, at the extreme, consider Bloomberg with its, you know, twenty thousand odd dollars for a seat at the terminal, or even Politico with Politico Pro.
You know, publishers in these kind of areas, it's not every publisher, will need to find the segments of their audience that are wi- are willing to pay far higher price points for differentiated products.
Then it's about you gotta figure out what those products are in order to add value to them. And, and it can be data, it can be training, it can be access.
On this episode, I talk with Adi Ignatius, the editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, about how they're adapting to this ARPU era and, and how they're trying to move people up the price curve.
HBR recently launched HBR Executive, a seven hundred dollar a year premium subscription tier aimed at the C-suite. Of course, that makes a lot of sense. And it's a smart move, I think.
You know, it's a sign of a broader shift happening, as I said, across the entire industry. What HBR is doing with Executive is basically to test that, that top end of the curve, and Adi and I get into this.
A lot of this is science, but a lot of it is honestly art. And the question is, how do you capture outsized val-value from the highest value part of your audience?
We talk about the thinking behind the product, the constraints of, of working inside a prestigious institution like Harvard. I mean, there's a lot of advantages to it.
And also why AI looms large, even for a brand like HBR.
We also get into what separates a true membership from what is just a high-priced subscription, 'cause I, I do think that there are differences, and I think words like membership and community are thrown around a lot by marketing teams, but on a product level, they're hard to pull off and, and they're different.
And I think that's, that's pretty clear. You'll get that from this conversation. And we also get into how media brands, you know, evolve without cheapening, you know, what, what built their value over many years.
Hope you enjoy this conversation. If you do, would really appreciate it if you shared it with someone who you thought would also find it interesting. And also leave the Rebooting show a rating and review.
I regularly swing by to check them out. It's something of a scorecard, I guess. But it, it apparently helps people discover the podcast.
Always wanna grow it, of course, and I find growing podcasts to be a pretty difficult thing. There, there are not a lot of growth levers, at least that are obvious to me.
It's a little different than newsletters or certainly website publishing.
But I think that's part of what makes podcasting interesting, is that there aren't these kind of growth hacks, at least that are readily available or that I know of.
So i-in any case, would really appreciate the review or sharing the podcast with others. Now, here's my conversation with Adi. [upbeat music] All right. Let's get started. Adi, thank you for joining me for the show.
Appreciate it. Yeah, it's great to be on. You know, before I was, like, saying how I'm kinda like an obsessive about the HBR brand. I know that sounds kinda strange.
I'm probably not specifically in- It's a little nerdy, but, but it's okay.
It's a, it's a little nerdy, but I think it's really about, like, the brand, because I think at this time of publishing, a lot of brands are just trying to figure out, like, one, are they gonna get to the other side of, of this chasm?And then the other is are we needed?
Like, what is our purpose? What are we about?
Because you know, the Internet really stretched a lot of these brands to try to be all things to all people and I feel like, at least from the outside HBR has a ton going for it and has a really diversified business model, and it's a true brand that gets expressed in a bunch of different ways.
And we're gonna be talking about one of the newest ways that, that you're leading with HBR Executive. But for those who are not as familiar, we don't have to do like...
'cause it's, it can be, at least from the outside, it can get a little complicated to describe like HBR. It's like one of those, what do they call them, the Russian nesting dolls? Yeah. Matryoshka. Yeah.
It's like, it's like that a little bit. So give us the matryoshka [laughing] Of HBR to kick things off. Okay. In English or Russian? 'Cause- No, do it in Russian. What are we doing here? Do it in English.
I know, 'cause you were, you were, you were in Moscow. No, I lived in Moscow a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean our, our... One thing I like about HBR is our basic mission is clear.
I mean, we're, we're trying to, to help your careers.
We're trying to help your institutions work more effectively, and that's, that, you know, that might sound nerdy, but that definitely will, will get our team to work with a pep in their step every day.
Yeah, I mean, we, we try to do it in multiple platforms. I mean, it used to be it was the magazine and every article was 12 pages long. So in the past 15 years or so, we've obviously changed that the way everybody has.
I mean, kind of digital and, and, and various platforms. And so there's a magazine, there's a website. There, there's a, a, a book, a book publishing arm.
We, you know, are, are doing various, various new platforms, podcasts, video, everything. And it, you know, it's really been an effort-- Well, well for 15 years it was an effort to kind of democratize, demystify HBR.
You know, it, it was a daunting brand to some people. So the question was how do you, how do you... What we're writing about is important.
It's about, you know, how you interact with people, how you get things done, how you improve the world, or how you make money. You know, whatever, whatever your motivation. So, so
I think we've always been creating value, and the question is how to, how to enlarge that audience and make it seem not too academic, not too daunting.
And, you know, and that's, that's about platforms and that's about length, and it's about poppiness and peppiness and, you know, all those things that, that we do in this industry. Yeah.
And so you were the, the editor for, I guess over like, what was it, 16 years? 16 years. Yeah.
And so, I mean, that was during the sort of the transition of, I mean, I would guess it is like where it was real- it was really about the digitization.
I think most brands were going through it probably, probably a little bit later maybe than, than, than they should have. But it-- I, I, at least that's the way I, I sort of peg it.
But explain sort of what that period was and then we can talk about now. Sure.
I mean, I mean now all of us have gone through that, so it's, it's not that interesting to say, "Well, you know, we were print and then we were digital."
It, it was a little bit more complicated for us just because, because of our relationship with Harvard Business School. I mean,
Harvard Business Publishing, the company, was set up as an independent company to do the things Harvard Business School couldn't do.
We, we've never been a vanity publishing arm of Harvard Business School, but, you know, there are connections.
So for us to suddenly say, "Well, we're gonna do blogs and we're gonna do short form stuff," and, you know, that, that required, I, I guess more people to sign off.
You know, you know, you just, you know, every, every institution has what they think is its special sauce and you come in and say, "Okay, great. And we're gonna do some new things," and nobody ever likes that, right?
So, so- So you have your own innovator's dilemma that's kind of fitting. Yeah. No, classic. Yeah, absolutely. [laughing] Nice, nice reference there. So yeah, so, you know, and, but, but that's how it happens.
I mean, you know, people, people are skeptical longer than you think, and then they realize the sky didn't fall in and our authors are s- they still wanna write for us and, and our, our...
We're, we're growing our, our, the audience that is, is reading us, and by the way, we're more successful, you know, as a, as a business too. So, you know, so, so we went through the process everyone went through.
It was, you know, slightly more complicated, but we, you know, we pulled through and, and, you know, now we just have to keep reinventing things moment after moment after moment. Yeah.
And one of the big ones is obviously in the shift in, in most publishing is to subscription. And yeah, HBR has been successful from everything that, that I've seen with getting people to pay.
I mean, because for the obvious reason is that people use HBR to improve their careers and therefore to make more money, and you're much more likely to sell subscriptions when people can use that content to, to make more money.
That's basically it. Yeah.
I mean, I, I think a lot of our readers, I mean, not every person in business reads Harvard Business Review, and I think, I think the profile of people who tend to read HBR, you know, they're people who are interested in ideas.
Often that means that they're mission-driven and purpose-driven in their business. So, you know, the motivation, sure, to make money.
Everybody is in business to make money and to be more efficient and make more money for their shareholders, et cetera. But I, I think our reader base and, and, and certainly
we as a, as a publisher feel, you know, w-we, we're not just talking about shareholders, right?
We're talking about stakeholders more broadly and, and we're talking about the issues that kind of matter for the world, like sustainability and diversity and- Mm-hmm... fact-based decision making.
So, so, you know, those are values that we take seriously, and I, I think our readership does too. I, I think the basic profile. So, but y-you get it at a, at a good point.
We need to, we need to show clear value, and we're nobody's first read. So, you know, we have to be super practical. Like you read something and you...
if you, if you're inspired and wanna do something now, we've kind of given you the playbook for how to do that. And it has to be differentiated.
It can't be stuff you're reading elsewhere 'cause, you know, it- we are relatively, you know, highly priced. Yeah. So talk to me about, talk about not being the first read.
And I understand what you mean by that because you're not a news publisher, right? Like you're not-A substitution product for The Wall Street Journal or for the Financial Times Yeah.
We-we're definitely not and, and I mean, we're obviously not. That's, I mean, it's not a, a controversial statement I made, but, but it, it just...
We remind ourselves of that all the time, that we can't just match what is already out there, what is already even in the zeitgeist. We have to, you know, we can't just say, "Wow, we're living under uncertain times."
We have to say, "We're living under uncertain times. It's stuff maybe we've never exactly seen before, but the world has lived through uncertain times before."
And, you know, th-there are approaches if you're a business or if you're trying to manage your career with kind of hyper uncertainty, how you think about increasing your chances of getting through this okay. Right.
So let's talk about HBR Executive and, and sort of thinking behind that. Obviously, you know, HBR provides a l- a lot of content that people are willing to pay for.
I think one of the, the big questions for a lot of publishers is, yes, how can you get as many people to pay as possible, right?
But then it's also is, like, how can we, you know, how can we have the price curve such that we're not leaving money on the table?
That, like, you know, just having a one-size-fit, fits-all subscription offering is usually not the best move for publishers and, and most want to obviously have higher priced, you know, quote-unquote, memberships.
And, and that to me, like, a membership -- to me, a membership is different from a subscription in that it's, it's beyond access to content. It, it, it needs to, it needs to have a, a bunch of different aspects to it.
I don't think it has to be community-based. Oftentimes it is community-based, but it doesn't have to be, and we can talk about how that's a little bit of a tricky proposition for a brand like HBR.
But talk to me about the, the thinking behind HBR Executive. Sure. So I, I mean, this is a new subscription offer.
It's the highest tier, highest priced subscription offer that we off- you know, that we offer, that we've ever offered.
And it's really e-exclusive content that you won't get anywhere else on HBR that is aimed at, you know, CEOs and their top teams. It's a, it's a departure for us in some ways, uh,
y-you know, in the, in the sixteen years that I've been at HBR, we really focused a lot of that time into, you know, m- m- you know, growing the funnel, enlarging the audience, trying to reach people who were early career in addition to the sort of senior people.
W-we spent about a year doing segmentation work, you know, hired a consultant to work with us and decided that it made sense for us not to abandon the, the kind of l-lower level people who were interested in HBR, but to, you know, to use the, the jargon, to super serve the, the sort of highest level, the C-suite CEOs and their, and their teams.
So, so that's what HBR Executive is. So it's, you know, I do a, a weekly newsletter that tries to, you know, capture the zeitgeist and offer, you know, interesting practical advice.
We have videos that are, you know, sort of master class videos to help senior leaders develop their, their skills.
We have what we call playbooks, which are, you know, kind of best practices for dealing with, you know, challenges that a lot of people are, are, are feeling right now.
And then live events of various kinds, large, small, in-person, virtual. The first one is I'm doing a, you know, a Q&A with Larry Summers on June twenty-fourth.
So, you know, just trying to, to produce people who, who, you know, our, our subscribers wanna, wanna hear from. Yeah. Okay. So talk to me about the pricing, 'cause how did you determine...
Because I, I'll be honest with you, I thought it, I thought it was kinda low. I've heard that a lot. [laughs] Yeah. No, I've heard that a lot.
So okay, so, so, so- I was thinking I was gonna like, it'd be like, okay, ten thousand bucks or something. [laughs] 'Cause if you're talking about CEOs, like, I mean, like, I don't know what the TAM is.
The values, all sorts of acronyms to try to get some sort of credibility here. So I mean, I already what... I, I name-checked The Innovator's Dilemma. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going deep, deep in my bag.
So we're not trying to be charitable and, and to keep the price artificially low for any reason. That, that would not be a motivation.
You know, look, w- one of our advantages is we've always been focused on subscriptions. You know, yes, of course, we sell advertising.
We have sponsorship of various kinds, but we've always been a subscription business, which I think has helped us through some of the, some of the turmoil that other publishers have faced.
So previously, our highest price subscription, you know, the kind of you get everything, was a hundred and eighty dollars.
So to go from one eighty to seven hundred, which is what HBR Executive is, and, and with HBR Executive, you get all this new stuff, plus of course the core HBR subscription, you know, that's a big jump.
If you compare it to, you know, some competitors that are also targeting this level, it, it, it is cheap, right? They are charging ten thousand or more. Often the focus is on convening. Yeah. We will do some of that.
We may evolve into doing more of that.
We're not, you know, we're w- we're doing, we're doing some of that at this point, but, you know, I, I think the, the, the competitors that are successful to charge a lot of money, it tends to be, okay, they convene people, CEOs, whatever, several times a year.
They get a good group. People come together, they can talk. It feels like a safe space. You know, that's... A-and that's admirable. You know, I'd, I'd like to do more of that.
Ours is primarily content play to people who are used to, to paying subscriptions, so to go from one eighty to seven hundred is a big jump. I agree with you. Yeah. Everybody says it sounds cheap.
I-I've, I've gotten that a lot and... Yeah. Well, I mean, I was looking at it's like the, the, you know, the, the...
I just did a, a podcast with Josh Stinchcomb from The Journal, and we were talking about, you know, a lot of their initiatives in this area because The Journal as a brand is a different position now.
It's like a halo brand within a broader portfolio at Dow Jones with a lot of information services. Doesn't mean it's not a great business on its own, but they're looking to wring more value out of this.
I mean, some of their, like, executive councils, I think, can go for up to twenty-five K like a pop, but they're very convening focused. Now, you guys are different, right?
And I think that's part of y- the HBR brand, right? Like, I mean, like, in that, like, you're not about... You're not, like, going to be, like, convening first.No, I'd...
Look, I'd like to do, I would like to do more convening. I, I don't think our brand is known for that. That doesn't mean we can't move into the spa- that space.
And, you know, we do, at this point, two major completely virtual events every year.
We charge, I don't know, you know, four hundred dollars per ticket, and we get, you know, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred people who, who show up, who wanna spend a day l- you know, listening to c- Q&As with CEOs and sort of master classes by passionate people who are making interesting points about things.
So, you know, so, so we have a, a piece of that, but it, it may well be that HBR Executive evolves into, I, I would call it a subscription thing now, that it evolves into more of a membership offer that, that could have some of that meaningful convening.
I mean, I, I... There's no reason why we shouldn't be in that space. It's just- Okay... we're not there at this point.
So you don't see, like, it's like that this is not a brand that, that necessarily makes sense for a quote-unquote community model. Because there's...
Look, a lot of people like to talk about community these days, and, you know, there's a lot of these executive membership communities out there, and they do really well, and they're really high priced, right?
But they also come with, I think they come with some kind of brand risk that is, you know, inevitable wh- when you go into any community model. Like, I mean, you could have set up like a, a Slack channel or something.
I see a lot of people do that.
And, and for me personally, I, like, visit my, like, HOA WhatsApp group and I'm like, "Uh, okay, that might not work for a lot of cases," [chuckles] because these, these kinds of free for all community can, can, can really devolve.
Look, I, I mean, I'm envious of DealBook and Andrew Ross Sorkin and, you know, his ability to convene pretty much anybody to get together and, and have really interesting conversations.
I mean, you know, I'd be happy to do that. You know, I, I don't... It's not really our brand to, to, to do things for the sort of celebrity aspect of it.
To me, you know, where community gets interesting is if we, if we have a, a large, you know, group or, or membership or something of, let's say, CEOs or, or, or people basically at that level, you know, what point would they be interested in writing meaningful content, right?
So- Yeah... and I don't, I don't just mean if you join up, you can, you can write something and we'll publish it. I mean, that's junk. But I'm talking about, you know...
So, so a lot of the articles that we do that are, that are suc- Well, when we do research, what people tell us they want more than anything else is, "I wanna see how my competitors dealt with a problem."
So it's sort of a case, the case study. Yeah. Right? It doesn't have to be identical problem, but it's like, you know, watching the, watching the game tape, you know, seeing how other people do it.
I'd love to scale that and, and let's say everybody who is a member of what we do, you know, they write a piece how we did something, how, you know, how we, you know, s- figured out how to hire talent in a super competitive environment or how, you know, whatever it is, how we transform the business, 'cause that they can write about.
You know- Yeah...
CEOs can't just suddenly write the next, you know, Clay Christensen disruption type article that will stand up and that would be, you know, a conflict for us to try to edit it and, and, and if there ever was.
But if they're writing about it, you know, how they, how they transformed their company, that you're suddenly scaling up those pieces.
And so, so that's where community and membership gets especially interesting to me, if you really have a community where people are creating content for each other and, and maybe that, that goes out more broadly. Mm-hmm.
So is this, is this really focused on, like, CEOs and C-level, or is it for people on their pathways to becoming there? Because a lot of these brands, you know, the people who they are theoretically for are a small...
Are like a s- not a sliver of the audience, but are a minority of the audience. I mean, you always get the aspirants. You always find like a brand that says it's for a specific group at a pinnacle and they're...
and then you're like, "But wait a second, there's only like a thousand of these people." [chuckles] Right. Like [laughs] you know, it's not a hundred thousand. I, I think that's a smart question.
I, I mean, it reminds me when I was at Time Magazine. You know, Time Magazine covered, like, inside the Beltway really intensely. Yeah.
And, and I think that was partly to give subscribers or readers, you know, all around the country this sense that everybody inside the Beltway was reading Time Magazine.
I don't know if anybody was, but you know, that was, that sort of got it what you're talking about. You know, as we said before, it's a crowded space.
There are a lot of people who are creating products for this really high level. I mean, that is our audience now. I mean, so, so, you know, we're, we're not the first to, to come up with, with a product.
We, we've already got that audience, so the question is how do we, how do we give the one... How do we, how do we lean into this moment where, you know, with AI, it, it, it's, you know, we know it's coming after us all.
We're not sure how. So that's, that must keep everybody awake at night.
And then this, the, the pl- political and geopolitical uncertainty, you know, th-that this is just a, you know, a moment that is, that is really challenging.
So the answer is, you know, yes, we, we probably have more C-suite, you know, subscribers than anybody else. We're not gating it.
We're not saying, "Well, if you're not that level-" So it's not like an apply to and attend where you gotta like, you know- Yeah... give them a, give their LinkedIn link. I mean, we thought about that.
Did we wanna sort of say- Yeah... you know, "You can't, you can't get in. There's a waiting list," you know, sort of a false- Yeah. No. This is Miami operates on that. [chuckles] No, I know.
[chuckles] It's tempting, but no. But we're not doing that.
Yeah, I think if we move to a membership model, it really would be you, you need to be at a certain level because we're gonna w- you know, as, as other people do, we're gonna break you down and, and they're gonna be, you know, CFO groups and CHR group, uh, groups- Okay...
and CEO groups. And, and then we would go.
But at this point, look, I mean, if you're, if you're paying seven hundred dollars and you wanna be part of this, you are either in the C-suite or you are close to it or, or super ambitious, and I would, you know, put money on you that you'll [chuckles] probably end up there.
[chuckles] There you go. You can see it's like the be- the, the fastest way to the C-suite is to get the HBR Executive, and then, you know, everything else is just execution at that point. Thank you for the testimonial.
[laughs] No problem. But I think that's a good, I think that's a good differentiator between a true membership model and... Because these things are all used interchangeably.
Like I was saying, the journal like always says, I think they, they used to at least always say that they had like a membership of like three point seven million people, and I'm like, "I don't know about that."
I mean, most people are just subscribing to, to, to get access to the news content, and it's not quite a membership community exactly. And- Yeah. I, I don't know about them. We're, we're... This is a subscription for us.
But, but, you know, we, we do wanna evolve into membership that would be more like what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah.How big do you think-- Like, what is the market you think that would...
That you can sort of get to upgrade? Because if you have-- How many, how many digital subscribers you have? I've seen a few numbers out there. Yeah. It's, what is the number? It's three hundred or...
Well, our paid circulation is three hundred and forty-five thousand. Okay. You know, that's like the last audited figure, I think.
So, you know, pretty much everybody is digital and then a large number are digital and print. So w-what's the question? What's the addressable market for- Yeah.
What's the addressable market of that three hundred and forty-five thousand? I mean, this is not gonna be new. I mean, this is basically getting people to upgrade, right? Yeah. I mean, we think both.
I mean, uh, our, our goal is to do both, that we'd like people to upgrade to that higher level. But we're also hoping... I mean, I mean, one of the challenges for all of us is, you know, will, will CEOs read?
I did not say do, can CEOs read? [chuckles] I think they can. Some of them are rusty, but- We, we have graduated to that point to have the first, like, sort of illiterate CEO- [chuckles]...
just 'cause they listen to podcasts. They're- [chuckles] They listen to enough podcasts to get, to get to where they were. That's interesting. I, I think it's a fair question.
You know, you can create this great content, but then you have to solve the problem. You know, our, our CEOs, do, do they have the time to actually tune into this?
So, so my anecdotal hunch is right now, yes, more than any other time.
You, you know, we, we did a, you know, kind of a virtual panel on tariffs the other day, and, you know, when tariffs were more sort of in the news and, and confusing and, you know, five thousand people signed up.
So I, I just, I think there is a willingness to, to, to tune in to something like that kind of content even for busy people who might not normally wanna do that i-in this moment.
And I think this is a, this is a particular moment.
And, and I think w-we assume some of our audience will be, you know, the chiefs of staff who've, who read what we, what we produce and, you know, summarize, summarize for the chief exec. You know, w-w-we'll find out.
We'll find out what, what content, what, what, what platforms, you know, what-- which ones really work. I mean, this-- I mean, we're a startup.
W-when we launched this thing two weeks ago, we had zero subscribers to HBR Executives. Yeah. You know, and then one came in, and we're like, "Cool," you know. "Should we call the guy? That's so cool."
[chuckles] You know, and then, and then, then it grows and, and, you know.
So we're, we're sort of like where we are, and we wanna see a lot more growth, but, but we will learn, you know, what, what is, what is effective, what...
You know, I, I-- We've created an advisory board of CEOs and former CEOs, you know, a lot of really interesting, you know, in some ways, very prominent people, to give us feedback.
I mean, they've promised this isn't just a simp bot. Like, "Yes, you can use my name on your advisory board."
But that they will tell us whether the content we're producing is valuable, if it's differentiated, if we're asking the right questions. So I'm excited about that, that we have a couple feedback loops.
And the biggest feedback loop... Look, uh, you know, w-we're w-we're an established brand. We have a great sponsor partner, Egon Zehnder, the big European executive search firm that...
I mean, they're big in the US too, but they're particularly well-known in Europe.
That's a kind of sponsor partner from day one, and it's, it's the most, you know, kind of the deepest sponsor partnership we've ever had in anything. So, so, so we're excited about this.
You know, the, the, in some ways, the, the, the metric, the KPI that, that I'll be most interested in is renewals. I mean, based on our reputation, we can get people to buy this thing.
But what, what is interesting is whether after a year, people will think, "Yeah, that, that was valuable. I got enough actionable sort of bits of information that I will happily renew."
And that, you know, that to me is the, the, the test of whether we've succeeded or not. Yeah. Just one, one more question on the, the pricing. How did you arrive at that? 'Cause I...
Usually with pricing it's a little bit of guesswork. Like it's [chuckles] like people like will make it like very formulaic and stuff, but at some point at the end, it's a lot of gut.
So there's a lot to be said for guesswork. You know, when we sold our brownstone in Brooklyn- Yeah...
you know, the, the, the property agent had a number, and we were about to go to the market with it, and my wife just said, "No, it should be higher." And it was-- She didn't know. I mean, she was not a...
It was sort of random, but she was also right. I mean, uh, you know, it, it turned out that her spidy, spidy sense of the market was- Yeah... was better than we were getting.
So yeah, sometimes, sometimes your gut tells you a lot. You know, you always operate from gut when you're setting pricing, but we did a lot of market testing.
We do a lot of market research, and we're, you know, it's quantitative and it's qualitative, and you try to figure out what it is people want.
And people don't always know what they want, but, but what is it they seem to want that they don't already have, and, and, and what's the willingness to pay?
What's the price point that where they stay interested and don't drop out? So, you know, I, I think we were looking at maybe a thousand dollars at one point, probably never higher than that.
Uh, ended up at seven hundred based on the various qualitative and quantitative feedback we, we got. It, it, it, you know, it, it, it's, it's not large compared to some other competitors.
It gives us a chance to, to push up the price as we add new features. I mean, that's... And, and/or evolve into a membership model. So- Yeah. But, but that's where we are for now.
And also, you as a media guy will appreciate this, we're not, we're not offering monthly subscriptions, right? It, it's only annual.
I, I, I kinda think all publishers wish, you know, we'd never, you know, kind of introduced the monthly subscription 'cause it just, you know, as you know, people come in, they come out, and it's- Yeah...
the old-fashioned annual was, was pretty sweet. Yeah. I think particularly for this kind of... I mean, if you're gonna, if you're gonna be...
You gotta be pot committed for this kind of thing, and it, it makes a lot more sense than, than doing some kind of monthly membership. W-who do you consider the, the competitive set?
But for HBR generally, and then for this, this product specifically. A-and I ask that for a couple reasons.
One is just in general, but the other is so many people, particularly as the general news market has collapsed, I don't know how else to put it, right? Have been trying to, to find safety-In these kinds of areas.
And I'm surprised by the people who I'm talking to who are talking to me like they're HBR about reaching business decision-makers. People like Newsweek are.
I just had Jess Sibley the other week, uh, she-- who I just published it actually today when we're talking from Time.
They're talking about being a B2B pub-publisher that reaches like the C-suite and are developing products around that.
A-and then obviously, the, you know, the, the regular, uh, Forbes and Fortune and Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. BI is now saying that they're gonna do like events.
They're gonna try to move up market after being-- trying to straddle all parts of the market. But who do you see as the competitive set? 'Cause I think like for a lot of media companies, it's just like so much.
It's everywhere, but it's getting very crowded, particularly when it comes for influential audiences. Yeah. You're absolutely right and, you know, we're, we're certainly not the first to address this market.
But again, you know, this sort of high level is our audience.
So, you know, we, we-- I think, I think we can win in this space even if we sort of weren't the first movers in terms of targeting a product at, at that level.
Yeah, I mean, the boring question or the boring answer people always have is, you know, it's-- we're, we're battling for, you know, share of time and mind share, and so everything is a competitor.
You know, right now in, in, in terms of the scariest competitor, I think it's large language models.
You know, they were all trained with our content before we told them, you know, before we all woke up and said stop, and, and some of them have stopped, some of them we know haven't stopped.
So, I mean, this is familiar to anybody who follows, follows media, but just- Yeah...
you know, not only are we not getting the kind of traffic referrals from, from Google, but, you know, the large language models, you know, they're, they're really getting good.
And yes, they hallucinate and make mistakes sometimes, but they're really getting good. And, and, you know, you can, you can find a lot of really valuable kind of, you know, management,
you know, advice and help and tools with, you know, particularly the best versions of, of, say, ChatGPT.
So, so I think that's a, that's a, you know, a possibly ex-existential threat that, that, that we and others have that is only just starting to play out. LinkedIn is, is a, is a big competitor.
You know, at one point LinkedIn relied on us for a lot of their content to sort of- Mm-hmm... create stickiness when they wanted to be more than just a collection of digital resumes.
You know, then they evolved to where they create content and their members create content.
And, you know, I could argue that our content's better, but, but, you know, it's-- there's a lot of good stuff out there and, and, you know, they didn't need us.
So we have fifteen million followers on LinkedIn, so we, you know, we, we, we need that audience, but, but I think in some ways that, that ecosystem is a, is competition to HBR because they're covering a lot of the, the same topics.
And then with, with HBR Executive, with our, our product for the, you know, CEOs and their top teams, yeah, I mean, you know, you mentioned The Wall Street Journal.
You know, even some surprising, you know, Semafor has a, has a product now.
You know, there, there are a lot of people who are, are, as you say, they're, you know, they're trying to figure out who, who will still pay for a subscription.
And, and that pushes you up the, the value chain, you know, away from the recent, recent college grads who might enjoy your content into
this more, you know, this, this higher level, higher up the hierarchy audience that has a, a greater willingness to pay. But, you know, again, because of all that competition, you know, you have to prove your value.
And, you know, for us, for us, the main differentiator, you know, as I was saying before, is we have to provide really practical, actionable, but not just like off the top of my head, but, but sort of research-based or otherwise, you know, kind of proven, tested
responses to the challenges people, people are, are experiencing. I mean, that, that, that's us.
And whether we do it, you know, Axios style in, you know, short bulleted form or, or, or long form, you know, that has to be the, the, the basic brand promise- Mm-hmm...
that we will, we will give you kind of proven approaches to the challenges that you face- Yeah...
that you may not know are, are commonly faced, and that there is data out there, and there is, there is research out there. So are you, are you confident that, that ChatGPT won't be able to do that?
I mean, I, I was using deep research to prepare for this. It gave me a nice... I'm not saying it gave me an HBR level, you know, [chuckles] piece about, about HBR, but like, you know, these...
Like, as we said, like, these things are getting pretty good at a lot of types of content. And, and I know a lot of, a lot of us would like to think that, no, we're special, and it won't come for us. But I don't know.
Technology keeps advancing. Well, what would you say if I, if I said that we ran your previous interview transcripts to figure out what questions you were gonna ask? [laughs] I mean,
I, this is like spy versus spy, I guess. I don't know. [laughing] Yeah. Yeah. So I think we don't know the answer to that.
You know, we're, we're, we're trying to stay ahead of, of generative AI by our sort of curatorial personal touch, convening, you know, the things that, that, that maybe these large language models can't do yet.
I, I, I think that's a fair question, I think, for us to say, "Oh, no, well, you know, people will always want what we do."
It's early days and, and I, I think the truest thing is that these, you know, generative AI models are advancing exponentially. And, you know, the stuff that we laughed at, it can't do math, you know, a year ago.
It can do math. Like, you know, they, they, they're, they're... You, you, you don't want to underestimate the power of, of generative AI, I think, to, to replace aspects of what we do.
And so I think the s- the strategic challenge for all of us is, okay, that will be the world, and how do you, how do you succeed in that world? And I don't, I don't have an answer for us.
You know, we're, we're trying to be super flexible and super adaptable and introducing new products, but, you know, we've, we've got to pay attention to this nonstop- Yeah...
all the time.I mean, did that influence any of the product choices here in that like I always say the more interactive the type of content, the, the, the kind of better.
Like static text content to me of any kind is the most at risk.
Text just in general is a clump of data that's really easy to be reorganized, and as someone who's created a lot of text content, I, I say that with some degree of sadness [chuckles].
[chuckles] But interactive content is less so, you know. G- and, and I think convening, I think the reason convening or events or anything are, is that is because AI cannot do that. But I think also,
you know, just having, you know, I, I believe in the webinar actually. I think I don't like the word webinar. I don't either. I've banned it. It's funny. [laughs] I call mine online forums.
But like honestly, like I believe in webinars because they have an interactive element that, yeah, you can get those kind of things with, you know, going back and forth with a chatbot, but honestly that's in some ways the chatbot is outsourcing a lot of the work to you because it can't figure out like what you want, and it doesn't wanna give you choice.
But I think being able to go back and forth with an actual expert live has a different element than, than, than interacting with some kinda chatbot. I, I, I believe in that certainly, certainly for now.
And, you know, as I said before the... this panel we did on tariffs, you know, it, it was the right, the right time and the right platform, and, you know, we had five thousand people sign up.
I think, you know, I, I, I think this innovation is something that we think will, you know, a-a-again, we're, we're mission driven. It is hard at the top. It's lonely at the top. You know, we get it.
We have authors and, and ideas that we think can, can actually help. So that's, that's the point. You know, I think it can be successful for us commercially.
It, you know, it may be that, that that's, that's a kind of-- that's a reform, a, an innovation on our existing business that buys us time to figure out the future business.
You know, I, I, I don't, I don't think anything that we've talked about so far that we're doing insulates us from the ultimate threat of generative AI. I mean, yeah, yeah, maybe live events does, and that's fine.
But I, I, you know, i-in my mind, this is an innovation that's really important and will be great, and it'll be fun to, to do, but, you know, we need to- Yeah...
simultaneously think about maybe a very traumatic rethink of, of everything we do because of the rise of gen AI. Yeah.
So you've spoken to a lot of, lot of business leader, leaders over the time, uh, who have dealt with, you know, different secular changes to the, the business and political environment.
Is AI-- does your gut tell you that it is qualitatively different as far as how the challenges that it is, it is placing on these people who are, who are stewards of these businesses?
Because I mean, honestly, sometimes, like I'll like... Pretty much anything is plausible to me at this point.
If like, you know, B-- it's like I open up X or something and I'm like, "Oh, Bill Gates says that we won't need doctors in ten years." I'm like, "Oh, okay. Sure." [chuckles] You know?
Like nothing surprises me [chuckles] at this point. Yeah. But, but it's usually like, you know, five or ten years.
I, I, I make note of the time, of the timestamps, and I don't doubt that these, that, that all, this, this, this raft of changes that are coming.
But I almost feel like these, the apocalyptic warnings that are coming, I can imagine them being conversely paralyzing versus catalyzing as far as leading organizations, because how are you gonna make decisions if you have no idea if you're gonna have doctors in a few years?
So good questions. I mean, you know, I was just talking to Karim Lakhani at Harvard Business School, who is one of the more interesting people on kind of AI in the workplace.
And you know, a-- his observation, he consults everybody, is that, you know, CEOs are talking a lot about AI. They know that they need to talk a lot about AI. They need to, you know, read the reports and talk about it.
They're not using AI, you know. There is this, there is this... So, so his view is that, you know, most, most business leaders have no idea really what the, what the kind of opportunities are.
And, and, and, you know, he's a, he's a techno-optimist.
He's a, he's a believer in AI, and, you know, he, he thinks it will absolutely remake every aspect of work, and that, you know, you just, you have to dive in and figure that out ASAP.
The apocalyptic part of that, I guess, would be that it wipes out all jobs. I, I don't know. You know, I, I, I could probably argue e-either side on that.
You know, the optimists are like, "Well, it'll be man plus machine. You know, it, it'll be this, this kind of hybrid, you know, interaction."
And I think that's true, but I, I feel like, you know, machine will wipe out most of the men and women, and that, you know, there'll be sort of, you know, one human for, for many bots and agentic bots.
And so it may be that... It may be the new jobs are created that replace the old ones, but I, I guess I believe... Who was it? It was the head of Anthropic who... What was it? Within five years, right?
I mean, you know- Yeah... ha-half of white collar entry jobs will be eliminated. I mean, that- I don't know where they're coming up with these very specific figures. If they wanna [chuckles]
I mean, the very believable ones like don't make it like half. It's like sixty-three percent of white collar jobs- Yeah... will be gone in three years. It's like- That's how to get your attention.
It's like, you know, if you throw garbage here, you will be fined a hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Like you notice that on a sign. You don't notice two hundred dollars.
But do you sense this, this, this being different, I guess? Because like, let's be real, like a lot of these... I mean, you've talked with a lot of executives.
Nobody wants to be caught with their pants down, and anytime any of these like these supposed massive change is coming, you have to name-check them.
I've seen those, the, the, the metrics about the number of times like AI is like name-checked in, in earnings calls [chuckles] and you know.
And, and that, that's to be expected because you have to message to the market that we're on it, right? Even if you're not on it, you have to message that.
But do you sense that this is like a different management and leadership challenge?I do, and, and but I wouldn't trust me. I mean, I, I, you know, again, I don't know where we are in the hype cycle, if, if it's- Yeah.
[chuckles]... if we're hype, we're counter hype. I'm not sure where we are right now. I, I guess I've just, you know, li- listened to enough people who, who I trust, who, who again, not, not necessarily a good barometer.
But so yeah, I, I think, I think there is a fundamental shift happening, and I think, you know... The, the mistake is to look at, at AI and say, "Well, it makes mistakes."
You know, if, if you get past the notion that it's meant to be a flawless fact machine, it's, you know, it's not.
But as a collaborative partner that we will all have our own personal, you know, agentic bots who will, you know, go to school with us, who will learn our, our study habits, who will learn our processes and will, you know, travel with us from job to job.
You know, it's just... That, that's not really sci-fi. That's kind of already, already happening.
So yeah, I, I guess I, I, I th- I think it will rework the white collar workforce in fundamental ways and, and that it, you know, it's only just starting. Mm-hmm.
And for the record, I never said that about the Metaverse. Yeah. [chuckles] Okay, good. Now what about Web3? Well, Y2K though was- Yeah, Y2K-... very scary to me.
Well, I do remember Y2K when, you know, people were like going to the ATMs, like, you know, getting out. I guess at the time you only had to get out like five hundred dollars that would last you a few weeks.
But, you know, I... You know, people were like not go- going to New York City during- Yeah... Y2K. [chuckles] So, and a whole cottage industry got, got- Yeah... created.
I don't think that that's necessarily the case here. What, what about the media business?
I mean, there's a lot of apocalyptic warnings about the media business and, you know, some of these are directly attributable to AI, some of them are only tangential.
Obviously, you know, search, the specter of Google Zero is, is hanging over all businesses to some degree, all publishing businesses, some far more than, than others.
But you've, you've been in this industry for a long time. Mm-hmm. I mean, are... Is, is it time to... [chuckles] It's too late for some of us to go into commercial real estate- [chuckles]...
but for those who, who aren't. Yeah, no, I, I... Yeah, I'm thinking about maybe going back to trade school. Uh, you know- Make room at the pencil factory, both Adi and I will be on the line.
I mean, so there are different ways to look at that. I mean, you know, I think there are people who are, are, are reinventing local news in ways that are meaningful. Uh, you know, I think that's happening in Baltimore.
I think, you know, MassLive. You know, there, there is a formula to kind of get you established that you can grow from and, you know, that tends to involve things like high school sports and covering the lottery.
You know, so things that, that, I don't know, you, you, you could do and, and get engagement and then, and then build from that.
So I mean, in some ways, look, y- y- I, I can't remember if you s- you said this earlier or not, but, but whether it was when we were recording or not.
But, you know, in some ways the media landscape has never been more vibrant. It's just, it's very dispersed. So, you know, so, so what models work? I mean, The New York Times model...
You know, The New York Times i- is unique, but I think its model of we have various ways of funding the journalism we do, in their case it's with, you know, a series of, of hugely successful apps, is an, is an interesting model.
I mean, you know, the rich philanthropist, y- you know, they come and go, but when they come, that's, that's a good model. I'm not sure why Jeff Bezos still owns The Washington Post.
I can't imagine what, what positive that, that does for him, but, but you know, the, the- I think he's stubborn. That's my guess. I guess. I guess it's why does Elon Musk still... Why did he buy, you know, X?
It's like sometimes you, you troll yourself into making these purchases and then you're sort of stuck with it. So yeah, so, uh, but, but The Washington Post is, is a good example.
I mean, that, that's a great paper, great people, and, you know, how in the world are they gonna make money? And I, I, you know, I think it's Kara Swisher who always says, "I have a million ideas what I would do."
Uh, good for her, I'm not sure I have any. You know, it, it's... And I'm not sure the, the current management has any.
So that, you know, it's, it's, you know, and then you look at The New York Times, which again is unique and again has these different funding sources, which I think- Yeah...
is a really, a really interesting approach to some of the news. Well, you know what one of the Post's ideas is? Is to go into these kind of like high price subscriptions for influential [chuckles] people. That's a...
I mean, that's the thing, it's like that's why I asked about the competition because a lot of people are saying, look, and I don't think it necessarily fits for most brands, is, "Hey, we have these influential people in our audience."
It's like, well yeah, you have like, you know, a couple million people in your audience. You're gonna have some that are, that are very influential.
That doesn't necessarily mean that, that you have the ability to, I don't know, to, to command...
Your brand m- might not be able to command that kind of convening power or just, you know, have that cachet with them when it comes to their identity as like business decision-makers.
But- But I, but I think what a lot of people are saying is business news and a business audience are likely to do better than a general news audience. And, and that's probably been true for a long time.
So the, you know, the extent to which you can, you can chase the, you know, and maybe they're using corporate cards instead of, you know, their own hard-earned cash to sort of buy a subscription.
So I mean, that, that's, that's tempting to all of us to sort of look, is there a way to crack that market? So I get it.
At some point it will be a, a saturated market, but, but we just launched HR Executive, so I think there's still, there's still room to, to grow in this market. All right. There's still room.
Well, Adi, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation, and definitely keep me up to date on the progress of HR Executive. Thank you, Brian.
You know, check in in a year and we'll see if, if we're getting- All right. We'll do it... if we're getting renewals, that means things are good. Okay, cool. Okay. Thanks, Brian. Thanks again. [outro music]