WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:12.180 [upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I'm Brian Morrissey. 2 00:00:12.620 --> 00:00:25.440 A quick reminder, if you haven't already, check out People versus Algorithms, the podcast I host every week with Troy Young, Alex Schleifer, and often featuring the always interesting Anonymous Banker, who has been on the Rebooting Show. 3 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:34.040 Hope to have Anonymous Banker back again soon. We tend to take a wider view on that show of the massive shifts that are upstream of the media industry. 4 00:00:34.140 --> 00:00:42.280 One of my go-to totems is that media is downstream of tech, and I think that's most apparent when we think about the impacts of artificial intelligence. 5 00:00:42.460 --> 00:00:55.020 My go-to 1980s movie metaphor for the media industry is Caddyshack, when Denunzio was stunned that a Coke now cost fifty cents, and the reason was that Lou has been losing at the track. 6 00:00:55.130 --> 00:00:57.360 And ultimately, that's the position of publishers. 7 00:00:57.700 --> 00:01:11.560 As Google fights its intergalactic battles with hyperscalers and there are mind-boggling hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on data centers and compute, I still don't understand how all of this nets out, since I don't see the productivity gains from all of this spending. 8 00:01:11.620 --> 00:01:17.100 I tend to agree with Ezra Klein that we have two sort of bad outcomes for many people. 9 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:28.640 Either this is a massive bubble that will crush the economy when the taps eventually get turned off on all this capital spending, or it delivers in the form of massive employment dislocation. I don't see a third path. 10 00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:35.120 Maybe there is. And no wonder regular people I speak to aren't as gaga about all of this as oligarch podcasters are. 11 00:01:35.720 --> 00:01:41.520 In the most recent episode of PVA, Troy and I discussed the building moral panic over AI chatbot psychosis. 12 00:01:41.990 --> 00:02:01.040 Maybe it's the slower rhythms of the Sicilian summer that I've been experiencing the last week, but I, I just tend to think that this headlong rush to replace human connection with the synthetic interactions is going to be yet another example of how Silicon Valley is really good at first principles thinking and really bad at second-order impacts. 13 00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:13.700 You know, we also get into the recent Summer story involving Food fifty-two's studio head funding her influencer lifestyle through fake expenses, and why running content studios is so tough for publishers, 'cause I think that's a bigger issue. 14 00:02:14.140 --> 00:02:22.820 And you can find PVA on all podcast platforms and also on YouTube. Still undecided about whether the Rebooting Show should embrace YouTube as a distribution channel. 15 00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:30.180 I'm wary, honestly, of video changing the nature of conversations since I find a lot of people perform if they know they're on camera. 16 00:02:30.260 --> 00:02:40.960 And to me, the best podcast conversations are when people sort of forget that they're not just talking to lots of other people and that they're just having a regular conversation. Also, one other request. 17 00:02:41.260 --> 00:02:54.760 Please leave this podcast a rating or review. It is always nice to get those, and it apparently helps with podcast discovery, if indirectly, 'cause people arrive at a podcast page, and then it provides social proof. 18 00:02:54.940 --> 00:03:05.340 So if you don't like it, don't, don't leave a review, I guess. But if you, definitely leave a, a rating or a review. This week on the, the show, I spoke to David Bank, the founder of Impact Alpha. 19 00:03:05.900 --> 00:03:09.989 Some of the best media companies to me share a familiar origin story. 20 00:03:10.100 --> 00:03:20.840 They don't come from market research decks, but from lived experience, a journalist or operator who stumbles onto an underserved niche and sees something that others dismiss. 21 00:03:20.900 --> 00:03:31.299 Legacy players tend to overlook those spaces as too small or too niche to matter, but they usually sit inside bigger structural changes in industries or culture. 22 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:42.420 And when done, done right, and I think this is the key now for sustainable media businesses, they're able to attract audiences that are influential or affluent or ideally both. 23 00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:55.720 You know, I think Impact Alpha hits on a lot of those things. David left The Wall Street Journal, and basically, as he says, he assigned himself to cover impact investing at a time when nobody else thought it was a beat. 24 00:03:56.350 --> 00:04:07.420 And I think that instinct turned into a really interesting business. He and his team have built what he calls a hometown newspaper for the people that are deploying private capital towards social good. 25 00:04:07.880 --> 00:04:09.440 He calls them agents of impact. 26 00:04:09.580 --> 00:04:30.060 Along the way, you know, we talk about the hard lessons of going from being a journalist to running a business, shifting from sponsorships to subscriptions, and also finding mission-aligned investors, and also how he thinks about independence versus becoming part of a larger entity. 27 00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:47.520 David explains why impact investing was ignored for so long, how Impact Alpha carved out its role in the industry, and what other journalists who are thinking of striking out on their own can take away from the always winding path, because it's not always a straight line. 28 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:57.480 There are a lot of cliches that are cliches for a reason. And we talk about how all of this requires patience, persistence, and also just, you know, spotting things that other people miss. 29 00:04:57.900 --> 00:05:08.560 I hope you enjoy this conversation. I know I did. As always, love feedback. Send me a email. You can send it to Brian@therebooting.com. Now here's my conversation with David. 30 00:05:10.840 --> 00:05:23.539 [upbeat music] David, thank you so much for, for joining me. Really excited to get into the story of Impact Alpha. Brian, thank you so much for ha- for having me. I've been watching you for years. 31 00:05:23.580 --> 00:05:25.720 It's a pleasure to join you. Okay. Well, thank you. 32 00:05:26.140 --> 00:05:34.120 I think there's some resonance to this, so I'll, I'll probably slip into some sort of, like, therapy as I, I've gone through my own, uh, travails in, in building this little thing. 33 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:47.160 But take me back, you know, to, to founding Impact Alpha, because I know you, you spent a time, like, outside of, of journalism. I guess the journalism adjacents at, what is it? At Yulett, right? 34 00:05:47.740 --> 00:06:00.700 I had a kind of either you consider a detox period or, or, or what have you between my last newspaper job at the, at the Wall Street Journal and, and, and Impact Alpha, and it was a, an, an outfit called Enco- then called Encore.org, now called CoGenerate. 35 00:06:01.060 --> 00:06:11.564 Oh. And it, it taught me a lot about kind of social innovationAnd I would guess also sort of organizational issues, you know, including fundraising. So it did, it did have a, a non-journalism segue there between- Okay... 36 00:06:11.584 --> 00:06:11.594 between that and this. 37 00:06:11.594 --> 00:06:25.124 But, I mean, it's not perfectly neat, but I think we're in this period where we're in this deconstruction of media decentralization, whatever you wanna call it, where there's a lot of people from our profession that are taking that path. 38 00:06:25.214 --> 00:06:35.064 They're going and they're, they're hanging their own shingle, and they're, they're starting their own, their own things, and that's very exciting, right? But it also... 39 00:06:35.204 --> 00:06:48.564 I think it's, it's good to talk to you for someone who has gone through the building of it, because it can be very messy and it rewards patience, perseverance, all kinds of different things. But- Absolutely... 40 00:06:48.584 --> 00:06:58.504 bring, bring me back to it. Why, why did you start Impact Alpha? 'Cause, I mean, you had like covered this space and then you just decided to, that, you know, this is something that you wanted to, to build around. 41 00:06:59.064 --> 00:07:05.834 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually, yeah, I, I did sort of just assign myself to the, to the beat was the, was the beginnings of it. And I had left the Wall Street Journal. 42 00:07:05.934 --> 00:07:14.364 I was a tech reporter, you know, all through the dotcom and, and, and era and, and, and beyond and, and had a, a whole newspaper, you know, career in that. 43 00:07:14.424 --> 00:07:21.384 And then, as you say, I had taken this kind of s- you know, s- side, side side route into the world of social innovation. 44 00:07:21.484 --> 00:07:34.844 Actually, my last newspaper beat was philanthropy, and I had become enamored of the kind of, you know, big social change ideas that some of the, you know, that were kind of c- current, you know, of the time. 45 00:07:34.874 --> 00:07:42.143 And some of the tech b- millionaires and billionaires, you know, were moving at that point, and I sort of followed them from the tech beat into the, into the philanthropy beat. 46 00:07:42.184 --> 00:07:48.784 And, and that got me kind of, you know, w- wired, I guess, for these kind of big social change ideas. 47 00:07:48.814 --> 00:08:06.304 And so then when I started I- Impact Alpha was essentially assigning myself to this, this idea that there was a kind of world, not of philanthropy actually, but of private capital that could be actually redirected in a way to kind of the, the social good or the c- or the common good, and that that was actually a beat. 48 00:08:06.424 --> 00:08:15.904 That wasn't just a kind of, you know, either a sort of white paper idea, which is sort of one way it was treated, or kind of a like a, I don't know, pa- you know, pat- patronizing pat on the head kind of thing, you know. 49 00:08:15.964 --> 00:08:20.284 Yeah. Always, "Isn't it s- isn't it, isn't it quaint that these people actually wanna do good with their money?" 50 00:08:20.344 --> 00:08:28.144 But that actually there was, you know, there were people making a living, building funds, you know, investing in companies- Yeah... building companies. That lots of, you know, entrepreneurs with- And this was-... 51 00:08:28.164 --> 00:08:37.984 all kinds of ideas. I'm sorry. Th- this was in 2014, right? Well, actually, the, the, the... I guess the, the germ was a little bit earlier, but the, the Impact Alpha dates to 2014. Yeah. So- Okay... 52 00:08:38.004 --> 00:08:48.524 so in that, in that period. And that was kind of, you know, if you, if you trace back, there was a, the big, you know, th- this idea was, was being born, you know, maybe, uh, five or so years earlier than that. 53 00:08:48.624 --> 00:09:13.713 Again, impact investing not really a new thing, but, you know, there was a concerted effort to brand it by folks like the Rockefeller Foundation and others, and, and kind of bring together the community development world and the global development world and the global health world and, and now the, you know, of course, the energy and, you know, clean, clean tech worlds and, and, and kind of call it a thing called impact investing, which was, which was a way to kind of give it a, a, a, 54 00:09:14.844 --> 00:09:26.284 a, a brand and a f- and a framework. And we just kind of... I, I kind of, kind of cottoned onto that, that broad idea. I just thought it was kind of one of the more interesting things out there and potentially big. 55 00:09:26.324 --> 00:09:34.774 It, it felt to me l- at the time, I remember like the tech beat felt, you know, in the nineties essentially. Yeah. 56 00:09:34.834 --> 00:09:42.164 And that there was a kind of, you know, to, to, to use what's now kind of common parlance, but a kind of disruptive technology at work here, you know. 57 00:09:42.204 --> 00:09:52.944 And it wasn't quite as clean as kind of Moore's Law kind of coming up and- Right... and disrupting, you know, you know, computer systems, but it was kind of a way, a new way to think about finance that just... 58 00:09:53.004 --> 00:10:02.524 It felt like a big beat. So I just, coming out of my, my, my gig, as I said, with this kind of nonprofit innovation think tank where we had, you know, I had dabbled in, in, in trying to... 59 00:10:02.554 --> 00:10:10.224 Actually, one of our ideas was to raise a fund that would've been a, now we'd call an impact fund, and I was kind of deployed to try to do that. We didn't end up doing that. 60 00:10:10.284 --> 00:10:22.444 But I found my way to this whole world of, of investors and, and, and folks and, and, and, and there's a conference out here every year called Socap that folks might know, and I, I, I had to cadge a press pass 'cause, you know, I don't wanna pay for those things. 61 00:10:22.484 --> 00:10:31.324 And I had to find an outlet to, to take my stuff and, and, and, and I went around and interviewed everybody, and they're like, "You're, you're the only reporter who's interested in this." And I'm like, "That's crazy. 62 00:10:31.384 --> 00:10:39.724 This is super interesting." And so I kind of assigned myself to it as a, you know, there's not many unfilled niches in the ecosystem. Yeah. And this was a, both a big one and a fascinating one. 63 00:10:40.184 --> 00:10:49.684 So you're talking about it like in journalistic terms. You're talking about a beat and, uh, like... And, and so what... Like, did you think it was a business, or did you... A- a- did this become a business? 64 00:10:49.744 --> 00:10:57.604 Like, did, did you- It, it became, it became a business... did you consider yourself like an entrepreneur at the time, or did you consider yourself a, a journalist who was scratching an itch? 65 00:10:58.264 --> 00:11:06.904 I would think initially th- that, to be honest, it was, it was journalist scratching an itch. It wa- it was, it was, it was an, a journalistic instinct, absolutely. And we did scratch around, you know, we... 66 00:11:06.924 --> 00:11:14.004 But, of course, everybody out here and, and, and elsewhere needs to have their own startup. So we did do the for-profit. A lot of folks said we should be a nonprofit, you know. 67 00:11:14.224 --> 00:11:18.314 Again, but that's the, a version of the, of the patronizing pat on the head, which is this- Yeah... 68 00:11:18.324 --> 00:11:24.704 is a kind of quaint niche that, you know, you, you know, you can kind of amuse yourself with, but it's not really at the, you know, grown-up table. 69 00:11:24.764 --> 00:11:33.744 And we, and we always had the sense that we wanted to be at the grown-up table, but, you know, jour- journalistically a- and then, and now, we know, of course, you know, you know, business-wise as, as well. 70 00:11:33.924 --> 00:11:43.424 So we, we formed it as a, you know, Delaware C corp and, and did all the things and, and... But we didn't really come to the business model that, that works in, in, for, for a few years. 71 00:11:43.464 --> 00:11:54.694 So we sort of scratched around in, in sponsorships and things and, and, you know, as, as folks know, that's, that's kind of, you know, long, long lead time, you know, l- n- not replicable, all the, all the, all the things. 72 00:11:54.784 --> 00:11:56.934 And, and so we said, "What's subscriptions?" 73 00:11:56.984 --> 00:12:10.084 You know, you know, th- there's a, there's a, a constituency of folks who are making their, you know, their, their work life, making their living in, in, in, i- in this and, and we'll j- we'll serve them, and we'll, you know, [chuckles] charge them, and they'll pay us- Yeah. 74 00:12:10.114 --> 00:12:18.284 Great... and we'll give them something valuable. You know, that was the... But that w- it... But it was still a editorial idea, was like cover the beat, and then folks who were following that beat would, would follow us. 75 00:12:18.444 --> 00:12:25.896 Yeah.And so, I mean, this is, this is obviously pre-Substack, right? Like, so I mean, it's like common for people to do this like with Substack, but it was, it was less common. 76 00:12:25.916 --> 00:12:31.616 It was, it was, it was kind of just pre-Substack. And, and I, I always think kind of luckily so because we decided... 77 00:12:31.656 --> 00:12:40.366 In fact, we, we had very early talks with Substack, and we were thinking, but at the time they, they, they only let you do a newsletter. They didn't have a, a sort of website or, or, or other kinds of things. 78 00:12:40.416 --> 00:12:43.616 Now they have podcasts and everything and, and, and a full kind of stack. 79 00:12:43.736 --> 00:13:07.016 But we, we, we saw, you know, we don't wanna just be a, a newsletter, although we-- although our sort of, you know, claim to fame I think has been our newsletter, but we wanted to have a broader platform, so we, we ki- we kinda, you know, conjured up all the, all the, all the different bells and whistles that you can put around it and, and, and also I think maybe made it more of an institution as opposed to a personal brand. 80 00:13:07.056 --> 00:13:09.196 Maybe that was a difference, you know. 81 00:13:09.256 --> 00:13:19.736 Again, maybe it was my kind of predilection, you know, from, from my newspaper career that you kind of want the, you know, at least to feel like there's a big masthead behind you, not just, you know, lone, lone ranger out there. 82 00:13:19.956 --> 00:13:29.366 So, you know, we conjured up Impact Alpha as a, as a masthead and, and, you know, we had a, a small crew of folks that, that we've collected, you know, as writers and, and, and journalists- Yeah... 83 00:13:29.366 --> 00:13:38.216 and I think kind of projected bigger than we, we were for a long time, and, you know, maybe I maybe still do, I don't know. But, but, but, but we've kinda caught up with ourselves. Okay. 84 00:13:38.336 --> 00:13:48.426 But I mean, was it you-- Was it just you initially? Or- Yeah... was it- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, me on the Impact Alpha side. We had a-- I had a c- a co-founder thinking through some of the, the, the, the structures. 85 00:13:48.496 --> 00:13:58.166 We had a kind of tech crunch and crunch base idea. You know, we always had a kind of- Right... editorial plus data idea. And so then we went out and- That's hard. That's hard to pull off... looked. 86 00:13:58.176 --> 00:14:04.596 It is hard to pull off, and we, I mean- 'Cause a lot of people wanna be the Bloomberg of X, and I understand why- Yeah... they wanna be the Bloomberg of X. A-absolutely. 87 00:14:04.636 --> 00:14:13.586 That has come up so many times over the years, and, you know, yes. I wanna be the Bloomberg of X too. [laughs] We did go out and found... And we were, you know, gonna build this data side. 88 00:14:13.816 --> 00:14:22.596 I, I came at it obviously from the, the editorial side, and then we found an outfit called Impact Space that was sort of similarly, you know, nascent and teamed up with that. 89 00:14:22.616 --> 00:14:35.116 And so we did a merger actually in our essentially first year of existence, and in fact the, the co-founder of, of Impact Space, i, it, it was Zuleima Biebel is, is, is still with-- is still is a co-founder now of Impact Alpha. 90 00:14:35.186 --> 00:14:49.636 So we do have this, and we're still essentially on this, on this e-editorial and data strategy, and we're now, you know, getting ready actually to kind of relaunch Impact Space, which has been a little bit under, under, under-invested for, for a number of years. 91 00:14:49.796 --> 00:15:00.376 But, but we still think that that kind of complementarity between the editorial and data is, is, is right. Yeah. So what was-- Like how did-- What was your conception of the, the, the audience segment? 92 00:15:00.436 --> 00:15:02.596 Like who is it for? Who are you making it for? 93 00:15:03.056 --> 00:15:14.966 'Cause I think a lot of times people come out and they say, "Well, I wanna cover this, this, this area," particularly from, you know, journalistic side, and sometimes there's less a specific person like on the other. 94 00:15:15.016 --> 00:15:27.526 I don't mean like literally. It can be a specific person, but I think particularly in, particularly in B2B type areas, you know, you really wanna focus in on, you know, almost like a job title. Yeah, absolutely. 95 00:15:27.576 --> 00:15:31.065 Like who are the people? Well, the, the, the, the people are... 96 00:15:31.146 --> 00:15:39.636 And, and this wa- actually was a challenge, so it's a very good question because it's-- It, it, you know, usually financial publications will be sliced say by asset class. 97 00:15:39.696 --> 00:15:46.516 You know, you'll cover, you know, private equity or real estate or, or, or, or infrastructure or fixed income. We're covering all of those. 98 00:15:47.096 --> 00:15:54.326 Sometimes folks will cov- will go geographically or something, and they'll cover, you know, Europe or, or, or Asia or, or the US or what have you. We cover all of those. 99 00:15:54.565 --> 00:16:05.976 But it's not just, it's not just a general, a mass audience. It's a, a cast of characters who are using finance or using capital for something other than just, you know, financial returns. 100 00:16:06.026 --> 00:16:11.506 And that, that, that group of folks, we came to christen Agents of Impact. Right. 101 00:16:11.516 --> 00:16:18.616 And the reason was we got tired of saying, you know, entrepreneurs and investors, or, you know, LPs and GPs or, or asset managers and asset owners. 102 00:16:18.676 --> 00:16:24.156 You could have a sort of laundry list of the target markets, but that wasn't actually the point. 103 00:16:24.196 --> 00:16:49.776 The point was that they had had this light bulb moment that from where they sat in their asset management firm, in their f- in their in private equity firm, in their family office, in their foundation, that they were gonna be one of those people who was thinking about this broader use of capital, and therefore they needed to know what was going on all around that ecosystem. 104 00:16:49.806 --> 00:16:54.416 And that, so that essentially that ecosystem became the beat that we covered. Right. 105 00:16:54.436 --> 00:17:14.246 And so I would say our, our audience primarily are, you know, when we look at it in terms of so we're b- both ind- individual and, and, and, and kind of institutional or, or, or enterprise subscribers, and if you break down certainly on the enterprise side, it's actually more the asset owners or the family offices and the foundations and, and, and some of the pension funds- Okay... 106 00:17:14.256 --> 00:17:23.476 and insurance companies that are, you know, deploying some... So there's a team in the, in the, in that, in that- Yeah... giant company. There's a six-person or a twelve-person team. 107 00:17:23.556 --> 00:17:32.146 That team is our, is our, is our, is our customer. Um- And they deploy those funds into, into like impact fu- 'cause I'm always like wondering- Into impact funds. 108 00:17:32.146 --> 00:17:37.966 Impact funds are, are, you know, essentially a sort of sub flavor of, of private equity or venture capital, s-stuff that- Yeah... 109 00:17:38.116 --> 00:17:42.416 and now there's more private debt and, you know, they can be in any kind of different asset class. 110 00:17:42.456 --> 00:17:55.966 But there's a, a manager, a, a, a, a f- a financial entrepreneur of some sort who's raising capital to deploy, and that person is raising it from, as a manager from, from these institutional or, and other investors. 111 00:17:56.066 --> 00:18:02.356 Yeah. You can think of family office as wealthy individuals as, as a kind of institution. And, and then they're making investments. 112 00:18:02.416 --> 00:18:06.096 They're finding companies, and they're making loans, and they're making equity investments. So it's much like... 113 00:18:06.236 --> 00:18:19.656 it's very much like the tech startup world, and in fact there's a, you know, a crossover from the tech startup world into the impact world because a lot of the themes are, are, are, are of, and, or, and a lot of the solutions are very tech, tech driven. 114 00:18:20.396 --> 00:18:29.396 So, you know, just like in the startup world, folks wanna know who's the hot startup, you know, which funds just got raised, you know, what is, what is Stanford or Harvard doing with their endowment investments in this area. 115 00:18:29.516 --> 00:18:39.848 Yeah. So- They're just tracking- So the base- Tracking the capital... the basic thing is like if, if that-- if you're in that worldThe idea is that you need Impact Alpha to, to, to do your job basically. Yeah. Yeah. 116 00:18:39.888 --> 00:18:53.268 I mean, that's what, that's what we, that's what we think, and I think we-- I think some folks in that world think that, and we get that kind of feedback, and it-it's, you know, we, we become kind of the, the sort of hometown newspaper of that self-identified world. 117 00:18:53.308 --> 00:19:07.428 And now our challenge, of course, is, is, is to go broader, but it's also the-- essentially the challenge of, of the impact investing world itself, which is, you know, is, is always trying to, to, to, to get bigger and, and more influential in, in, in the mainstream financial markets. 118 00:19:07.488 --> 00:19:16.608 And so at some level, we're riding the, you know, riding that wave and, and, and the question of whether that really comes to pass. 119 00:19:16.638 --> 00:19:22.568 And we've sort of decided that the w- the world of finance is, is, is slightly, you know, beyond our complete control. 120 00:19:23.028 --> 00:19:29.208 And so if, if that trend plays out, we'll be very, you know, we'll be very lucky, and we'll be very well-positioned. And if- Right... 121 00:19:29.218 --> 00:19:33.708 that trend falls on its face, you know, there's, there's bigger problems than, than just poor little Impact Alpha. 122 00:19:33.748 --> 00:19:44.788 But so we wanna obviously super serve everybody in that world, and then we want that world to get much bigger. And you decided to boot- you bootstrapped it or initially, correct? Yes. 123 00:19:44.868 --> 00:19:52.348 We did get a tiny kind of convertible note early on in, in, in a, you know, that, that, that helped us through actually on the, on the data side initially. 124 00:19:52.368 --> 00:20:02.688 But then we decided that the first step just to kind of get in the game would be to, to s- to get some, some sponsorships. 125 00:20:02.708 --> 00:20:12.218 We, we kind of took a, I suppose it may be a slightly more nonprofit approach, maybe coming out of that, like I said, my little education between my journalism career and now. 126 00:20:12.268 --> 00:20:24.588 And there are a set of foundations that have decided that they wanna catalyze private capital for, you know, the greater good and, and in particular for the kinds of programs that they're, that they're working on. 127 00:20:24.618 --> 00:20:40.908 And so the notion that we could, say, round up all the investors in that field or round up the, the, the, the, the, the hot entrepreneurs or the sharp entrepreneurs and, and kind of create a drumbeat of coverage around areas that, that don't generally get much mainstream coverage. 128 00:20:40.918 --> 00:20:42.158 And so we did a number of those. 129 00:20:42.188 --> 00:20:52.688 We've done a number of those and, and kind of serve a kind of, you know, I don't know, ecosystem building purpose from the point of view of the foundations just to kind of validate the, the thesis in a way. 130 00:20:52.708 --> 00:21:02.188 And so we, w- you know, w-we, we, w- w- that helped us, you know, sort of pay the bills and, and, and bring some, some writers on and others on to, to, to cover those beats. 131 00:21:02.888 --> 00:21:16.008 And then, as I said, we thought that was kind of a, a, a slow road to growth [chuckles] to say the least, and, and moved over to the, to, to subscriptions as a way to sort of avoid having to kind of sell those kinds of, of, of gigs. 132 00:21:16.017 --> 00:21:27.868 And weirdly- So wait, when was the... When, when, when did you decide that subscriptions were not g- or subscriptions w- that sponsorships were not gonna be the, the main business model? 133 00:21:28.668 --> 00:21:38.988 Well, the first thing we did actually was w-was we, we turned on the, the daily brief. So we had been doing these kind of projects. We had a website, you know, that was in the sort of '14, '15, '16 er-er-era. 134 00:21:39.008 --> 00:21:45.457 In twenty seventeen, we turned on the, the daily newsletter. Again, pre-Substack, so the newsletters were not yet quite a thing. Yeah. 135 00:21:45.468 --> 00:21:52.098 But dropping stuff in people's email box, in inbox seemed like a better way to deliver it than expecting them to come find our, our website. 136 00:21:52.668 --> 00:22:02.838 And that changed our kind of relationship to the, to the, to our readers, and all of a sudden we were like five days a week, which was, you know, unheard of and, and, and, and, and somewhat crazy. 137 00:22:03.248 --> 00:22:13.978 But we had kind of a relationship with our sub- with our readers, and that made us confident that we could then kind of make the, cross the chasm to, to charge them for that. 138 00:22:14.008 --> 00:22:20.768 And that was in, I think, April twenty eighteen. And it was a hairy moment. You know, people were happy enough to get it for free, but were they gonna pay for it? Yeah. 139 00:22:20.818 --> 00:22:28.878 And, um- Well, it's hard, it's hard when you give some-something to people for free to then be like, "Oh, yeah. Now you gotta pay." And they're like, "Wait, I liked it when it was free." Yeah. Yeah. 140 00:22:28.998 --> 00:22:32.668 And we got, and we got a lot of, you know, squawkings from that and, and, you know, we tried to be... 141 00:22:33.128 --> 00:22:43.168 You know, we do have a mission, you know, mission focus, so we tried to be ac-accommodating to folks who truly couldn't pay. But we also tried to make the case that this was a, you know, a valuable product. 142 00:22:43.208 --> 00:22:47.528 We never want it to be like the NPR pledge drive, you know, and please, please, please- Oh, yeah... you know, contribute to us. 143 00:22:47.588 --> 00:22:54.468 We want it to be a, a valuable- Letter located sort of guilt-tripping you, like, every couple months. Yeah, and go on a, go on some kind of pledge drive and, and something. 144 00:22:54.508 --> 00:23:05.188 We want it to be like, you know, a, a, a, the, the, the thing that, you know, that helps you do your job- Yeah... in, in, in this world and that, you know, a lot of it is kind of bread and butter kind of coverage. 145 00:23:05.208 --> 00:23:17.988 We have, you know, job, you know, people who've changed jobs and, you know, peop- you know, de- you know, the deals that went down, you know, this week or, or, or yesterday and, and kinds of things that people talk about in the morning meeting with their colleagues because the, "Did you hear about this?" 146 00:23:18.028 --> 00:23:25.668 And, and over time we also got folks wanting to kind of play out their own ideas on this and, and kind of, you know, demonstrate their thought leadership. 147 00:23:25.688 --> 00:23:31.318 And so a lot of guest posts and, and, and, and kind of debates get played out on, in, on Impact Alpha. 148 00:23:31.358 --> 00:23:40.088 And some of them are, you know, quite arcane to the sort of general reader, but they're the, the, the kinds of stuff that animates the folks, you know, who are d- who are in this field. Okay. 149 00:23:40.128 --> 00:23:53.648 So I mean, the newsletter is sort of a front door to subscriptions, 'cause I always think, you know, once you develop a direct connection, you know, you can, you can understand, first of all, you need to become a habit, right? 150 00:23:53.748 --> 00:23:59.968 Like, I mean, there is, like, a way to make subscriptions work, you know, if someone has to have that one piece of content. 151 00:24:00.348 --> 00:24:11.238 But really, and I think for the most part, you're, you're selling a bundle, and so you, you need, you need people to, to have a habit. And, and I think that's what newsletters are really good at. Yeah. Yeah. 152 00:24:11.348 --> 00:24:12.468 And that's what we found, like I said. 153 00:24:12.788 --> 00:24:23.948 And we, you know, we, we come out at seven AM Eastern and, and, and, you know, I guess four AM in, in, out here, and we'd get a lot of comments of, you know, just how much stuff folks have in their inbox in the morning, a-at least the ones who tell us. 154 00:24:24.008 --> 00:24:30.468 You know, but you're, you're, you're one of the very few that I, that I open and actually, you know, if not read every word, but, but, but scan. 155 00:24:30.568 --> 00:24:40.687 And so we think, you know, as long as we can kinda keep delivering something interesting and fresh, you know, that, that we have a kind of constituency now that, that appreciates the- Yeah... the viewpoint. 156 00:24:41.288 --> 00:24:42.888 So when did you turn on subscriptions? 157 00:24:42.908 --> 00:24:59.212 And, and, and, like, how many, like, email subscribers did you have at that time?Well, we did have a good, you know, good, you know, pretty good conversion of the free to, to paid right at the, you know, the, the, the literally the first month, and then you get the, you know, the low-hanging fruit, and then, then it becomes much harder to get, to get the rest. 158 00:24:59.252 --> 00:25:29.392 So we turned it on in April twenty eighteen, so we're, we're now just through our, you know, seventh year of, of, of subscriptions, and we've been growing revenues every year, and we've been growing subscriptions, you know, every year, and we've, as I said, we've got individual and we have, uh, business or, or group or enterprise, and we've got a few dozen universities as well, which is a, a nice little business because we give it away to the profs and they put it on the syllabus or the-- of their sustainable finance or impact investing courses. 159 00:25:29.432 --> 00:25:40.112 And then, of course, the students need access, and so then the libraries buy, buy subscriptions. And if enough students clamor for something, the, the librarians generally, generally get a, a group subscription. Okay. 160 00:25:40.232 --> 00:25:48.452 So you found a li- the, the librarians. This has actually come up before at, at a couple of the dinners that, that we've done. You know, uh, the librarian q-question. 161 00:25:48.492 --> 00:26:02.792 It's a, it's a, it's a sort of niche to, to a lot of the, the people at the table, but for, for those who do sell it, sell a kind of a, a journalism product that can get into libraries, the librarians are actually quite important. 162 00:26:02.852 --> 00:26:09.932 Yeah, you gotta have a, you gotta have some, some ambassadors to, to carry the flag that are th- their constituents, the students or the teachers or- Yeah. Some of them, they, they had no idea. 163 00:26:09.992 --> 00:26:15.052 It's like, how do you reach the libr-librarians? It's just not like a normal in the sort of enterprise sales. 164 00:26:15.152 --> 00:26:23.532 Enterprise sales is something obviously we're thinking a lot about now, and sort of literally which door you go in and who, who you're asking and what budget they have is, is the key thing there. So that is a good one. 165 00:26:23.552 --> 00:26:32.052 And the other one we're, you know, is, is we realized that B2C, when we were selling to individuals, that it was... that it really wasn't B2C. 166 00:26:32.112 --> 00:26:35.552 It was kind of B2B by, you know, just with a, with a, you know, with one seat. 167 00:26:35.852 --> 00:26:46.312 Because the people were not generally s-speaking sort of buying it for their kind of reading pleasure, although we hope it's, it's well-written, but that they were buying it to do their job. So we, we've, we thought it. 168 00:26:46.352 --> 00:26:51.242 We haven't quite executed the, you know, get your boss to pay for or get, you know, get your company to pay for it, um, campaign. 169 00:26:51.452 --> 00:27:01.492 I never know if that works when people are like, "Here's the, here's the, the letter for your boss to, like, you know, so you can get a subscription." I'm like, maybe I'm like putting myself. I was like, I would never 170 00:27:02.392 --> 00:27:14.432 take copy and paste some [chuckles] something from, uh- No, I don't, I don't mean that. I just mean like different, different strategies. Like, we had a guy who said that he was forced to tell his CFO. 171 00:27:14.892 --> 00:27:21.752 He told the CFO, "This is very useful to me. I, you know, see all these partners and all these opportunities and, and I get all these contacts and, and, and ideas from this." 172 00:27:21.792 --> 00:27:29.772 And, and so he kept a log of it for several months to prove to his CFO, and he would take each, each day's edition and kind of circle the stuff that, that was relevant. 173 00:27:29.801 --> 00:27:38.992 And, and he said it so far exceeded the, the, the, the, the measure he-- the metric he had set for this, a-and, and the CFO just said, "Oh, to hell with it, just, you know, just, just charge it now." 174 00:27:39.112 --> 00:27:49.372 So it-- there is a way- Yeah... to sort of get your company to pay for it. Okay. So how much of, how much of the revenue is subscriptions? Like, how, how- It's about fifty-fifty. 175 00:27:49.452 --> 00:27:53.772 It fluctuates, you know, with how we're, how well we're doing on sponsorships, but it's about fifty-fifty. 176 00:27:54.412 --> 00:28:06.572 You know, as you well know, there's a kind of valuation of the ARR or the, or the MRR, the recurring revenues from subscriptions that f-that investor types- Way better... like, like more than, than sponsorships. 177 00:28:06.592 --> 00:28:18.452 But our sponsorships have been multi-year, you know, sort of, sort of stable and, and increasingly, you know, higher tickets as well. So I don't know if we'll convince the investors, but it's... it definitely is, is... 178 00:28:18.492 --> 00:28:28.972 We thought it would go away, as I said, and in fact, it's gotten better. Oh, even better. And particularly if you, you can make them longer term. I think the campaign, the campaign thing is hard. 179 00:28:29.192 --> 00:28:36.712 To get on that treadmill is just really difficult, and to do, like, one-off. I mean, I do a lot of it myself. It is hard. It's like, it's boom and bust. 180 00:28:36.892 --> 00:28:46.912 There's periods of the year where anyone who gets the Rebooting newsletter will probably be like, "Hey, good for the monetization, but you're [chuckles] like trying to get me to do like four different things at once." 181 00:28:46.942 --> 00:28:50.872 And I'm like- Right, right... "Yeah, but I gotta, I gotta take the money when it's offered," you know? 182 00:28:51.012 --> 00:28:57.672 [chuckles] It's like, meanwhile, I'll leave you alone all of August because, you know, a lot of companies just don't... they don't... 183 00:28:57.742 --> 00:29:01.412 their sales teams are not active then, and so basically- Well, you're very, you're very susceptible... 184 00:29:01.432 --> 00:29:09.212 I'm gonna be in Sicily, so, uh- [chuckles] Yeah, you're very susceptible to things that are completely out of your control, like their, their, their mark- their budgets and things and, and- Yes. 185 00:29:09.372 --> 00:29:14.832 And also, like, in, in, you know, the... it's just more fickle. It's just simply more fickle. I mean, it depends. 186 00:29:15.432 --> 00:29:21.272 You, you, you're probably in a much more, you're in a much more s-stable space than, you know, the media business. 187 00:29:21.392 --> 00:29:28.972 I mean, the media business- Well, I mean, the, this, the, this, the, you know, this, this stable space has been under, you know, un-under attack on political fronts and, and other things. 188 00:29:29.012 --> 00:29:34.832 And so, you know, things get- Yeah, that is something. Let, let's actually talk about that, and we can, like, veer back to you as, you know, running the business. 189 00:29:35.052 --> 00:29:42.932 Obviously, you know, the DEI, ESG, I remember Bloomberg at Cannes a couple years ago was, was having... 190 00:29:43.192 --> 00:29:51.272 they, you know, these places have these houses where they, you know, it's basically something that they, they set up for, you know, partner activations, et cetera. 191 00:29:51.312 --> 00:30:01.442 There's the Wall Street Journal house and the Hearst house, and the Bloomberg, it was the Bloomberg ESG house that they had, and that went away. They, they, they, [chuckles] they went away. 192 00:30:01.492 --> 00:30:08.192 That would not, that would not have been this year's, this year's house, no. No, no, no. They just, they're just like Bloomberg at Bobo Cafe. 193 00:30:08.392 --> 00:30:19.212 And yeah, I mean, ESG itself, I think, you know, with the return of Trump, and it probably got lumped in with, with DEI, I think. Like, I don't know if it was... it was getting attacked, I think. 194 00:30:19.252 --> 00:30:23.402 It's like, this is outside of my area, but it's like BlackRock. Is BlackRock the one? Was, was- 195 00:30:24.392 --> 00:30:42.992 You know, there's, there's all these ironies in, in this because, you know, BlackRock both gets, you know, attacked from, I, I guess, you know, the, the, the, let's just say the right for, for, for, for its, you know, supposed, you know, either, you know, wokeness or diversity or, or climate policy, and then, of course, it gets attacked, you know, from the quote unquote left- Yeah, I know, for Larry Fink... 196 00:30:43.012 --> 00:30:49.892 for being completely inadequate on all of those things, so. [laughs] But no, it, it did become politicized, obviously, right? 197 00:30:49.942 --> 00:31:01.772 And, and- It got, it got completely, it got completely weaponized for reasons that had very little to do with, with the, you know, with the, with the merits of, of the investment case, but had to do with, with other things, you know, including, you know, fossil fuels and everything else. 198 00:31:01.832 --> 00:31:05.252 But mostly it got, it got used as a way to sort of drive, drive a wedge. 199 00:31:05.292 --> 00:31:14.686 And ESGYou know, it's really only, you know, a s- a part and, and not probably the most- Oh, by the way, for, for those who don't know ESG, just explain- Yeah, ESG- Like... 200 00:31:14.836 --> 00:31:19.916 ESG sort of a- arose over the last ten years or so as, as a really as a risk management framework. 201 00:31:19.956 --> 00:31:35.456 It's, uh, ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance, and it was kind of a way to put a to, to create a bucket of things that were considered and, or could be considered as sort of non-financial factors that might have an impact on your investment or on your company. 202 00:31:35.776 --> 00:31:41.176 So that you, you know, you'd need to understand, of course, you know, if you're a bottler that, you know, you have a water supply. 203 00:31:41.596 --> 00:31:50.885 But you might also wanna understand, you know, how many women you have in senior leadership, especially if you're a company or a, or a, or a fund that, you know, wants to n- wants to reach women customers. 204 00:31:50.926 --> 00:31:56.456 It might, might give you a kind of a, a perspective on that if you had some, some, some more women in, in leadership, that kind of thing. 205 00:31:56.576 --> 00:32:04.565 And, and then governance, of course, you know, things like, you know, d- dual stock structures and other things that, that sort of dilute shareholder power- Yeah... 206 00:32:04.836 --> 00:32:07.256 and, and, and, and what, what, what constitutes good governance. 207 00:32:07.296 --> 00:32:17.576 And it was just a way for investors to say, "I'm gonna look at these things that some other investors don't look at, but I know, because I'm a smart investor, that these things could be material risks to my investment." 208 00:32:17.606 --> 00:32:24.756 And then if you were that kind of investor, you'd attract those kind of in-- you know, those kind of... that kind of capital that, that wanted- Yeah... to look at those things. 209 00:32:24.796 --> 00:32:33.876 And then it, it got painted as like woke capitalism, right? But I always saw the tech rights seem to have a real bee in their bonnet about this, but maybe I just see them more like- Well, you know, you know, 210 00:32:35.916 --> 00:32:41.696 i- i- i- it, it, it, it, as I say, it got attacked sort of for both, you know, being too much and, and too little. And, and it sort of was both. 211 00:32:41.856 --> 00:32:55.376 And the, the, the, the too much was, you know, that, that, that folks would dream up these, you know, sometimes these, these frameworks that had some- sometimes, you know, you know, o- o- over detailed and, and, and overburdensome kind of, kind of, kind of standards. 212 00:32:55.406 --> 00:33:05.696 And then the too little was, you know, it's not just the risks to your company, but it's, and this is where it sort of goes into impact, but literally what your company is, is, is doing, what your company is, is making. 213 00:33:05.756 --> 00:33:13.876 Like, like Tesla, just to take one example, you know, is a very high impact company. I mean, it ch- it, it, it, it, it transformed the auto industry, right? 214 00:33:14.496 --> 00:33:22.256 But on some ESG scores, it w- it would rank lower because, you know, there's been a lot of concern over, you know, workplace conditions there or something. 215 00:33:22.456 --> 00:33:41.816 And so folks, like you say, you know, in, in, in, in some quarters would say that the ESG ratings were kind of missing the point of, of Tesla's, you know, Tesla's actual impact, which was, you know, quite, quite extraordinary in terms of changing the trajectory of, you know, say, oil consumption, e- even if its, even if its factories might, you know, not do-- have a good recycling plan or something. 216 00:33:42.356 --> 00:33:53.376 So how did that impact you? How did it impact, impact Alpha in that... I mean, I feel like all of these publications, it's, it's you're kind of like have one foot in and one foot out, right? 217 00:33:53.436 --> 00:34:00.326 Like you're, you're, you're part of a community, but you're apart from it in some ways. Yeah. And we do- And it's a difficult balance. We have, we have to... 218 00:34:00.356 --> 00:34:19.195 Yeah, we have kind of, you know, kind of tried to walk this kind of insider-outsider line, and it does, as you say, it is a, a either a hazard or, or maybe an advantage in, in these kind of niches because you, you are the, I don't know, at least the water cooler if not the sort of town, town square of, of, of the, of that niche. 219 00:34:19.276 --> 00:34:29.276 And, and so you are, you know, somebody who understands at least the issues and, and gets it, you know, at least more, in a more nuanced way than, than maybe somebody who just parachutes in. 220 00:34:29.996 --> 00:34:39.316 But, but you don't wanna be, you know, captured by it either, and you wanna be able- Yeah... to, to have enough, enough distance on it to be able-- and to, to frankly deliver the value, which is to not- Yeah... 221 00:34:39.336 --> 00:34:44.616 you know, not to just fall for the- I mean, it's your job. Like it's, like I, I sometimes hear- Like that's the value actually, to be, to be a- I always like I cringe. 222 00:34:44.756 --> 00:34:49.706 Maybe this is my sort of old school journal- I'm out. I don't even know if I'm a journalist anymore. But like I, I... 223 00:34:49.716 --> 00:34:59.896 when I hear people who are in journalists say we a- and the industry that they cover, I'm like, "You are not a we." Like, you can't be a we and be a reporter. 224 00:35:00.256 --> 00:35:07.836 We, we, we parsed it was we said, we said that- I guess I can 'cause I'm talking to the media industry and I am in the media [laughs] so like, I don't know, I get an out. 225 00:35:07.876 --> 00:35:10.196 We said we, we want, we wanna be down for the goals. 226 00:35:10.876 --> 00:35:20.476 You know, like, you know, there's this something called the sustainable development goals, which folks might know, and, and there's, you know, seventeen goals and, you know, it's like eradicate poverty, eradicate hunger, make sure everybody has clean water. 227 00:35:20.936 --> 00:35:27.515 You know, we wanna be down for the goals. It's a pretty... I, I, even, even the tech right can't be [laughs] That's what I say. 228 00:35:27.556 --> 00:35:34.326 There's a- And that, and that to your point that, that, that you have to be agnostic and, and skeptical and, and critical about the means, because that's how you get to the goals. 229 00:35:34.376 --> 00:35:45.216 You don't serve the goals by, by having- Exactly... half-assed, you know, projects that don't work. You serve the goals by finding the truly impactful, you know, strategies that are gonna actually fulfill that goal. 230 00:35:45.796 --> 00:35:57.676 And so that's kinda your duty is to sort of be to, to, to, to be hard-nosed about, about the means, and that's, you know, that's where the journalism, you know, credos of, of, of independence and, and fairness and everything come in. 231 00:35:57.696 --> 00:36:08.376 But we, but we kinda crossed over the line into what some folks would call advocacy by saying, "Look, we're in favor of, you know, climate action. We're in favor of, you know, of, of, of reducing income inequality even." 232 00:36:08.416 --> 00:36:27.816 We have a whole kind of campaign around shared prosperity now because we think that there's a whole set of, of, of, of strategies, you know, that, that investors are using, that, that, that community groups are, are developing that, you know, kinda share the wealth more broadly, and that's a good thing for the economy and that's a good thing for communities and we wanna find the best strategies to actually do that. 233 00:36:27.866 --> 00:36:35.356 Yeah. So at that level, we over some line that some journalists would, would, would, would not cross. Well, the Wall Street Journal wouldn't do that. Yeah, I don't think you'd do that at the Wall Street Journal, right? 234 00:36:35.436 --> 00:36:41.376 No, no. And in fact, that's why I always thought that this had to be built out- outside because you would always be, be, be pulled back. 235 00:36:41.556 --> 00:36:59.215 You'd be pulled back in that way, and you'd also be pulled back in the, "Oh, this is such a small thing that you, you c- you, you can't-- that we can't justify putting you on this full, full time, and you need to, you know, cover the, the, the, like I said, the, the grown-up world first, and then you can do this kind of whenever you get a spare moment." 236 00:36:59.276 --> 00:37:03.655 And I was like, "No, I think we'll do this, you know, full time and s- and, and see whether it, it plays out." 237 00:37:03.706 --> 00:37:14.763 And it does take, as you said, persistence and, and a little bit of patience and, and maybe a little bit of, you know, you know-B- b- blue sky utopian thinking that, that, that there's a, a thing here. 238 00:37:14.804 --> 00:37:24.984 But if y- you know, if we're right, we're, we're brilliant, and if we're wrong, you know, like I said, we got-- all got bigger problems. Yeah, exactly. So talk to me about running the business, right? 239 00:37:25.144 --> 00:37:33.374 I mean, and, and sort of mistakes along the way, hashtag learnings. [laughs] Uh, you know- How much time, how much time do you have? [laughs] I know, I know. 240 00:37:33.604 --> 00:37:43.064 [laughs] You know, 'cause you, you never-- there's no like, there's no book that you can read, I don't think, for running a business, and I don't know if you went to business school or anything. 241 00:37:43.164 --> 00:37:45.544 I don't even know if that'll help kind of- I'm kind of probably the... 242 00:37:45.564 --> 00:37:54.204 I'm probably the, the, the proof point in the truism that, you know, journalists, you know, should not be the, the, the, the, the CEOs, but I was the CEO. I, I now am not the CEO. 243 00:37:54.264 --> 00:37:56.954 You've done, you've done all right job, I think, just from the outside. 244 00:37:56.964 --> 00:38:12.204 [laughs] I've just, I've just transitioned, or we just transitioned the CEO role to, to my colleague, Dennis Price, who's been with, with us for, for, for ten years and who's taken the, you know, very much more hard-nosed revenue growth reins now, which, which obviously is, you know, the- Right... 245 00:38:12.213 --> 00:38:13.064 the coin of the realm. 246 00:38:13.104 --> 00:38:29.224 And I, I, I say I've promoted myself to, to editor and founder, and I get to, to, to deliver what I think is the, is the key, you know, value prop of this, uh, of the, of the enterprise, which is the editorial, you know, leadership and the editorial product, and that's, that's, that's on, that's still on me, and that's on me. 247 00:38:29.244 --> 00:38:37.034 But there, there's, there's a lot of blocking and tackling and execution and, and, and Dennis is terrific, uh, and you can have him on your podcast next, so. Yeah. But- But [laughs]... 248 00:38:37.034 --> 00:38:40.144 but like you were doing it yourself for like a decade, so. 249 00:38:40.204 --> 00:38:56.214 I was doing, I was doing, I was doing both of them, and I, and I think you understand this, and it's, it's, it's not only a lot of work and, and, and, and, and, and you ca- can't possibly get to the end of the to-do list on, on either front, but it's kind of two different parts of your brain and, and, and, and, and a little bit- Two. 250 00:38:56.224 --> 00:39:03.564 Like [laughs] ah. It's a little bit, a little bit disorienting to have to kind of keep, keep, keep switching, so we kind of streamlined a little bit. 251 00:39:03.644 --> 00:39:11.884 But in my, in my CEO tenure, we, you know, we essentially made, you know, kind of all kinds of mistakes and, and, and a lot of things that were very lucky. 252 00:39:12.744 --> 00:39:16.004 You know, we tried a lot of things that were very lucky that didn't, they didn't work out. 253 00:39:16.144 --> 00:39:23.794 We, we were almost acquired on, on, on, on a number of occasions, and I think in, in most of those cases, if we had been, we'd be, we'd be dead now. We would have been- Okay... 254 00:39:23.824 --> 00:39:34.504 cast off in some future, you know, budget s- shuffling of, of the- Yeah... of the larger entity, which wouldn't maybe have, have, have been investing, you know, in us the way we, we would've invested in ourselves. 255 00:39:34.864 --> 00:39:48.144 We went out for kind of classic venture funding on, on various occasions and, and found that people thought the, the niche was too small or the, you know, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the model wasn't, you know, scalable enough or it wasn't gonna be a, a, a, a unicorn. 256 00:39:48.184 --> 00:40:04.744 In fact, I talked to, I talked to Marc Andreessen a- actually very early on and, and, and, and 'cause I knew him from my tech days and, and he said, "You know, the problem is, you know, even if you're, you know, wildly successful, you know, the, the, the, the, you know, your, your, your, your total addressable market," from his point of view is not, was not big enough. 257 00:40:04.784 --> 00:40:14.604 And, and I said, "I beg to differ. It's the entire, you know, financial, you know, the entire financial marketplace." And, and he said, "Well, you know, good luck." And- [laughs] 258 00:40:14.704 --> 00:40:22.944 But so we, so we failed to raise venture money, we failed to get acquired, and we did a couple of years ago raise a seed round, but from mission-aligned investors. 259 00:40:22.984 --> 00:40:32.064 So the Ford Foundation is our, our main, our, our, our biggest investor, and the Sorenson Impact Foundation as well. And they're, you know, in it, you know, for a return. 260 00:40:32.184 --> 00:40:55.004 It's, it's a, it's a legit investment, but they're also in it for, for the impact, and they're also in it for, for helping us become, you know, the, the, the go-to place for, as I said, this kind of c- category of, of folks, you know, agents of impact who, who need, you know, need this kind of, you know, information infrastructure, and that that, again, will, will be a good business when, you know, as that, as that whole sector grows. 261 00:40:55.124 --> 00:41:11.144 And so we feel like we've kind of landed in the right place with, with investors that are both, you know, pushing us to, to, to, to, to realize those ambitions, but also patient enough to, to know that there's, you know, things that have to be put into place and, a- again, not all of it, you know, within our own control. 262 00:41:11.824 --> 00:41:17.224 Yeah. Why did you end up raising money? I mean, why not just live on cash flow? Well, 263 00:41:18.304 --> 00:41:30.724 y- y- we, we basically, you know, had, you know, we had, we had, we had briefly crossed, crossed to cash flow positive and, and we, we probably could have, you know, expanded that, but we had no real visibility into, into, into the future in, in, in that way. 264 00:41:30.754 --> 00:41:49.934 And we, we couldn't-- We, we had done it all really not just bootstrap, but sort of shoestring, and we hadn't-- There were a lot of just basic business functions that we had never invested in and, and, and sometimes we consoled ourselves and said, "Oh, wow, we've had such great success without doing any of the very obvious things that any real media company-" [laughs] Well, what, what obvious things that were you not doing? 265 00:41:49.934 --> 00:41:58.964 Well, just, just like optimizing the, the subscription funnel for starters, right? As you know, there's a whole science and art to and, and, and, and sort of tech stack to, to, to running all that. 266 00:41:59.004 --> 00:42:07.464 And then sales, you know? Like, like we had, like we had basically let folks walk in the door and we would sell them stuff. Yeah. But, but we hadn't actually had a real sales function, so. Eventually, you gotta go out. 267 00:42:07.764 --> 00:42:15.844 Ads get-- Sponsorships, ads, whatever you wanna call them, they get sold, not bought. O- only from Google and, and Meta do they get bought. A- a- absolutely. So- Everyone else sells. 268 00:42:15.864 --> 00:42:21.884 And you gotta, and you gotta, and you gotta take a flyer that you're gonna pay all those folks to do all that stuff, you know? Yeah. That, that's gonna u- ultimately result in growth. 269 00:42:21.924 --> 00:42:28.164 And we did take a big gulp 'cause we, like I said, we could have gutted it out as, as bootstrap. 270 00:42:28.374 --> 00:42:36.314 And we thought, at some level, I thought, I remember, "Oh, we've arrived at where a lot of folks wanna get to after the investment, is we've become... 271 00:42:36.664 --> 00:42:41.644 We're, we're independent media company, cash flow positive, no debt, you know, you know, happy customers. 272 00:42:41.864 --> 00:42:50.244 You know, we're, we're actually, you know, the-- that's the goal, and why would we go, you know, back into the hamster wheel of, of investment?" 273 00:42:50.484 --> 00:43:01.744 But we ultimately decided that if we wanted to actually not be just a kind of, you know, lifestyle business, as people disparagingly call it, and, and actually- I love lifestyle businesses. [laughs] I aspire to one. 274 00:43:01.864 --> 00:43:06.344 I don't have one right now 'cause [laughs] it's- Or you have a, or you have a bad lifestyle business. 275 00:43:06.364 --> 00:43:16.984 [laughs] A lifestyle business to me means like I like have like enough brain space to like truly enjoy a, a- It depends what kind of lifestyle you want. Yes. [laughs] I guess so. But then, yeah, you- It sounds good. 276 00:43:17.124 --> 00:43:24.796 A s- a lifestyle business sounds greatYeah, it, I do think it sounds good. I don't, I don't actually disparage it, but it, as in the investment world, it's considered like the- I know... 277 00:43:24.836 --> 00:43:32.926 the, you know, the, the sort of also-ran if you don't have a, a scalable, a scalable model. I think lifestyle business is coming back. I mean, just like how... 278 00:43:32.956 --> 00:43:40.076 You know, I was gonna le- a-ask like how many employees you have, 'cause it was always like a sort of, you know, the more employees the better, and that has kind of flipped now. 279 00:43:40.196 --> 00:43:48.616 Now you got people who are, who are like proud. I'm like, "No, well, I just, I, I, I just have a lot of fractional people." They're like, "Oh, good for you." They're like, "Congratulations." 280 00:43:50.026 --> 00:44:00.396 [laughs] We're- we've got 10, 10 folks, and then we do have some fractional folks. A-and, and, and, you know, AI is, [laughs] is, is, is a, is a, is a, is a good topic we could, we could jump into of course. 281 00:44:00.576 --> 00:44:02.476 But we, you know, we're kind of old school in that way. 282 00:44:02.556 --> 00:44:11.816 We, we sort of are scaling up the, the editorial on subscription revenues because we think that's the kind of, you know, that's a kind of old newspaper kind of model. 283 00:44:11.826 --> 00:44:20.256 And then we s-are, you know, have taken this investment money to kind of scale up the business side, the growth side. So now we've got more of a product team and some, some, some developers. 284 00:44:20.856 --> 00:44:27.836 And, and now we're just scaling up the, the sales team as well to, to, to, to take all this great stuff and, and try to, as you say, sell it- Yeah... 285 00:44:27.876 --> 00:44:36.096 not, not hopefully not wait for people to- So will you tell me how big the business is? In, in terms of revenues? Yeah. Or you could do profits too. We could do, uh, everything. 286 00:44:36.116 --> 00:44:46.616 [laughs] Well, you know, because- Do margins. Well, because we're, because we're, you know, still in, you know, in, in investment mode, you know, the, the profits are, are shall we say future, future- Yeah... 287 00:44:46.656 --> 00:44:51.776 future leaning. But- Can you tell me about how, how do we get, how do we get an idea of the size of the business? 288 00:44:52.376 --> 00:45:01.556 Well, we have, we have, you know, m-multi tens of thousands of sub-subscribers of which, you know, multi s-multi single digit thousands are, are, are paying. 289 00:45:01.616 --> 00:45:08.256 We have about hundred and seventy, as I said, you know, enterprise or, or, or group subscriptions, so that, that, that multiplies out. 290 00:45:08.296 --> 00:45:18.236 And then we have, you know, multiple sponsors, you know, six-figure sponsors that, and m- and many of which are, are, are multi-year. So, you know, we're in the- So you're able to sell multi-year sponsorships? 291 00:45:18.396 --> 00:45:23.966 I gotta do this. Well, so- sometimes we don't sell it all in advance, but they become multi-year over time, so they renew. Okay. 292 00:45:23.976 --> 00:45:30.056 And we have a, a number of those, and some of them have been, you know, as m- as much as five years, and a couple of them are like more like three years. 293 00:45:30.156 --> 00:45:39.916 So that, you know, gives us a little bit of, of, of visibility in-into the future, and we, we, you know, we've, we've sold a bunch, you know, for, for next year already, so we're, so we're feeling good about that. 294 00:45:40.336 --> 00:45:49.965 And the subscription, you know, renewals I think, you know, are, are, are strong and, and, and certainly in line with kind of, you know, what we understand to be like industry standards for, for churn rate and things like that. 295 00:45:49.996 --> 00:46:00.196 And, and we're developing, broadening the, the product set and, and, and that, that both... You know, I think this is actually so a unheralded thing, which is, you know, 296 00:46:01.096 --> 00:46:11.396 we can kind of do the development, the product development i-in the current model because we're just giving more and more value to our subscribers in the first cut. 297 00:46:11.936 --> 00:46:21.576 And then if we've come up with a, you know, something that's, we, we, we can both replicate and that's super valuable, you know, we do think there might be, you know, premium tiers and, and that sort of thing going forward. 298 00:46:21.636 --> 00:46:32.216 And so the, the, the fact that you've got a kind of stable subscri- and growing subscriber base gives you a lot of, a lot of freedom and a lot of, you know, master of your own destiny kind of- Yeah... 299 00:46:32.256 --> 00:46:36.876 kind of, kind of- And you have that solid base, right? Like, I mean, you go into the year, you know. 300 00:46:36.976 --> 00:46:44.876 I mean, I guess if you're selling annual deals, you, you, you kind of get it, but it's just, it gives you a lot of leverage in a business. That's why businesses are, are valued differently. 301 00:46:44.916 --> 00:46:50.496 We're, we're basically, you know, fighting for the, the growth, but we, we kind of have the basics, the basic locked in. 302 00:46:50.556 --> 00:46:58.436 You know, but we, you know, we're trying to find the, the, the, the hockey stick, but, but we have the kind of, you know, slow and steady- I don't know if the hockey stick is in any, any parts of media really. 303 00:46:58.446 --> 00:47:09.316 [laughs] I, I, I don't think so either, and that's, that's what I wanna ask you about because I think the, the investors are kind of trying to treat media like, like software and, um- Well, wasn't that last generation? 304 00:47:09.356 --> 00:47:18.176 What have they been in like, you know, cryogenically frozen like Han Solo? Like, I mean, that, that was- Well, but you tell me, you tell me because we had all these people who turned us down 305 00:47:19.096 --> 00:47:22.536 on, on, in all kinds of ways and invested in s- you know, something else. 306 00:47:23.396 --> 00:47:38.456 That something else, you know, crashed and burned, and, and, and, and they lost their money on it and, and they're, they're not-- They don't come back and say like, "Oh, your kind of model, you know, might, might well have been better in the f-," you know, they don't, they don't have, they don't seem to have any humility from the fact that- Yeah... 307 00:47:38.486 --> 00:47:45.956 that the, that the very smart thing they were doing la-la-la last time you talked to them didn't work. Well, is one of your investors, is Jessica Lessin one of your investors? 308 00:47:45.996 --> 00:47:50.496 Well, we went through the first cohort of, of Jessica's information accelerator. 309 00:47:50.856 --> 00:48:08.116 So, so, so we, when we had come upon, and I think we had come upon, you know, or, or, or, or arrived at the subscription model ourselves, we started looking around for, for, for, for, for how to do it and, you know, of course, Jessica was a great evangelist of the subscription model, and so she was starting this accelerator. 310 00:48:08.176 --> 00:48:18.056 So we were in the first cohort and, and that actually di-did serve a useful forcing mechanism to, to get us to, to push, you know, go on the, on the subscription model. 311 00:48:18.236 --> 00:48:27.336 And so as a function of that, she's a, she's an investor now. Yeah. 'Cause I mean, I think that's like a good model in that 'cause she, she knows how long it takes to, to build these businesses. 312 00:48:27.396 --> 00:48:38.216 These are not- Yeah, yeah... overnight, you know, hockey stick businesses. I don't know of any- Yeah... and, and the ones that I have known of that have been hockey sticks, the, the stick just stopped at some point. 313 00:48:38.356 --> 00:48:50.476 You know, there was like little things or someone who was gaining some kind of algorithm or at some kind of edge and it, a, or was doing some kind of arbitrage and, and that arbitrages, you know, aren't forever. 314 00:48:50.496 --> 00:49:04.416 We've thought that, you know, that, that we would be swamped by, you know, either major media or, or competitor. You know, I, I, I did not predict that we would have had the field as much to ourselves as we have had. 315 00:49:04.476 --> 00:49:06.636 Now there's, there's competitors all around the fringes. 316 00:49:06.656 --> 00:49:16.188 There's a lot of, a lot of stuff obviously around climateYou know, you know, Bloomberg, FT, you know, others, you know, you know, you know, are making a, a, make, make periodic runs, runs at all this. 317 00:49:16.288 --> 00:49:25.467 But I think the niche advantage is that you're, you know, you're, you know, we're on it full time, and we're on it, you know, you know, day in, day out, week in, week out. 318 00:49:25.608 --> 00:49:40.368 And, and so just the sheer kind of sticking with it kind of gives you an advantage over folks that, like I said, have, you know, bigger fish to fry, and, and this beat then becomes something of an afterthought, or at least a, not, not the primary mission. 319 00:49:40.398 --> 00:49:49.358 And so there's... You know, people ask about, you know, "What's, what's your moat? You know, why wouldn't, you know, somebody just take you on?" And I'm like, "You know, you try putting out five newsletters a week." 320 00:49:49.358 --> 00:49:58.128 [laughs] That's-- The moat, that's the only, the only moat is how hard it is and how long it takes. That's the moat. [laughs] Very, very few people wanna suffer. 321 00:49:58.168 --> 00:50:04.388 So why did you step aside as, as, as CEO, as you elevate Dennis? Well, it was, it was a, a combination of things. 322 00:50:04.408 --> 00:50:11.608 But the main thing was that, you know, in this moment, you know, and, and we all kind of know what, what the, you know, the current environment is, is about. 323 00:50:11.648 --> 00:50:19.258 You know, it, it just felt like that my skills were actually, you know, more differentiated on the editorial side, and that what we really needed- Yeah... 324 00:50:19.258 --> 00:50:29.428 was, was leadership to kind of navigate [chuckles] this crazy time we're in for our readers and, you know, and, and for the team and, and so that, that I could make the biggest contribution there. 325 00:50:29.868 --> 00:50:44.068 And then frankly, you know, the, the, the revenue goals which you get when you, when you take investment, and which, you know, we may have to, you know, eventually take, take more investment, you know, those, those need their own kind of full-time, maniacal, obsessive attention. 326 00:50:44.288 --> 00:50:56.368 And so just to make sure that everything, you know, kind of got done and that we had kind of accountability and, and, and all that good stuff, you know, that, that, that, that folks like, I decided, like I said, to promote myself to founder. 327 00:50:56.388 --> 00:51:01.828 And so I feel like- Yeah... I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I get, I get to have my platform still, which I had before, but now I don't have to... 328 00:51:02.408 --> 00:51:11.128 You know, now I get to be the troublemaking, you know, you know, crusading journalist again, and, and not, not, not the CEO who's got to, got to report the, the quarterly numbers. Yeah. 329 00:51:11.548 --> 00:51:19.248 Was it, was it, was that hard to... Like, I can't imagine personally, like, but [laughs] talk to me in five years. It was, it was... 330 00:51:19.548 --> 00:51:28.488 It, it, it created a, you know, just at a psychological level, a little bit more of a wobble than I had realized. But I quickly got over that and realized what a, what a great gift, what a great gift it was. 331 00:51:29.068 --> 00:51:38.348 And, and, and partly it's because Dennis is, you know, had been, been with us and been with me for, for so long, and we work so well together that he was, like, essentially the only person I could imagine working for. 332 00:51:38.608 --> 00:51:48.968 And, and- Yes... and then as, as I say, you know, it's a, it's a great blessing to be able to, to, to have that and, and, and still have my platform and, and my, and my team. Yeah. So you did all this with... 333 00:51:49.228 --> 00:51:57.327 Y-you guys, you-- I don't think you're, you're doing m-much with events. That, that kind of surprised me. Yeah, we- Usually these B2B businesses are events businesses. 334 00:51:57.648 --> 00:52:08.068 Ag-again, it's one of the things that everybody has, has, has told us we needed to do, and, and we, we, we understand the argument, and we've had a, a bunch of discussions and, and are still having a bunch of discussions about how to, how to do that. 335 00:52:08.098 --> 00:52:21.038 And it, it's, it's less so about the supposed margins in that business, which I don't really believe, but more about, again, what do these agents of impact need to move forward? 336 00:52:21.068 --> 00:52:25.108 And one, one of the things they absolutely need is to, is to get together. 337 00:52:25.168 --> 00:52:36.768 And so we're sort of held our fire until we could deliver something that truly kind of, you know, met the moment in the sense of being a kind of place where... 338 00:52:36.828 --> 00:52:48.708 Like, just putting on a bunch of panels and, and, and trying to, you know, just doing that again and again and again that, that, that we've all been to, like, we wanted to do something different, and I think we're gonna come up with that and, and hopefully roll it out early next year. 339 00:52:49.208 --> 00:52:55.988 Okay. Awesome. Oh, oh, oh, we didn't, we didn't actually get to the AI stuff, 'cause I do think that that's, that's part of the event stuff. 340 00:52:56.088 --> 00:53:10.088 It's like, as I think of, like, all the, the threats and everything with AI to all parts of the content ecosystem that, you know, that's why events are, like, so important, because people are gonna always convene, and if you can convene people- And you know they're... 341 00:53:10.138 --> 00:53:19.008 And, and then [chuckles] I suppose you know they're real, or they at least seem real in, in person. [laughs] Yes. Exactly. But are you, are, are you able to use AI to... 342 00:53:19.588 --> 00:53:31.288 Because I, I, I think just theoretically, I think it should give advantages to s-smaller, you know, companies of all kinds to be able to do more. 343 00:53:31.688 --> 00:53:41.478 You know, they're, they're, they're always resource constrained compared to larger companies. And I mean, I'm convinced most larger companies could be twenty-five percent smaller, just about all of them. Yeah. Yeah. 344 00:53:41.478 --> 00:53:52.768 Yeah. And that's not the case. I, I could not be twenty-five percent smaller. I'd be, like, four feet tall. So I don't know. Are you able to find ways? I mean, I, I do, like, here and there. 345 00:53:52.868 --> 00:54:02.348 I mean, less with, like, content, you know, other than, like, you know, transcripts and finding quotes in there, but more around other parts of the business, marketing and what- We've, we've done some... 346 00:54:02.408 --> 00:54:07.908 I would s- you know, in the scheme of things, I'm sure it's very low-level stuff. But we, for example, re-rebooted, to use your word- Yeah... 347 00:54:07.968 --> 00:54:19.868 our, our jobs board, and we, and we use AI to, to, to help keep that organized and, and, and to sort of speed up what had been a lot of scut work, and we, we... It enables us to post many more jobs. 348 00:54:19.968 --> 00:54:25.938 And, you know, as you can imagine, jobs are something where when you want one, you're very highly motivated. And so the- Yeah... 349 00:54:25.968 --> 00:54:36.608 the job, the jobs board has become a, a big, you know, kind of page view and lead generator. So, so that's a kind of just a sort of bread and butter kind of, you know, operational, you know, workflow improvement. 350 00:54:37.208 --> 00:54:42.848 And but I think the real opportunity for us, and we're, we're working on it now, is, you know, we, we've had many offers. 351 00:54:42.888 --> 00:54:51.008 You know, "Give us your whole corpus, and we'll, like, you know, somehow make you a search, you know, a search result in our, in our AI, you know, algorithm or something." Yeah. 352 00:54:51.048 --> 00:54:55.348 We're like, you know, and that's not really likely to kind of, [chuckles] you know, change the game for us. 353 00:54:55.788 --> 00:55:27.384 But that if we could kind of instantiate the Impact Alpha-Point of view or the thesis that, that we kind of try to hammer in editorially ev-every day that, and use that as a, as a kind of starting point for people to, to, to go deeper into, you know, either an investment thesis or a geography or a, a, a, a particular, you know, inflection point or, or mega trend in the world that there's a kind of value in kind of being able to, to, to put our own thinking, the... 354 00:55:27.544 --> 00:55:39.784 You know, create the impact alpha IA, we call it, you know. Sorry, AI. The IA for, for, for... AI for AI. Sorry. AI for IA, and that's, that, that puts us more at the, you know, the top of the food chain. 355 00:55:39.824 --> 00:55:47.344 So that's the kind of stuff we're, we're, we're, we're trying to, to, to build and see whether there's some tools that we can give our, our readers, or AI tools we can give our readers. 356 00:55:47.844 --> 00:56:01.164 Okay, so final thing is any words of wisdom for the many journalists out there who are like, "Okay, I've seen enough of these layoffs. I gotta go out. I'm gonna start my own thing. I've got a niche. 357 00:56:02.024 --> 00:56:12.384 I'm gonna build a business." Go ahead. I think if you're covering something, you know, that people wanna know about and you're the best beat reporter covering that beat, there is a business, right? 358 00:56:12.424 --> 00:56:14.744 And, and Substack has proven it and, you know, you know. 359 00:56:14.824 --> 00:56:23.874 And I see a lot of folks, you know, trying to be sort of the flashy kind of pundit or, or, or feature writer or something, and I'm, I'm a beat reporter, you know, and I was, kinda- Yeah... 360 00:56:23.944 --> 00:56:32.484 came up as a beat reporter, and it was always kinda, you know, looked down upon by the [laughs] yeah, by the, by, by the swashbuckling correspondents. 361 00:56:32.584 --> 00:56:36.134 But, but that's, you know, that's where you can really, you know, you know... 362 00:56:36.144 --> 00:56:47.424 You'd think that everything is, you know, is covered, everything's been said, but on, on many of these beats, you know, the-- somebody's just watching, watching it, knowing the players, knowing what's happening next, ma-making sense of it, you know, that doesn't exist. 363 00:56:47.464 --> 00:56:49.464 And so, you know, like I said, not many un... 364 00:56:49.664 --> 00:56:59.294 You know, when you find an unfilled niche in the ecosystem, you know, that, that, that folks need to know about, you know, just, just make sure it's, you know, big enough niche to, to support at least, at least yourself- Yeah, exactly... 365 00:57:00.044 --> 00:57:09.074 if not your, if not your, you know, if not a, a couple of reporters to help you out and, and can keep it all rolling. [upbeat music] Okay, awesome. David, thank you so much. Really appreciate you. Thank you, Brian. 366 00:57:09.104 --> 00:57:18.124 It's terrific. [upbeat music]