[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey. Before I get to this week's show, a quick message about an upcoming online forum, Rebooting and Scaling.
It is tomorrow, Wednesday, February 26th. It's gonna be at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
I will be joined by True Anthem CEO and founder Chris Hart, as well as Valnet's Director of Marketing for Gaming, James Kosur, for an interactive session, it's like a webinar, focused on how Valnet's brands in entertainment, gaming, and tech use Facebook, TikTok, and X.
You know, social media is still an important channel for traffic.
We're gonna talk about everything from the job social platforms do now, why optimizing to engagement on Facebook is critical versus traffic, gaining efficiency at a time of fragmentation, embracing platform volatility as a reality and also an opportunity, and also just so you know what's working and what's not across various platforms.
So I'll leave a link to it in the show notes, or you can also find it on rebooting.com. But please do join us for this discussion.
This week, I have d- a conversation with Sean Griffey, the co-founder and now ex-CEO of Industry Dive, a network of B2B publications that emerged as something of the antidote to a lot of the disappointing outcomes in the scale era.
It was purchased by Informa for five hundred and twenty-five million dollars back in twenty twelve.
It was a massive win, and I think it opened up a lot of people's eyes to how, you know, for all the doom and gloom around B2C publishing, B2B publishing has continued to be a really kinda healthy and lucrative sector.
Sean departed Informa Techtarget at the end of twenty twenty-four, so I wanted to have him back on to get his view of the landscape.
We discuss a range of issues, including the dangers of building a publishing business on Substack, why peer-level communities have Sean's interest at the moment, and of course, the enduring power of email.
I hope you enjoy the conversation, and if you do, please leave the show a rating and review wherever you listen. [upbeat music] Sean, welcome to the podcast. I think this is our third or fourth. You're up there.
Um, I'm honored to be called back, so, um- Yeah [chuckles] exactly. Um- Says something about your judgment, but, uh, thank you for having me.
Well, I mean, you know, I, I admire you're a, a retiree, and you know, I spend some time in Miami, so I'm, I'm comfortable around, around your, your people. So you just wrapped up, like, an amazing run.
Is it thir- now 12 years at- Thirteen. Thirteen years building Industry Dive. Amazing exit in twenty twenty-two to Informa. Fi- I think it was five twenty-five million. And, and now, you know, you're out.
For those who don't know the Industry Dive story, think it, you know, I, I've always thought about it as kind of the antidote to a lot of the doom and gloom that existed from the B2C side of publishing with a lot of the, quote-unquote, "scaled publishers" that got built up, a lot of venture capital money.
Obviously, it didn't work out for all of them, I think at this point we can say.
Industry Dive, different, different outcome, and I think it symbolized how, you know, the media industry obviously has rewarded depth over breadth and, and niche, and also, let's face it, B2B.
B2B has come out, like, as, as one of the few winners, I guess, in this, in this landscape. Is that fair? Yeah, but I, I think what it's actually valued is audiences, right?
Audiences that you can define, audiences that care about you- Yeah... and at a real deep level. I mean, the, the niche, you know...
One of the great things about B2B is that we've been writing towards job titles the whole time, right? And when you, you know, not just an industry, but towards specific roles within those industries.
And when you can get that granular, you can really provide value, and it turns out the market, you know, recognizes value. Yeah, that's a great point about, like, writing to job titles, right?
'Cause I think a lot of people don't truly know who their audience is, right? And when you write to a job title, you know, you, you know specifically, right? Yeah.
And you have to be that lifeline when they get up in the morning, and that's why emails is tremendous. You guys, you know, got that, was not only does it give you a ton of data, right?
And that's incredibly important, but, you know, it is, it is that direct connection that if you can create the must-have information that they have when they get up in the morning, you got a good shot. I mean, there's...
Y- y- it's all an execution game, but, like, you gotta get, you gotta nail that part.
Yeah, but I mean, we, you know, it's, it, it is can you provide that value, and then do you recognize that everything else isn't valuable, right?
So when we set up analytics at Industry Dive, we set up, you know, using our, our tech stack, set up we're only gonna track behaviors for our targeted audience, and we're not gonna care about how many page views we got, you know?
Yeah. And, and in fact, every now and then we have a story go viral, and we have to turn off the ads, you know?
So virality, like Reddit, you know, finding one of our stories amusing actually hurt us more than it helped us, and I think that's sort of the difference of what we did is, you know, we said, "Here's the, here's the audience that's really valuable at a job title level.
We're, you know, as a company, we're only gonna watch these people." And, and certainly we looked at, you know, other metrics.
I don't wanna say we never looked at the total traffic and the rest, like you, you do all of that, but what we really cared about this level.
And then we actually had relationships with advertisers where we said, "Okay, what is valuable about what we're doing to you?" And it's, you know, a random flyby from Reddit turns out it's not valuable to anybody. Yeah.
And so don't charge them for that. Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, it's also, like, I mean, I think you guys, uh, it's, like, often in, like, B2B or you're really talking to marketers, not advertisers.
I know that people use them, like, interchangeably- Yeah... right? But- No, you're right...
um, you know, with advertising, I think that is the difference, where B2CParticularly in a lot of publishing, you know, they're, they look for, you know, impressions, and they're, and they're looking for advertisers who wanna get their message out, whereas I feel like in B2B it's always been very performance driven.
They're marketers, right? And, you know, you need to... That's why lead gen is incredibly important in B2B. That's why in person becomes important because I say it, it gives you receipts, right?
And I think all of, of the media industry is moving towards this, where you have to fulfill an economic function.
And I think it's just, it's hard to do, but it's, it's a lot clearer, I think, in B2B about how you get there. But, you know, the big difference between B2B is we actually talk to our customers.
You know, I, I think everyone wants to, you know, online wants to poo poo the value of, uh, MBA these days.
But, you know, I've always said, and, and I got an MBA, and if I walked into one of my strategy classes and said, "Hey, I'm gonna build, I'm gonna build a new business, but key to it is I'm gonna put a very opaque middleman between me and my customer and never talk to my customer again, and have the opaque middleman who I don't really know explain the value of my product and set pricing for it.
Does this sound like a good idea?" You'd be laughed out of the room, right? You'd be laughed out of the room.
And that's what the media industry did, you know, twenty-five years ago, is they put in an ad tech middleman in between them and the customer, and they stopped talking to the customer.
And when they did that, it becomes, you know, the next step is the audience doesn't become valuable anymore. It leads to the rise of traffic.
And when that doesn't create values, you know, the media industry just became kind of crypto bro-bros, where we're just shooting shots in the dark hoping that, you know, the next platform's gonna be the savior of the rest.
Like, we're just gambling on things much like crypto investors are gambling on meme coins. And there's just a, it's...
You know, to me it started with this fundamental disconnect of we stopped talking to our customers, and that's something that B2B never did, you know, fortunately, and that's something that you see the, you know, the, the media companies that are hot today are ones that aren't monetizing it with, you know, programmatic, or not building around that.
They're, they look smaller, but it's, they're smaller because they're actually talking to people who write them checks. That's very true.
Although I would say, [clears throat] looking programmatic, the, the buy side drove a lot of that. I mean, all the, the early programmatic investment clearly went into the buy side.
I feel like a lot of publishers sort of went a- went along almost like kicking and screaming in some ways.
This wasn't something that, like, they got up, like, super excited about, like getting disintermediated [chuckles] from their customers.
But when their customer was like, "Oh, yeah, we have a mandate, we have to just, you know, pour it all into programmatic," forget about how that mandate came about.
You know, they were left, okay, well, you know, we can't dictate how... They didn't have the leverage to dictate, you know, how people were gonna buy.
And, and also I think, you know, on, on, on a maybe more profound level, a lot of publishers were not that essential to both their partners and honestly to the audience itself.
And you, you see that when, you know, a lot of peop- a lot of people went out of business and, and there was a lot of, you know, rending of garments on, on, on then Twitter.
But then, like, everyone kind of went on with their lives. And so there were a lot of flimsy brands that got built.
What do you end up thinking when you see, you know, it used to be like, it's still like the Morning Brew of X, but I still... You know, people wanna build the, the industry dive, you know, the n- the next industry dive.
It's like industry dive, but with creators. Industry dive maybe, but with more AI. I love it, you know. Uh, you, you, when you, when you start something, you always want people to say that they're, you know...
You, you wanna get to the point where they say they're gonna copy you and do it, and, and I hope someone does. You know, I think, I think there's some people doing really cool things.
I do think it's easy to pick one or two of the things that made us successful and miss all of the other ones. And so it's gonna be interesting to see, you know, who, who can do it.
And I, I think, you know, if you talk to Austin and, you know, the Morning Brew guys, I think they'd say all the people who wanna be Morning Brew of whatever, I think they'll, they would tell you, "Yeah, they're getting seventy percent of what we did, but the thirty percent is actually really hard and important."
What's the thirty percent? I mean, 'cause we know the, the sort of, you know, look, a lot of people wanna build. You guys went narrow and deep. I think I checked this morning, there was thirty-three publications.
There might be a couple others I missed. But, like, you know, you went into specific sectors, you went narrow and deep. You bet on email and, and, and direct connections, and therefore first party data.
You bet on performance, I, I think in, in a, in a lot of ways. You weren't just selling, like, banner ads or anything like this. You stayed focused. You didn't go into...
It was w- it was kind of funny that an events company bought you because, like, you were like, what?
[laughs] You're like the only B2B company that wasn't, like, an, you know, a, an events company masquerading as something else. Yep. Um, but you're, I mean, you're right. We- What's the thirty percent?
I mean, the thirty percent is, like, the executional details that nobody sees back in the kitchen, right? Pretty much. I mean, I think there's... I mean, there's a lot within that thirty percent.
I think some people do... The, the thirty percent that people miss differs between depending on who they are. You know, some people will pick up on one nuance and not the other.
I mean, I think the one thing that we did early on was we always said we were trying to build a platform and not trying to build a portfolio of brands, which I think is very different- Yeah...
with what you see, you know, particularly some of the larger, you know, companies that are buying assets to, to sort of build Industry Dive secondhand.
I think they're building portfolios and they're not building platforms, and we were very deliberate about the technology underlying things.
We were very deliberate that all of the teams we were building were horizontal across all of our properties, right? There wasn't, there was an audience development team for our utility pub that was different- Yeah...
than the audience development team for our biopharma one, right? Like, the, like, everything was across platform. The sales teams were the same way, and the data structure was the same way.
So at the, at the end, it's hard in the beginning, but you sort of pick up steam along the way, you know. And, and when we were really humming, all of that sort of network effect built on itself. Yeah.I mean, that's...
Yeah, because you get efficiencies with... I mean, the, I think, I feel like in publishing a lot of times, like, the the trade-off is okay, and I, I've been in these meetings.
I mean, we, we went down this path, like, at Digiday, is okay, well, this won't feel, this'll feel like stamped out, right? Like- Yep... and it feels, it feels like Yahoo's, you know, portal approach.
It was like, okay, Yahoo Jobs, Yahoo, I guess it was Yahoo Classifieds, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo this. And I think a lot of people end up gravitating towards a house- Mm-hmm... of brands approach, right?
Versus- Um, I mean, you're, you're right. Like, you lose something, and I think if we're gonna be honest, right, the, there's always, you know... People have said, "Who's the Industry Dive's competitor?"
And it's like, well, we had a, we have a million competitors in each of the different industries, but we didn't have someone that competed across all of the industries. Yeah.
And I think there were really great companies and publications within some of the industries. Some of them could go much deeper in the industries or do unique things specific to that industry that we couldn't do.
And so may- maybe ours felt stamped out, but it mostly felt stamped out to people like you who watched all of it, right? If you're in the utility industry, you're, you're not seeing- Yeah...
biopharma, and you're not realizing that it's stamped out, you know? That, that there is a template to it. I didn't say... I didn't mean that it was stamped out.
I'm the- [laughs] No, no, but, but I under- I mean, I understand what you're saying. Not to me. [laughs] Right? You know, I totally understand what you're saying.
Like, you know, if, if you go house of brands, you can create unique things and, and we would have people, you know, particularly editorial people, you know, within our teams that would wanna create something if we said, "Can we do it 34 times- Yeah...
more?" And if we said no, then we're like, "Sorry, we're not gonna put any engineering or design time behind this," you know? It had to work in every industry. So when you look at, like...
I wanna g- I'm going to this newsletter conference later this week. I don't think I've ever been to a newsletter conference. It's a first for me. There's a lot of them now, which is, like, sort of- Yeah...
telling, right? What do you think of, what do you think of newsletters as a business? And by that, I mean, like, there's been an explosion of newsletters. Obviously, you know, Substack started newsletters.
I don't know what Substack is now. We'll, we'll talk [laughs] about that in a bit. Beehiiv, full disclosure, I'm an angel investor in Beehiiv. It's my only angel investment. Tyler's done an amazing job.
[laughs] But I'm also given pause by the sort of mania that existed in, in newsletters. There was a lot of manias that existed in, like, particularly in that 2020, 2021 ZIRP era. [laughs] Yep.
And I mean, crypto is in there. And I don't know. It's hard for me to really make at it, 'cause I really believe in newsletters, like, as a, a way to get...
And I think you probably agree, but, like, as a way to get data, it's amazing to have, like, data about people. You know, you know who's in your audience.
You know, you enrich it, and you, you can find out exactly who the, who they are, right? And that's, like, incredibly valuable for, for business purposes, and just, like, for what you're gonna make purposes.
Love the direct connection. Nothing is perfect. You're gonna be disintermediated by technology in some way, shape, or form. But look at the competitive set. What are you gonna do?
[laughs] Like, just load stuff up on a TikTok. At the same time, like, I think about it as just, like, a little bit of a limited distribution vehicle, and a, and a lot of people seem to be looking to...
A lot of, a lot of the businesses here feel like arbitrage businesses, to be honest with you. I think you're right about the arbitrage. I mean, you know, I, I still love email for the reasons you said.
I mean, I think the other one that we talk about is it's a push platform, right? Yeah. Like, we send it into the inbox. In some ways, podcasts are the same way, right? Which is the other thing that's really taken off.
Like, you know, I open my podcast app and new podcasts are there. I don't have to go remember to go to a podcast I've subscribed to. It shows up on my phone. And, you know, push notifications.
Those are the three things we have as a tool in terms of push versus pull going in. So that's incredibly valuable. Yeah. The, and- You can include texting in there. Text- texting's in there too. Yeah, yeah. Texting too.
I, I guess I had texting as a push notifications, but yeah- Okay... if you can get- That's all right... get them, that's great.
But it, but it's, it's the one that has the most personally identifiable analytics behind it, right?
And so, you know, what you talked about, I mean, that's the, that's, like, the key to this is, like, we, we can learn a lot about what people care about and their behaviors 'cause an email address is unique, unless you're like, you know, some parents I know that share an email address between the mom and dad.
But they're usually unique, unique between people. [laughs] I didn't think people still did that. Uh, there's one or two out there. Wow. I think that's generational.
So I mean, there's a ton of value to the, to a media company, but I think the, the thing that I worry about with all these newsletter conferences, and, and you're right, is it feels like the newest arbitrage, right?
Like, it feels like the newest, we're gonna game Facebook to get audiences. Now we're gonna game audience, and, and we're going to arbitrage 30 cents subscribers to make a dollar on top of it.
And I think that'll work for a while until it won't.
But I think the people who are actually building audience and, and then taking that audience and building community off of it are gonna do fine with email for a long time. I, I don't... You know, I mean, I've been...
You know, the first time I got into media and it was a company that was, you know, heavily into newsletters was 2005, and we've been talking about email dying for 20 years since then, but somehow it hasn't. Yeah.
So what are some, like, newsletter-centric businesses that you think are promising in that, in that realm, right? Because I think a lot of people... Look, there's, like, so many newsletters now.
I mean, like, you know, so many people have created newsletters, and, you know, some people are gonna make it, and, you know, it's like anything, there's a power law.
And some people are gonna build real, you know, media businesses. Some will remain, you know, just, you know, passion projects or just, you know, really small, like, quote unquote, "creator businesses."
But are there any that sort of stand out to you as having-A lot of, you know, promise from just looking from the outside. Well,
the, the, the companies I like, I don't know if they'd define themselves as newsletter businesses, right? Like, I think it's really- Right. Yeah... limiting to say you're a newsletter businesses.
I think they're the ones that say, "We're a media company." Yeah. That's why I said newsletter centric. Newsletter centric- Yeah, newsletter centric. Uh, you know, um, gosh, I don't know.
I mean, I, I, I, I tend to like some of the folks like Payload in the space, you know, industry that, that certainly are driven by a newsletter, but, but, you know, they certainly are doing events and the rest, you know.
Yeah. The, the, you know, t- time will tell what happens with the 1440s and the Flyovers and the rest.
I mean, I think there's smart people working on those, and at times I think there's utility to them, you know, and that I appreciate them, and then at other times I don't think there's depth enough to get me what I want.
I, I don't know, you know, but I, I certainly, I certainly think that if they can push past just, uh, we're a newsletter, there's something there. Yeah. So what...
How, how do you evaluate, like, creator businesses, right? Because, like, there's clearly been a decentralization in the overall media ecosystem, right?
And if there's, if there's an area that's growing fastest, it's around individuals. And we saw that in the election, et cetera.
I think the growth of newsletters and podcasts in some ways are part of this in a, in a large way because there's just so many more individual voices out there.
There's a maybe like an overvaluation right now placed on authenticity, and it's just harder to do that, I feel like, as an institutional brand than it is as, as an individual. Obviously, not necessarily.
Personalities are not a new thing. [laughs] This is not like something that just, that just arrived. However, the scale of it feels different.
There's, there's more of them certainly, but I, I think, you know, Kiplinger had a newsletter over 100 years ago in the finance space, right?
When people say newsletters are new, it's like, no, we, we've been doing newsletters for hundreds of years. We just mailed them.
And, you know, I, I try to have someone tell me the difference between Oprah and MrBeast in terms of, you know, dominating one platform and then expanding off of it, you know. I mean, was Oprah a creator?
We would call... We probably would call her one today, but we didn't.
I mean, I, I think there's, I think there's more creators covering serious stuff, you know, like politics and stuff that we had in the early '90s, but I think the creators were there.
In, in terms of how I evaluate, I mean, well, b- by the way, I mean, I think the interesting thing for me when I look at this is how, how does legacy media tap into that, or how do you build a platform tapped into creators?
And I, you know, I would argue that's what Axios did, right? They, they used brand names to- Yeah...
you know, as an audience hack, and they, they managed to take sort of what people that could've been creators or could've gone to Sub Stack, you know, and brought audiences, and they put them under a platform, and they built a brand around it.
I think Puck's doing a good job of that right now too, right? Which is like, how do we have our cake and eat it too?
In all of those instances, though, I mean, the, the, you know, thing to me is they're mo- It's like how they monetize the creators within those platforms. They're not monetizing it like legacy media is.
They're monetizing it with more direct relationships, as I talked about, you know, and it's, it's, it's...
You know, the, the thing that I always spend a lot of time with with Industry Dive was if we're doing something, like, how do we do something that's small or valuable multiple times?
And I think, you know, from a creator standpoint, the Pucks and, you know, the Axios's have done a really good job.
I think where, you know, some people are getting sidetracked is they're saying creators means voice centric, and we're gonna take someone and try to build a creator, which is like, you know, a legacy company shouldn't try to build creators.
You're, you're paying for someone to utilize your platform. That's what we've always done. You, you need... Like, if you're gonna build creators, you need people, like, bringing creators. You need to...
They need to bring an audience. So they need to bring something that is a hack for you. Okay. Explain a little bit of that difference. I mean, so...
I mean, 'cause usually, look, media companies, I mean, the essential job is to sort of bring in talent, okay? You have, like, a brand, and you have distribution, and you're gonna provide them that.
They're gonna provide, provide their, their labors and their talents, and they... You know, the, the relationship i- is, is such that, you know, the individual didn't have the distribution, right?
They didn't have all of the, the things that the company has. That's the platform you're talking about, right? Yeah. Um- But, but you, you know, and, and historically, though, you, you grew individuals.
Like, you grew- Yeah... brands. You made them popular. I think, I, I, I think there's some people...
And, and, you know, Axios went and got, you know, creators, like, quote, "creators" that had big audiences that would follow them, right? Dan Primack brought it in.
I think where some people are saying, "We're gonna take a 25-year-old and make them a creator," and you're paying to build the, a d- audience for them, and if you're gonna be creator centric, like, you can't...
Like, the cr- you have... You can't grow your own creators. You have to buy creators if you're gonna be a media company. Right. Yeah, and that's totally different, right, than- Yeah...
I mean, look, a lot of models are premised on, it depends, but, like, uh, you know, bringing on people earlier on in their careers and, you know, the, the idea is, like, they can...
It's the same reason, you know, NBA teams wanna draft, like, 19-year-olds is, like, 'cause they've got more upside than if they're- [laughs] Yep... you know. That's just reality.
And, you know, depending on where you are in the market, maybe they go on to, like, a more, quote-unquote, "prominent place." That used to be it, but now those places are shrinking. So you've got a, an advantage there.
But, you know, the test of a place was, you know, can you-Can you bring people into your platform, right?
And, and have them basically grow into being prominent voices and, and faster than they could, like, on their own or at a different place. Yep. But now
y-you kinda need someone who has already achieved a little bit of, or, or a lot of, you know, success already, I guess. Yeah. I mean,
I, I, I mean, I think, like, if you're The New York Times, you're gonna have to do both, right? Yeah. You're gonna have to grow talent, and you're gonna have to find it. I think just more of the...
I, I think some of these companies are hiring, hiring people in a, in a creator-led is, that don't actually have the distribution, you know, a name creator would be.
And I think that's all I'm trying to say is there's a risk to say I'm, I'm gonna hire someone who has a voice, but if they don't have their own audience coming with them- Y-... it's just the old model.
If you want the new model, which is we're gonna hire a creator to be creator-centric, you actually have to have people who have real followings and real communities and real importance in where they are. And- Yeah...
trying to, like, get someone who has fashioned themselves as a creator but has only, you know, been middling success is gonna be, is a mistake I'm seeing people make. Yeah.
So do you think, like, the, the, the phenomenon of in, in B2C media of a lot of influence and audience has, like, leaked to the edges, right? Like, it's, it's gone from institutional media.
It doesn't mean institutional media is gone. It's not going anywhere. But look, it's, it's...
a lot of its influence has, has, you know, it has been lost, and not a lot of it, but, like, portions of it to alternative media, individual voices, whether that's podcasters, YouTubers, newsletter people, whatever, independent publishers.
Do you see something similar coming for B2B? I mean, because I feel like in the, quote-unquote, extinction event, you know, B2B was just kinda, like, hanging out for the most part. [laughs] It's like, "No, we're good."
It's like, "Fine. We've got, we've got different models here." I d- I don't remember reading about all the B2B companies going out of business. They're like, "We're doing our events. It's all good."
Like, [laughs] "It's no big deal. I don't care about this algorithm change." [laughs] Yep. But I'm wondering if those dynamics end up coming to a lot of, of B2B. I think some of it will.
I, I don't know if I see all of it coming. I think, I think certainly B2B companies have to think about, you know, the... You know, you talked about authenticity and tone- Mm-hmm...
and the rest, and I think that'll be a norm that people have to adapt to, right? Like, h-how do we speak to people, and, and, and where?
And I certainly think there are experts out there in B2B that are gonna have their own platforms, and that there, you know, th-there are gonna be individuals that can, you know, can create their own newsletter and, and...
or create their own podcast or do the rest. I, I think that'll come. I don't know if it's gonna be as widespread as some of the consumer ones are.
You know, the, the one thing I do know, though, is you don't have to be the first one to solve this problem, right? You know, like, I...
One, one of the things that I always wanted to do with Industry Dive was to be a fast follower and not be the first one to go and say, "Hey, we, we need to get on TikTok for B2B," 'cause that's where 19-year-olds- Yeah...
who are soon gonna be 25-year-olds, who are then gonna be 35-year-olds are gonna be. I'm like, "Ah, I'll just wait until someone else has proven that this is important- Yeah... for me to go do that," you know? And so
I, I think, you know, people's appetites and how they wanna be spoken to and maybe where they wanna be spoken to, that'll change some. But we don't have to chase it, you know?
We can just be there and have good content when the time comes. Yeah. What is, what is your opinion on the outlook for, for something like Substack? I mean, obviously it's been incredibly influential platform.
More influen- I mean, it's actually a perfect media platform because it's like influence is far bigger than its business, and [laughs] media, media, particularly in B2C, like, uh, media businesses were always, their reputation was far larger than the actual business.
When you think about The New Yorker's reputation versus The New Yorker as a business, I mean, it's, it's an okay business, but it's not like it's some massive business. And that's the case across most of B2C.
And Substack has yet to become a massive business, okay? But it's had, I think, a really, a really big impact. Yeah.
I mean, I'm, I've been wrong about it 'cause I thought we'd be past the Substack phase by now, to be honest. And I, I love- Why did you, why did you think... Why, why wait, why did you think that? 'Cause I, I think...
My, my view was that the self-selection of the successful people would be the people who don't need it.
And so that the, you know, the, the biggest people would get off of Substack the fastest, and it would be left with the tier Cs and B newsletter companies.
Because what, why would anyone give a cut of their revenue to these guys if you were super successful? I thought, you know, that would, that would take it away.
I, you know, I, I guess the audience, you know, I guess inertia's a powerful thing for people not wanting to leave, you know? Yeah. The folks that had guaranteed, guaranteed income with them, certainly powerful.
And now m-maybe there is some sort of audience hack among them, but I'm, I'm... You know, the, the thing about audience hacks is they always, you know, they work in, they work for a while, and then they don't work.
There's not been an audience hack that has withstood decades, right? Because as soon as it becomes a hack, everyone uses it, and then we destroy it. And so the, the...
I'm, like, skeptical of the Substack audience hack as, like, we're gonna provide value in driving audience to them long term, but I'm, I think it's working for folks right now.Yeah.
I mean, they've got, they've got a, they've got a few lock-ins with the recommendations being, you know, a distribution hack, if you will. Like, you don't have to, like... It- it- it works.
It's a, it's, it's a bit of a flywheel. And then the biggest is they got every- they got all those credit cards, you know?
Well, and that- You convert so many more people when they don't have to actually enter their credit card.
Like, it's kinda simple, but it- The- the question to me is, like, how, how much, how many new audience members are they, at, as Substack as a platform bringing in, right?
'Cause at some point, it becomes this closed garden of- Yeah... the same people being passed around, and the rest.
But, you know- Oh, and that's, that's the risk for Beehiiv and all of these, you know, 'cause they're, they're moving in the direction of being platforms to, to a greater or lesser degree, right?
Like, I mean, I don't know. Like, you know, the Substack can talk about how you own your audience, and I'm like, "Okay, but you email my audience then."
Like, what, like, you email on my behalf to recommend different things. Like, how is that...
I mean, I left Substack, like, a year ago, but, like, that's, yeah, to me was, you know, essentially, you have to make a decision.
Are you gonna build a business on a platform, or are you gonna build a platform around a business? And, you know, you- you- there's trade-offs to- to- to both, at the end of the day.
I, at the end of the day, if you believe your data's valuable, I- I personally would get off closed platforms. You know, I- I'd get off...
You know, I think, I view Beehiiv more as, like, a great ESP for small publishers. You know, r- maybe it's a platform.
I know they're trying to do stuff with ad networks and the rest, but I think it's a, it's a drop simple ESP for people who are launching newsletters with- Yeah... the analytics, you know?
Substack is definitely different.
I mean, the, with, with how much they're going into video, I mean, they had already had a podcast, but now with video, they're trying to attract, and with Notes being a social network, at the end of the day, it's much more fraught to me, the, the Substack model.
But again, it works for a lot of people.
There's a lot of people making a lot of money on Substack and not having to worry one bit about, like, email deliverability or [chuckles] any of the, like, you know, pain in the ass parts.
No, about that, I don't, I'm not... I mean, just 'cause you don't have to worry about it doesn't mean they're doing a good job with it. Yeah. No, I know. Um, you know?
But, like, all the product stuff taking off, taking, taking all of that stuff off your plate has a, is, is very attractive to a lot of...
If you're operating, like, an individual-sized business, like, that is- A- absolutely. If, if you're a one-, two-, three-person shop, you know- Yeah... I can see the value of it.
I think if you're gonna be a media company, you quickly go look at the, you know, you, you grow into the Omidyas and the other people that have sort of- Right... audience-centric plat- platforms, you know?
And those are the, that's sort of the evolution. But, but I think they do a great job for, you know, the smaller people. So I remember when, when BuzzFeed went public, you, you were like, "I'm buying. I'm long BuzzFeed."
I mean, I've given you your laurels about, like, how [chuckles] forward-thinking you are, Sean. Okay, a little bit. It's down 94% since I remember reading that tweet. Maybe that's why you're not on Twitter much anymore.
[laughs] I'm keeping receipts. Um, what you didn't know is I kept buying on the way down. [laughs] All right. So I, I ultimately got out of my BuzzFeed, uh, position up a little bit, you know.
But I'm just convinced that there was a first-party data play there, and I'm still convinced that, you know, BuzzFeed, and, and I, you know, I have no idea what this new social network's gonna be or the rest.
You know, I- I have questions of BuzzFeed. That, you know, I know Jonah was on your podcast the other day, and he talked about, you know, the audiences. And do you, you know...
And you had a great, you had a great point, which was that it felt like BuzzFeed was part of the millennial internet, and now it's a- Yeah... different internet, you know.
And, and what I couldn't understand from Jonah's response was, are they trying to age with their audience, or are they trying to stay in the same age demographic and attract new ones? And I don't really know.
That's, like, one of my problems with BuzzFeed. They gotta age with it. They gotta age with it. I guess so. I think it's just, it's too millennial for- But it-... for, like, a Gen Z... it doesn't seem that way now.
And, and I think the, the other thing that's kind of, you know, for me, I know they have newsletters there, but they should be, like, it's, they're not obnoxious about it. Like, if I, if... BuzzFeed had so much traffic.
If they had been collecting emails and creating everything around something that was registered in first-party data, they would have this massive set now.
And it's, it's kind of, there's, like, a sign-in, you know, link when you go to BuzzFeed, but there's nothing, like...
I, I would have five places to collect an email address on every single one of those pages, and I would be doing things that would convert that to my own audience and trying to build, build brands around it.
And they just, uh, you know, I'm a little disappointed they never did that. But, but I, you know, it's also, you know, you see the nails, like, that's the hammer I have, you know, first-party data- Yeah...
emails and the rest. And I was like, there's, there was so much opportunity there that they just kind of didn't work about, worry about. So let me ask you this then. So I mean, that, those are sort of your priors, right?
So where would you be building right now? Like, where, like, because, I mean, is it still, is email still the, like, most attractive starting point for these kinds of businesses?
That you know the dynamics, and you know they work.
Email, as you said, has proclaimed to be on its way to dying or dead, like, repeatedly over the last 30 years, and, and somehow [chuckles] we get up and we check our emails. I don't know.
Where, where, where do you see the actual opportunities now? So I mean, listen, I think email is a component of it. I actually think
real pure communities on a scaled level is something that's really interesting to me, right?
And you think of, you know, World50, which has built this, and, and maybe a lot of people don't know about it, but it, they've built these massive sort of a community business and stamped it out.
Like, there's a-World 50 for CEOs, there's a World 50 for chief marketing officers, there's a World 50, and, and it's these peer groups that go.
And, you know, you see Chief create communities and Vistage create communities for different types of folks. I actually think there is a real opportunity for... And, and this is my B2B hat on, right?
In the B2B- Mm-hmm... space to create communities off of the publications that you have at a job title level. And I think you can create- Yeah...
sort of a platform around it like, like Industry Dive did with, with media, you know, with, with email. You can do that with peer-to-peer community and marry the two right now.
And it- it's, it's something that I think only a few people are really trying to think about in a scaled way.
But I think, I think that, that, you know, that community is, is one of the antidotes towards aggregation and sort of, you know, content proliferation and sort of slop out there is if you can marry those two things, you got something really powerful.
Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, 'cause a lot... I, I... It should say in B2B, a lot of people, like, they waver on community when they really mean events. Like- Correct... they're different things, right?
[laughs] There's total, there's total differences. But I think events is another leg of the stool in B2B, right? Right. If you can do a true community with events, with, with- Yes...
content and media, you've got something really powerful.
But you can have a community business and not have events a- and not have it an events business, but you, you can have an events business that's not a community business. I guess that's my point.
Like, you know, and I think sometimes- Correct. No, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right There's a lot, there's a lot of different kinds of events, and some of the best are just like they're pure marketplaces.
They're matching up a buy and a sell side. You can kinda claim it to be a, a hosted buyer forum, for instance, to be a community model, but you're kinda stretching it. I, I, I think I know what you're saying.
It's like, do the people wanna connect with each other directly? I mean, it's, it's a little bit different than like, you know, setting up a marketplace. Yeah. And, and honestly, I think communities are paid, you know.
I mean, they're, they're, they're pay to join, and they, they may not have vendors as a part of them, you know. Right. Now, I think you could blend the vendors in there, but, but I do think- Yeah, why not?
I mean, you know- Chocolate and peanut butter sounds great. [laughs] Yeah.
I do think the w- the one thing you're talking about, the events and the rest, like, there's a lot of high-end event people that I think don't realize that they're in lead generation, too, right? And that the...
They're like, "Oh, no. We, we h- Our events bring C-level folks, and, you know, sponsors wanna do whatever."
I'm like, "Yeah, sp- Like, it only works if you bring the C-level folks there because, you know, there's someone that, that wants to talk to them."
Even if it's not hosted buyer, you're like, you know, the, a marketer who bought that sponsorship is going back- Yeah... and saying, "Here's what we got out of it." And it is leads. Yeah.
I mean, that is the sort of the key to a lot, particularly in B2B events. I mean, they, they, they call them, like, sponsor driven really.
At the end of the day, most, most events, and I think this is very risky when people try to get a hybrid model, 'cause you wanna be greedy, but you can't be too greedy, right? And everyone wants both.
They w- It's like I want, I want the ticket sales, I want the sponsorship [laughs] I want it all. I wanna, I wanna sell the key card, you know, Wi-Fi sponsorship. We got a sponsor teeny going on, and I love that.
Like, I love monetization.
But at the same time, you're kinda working against y- uh, yourself in some ways because if the value is who is in the room and your basic job, your economic function is really connecting the people in the room to each other and to your partners, you're giving up in a tremendous lever if you can't control who is in the room, right?
If you're selling, if you're selling tickets, it's, you're working against yourself because you're gonna be selling tickets.
First of all, it creates conflict with your sponsorship packages, and you're gonna, you're gonna screw up, you know, the ratio, if you will. I mean, you can-- You're always gonna claim it's 50/50 buyers and sellers.
[laughs] Uh, it might be 70, but, you know. Everyone's buying something, so... [laughs] What do you mean by marketer? Yeah. No, I've been, I've been in there. They're like, "Are you sure about those ratios?"
I'm like, "I think so." Oh. "Like, I'll have to, I'll have to check with the, the team on that."
But yeah, no, I think that that is like, 'cause, you know, events do an essential economic function of matching up a buy and a sell side, a lot of events.
And I think what I see is a lot of- But, but do you think like a, do you think like a Punchbowl views it the same way?
I don't think they view it the same way, but I think that they, I think that they, it acts in, in, in a very similar way. I mean, they do different types of events.
I feel like Washington, DC is home-- First of all, they do breakfast there. They do dinners in New York. It's, it's really unusual. I, I wanna-- I'm doing breakfast now 'cause I'm pivoting away from dinners.
I don't think people wanna go- [laughs]... do more work after working. Get on with your day. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, let's, let's do-- This is business.
But no, I mean, I think that there's, there's a lot of similar... That's like those Washington, DC publications to me are just a different version of B2B.
I think they are, too, and I just don't know if they, if they realize it, you know, or they wanna realize it, you know, that, that there's, you know...
Y- you can say Politico Playbook selling influence in their newsletter, right?
You know, or that the, you know, Punchbowl events are, you know, high-end sort of sponsorships, but I think they're measured based on the same exact things a lead gen, demand gen person- Yeah...
is gonna measure it as well. We all end up on a spreadsheet. You might not [laughs] want it. You might [laughs] but you're gonna end up there, so you might as well, like, prepare for that because otherwise...
I mean, that's why I think a lot of people make mistakes in B2C when they go into events into, like, the business realm of not really thinking in-- They don't use words like demand gen and stuff.
They're like, "Ooh, that's, you know, this is about live, this is our live journalism and stuff." And it's like-All right, I get it.
I, I, I love, like, a great, you know, conference session as much as the next person, but the reality is, for most of those events, you're not going to be judged based on how great your sessions were.
They are a means to an end.
They're a means to, like, creating an atmosphere that people find, you know, valuable and rewarding, but really, and I would say this at Digiday, and they were a particular type of events, I was like, the co- getting the cocktail party right's probably more important than- 100%...
most of, most of what's going on on the stage. Yep. And you have to think holistically about that. You can't, that can't be an, an afterthought if you're gonna be in that business. Totally agree.
Because people are gonna, they're gonna judge you based on, like, how many connections they made, whether it drove business, whether those were the right people, and they're all tracking that, and so you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to perform, I guess.
That's what we all have to perform. Everyone's accountable at some point.
And also, I think, like, if you look at really what, like, Puck is doing, to me, it's like high-end B2B at the end, uh, yeah, at the end of the day.
I mean, they can call it, like, influencer industries, but a lot of, like, a lot of their business, uh, ultimately, you know, comes down to, to B2B, anytime you're in, like, a professional realm.
Yep, I agree, and they're monetizing it more like a B2B than they are a consumer media, so I'm a fan. You know, I've become a fan of Puck.
I find myself reading about industries and things that I wouldn't have otherwise, so I'll give them a...
You know, that, that's another one where I'm not sure I, I saw Puck being important to me four years ago, but I actually...
Like, I'll read about, you know, art galleries and fashion now in ways that I never did before, so good for them. [laughs] Okay, you're getting into the art section. Uh-oh. We gotta, we gotta get you your next gig.
[laughs] You're not gonna start to collect art, are you? Oh, who knows? You become a watch guy, too. Yeah. [laughs] Uh, what do you, what... How do you, what do, how do you evaluate Semaphore?
They're a couple years in, too. They're, like, four years in, I guess. You know, I think the last time we, we had this podcast, you asked me companies I liked, and I said Semaphore, and I thought your eyebrow raised up.
I feel like I was early on the, "I like what Semaphore is doing," train compared to a lot of folks. I mean, I, I think, A, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bet against Justin launching something, right?
Like, I mean, he's, he's someone that made The Atlantic incredibly profitable, and then he leaves, and it goes into a, a tailspin, right? And he did a tremendous job at Bloomberg.
And so I think, you know, I think the team there is incredibly good operators. I think they're trying to be thoughtful on, you know, what they cover in a way that's, that's a little bit more unique.
I mean, a little bit like Puck, right? I, I read more international news with Semaphore than I read with anyone else, and I find that valuable to me.
I mean, I, I do think the, you know, the events are incredibly popular, you know, important to them, not popular, but incredibly important to them, and so they- Oh, yes.
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're- I mean, it's, it's like over half their revenue.
Uh, they're, you know, so they're an event business, and I think there's gonna be, you know, a trick of can we either double down on that, and, and not double down in we need more 200,000, $500,000 events, but can they do some big events?
Can they grow important enough to be big, or can they branch out and actually, you know, grow the rest of their business?
Yeah, they have a, they have a, they have a big one coming up in Washington, the World Economy Summit, and, like, to me, that is the, that's the question about whether they can pull it off.
'Cause, like, events are, you know, look, the knock on, I guess the positive for events, like, as a bulwark of a media company, right, is they can generate cash flow ahead of you getting, like, a massive audience.
Like, that, that you can... If you're not gonna raise a ton of money to, like... You know, the old thing was, like, you were gonna start a publication and lose money on purpose for like three or four [laughs] years.
It's like, no, nobody wants to do that anymore. [laughs] But events can, like, really bridge the gap, and they're a great way to launch, like, a media company. You can generate, you know, revenue out of it.
And, and, and if you do events right, you know, they should be highly profitable. The margins should be really good on events. And the knock on them is they, they don't scale. Like, you can't do a million events.
Like, you know, there's, that, that's just really hard to, to, to pull off de- depending on what your ambitions are.
So I think for that business, you know, if it's not gonna be, like, a side dish, if it's gonna be your main dish, you gotta knock the cover off the ball with, like, some Davos-like event. Yeah.
I mean, you look at Davos as a business, and I think that's probably in decline now, massive business. Yep. Well, then if it's in decline, that means there's an opportunity for the next one, right? Yeah.
There's, there's gonna... You know, the Aspen Institute used to have, like, a massive one, and then Davos kind of came and, you know?
I mean, there, there may be a, a, a lane here for Semaphore to do it, but I, I also- Yeah... I just think that they're deliberate in their execution, you know? And I think, I think they've been s- you know,
th- they've been smart, you know, they've been ambitious but smart in how they execute, in my mind. And so I, I think long term I'm bullish on Semaphore, for sure. Okay, so what other models are you optimistic about?
Both, both companies, but also just, like, sectors. I mean, you've mentioned community-based models.
I think there is a lot going on there because I think a lot of times people don't think of these things as, quote unquote, "media," right? But they are at the end of the day. Yep.
And but what are, what are some other sectors you think are, are very promising right now in, for media? So, so, yeah, I don't...
That's a good question, and I, and I'm, I'm, like, trying to find the, the right way to go. I mean, one of the things I've done since I've stopped working, you know, semi, semi-retirement, we'll say the retirement word.
[laughs] But I've been, I've been talking to a lot of really early stage entrepreneurs.Who are building out, you know, with AI, which I think is interesting in there.
And, and you know, it kind of dawned on me when, you know, over the last two years, Industry Dive has a sizable newsroom, right?
And I just kind of kept my mouth shut about AI for the most part because it can screw a newsroom.
You know, you get a hun- hundred and forty people there, and you start saying AI, they think you just mean that AI's gonna write the stories for them, uh, and it's gonna mean something.
But I, you know, I kind of realized, like, no one would, no one would blink at an eye, you know, as accountants as they use Excel. You'd think they're crazy if they didn't, right?
You know, it's like, "Oh, my CFO doesn't like Excel." Yeah. You'd be like, "Well, that's a problem," you know?
And I, and I think that there's a, you know, there's an inflection point now that we've hit where it's like AI is the Excel for the newsrooms and for media companies and the rest, and, and they're going.
And so I, I think, you know, what, what I'm really interested in now is, you know, not necessarily sectors of business models and the rest, but who are the people that are doing really interesting things that are gonna allow them to cover things in ways that we haven't seen before, that's gonna allow them to truly...
You know, I, I think there's, there's a lot of businesses out there that are data businesses, right? That's like, "I'm selling data."
And then there's a lot of news businesses out there that says, "I'm selling stories and content."
And I, I think there might be a way now with AI for that to blend more, and for the amount of data that comes into the news, you know, news process to exponentially increase in a couple years.
And so I'm, I'm, like, excited and trying to chew on what that would mean for, for different businesses. Yeah. Okay, so what, what is next for you?
You know, I told myself to say no to everything for six months, 'cause I'm, like, one of those people that as someone presents an opportunity and I think, "I'll never get this opportunity again, I gotta say yes to it."
So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to step back. I'm talking to a bunch of people. I'm serving on a couple boards, you know, in Informa Tech Target, which is, you know, where the Industry Dive portfolio is. I'm, I'm on...
I've stayed on the board with that, so I'm not fully out of the business, and I'm on the board of a, a couple other businesses, and, and we'll see.
So- But do you know if you wanna operate another business, like start another business and operate another business? You know what?
I think the days of, like, truly starting a business, like building desks, you know, and getting the business licenses- You don't have to now. Just skip over that. Just skip over that... I know. Yeah, skip over that.
But I, I don't know if I have the energy to start at square one. I, I don't think I'm gonna be the operator again.
But I think there's a lot of people who've said that, and then they wake up six months later and, and say, "I, I can't. I gotta get out of here. I gotta go back and do this," you know?
And, and so I don't know what I'm... You know, if I'm being honest, I don't know what I am yet. But I'm, I'm not planning on being operator again, but we'll see how long that lasts. Okay, cool.
I'll, I'll be begging, you know, I'll be back to begging you to get on the podcast so I can promote my next company. I know. [laughs] My AI-generated community company. I love it. I love it, Sean. Awesome.
Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad we got to do this. Thank you. Always fun. [outro music]