[on-hold music] This week's episode of The Rebooting Show is brought to you by Permutive.
One of the big themes of this podcast and the Rebooting newsletter is the need for publishers to take more control over their businesses.
That's happening in the programmatic ad market, which is undergoing a shift, along with most of media, from indirect to direct relationships.
Permutive is helping publishers deal with these changes to the open marketplace in particular.
According to eMarketer, in the US, direct sold ads will account for seventy-five percent of total programmatic digital display ad spend by twenty twenty-four, while open marketplace will only make up eight-point-five percent.
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Find out more at permutive.com. That is P-E-R-M-U-T-I-V-E dot com. Thanks so much to Permutive for the support.
The next series of podcasts over the next few weeks will be brought to you by Permutive, and I'll be discussing modern approaches to building resilient digital revenue models in these shows.
[on-hold music] And to kick things off, I'm having an overdue conversation with John Kelly, a co-founder of Puck, which I think of as one of the most important of the crop of new digital media companies we've seen.
You know, Puck recently closed a ten million dollar funding round, bringing its total funding to seventeen million dollars.
I mean, this is a tough time to be raising money, and I think the fact that it got the round done says a lot about its progress in its soon to be second anniversary. And I think it's had actually a really good launch.
I mean, just today, Puck's Dylan Byers, at least when I'm recording this, broke the news of Mark Thompson being named the new head of CNN. And this is a story Puck has been obsessed with since its start.
And John and I discussed these main characters, at least that's how I call them, and how Puck applies its lens to the power centers of America, from foreign policy to business to media to tech to Hollywood, and most recently, to fashion.
And underpinning that brand ambition is a business model that I think we'll see more publishers apply.
John and I discussed the dual revenue stream model and how advertising has become a larger part of the business than originally thought. At least that's how I interpret John's answers.
And the reality is that when Puck launched back in twenty twenty-one, it was a time when there was a mania for subscription businesses, and there's not one size fits all model.
And the reality is advertising is still a very good part of a business model for publishers, particularly if they have a direct connection to a valuable audience.
It also helps to tap into lucrative and somewhat protected niche ad categories like the free or consideration ads that power Hollywood trades and corporate affairs ads that have fueled DC power broker publications like Politico and Axios and most recently Punchbowl.
This was a fun conversation. John had put me off during fundraising, so I'm glad we could finally make it happen.
And I wanna hear from you about the show, guest suggestions and reminders that I say, like, far too many times for a fifty-year-old man. Send me that feedback to brian@therebooting.com.
Thanks again to Permutive for the support. I'm looking forward to a dinner Permutive and I are hosting in early October as part of this program, and it's one of the first of the Rebooting's new dinner series.
We have a bunch of dinners coming up in the fall and are finishing an entire slate for twenty twenty-four.
Personally, I find these kinds of smaller gatherings more meaningful and valuable, and I also like the idea of not wearing a lanyard.
So if you wanna get involved in sponsoring one of these dinners, and I'm biased, but I suggest you should consider it, get in touch with me. Again, my email is brian@therebooting.com. Onto my conversation with John.
[on-hold music] John, thank you so much for doing this.
I should start this with a disclaimer because, like, we talked about doing this for the longest time, and subsequently I talk with Max, and we're doing this little deal together. But this is nothing to do with the deal.
This is all part of the new world as me being a salesperson.
[chuckles] Because I was bugging you to talk about this because I was tired of, like, reading articles about you guys when you were raising money, and then you closed your round.
So that's why we're doing that now, not because I'm trying to sell Puck subscriptions. So welcome. You can do two things at once. Thanks. I'm glad to be here. So let's talk a little bit about...
You know, I think when we first talked actually was when you were sort of formulating the idea for Puck, and I think you were at TPG, but you were raising money in, in twenty twenty-one, which was a different time.
Like, what was the difference between twenty twenty-one and then doing it this time? 'Cause, like, raising money in general, rough. Raising money for a media company, oof. We were raising money in twenty twenty actually.
Gotcha. So I think that we closed in twenty twenty-one, so that was the end of that. Twenty twenty, uh, couldn't have possibly picked a worse time to raise capital.
Of course, we knew secretly that our thesis was going to, I think, b-become more evident than ever as the pandemic, you know, tragically hit.
And I think we saw a lot of ad-supported large media companies immediately, you know, fall under duress and have to pull the levers they had to pull to get through.
Obviously, no one could have predicted the, the sort of soft money environment that was gonna follow.
But yes, we, we began raising money in the summer of twenty twenty, and then we eventually, you know, by the fall, we found our, our partners and closed in early 'twenty-one. I think that that was hard.
We're, you know-- W-raising money for a concept that doesn't exist during a global pandemic is not for the faint of heart. But on the other hand-It forces you to really believe in what you're doing.
And I'm not just saying that like, you know, i-in a sort of fairytale [chuckles] sense.
I mean, you have to live it and you have to have extraordinary conviction, because there are so many headwinds that are preventing you from, you know, getting this off the ground.
And, um, but yeah, we believed in it and believed passionately in it and, and fought like hell to make it happen.
And I think getting past that fundraise was a really eye-opening lesson to me that, you know, it's-- this is, this is a journey that requires e-extraordinary faith and diligence.
You know, we're very fortunate that, you know, and we had an excellent first, you know, year in, in market. And so when we ca-- you know, fundraising kind of came to us before we went to market.
There were a lot of companies that were, you know, interested in seeing if they could become a part of the Puck journey. And I think we actually probably benefited on some level from the macroeconomic picture.
There were not a lot of exciting opportunities in media in the last year, and, you know, we're really thrilled with the progress we've made as a company.
And we also have benefited from the fact that TPG and Standard are investments, our two cornerstone initial and principal investors were absolutely there. Like, absolutely there in every way.
And so when we, when we went to market to, to price around and, and consider a new partner to, to lead the Series B, we could do so from a position of strength.
And we worked like hell for that position of strength, but it was a different journey than, than it was in twenty-twenty, to be sure. So what's different, if anything, about the thesis now than when you started?
I mean, I think it's, like, broadly the same, but I mean, things are always different from when you start to- Mm-hmm. -when you're a year plus in. Sure, yeah. In, in almost two years. It'll be two years- Oh yeah.
-in market on September thirteenth. I'm sure you're receiving some promotions in your, uh, your emails, Brian. No, I told Fritz, I told Fritz I was joining. I'm still pissed about that, by the way.
What are you pissed about? That Fritz doesn't exist. I was like, "Hey, Fritz." Oh. "I'm coming." There's a fun backstory there that I'll share with inner circle only, inner circle members only.
Here are a co-- There are, I mean, a number of things have evolved since then, but I think one, you know, one salient point that's probably of, of interest es-especially to, to your audience is the power of advertising.
You know, I think when we, when we launched the company, we were absolutely following the thesis of going direct to consumer, right?
Like, the direct-to-consumer trend, which had disrupted every [chuckles] other sort of cons-- you know, consumer and commercial channel had come to media late, and the businesses that had leaned into it considerably, when you think about, you know, the information, which is sort of like the godfather of the subscription media world, and then The Athletic and obviously The Times on the biggest and most broad level, they had either been pure plays or in the case of The Times famously, used subscription to replace a lot of hemorrhaging advertising- Yeah.
-money that had gone away, you know, ever since the kind of the Craigslist meteor first happened, and then the, you know, retrenchment aw-away from print.
What we found is that if you create an excellent, you know, product for a highly engaged audience and you have no disintermediation, you know, you have in-incredible first-party data, then you can build a really successful advertising business on top of that.
Yeah. And, you know, w-without getting into numbers- Oh, no, it's fine. I believe- No, numbers are good. I told you before, like, any number I ask for you, I will give you the same number from the Rebooting LLC.
[chuckles] Thanks. What are you not creative about? Neil, we both grew up in, in, in what were basically large, you know, advertising businesses. You grew up in it and covering it- Yeah.
-on some level, and I started my career in Conde Nast, which was the most extraordinary interplay between a creative business and an advertising universe that you could ever imagine.
But it was actually, people forget, it was built on a direct-to-consumer element, right? People subscribed to magazines, even if they were filling out those little insert leaflets that you sent back to Boone, Iowa.
There was a steady subscription rate, a sort of TAM, to, to Vanity Fair in those days that allowed, you know, the business to, to have a million subscribers that it could then build a, you know, like probably a hundred and fifty to two hundred million dollar advertising business off of.
I think that's a directional future for a new generation of direct-to-consumer brands.
And I think, you know, Puck has deep penetration, obviously in Hollywood due to the incredible work of Matt Belloni and in the media, you know, with Dylan and then, you know, in Senate offices and offices in Congress and the White House, et cetera, et cetera, on K Street through, you know, the work of Julia and Tara and Peter, Abby, Tina, et cetera.
Like, those are endemic ad markets that are really meaningful. Yeah. I don't know, you know, I think we knew that, but we didn't see it in twenty-twenty slash twenty-one the way we really see it now.
Will you say percentage-wise how much, like, advertising is versus subscription? You know, I, I won't dig into that one, but it's meaningful. Oh, God. It's meaningful.
And the cornerstone of a great ad business is a incredibly low-churning subscription product that can penetrate real, you know, centers of thought leadership in crucial industries.
You've talked to Sean Griffey on this show. Yeah. I think they saw that early. I think that we see a version of that too. Puck's obviously a very different company- Mm. -and a different brand, but that's real.
And you know, I mean, you've had Liz on the show.
You know, Liz Goff helped build this business, and I think that this was an insight that she had early on and, um, you know, played out in a- I would always send her emails. I'm like, "Great get. Great get.
I'd like to see this [chuckles] advertising at Amazon. Wow!" Yeah. Now, I think, like, the big thing is, like, a lot of people paint everything, like, with, like, the same brush, and we're all guilty of it, right?
But there's one publishing industry, there's one advertising market, and the reality is the advertising market is so vast, and particularly in the United States, and there are pockets that are great pockets.
And you operate in two really good pockets of advertising, and that's the, you know, the corporate affairs stuff in Washington and then the f-broadly, the four-year consideration ads.
I've, I saw plenty of them in Puck recently because the Emmys are coming up. Oh, true. And those are good categories to be in.
So is fashion, so is finance, and I think that there are other, there are other categories that are, are really appealing.
And, you know, I think o-o-one of the, one of the traps that-- or I should say, one of the cautions that we beganThe business holding in mind was that we were watching a generation of ad-supported media really just sort of collapse underneath the weight of, of building out extraordinary, extraordinarily large sales forces- Mm.
-that were really subject to the whims and the vicissitudes of the ad market, you know. And th-that can be a real trap when you're dealing with CPG or some sort of, you know, consumer elements.
You know, what if Ford is targeting, you know, a female audience in the Midwest one year, and then what if they just go away the next, you know, season?
Or what if they're now trying to market their trucks to retirees in, in red states? I don't know. Like, you can be completely vulnerable as a media company. It's much better to obviously service endemic categories.
You can build small but really impactful, or I should say right-sized, not small, but deeply impactful teams of salespeople to build relationships there and grow them over time. Yeah.
And I think that the collapse of that generation of media really made people freak out for a couple of years, maybe unnecessarily, and we're seeing the rebirth of it.
[instrumental music] It's almost like direct advertising, really, at the end of the day, 'cause I think where things are moving, it's still towards direct.
I mean, there's direct revenue in subscriptions, right? But there's direct sold advertising, which is more valuable than ever.
I think there was a time where everyone was obsessed with programmatic and the open programmatic marketplace, and that's fine, but the open programmatic marketplace is not a place that someone like Puck is playing.
C-correct. You know?
I mean, I could understand, you know, when I worked at Condé Nast, and now, you know, seemingly l-light years ago, I remember talking to Fred Santarpia, who was the chief digital officer at the time, about why the company-- Yeah, sure, I'm sure he's a, a creature of the rebooting verse, right?
[laughs] He must be. The rebooting verse. [laughs] And I, I assume that-- I wonder why we're, why the company was investing so heavily in, you know, in this kind of advertising business.
Programmatic made sense to me if you were insider, right? I remember actually, I think hearing Blodget was on the Digiday podcast another lifetime ago for you to talk about why that was such a smart business decision.
And that probably netted out well for, for him and the Axel guys. But anyway, Fred said, "Look, like, you know, thirty percent of, of our, of our content is a sold.
We have a, a, an inventory of seventy percent, and are we just gonna, you know, let that live fallow?" And, and I understood that it ha-it had to be monetized.
And obviously, the challenge for, for the e-executive team at Condé Nast was, was, you know, managing how you would do that while still making it, um, you know, the company's house their premium brands, and that is very hard.
I can't imagine a world ever in which A, Puck would endeavor to have the scale required of programmatic. But also, like, we live in a world that, that is responsive to what came before us.
I think in a world of too much, like, you know, s-scarcity matters. So we've spent so much time crafting the work that's published by Puck. We wanna be just as thoughtful about the advertising partners that we work with.
And we do that because we're, you know, having daily conversation across multiple touch points with the most elite audience in the culture. Yeah.
And it's like true, like with programmatic, a lot of times we, again, we broad brush. I mean, there's like open programmatic. The programmatic itself is just an automation tool, and it's not going anywhere.
And I just think that more of it's going to be applied to direct sold because there's a lot of challenges right now with cookies and whatnot.
And those who have direct relationships, that's why I never understood this tendency to put subscriptions against advertising.
I know a lot of times they're, like, thought of that way, but, like, they work well together in a lot of areas because you have a lot more information about your audience, and signals about an audience are more valuable than they've ever been, so.
Yeah. I, I think I know what you're sort of scratching at here.
For legacy businesses that were probably first print and then were l-large format, desktop-based and then mobile web-based, going direct to consumer, i.e., cr-creating a subscription business, was often seen as antithetical to the business interests of the advertising business.
Mm-hmm. And I get that. I, I've worked at companies like that, and you could even see how unconfident they were in, in implementing the subscription business.
You know, they'd have these paywalls that were the, you know, the, the terrible term, first of all, you know, it sounds like a penal colony.
But, you know, they, they, they put, put in place for like twenty articles or ten articles, but basically it's just, you know, are an expression of how little confidence the brand had in the quality of their own work.
That's really hard, right? And I think you can count on one hand the companies and brands that have done it really elegantly and successfully.
But when you're starting from scratch, they are truly the most mutually reinforcing revenue streams you could imagine.
Having a, an audience that e-enthusiastically, you know, appreciates and, you know, e-enjoys and supports and lives by the work that you do is absolutely the necessary platform that you need for an advertising business.
The-these are the most mutually reinforcing revenue streams imaginable.
And I think on some level you have to start from scratch to get it right, and if you are gonna start from scratch, boy, oh boy, a subscription is essential. Right.
So when you guys began, I think a lot of times people were more obsessed with Substack then, I feel like, than they are now. But I think Substack was, like you said, it's gonna be a collection of individuals.
And I think we've talked before, I just believe that we're on this continuum between institutions and individuals.
And you saw, like, Axios sort of moved a little bit towards individuals more so probably than a lot of other publications. Mm-hmm.
And you guys are more around that, but explain how you're seeing that now versus back then.
Because, you know, there are a lot of advantages, particularly as you grow, to bundles and to, you know, groupings, and I see the makings of like s- almost sub-brands at, obviously with Matt and what he's doing with what I'm hearing, I mean, that's- Yeah.
-a sub-brand that's a vertical brand. Yeah. Yeah, and there's talent that, that supports Matt in that, in what I'm hearing. Well, let me zoom out for a second.
I tend to think in frameworks, and I think that there's, there's a broad one here that m-may help illuminate this.
I think thatOur part of media is going through a similar transformation to what the music industry went through from about like the Napster moment, you know, in the late nineties, whenever that was, to call it Spotify's IPO.
So it's about twenty years, and I think that we're really in the early or mid-ish, early mid stages of that.
You know, maybe our story begins around two thousand and eight-ish, when you have the, like, uncoordinated [chuckles] but completely timed disruptions of Facebook, Twitter, the financial crisis, Google, cookie, et cetera, the departure of classified advertising, whatever you wanna call it, and the sort of loss of its own nerve- Yeah.
-to whatever the end stage is, maybe a, a decade from here. I mean, we certainly try and, you know, envision what that end stage looks like. There's been an unbundling, to use one- Mm-hmm.
-of your famous terms, Varad, and I think it's completely true, and there's gonna be a rebundling. And we're really figuring out what that looks like now. And I think, look, Substack is perfect for some creators.
It's probably a gateway drug for others. I think there are gonna be a lot of winners in this new world, and all creators are built differently and have different views of success.
But I do think that journalists have many more talents oftentimes than the actual journalism they produce.
That is the cornerstone, obviously, but they can also be not just great writers, but domain experts, conveners, podcasters, and also distributors of other people's work.
I think pointing out Matt and what he's built with What I'm Hearing, which is obviously incredible, and he's the defining voice in Hollywood.
And Julia Alexander and Jonathan Handel are voices that people have discovered because of Matt, and that's not so entirely different on some level than you going to Spotify to select an artist that you like, and then in the playlist, you find another artist that maybe you'd never heard of before, and you develop an affinity towards.
So I, I think that we see a lot more possibilities in what journalists are capable of than even when we started, and that's phenomenal. That's what we wanted.
One of the challenges of the post-two thousand and eight era was that it just created this fog of depression in the industry, you know? Yeah.
Where people were told to feel grateful for whatever jobs they could get or for, in some cases, limited opportunity. And now we have a lot of tools.
Some are technological, some are more based in distribution and format innovations as well that allow journalists to have more impact than ever before.
And I do think the bundling will become more nuanced and more sophisticated and more stable, uh, you know, in the next five or ten years. Yeah. I mean, I...
Going back to that era, just, I'd like to note, I'm still mad about my cubicle getting shrunk by some private equity guys back then. I hope your private equity guys are better. They were-- These were different times.
[laughs] I'm like, "This is your strategy? You're gonna shrink our cubicles? These are the people who are leading us fearlessly into the future? This is their plan."
You were joking, and I'm laughing, and I'm thinking also about when I was at Condé Nast. I was there twice.
When I was there the second time, the iteration of-- that I observed is, you know, after Graydon left, they moved Vanity Fair, which had been on two floors, to being, like, one-third of a floor i-in a hot desk environment- Man.
-where nobody had, like, a real desk. Hoteling. Didn't they call it hoteling for a while? Oh, did they? Oh, boy.
[laughs] That, that, that term of art didn't make it down to me, but, you know, it was done because they knew that they were going to have very dynamic workforces, i.e.
they were gonna, you know, get rid of a lot of people, and people were gonna shuffle in and out.
But, you know, in all seriousness, like, those were grim times, but I started my career w-working for Graydon at the beginning of the end, and we're, you know, we still watered the plants with champagne, so to speak.
And I remember w-working at, you know, various other companies and sort of seeing that, that there were no great answers.
And actually, one of the frustrations I found was that the creative people weren't even at the table.
And I'm not sure if they weren't at the table because the other executives would have patted them on the head and sent them off.
But I felt that for my career to advance where I wanted it to go, I had to learn their world because they weren't gonna learn mine.
There were a lot of inevitable factors that led to these dark days that we're talking about, but there were plenty of unforced errors as well that I think we're just digging our way out of right now.
How much do you focus on, primarily, I assume, on the editorial product, but how much do you get involved in the business? A hundred percent on both. I mean, where do you see it?
You, you- I mean, that's, um- Equal on both? Absolutely. Yeah? This is a good thing. What's up with the CEO search, Max [laughs] Like, what, what's going on? Oh, it's, it's continuing.
I've met some great candidates, and it's a really impressive group, and, and we're working through it. You know, I'm sure you've been a part of these processes and also covered them.
It's a process that relies on really getting to know people and honing a vision that, you know, that makes sense.
One, one of the things that I am most proud of about Puck is that we have a board that's comprised of not just myself but, you know, three incredibly powerful institutional investors, and we have really big ambitions for this company.
So this is a really important decision, and we're not taking it lightly.
[upbeat music] So I remember talking to you at some point, maybe it was, like, last year or something, and we talked about getting the size right because I think one of the advantages of, for instance, a model like the Information, 'cause by doing just subscriptions, particularly originally, they radically simplified the publishing model.
And publishing is more than just creating content.
More people exist outside of that, and that's because it's gotten even more complex because publishers have to do so many things to make money, and I think sometimes people try to do too many things and, like, it's how do you- Mm-hmm.
-simplify as much as possible. I'm gonna talk about how you ended up- Yeah.
-thinking about that because I think the way you build a media company now and how you guys are going about it, and even Justin and Ben at Semafor, is just totally different than the scale era.It, it is totally different.
And sequencing is everything. I couldn't agree more with you. And I think it's im-important, and we talk about this internally at Puck all the time, where we are today is not where we're gonna be in a year or two years.
And, you know, sometimes we keep those plans to ourselves, but you absolutely have to...
The, the term that everyone uses these days is create product market fit, but you have to begin small, I think that's just a part of the culture now, and then build on your strengths.
And part of the benefit of starting from scratch is that you are not so big that you can't iterate quickly and pivot when things either work really well, which is what you hope for, or when things don't work out as well as you want it to in a certain area, where you can adjust really quickly.
I know I'm giving a sort of philosophical answer. Mm-hmm. I'm not trying to avoid it, but I think that's just, like, the framework that, that I approach things with.
It's really hard at big companies to move the plane and whatever metaphor you wanna employ. It usually requires changing teams, changing reporting structure. What a headache. When you're small,
o-one person can often make a big difference. But I think that the reason that we began this way w-was very intentional. Uh, y-you mentioned it before.
I'd spent a couple years at TPG before starting this company, which was brain surgery to me, you know? It, it totally opened up a part of my thinking and my worldview that, that was necessary.
And, you know, there, there is an impulse that any creator feels that like, you know, why start small? Let's just, let's just go for it.
Let's just hire hundreds and hundreds of people and build a newsroom and start publishing and o-own the waterfront. Well, I don't think that makes sense. What if something doesn't work the way you expected it to?
How much harder have you made it for yourself to undo those mistakes?
Wouldn't, wouldn't it be a lot better to begin with something, iterate on it till it's really successful, and then use that as a position of strength to, to build on top of it?
And I think that's also the most organic way to create enjoyable, powerful bundles- Yeah. -which is the goal that we're all searching for here. And you can cover a lot of ground, I feel like, with your model, right?
And I think that's the smart part of the model is that someone like Matt Belloni can cover a ton of ground.
Like, I mean, they talk about, like, twenty X engineers or whatever it is, but, like, those exist in pretty much, I think, most fields. And, like, a team has different types of people.
But, like, when you have people, particularly when you're focused on, like, high value niches, one person can make a big difference, I think. I mean, you're seeing that with Substack at the end.
If there's a tie to the Substack, I think that's sort of the tie to me.
You know, there's no question our point of view is that elite, extraordinary journalists, it's almost har-possible to quantify their value, and we don't want to compete with what's out there.
You know, Matt's a singular voice. Reading what I'm hearing and reading Matt and listening to his podcast, The Town, is a completely different experience than re-reading all the endless coverage in the trades.
You know, M-Matt does his work to be on top of that, and that's how I think Dylan and Julia and Tara also think about their work as well. We don't wanna compete with the brands that cover the waterfront. You can't.
I think that's a fool's errand. I think in framework, so I'm not trying to belabor here- Mm-hmm. But, like, if you think about this kind of media, and you divide it into three tranches or three categories, right?
I think of it as the cover the waterfront group, which is The Times and the AP, the FT, Wall Street Journal, the networks, Yahoo, just the biggest of the big. I think the disruption there is done and set, you know.
And if anything, there's no room for more players. What we may find is that it's becoming so ossified that certain players are just gonna go away. The second bucket i-is affinity driven media.
I think that's where the activity is really happening now, and where the winners will be created over the next, you know, I think I said five to ten years.
Third bucket is highly produced, you know, CNN, sixty Minutes, et cetera, and we're just seeing the real pangs of disruption happening there now, and that's gonna be obviously myths of, you know, as I...
As you know from reading Puck, like that story that we're pretty infatuated with here, but it's just beginning.
So the activity I think really now is hotly taking place in the affinity category, and we recognize that sometimes we're part of the story, you know? Yeah. We're all trying to figure it out.
I have a question on that, just editorial question. It's your show. You can, uh- You guys, like, you have main characters, right? [chuckles] Sure. Like, it's like there's characters, like... And I always...
I remember, like, I very briefly worked for Michael Wolff, and he was like [chuckles] remember he's like, "Heroes and villains, it's that simple."
But talk to me about the main characters, 'cause this is like Zaslav as a, as a character. I don't know, Licht exited as a character. Maybe he'll come back as a character. [chuckles] Yeah.
Well, you know, look, Michael's got his own view of things. I, I think I've heard the, the renditions of the heroes and villains story before. I... Look, p-part of this may be some manifestation of my own personality.
Yes, we're obsessed with things here. These are obsessions.
I remember early in my career, I worked at The New York Times Magazine, and I remember just having this funny little epiphany that like if we basically had just done cover stories, you know, e-every month alternatively on like chemo recipes, Hillary Clinton, and college anxiety, this thing would've made a hundred and fifty million dollars a year.
[chuckles] We could've unbundled from the Times and, like, become a public comp- You know, like, these were, these were the touch points and the infatuations.
You have to know and lean into and, like, absolutely commit to the infatuations of an audience.
It's actually one of the reasons why I think so much innovation in media starts in sports, where it's okay to be infatuated, right? It's okay to be infatuated with your team or free agency or a league.
So yes, Zaz, like, you know, and I know that he's a controversial figure now.
To me, he is a consequential executive of the moment, you know, seduces the town for a year and then comes in and makes, whether you agree with him or not, unbelievably gutsy decisions and in, in many cases, was the market maker.
I-is there an obsession with Jeff Roe? Obviously.
You know, the, the sort of, you know, Geppetto of the DeSantis super PAC, like this person who, he may be largely unknown to the public, but is, you know, just likeAbsolutely. A Zelig-like figure in Republican politics.
Mm-hmm. Yes, Licht. I mean, I-I could go on for days. There are a number that emanate from Lauren Sherman's world, and Lauren Sherman's world in fashion, and I think these are important.
I'm sure that somewhere along the way, this is a lesson that I learned from Graydon, you know, back when I was wearing short pants, 'cause he certainly was a person who wore his obsessions on his sleeve.
I think people remark mostly about the Kennedys, but what was wrong with that? You know, I think it's absolutely healthy and sometimes [chuckles] - Yeah. I mean, it's funny 'cause it's distinctive.
I feel like you have to have calling cards, and particularly in the very chaotic media ecosystem, and, you know, that's one way to, like, have a calling card. For sure. So talk about, like, the vertical expansion.
You went into, to fashion. I think that was the first... Was that the first vertical, I believe, that you added?
I mean, that-- to me, like, I was-- I always thought of, like, the originals, like the power centers with, you know, Wall Street- Yeah... Hollywood, media. I don't know what media is. It's everywhere. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, Silicon Valley. Yeah, that's right. Silicon Valley. So t-tell me, like, how extensible you think this model is. I mean, you're not gonna be competing with Sean in some of his categories. No.
I mean, I think w-you know, fashion, the simple conversation, I admired Lauren's work for years. We were introduced. We had a conversation and hired her in the room. Just said that, "You have to work here.
You're perfect for Puck."
And I think that it was clear to me in that conversation, I think clear to Lauren in bringing the conversation to Puck, and I think pretty instantly clear to Puck subscribers that fashion was a part of the Puck worldview.
I think that seemed pretty natural. And there are other categories that we're targeting now, and I think that the way you enter them, and this is a little bit different from, I think, how Industry Dive views things.
Mm-hmm. You know, reflexive to your, your point moments ago, we wanna find the category-defining journalist- Yeah... in the category.
And one way that you can sort of turn your a-antennae is towards industries that are maybe underserved by a trade press in some cases, that don't tolerate independent thinking in certain areas.
And so L-Lauren was a no-brainer, and we're having conversations with other journalists in other categories now that we think makes sense in, I guess I'm calling it the Puck worldview, but makes sense within our brand.
But how do you ascribe that lens? It's interesting because it's slightly more complicated in some ways, 'cause I always felt, you know, with, like, Sean, like, they accomplished a lot with a very programmatic approach.
Not programmatic like advertising, but programmatic like- Sure... we're gonna size up, like, you know, we've got a criteria.
It needs to, like, have, like, you know, if there's, like, trade show in the area and it has to have this much, you know- Mm-hmm...
spend that goes through and these vendor-- it looks like it's very programmatic and top-down, whereas this, obviously, you guys, your whole thing is journalists as a talent, so it's gonna be a little bit different.
Mm-hmm. But it would seem like, you know, the biggest expansion areas would be in cultural industries. I mean, and p-I guess it's, like, broadly power industries. Yeah.
Well, we have an internal framework for this that I'll keep close to the vest here, but I think that broadly speaking, the way you put it is right.
There are industries, more attractive, thoughtful, provocative industries that make sense to be covered inside of Puck. And I don't think it requires a PhD in rocket science to figure out what they are. Yeah.
But there are more of them than you might realize.
And, and I think that, you know, what we find i-internally in our data is that the people who enter through one industry are not surprisingly curious readers, you know, who want to- Mm-hmm...
they may be experts in Hollywood who come from that, but they wanna know about fashion. And I think, you know, you, you wanna operate on that dual level sort of editorial strategy, right?
Where you're, where you're, you're publishing and creating work that's for incredibly informed people who are really curious and looking to find this, some sort of, you know, contextual information or edge.
And people, you know, people who are, for whom, you know, they're always working, right? You know, they're always consuming information.
But then there's also just the level of expertise where you have to be able to be deeply credible, informative and offering new information to people who work in these endemic fields, right?
So y-kneeling that, that dual level philosophy, strategy, whatever I call it, that's pretty key, and I think that we see a lot of options that, that come from that.
[upbeat music] Yeah. And I guess the shape of the organization, I mean, there's upsides and downsides. The shape of the organization i-ends up being different in that, with that approach, right?
I mean, just because you end up... I mean, how many people are at Puck now? I think it's like, uh, Axios had it at, like, thirty-one. Yeah. We just hired our thirty-second person yesterday. Yeah.
I mean, you guys, that's covering a lot of ground for thirty-two people.
Like, I mean, um, I think, 'cause I just think that, like, you know, you end up having a different, like, type of organization and, you know, I don't know, one of my mantras that I'm trotting out is the more with less.
Like, and you have to- Yeah. This new era is gonna be a more with less era. You know, interest rates are not going down to, like, two percent anytime in, in the foreseeable future.
And it's just gonna be a different framework for a lot of industries. But media's already been, you know, [chuckles] gone through the wringer, and it's gonna... I think the pressures are not going to abate.
They're probably gonna get more acute. I don't see that as necessarily negative. I think it provides a lot of opportunities for new entrants who don't have as bulky of models, I guess.
More with less is not germane to media, of course, right? Yeah. It's a leitmotif of a lot of businesses in the last fifteen years. I actually think I'd quibble slightly with the idea- Mm-hmm... that we're doing.
I, I think we, we run a pretty efficient operation here, and that our team remains small, l-you know, w-with a lot of intentionality.
But while you definitely want to be frugal and cost-conscious, I think we, again, we've learned from some of the horror stories of a previous generation, you also have to be aggressive.
And when you see things that work, you have to move quickly. And that's another, I think, lesson that we learned from some of our forebearers, that-I-industries are dynamic, they should change.
The, I know the bias sometimes that we in media and in the journalistic part of me, that you just kinda want the water to be calm all the time and to go about your business.
But I don't quite think that's the case, and I don't... And I think that's a false positive. I don't think people actually want that.
I think they, y-you know, the other side of turbulence is opportunity, and, you know, if, if you just turn the telescope around, usually there's a big opportunity there. Yeah.
There's lots of opportunities to create, like, small niche brands. My question for you guys, it's funny 'cause after the news of your raise broke, I won't say his name, but he was a former podcast guest, that's a hint.
He wrote me an email and he said, "Do you think Puck is a five hundred million dollar business?" I was like, "I don't know." And he's like, "Well, let me walk you through the math about, like, raising that kind of money.
Do you think they'll get to, like, five hundred million?" How big can this business get?
Uh, obviously y-you had to deal with th-that, with the fundraising and stuff, and I think there's a lot of small and mid-size publishing companies to be created that are extremely profitable and will do really well.
I think the, the physics are different when you start to go really big.
Well, I mean, without getting into the economics, do we have very serious, significant ambitions to be one of the leading media companies of this generation? Like, no doubt, brother. You know, is there a path for us?
Absolutely. Do we have the investors to help us get there? Completely. And an incredible team of partners. It's funny, talking about these things is always satisfying than trying to accomplish them.
It's hard to discuss them without either sounding like sort of Joan of Arc, you know, or- [laughs] I've heard this is the first reference to Joan of Arc on this podcast.
Or, or alternatively, you could sound like you're a kind of a carnival barker.
You know, I try and resist both, but I do think that some of the opportunities that we were talking about before, as this industry figures out bundling, pricing, how you stack revenue streams together, that there are opportunities to be really successful.
Yeah. And, you know, we're, we're not doing this to tap out in the second round, trust me. Okay. I'm a very competitive guy, and, uh, we're very motivated.
So final thing is, because you're media obsessive, give me three media storylines that you're personally, like, obsessed with for the rest of the year. Oh, great. I didn't prepare for this, so let me- I know.
I don't prepare. [laughs] My guests love that. I think the power of the dual revenue stream, the reinforcement of subscription advertising, I can't believe we're the only ones who are seeing that.
I think that's gonna be something that will become extremely powerful, especially for small companies that are sub fifty or a hundred employees. I think the long arc of this era of media points towards authenticity.
And without, like, trying to butter up the host here, like, this is one of the reasons why I think you've been so successful in the post-Digiday era.
Like, you know, with your newsletter and multiple podcasts is, I knew you were in Serbia before I texted you about when we were gonna tape the show because I heard you and Troy talking about it, you know?
[laughs] Or m-maybe, like, ad infinitum for two months. I don't know how long you've been there for. I've been, it feels like two months.
But I can imagine that too, but I think there's a farm to table element to media where people don't just wanna order off the menu, they wanna know the story behind the Lancaster Farms chicken or whatever, and then they want the chef to come out and talk to them.
Like, I, I think that's very real. I'm constantly surprised why the preponderance of queries are at email, newsletters, why it's still so shocking to people. Email is an incredible format.
It's the platform that, that people trust the most, and I don't know why it's been so hard for people to realize that the unit of media is changing.
You know, it changed in Hollywood from linear and broadcast and exhibition to streaming, you know. From weekly to binge drops.
Like, it changed in journalism too, from magazine and print and then to web, to people wanting to read something in their email, and I think it actually positively reinforces how the creators create and craft their work.
So I think that's very real. And then, you know, o-on a more dour note, it, it does seem like we're on the other side of the podcasting parabola now. A lot of investment, a lot of M&A.
I think we, we found that the business model doesn't make sense yet, and that there's gonna be some cratering there as humbling takes place. Yeah.
And, and, and actually that's gonna be painful, but I think what comes out of it will be probably more professionalizing, less hobbyism, m-more networking, better advertising feeds, and probably a more sustainable business.
There are a lot of smart people spending a lot of time on it and, but I think there's a way to go before- Yeah... it's where it, it needs to be.
One, one of the things with discipline and sequencing that I've noticed is that you guys have stuck to, you know, what you really started with, which was, you know, newsletters slash, you know, texts, basically.
It's on a website, it's on a newsletter, whatever. And then podcasts too. But you haven't gone into video or, and- No... I guess live formats too. But, like, with live, mostly just dinners and stuff.
We've done some dinners and stuff- Okay... as you elegantly note. But, uh- That's my category. It's on my P&L...
we're, um, we're, we're working on a really exciting, very modern point of view on what a tentpole would look like, which is a sort of de-tentpole tentpole for the modern era that you may hear more about soon. Okay.
But we're gonna be kicking it off in Q4. Are we avoiding video? You know, I think we're deeply invested in building out IP. We have a number of shows now, some with The Ringer, some with Odyssey.
We have some other exciting IP we're working on now that I've gotta keep under lock and key, but one project is really exciting. But are we avoiding, like, you know, video? D-didn't you live that movie?
I- [laughs] Well, yeah. I feel like you had pivot to video tattooed on your chest like Nicole Forever in- Yeah, exactly... what was that fear, that marketing movie?
I visited the movie, like this is- Well, it wasn't pivot to Facebook. That's fair. No. Oh, no, I'm- Right.
It was- I just find it interesting, like, how you sequence things, and it's interesting when people move, like, live and, like, event, like, activations, whatever you wanna call them, up because- Right...
you know, that's still a vibrant area, and, and other areas it's like you gotta think hard. Like with video, I was always like- It's vibrant, but hold on a second. It's vibrant, but it's...
I remember being at the new, at the Vanity Fair New Establishment event. It was, I think it was Graydon's last year doing it, and maybe twenty seventeen, something like that.
And I was like circling around the Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, and I ran into Bob Sauerberg, who was then the CEO of Conde Nast, and, and his, like, socks were blown off by how am-amazing the event was, the speakers were, the crowd.
The like, you know, four zillion dollar BMW that Chris Mitchell, you know, twisted Graydon's arm to have, like, on one side of the plaza with, with some awful activation they're putting together.
Actually, it wasn't awful. It was totally tasteful. But I remember Bob was saying, "Oh, we, we have to do like ten of these a year. This is incredible." And I thought- That doesn't work [laughs]...
but if you did ten, and not just the human capital, but, like, if you did ten, would any of them be as good? You know, may-maybe TED, the business, is a good counterpoint to this on some level.
Yeah, I think that- But I think that what's important here- ButThey did TEDx, which totally diluted the brand because it was like if you have TEDx speaker in your LinkedIn- It turned into like a McDonald's franchise...
it's like it's a red flag. Let's be real, and I love LinkedIn. Yes. It's like for the Fortune, the Forbes ten under ten. You know, my, my sons are vying for that now.
But no, in all seriousness, o-o-one of the setbacks in our industry was for a long time, for better and worse, largely better, sometimes worse, but largely better, the creative executives control the destiny of the businesses.
You know, again, I came up seeing Graydon at the peak of his powers, marshaling a multi-hundred million dollar a year business.
You know, they called him the editor-in-chief, but he was the CEO and had all the powers of multiple, you know, of an investment banker, a lawyer, you know, an entrepreneur. All tho-those powers were vested in one.
When the power was yanked away for years by executives, you know, presciently seeing the crumbling of the industry, when it was yanked away and they came in and provided a number of new revenue streams, pivot to video being one, event mania being the other, and there are plenty of others, you know, white glove customizations, you know, the-these things that make, like, three percent margin.
The creators knew better. Now, they didn't always get it right, but the creators knew that wasn't gonna work, and their heart never went into it, and, and the businesses didn't work.
So there was a culling of that took place, and we lost a lot of time. So I, you know, to do-- very long answer to your very simple question, I don't wanna recreate mistakes that we've made.
I have partners lived through those years as well, and I think we all came out knowing what works and what doesn't, while also being really thoughtful about trying to figure out what are the future revenue streams that we haven't really contemplated or executed yet, but that will help take our business to the next level.
Cool. All right, John, we'll leave it there. Thanks so much. Final podcast from Serbia for me. Welcome back. Can't wait to see you on American soil. Yeah. Thanks.
Thanks for listening, and thank you to Jay Sparks for producing the Rebooting show. If you have a podcast that you're considering making, you should check out Podhelp US and what Jay can do for you. Go to podhelp.us.
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