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[upbeat music] This week's episode of the Rebooting show is brought to you by my friends at House of Kaizen. I know from experience how hard it is to build a subscription business.

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Yes, having content worth paying for is the most important thing, but there are also thousands of details to master. What does an optimal subscription business look like?

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How do you know if your efforts to build subscriber revenue are performing to their potential?

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Well, House of Kaizen's twenty years of growth optimization for subscription products experience has given them the unique ability to identify the common markers of the strongest subscription product businesses and share them with you as your partners.

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Their subscription growth diagnostic very quickly identifies where and how to tackle the low-hanging fruit or the more meaty efforts to achieve the next phase of your growth goals.

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House of Kaizen's subscription product experiences span publishing, streaming, software, wellness, and retail.

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It runs the gamut of subscriber experiences and will provide you with the best practices, research, and testing methods to get you where you wanna be, faster and with more confidence and efficiency.

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They'll work alongside your team to discover, ideate, and execute experiments for sustainable subscription revenue growth. To find out more, go to houseofkaizen.com. That's Kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N.com.

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And if you wanna contact them even more directly, send an email to matt@houseofkaizen.com and tell them that you came from the Rebooting. Thank you, House of Kaizen.

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[upbeat music] So on that, like, explain the, the, um... I mean, you obviously must be really, really happy that you went through the first six years mostly bootstrapped, [laughs] right? Yes. Hundred percent.

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Hundred percent. Yeah. Although you probably wouldn't wanna do that again. [laughs] It's not fun in the moment.

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I can look back on it now fondly, because I've forgotten all the bad stuff, and I just remember all the good moments. Okay. So what are the good...

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What, what were the, like, the, an, like, an honesty, like, the pluses and minuses of, of doing that? And did you think you got the timing right?

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[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey.

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Thank you for joining us this week. Um, this week I'm speaking to Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CB Insights. CB Insights is a data service focused on private companies in the tech industry.

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Anand founded the company back in 2010, and it has since grown to 400 employees and is on track for $100 million in revenue.

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And along the way, CB Insights has also built a substantial publishing footprint with an email newsletter that reaches some 800,000 subscribers.

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I've wanted to have on Anand, uh, for a little while now, because publishing can be a very good way to acquire customers for subscription businesses, even those that aren't quite media businesses themselves.

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But it's very tricky to do and to do well. I mean, we've just recently seen Netflix do layoffs at its publishing unit, Tudum.

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But we've seen successful instances of this in, in areas like gambling and crypto, and I'm not gonna count them as the same field, not, not yet at least.

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But Anand has a lot of experience in this, and I was, uh, really impressed with the clear-eyed view that he takes to what publishing can and can't do for a business like CB Insights. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

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And please let me know your feedback by writing me at bmorrissey@gmail.com. [upbeat music] Anand, welcome, uh, to the Rebooting show. Appreciate you joining me. Thanks, Brian. Fan of the podcast. Ah, love it.

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[laughs] So let's go all the way back, 'cause I always like to get, like, you know, people's, like, origin stories. I mean, s- you started CB Insights in 2010, yeah? That's right. Yep. 2010.

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So what did you see in the market, um, that, that you wanted to fill? Yeah, I'd worked in venture and M&A before, and, uh, thought private market data was pretty poor, and so that was, that was the initial impetus.

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You know, I wanted to... I wanted to get out of corporate America, so candidly, that was probably- [laughs]... the biggest driver.

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And, uh, thought, you know, we were using products from Dow Jones and Thompson, and I never really liked those and thought we could build a better mousetrap when it came to financing and exit data for private companies.

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Um, and so that was the initial, that was the initial idea. So initially, it was back in 2010, there was uh, an explosion at the time of, of private companies as only, so that was a good trend to be in front of, right?

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Yeah. And there was less visibility into the data. I mean, so when you're talking about, like, financing data, e-exits, like- Yeah. Right?

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Exit, IPO, M&A, you know, valuations, all that good stuff related to private markets. And yeah, 2010, it wasn't... It was... Yeah, I couldn't have predicted the wave, right? Like, it's been crazy since.

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So we've, we've definitely been riding a phenomenal wave when it comes to just private market growth. Okay. And the ada- the idea was always build a data business, the SaaS model, yeah? Yep, from the beginning.

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Hu-100%, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you were not setting out to build a media company by any stretch of the imagination. No. I, we... Yeah, I wouldn't... I don't think we're a media company- Right... you know, at all.

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So, uh, so yeah, definitely not the goal. Right.

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That's actually why I wanna talk, because I, I think a lot of people are waking up to how, you know, media, uh, has long been, but, you know, will be a great front end to other business models that are not media. Yeah.

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Like, there's, there's a world beyond just selling, um, you know, uh, lower priced subscriptions and advertising. It's selling really, really, really high-end [laughs] subscriptions. Yeah. So explain the...

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explain CB Insights' business model. Yeah. So today, you know, so we started off selling into investment banks, VCs, uh, you know, your private equity firms.

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Over time, what we realized is large corporations, I mean, you know, the, the buzzword today is digital transformation. Mm-hmm.

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So they're all trying to figure out where the world is going, and we had access to this data on the companies, the business models, the technologies of the future.And so over time, our business models actually pivoted.

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Pivot might be too strong of a word, but it shifted pretty dramatically to enterprise.

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So we work with now a majority of the Fortune five hundred who are looking to us to either understand what's going on in technology or actually now connect them with technology companies that can help them solve a problem they have.

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So if you're store operations of a retailer and you're trying to figure out autonomous checkout, you'll come to us, you'll see all the companies.

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We've got some algorithms that say which companies are the best, and then, you know, we'll-- you can actually hit a button, Connect, and you can actually connect with those companies right on the platform. Okay.

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So, like, who do you consider, like, like who is like an analogous, like in a different market even, like type of company for people to have in their mind? Like, when you think about like your peer companies.

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Yeah, I mean, I think there's the-- there's-- we, we don't sit nicely in one bucket, right? So there'll be the traditional data providers. So if you think of like a, a Capital IQ. Yeah.

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Bloomberg doesn't play in our world, but Bloomberg's, you know, probably the one that everybody knows.

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Um, so, you know, we have data, and then we have this kinda marketplace overlay, which connects you to the companies, the buy side, which is these enterprises, and the sellers, which is the vendors.

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Um, there the, the analogy is probably any number of marketplace businesses, but nobody's really doing it in the technology world the way we are.

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But that's the dynamic, is trying to- Yeah...reduce friction for the buyers to connect with sellers on platform. Okay.

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And you went that direction rather than the, the research, like, you know, having like a, a, a big team of analysts and, and doing and selling access to that? Yeah. I mean, we do sell research behind the paywall, right?

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Yeah. But our research is, um, you know, like we wanted a business that could scale, right? Yeah.

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And so I think what you have in a lot of traditional analyst businesses is a very personality-driven kinda model, where it's like- Yeah...hey, I wanna hear what Brian has to say.

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Problem is, you know, it's tied to Brian now, right? And so we've built a model where there is proprietary research behind the paywall. It's very methodology driven. It's very data-driven.

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Uh, and then we've also-- we also believe like the days of the eight hundred page PDF, our report are like long over, so it tends to be visual, shorter, you know.

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Hopefully, it's got a little bit of like irreverence and a little bit of a voice to it versus just like, you know, mind-numbingly boring, which I think was sort of the, the, the old way.

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Um, and, you know, our, our general view is, you know, you know, that much ballyhooed, like, attention spans are shrinking. Yeah.

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But I think the thing we realized is the more somebody is paid, the less time they have to read research, right?

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And so we're trying to, you know, kinda get it down to its essence, is a big part of what we've been focused on. Yeah, 'cause I think everyone...

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I mean, in general, people end up thinking more is more-- is, is gonna be valued more, like whether it's like unlimited access to content or the eight hundred page- Right...PDF, when in fact there's tons of businesses where, a lot of them, where they make a lot of money basically on saving people time, rather than having- Absolutely.

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I think a lot of times people focus on perceived value rather than real value. If that makes sense. Yeah.

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I mean, our goal is, you know, in tech, it's what's going on, what should I do about it, who should I do it with, right?

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And so those are the three questions we're trying to answer, and if we can do that in as concise and precise as a way as possible, like that's a good, that's a good place for us to be, um, so.

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And you make money s- and you make money based on selling like seat licenses? Yeah. We sell team or seat licenses- Team, okay...into these enterprises. Yeah.

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So, you know, if, if a, a big retailer has multiple product lines or a b- a big consumer packaged goods has lots of product lines, you know, their, their diapers team might have one, and their, you know, feminine care team might have a license, and their household products team would have a license.

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And, you know, at some point, procurement sort of says, "Hey, we've got a lot going on here. Like, let's standardize across the organization." But average, let's call it sixty thousand dollar subscription, uh, per team.

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Okay. And then, you know, and then, you know, we'll have clients that now have, are across seven figures in total. Yeah. Okay, sixty thousand dollars per...

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I mean, that's, that's, it's a little different than the one dollar intro offer subscription business. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a little different than that. [laughs] A little different. Yeah.

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So explain, explain how the sort of publishing fits into this.

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'Cause I said, I think, you know, publishing is a great way to put on the front end of a lot of different data business models, and I think we've seen this- Yeah...throughout, throughout time.

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I think more people are focusing- Yeah...on it in, in newer areas. But explain how th-the publishing part of CB Insights works with this, um, SaaS model. Yeah.

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So, you know, in the beginning, I, I wish I could say it was like this sort of designed brilliant strategy, right? Like when we started- Oh, it's a fly wheel. Come on, Hanan. You know that. [laughs] Yeah.

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So when, when we started, you know, our competitors could take you to a Yankee game, right? They could take you to a steak dinner, right? And so our thought was, well, uh, what can we do to just get our name out there?

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And so we studied... The two people we studied was Nate Silver and, uh, OkCupid, the dating site, had this awesome blog of d-- of trends- Oh, yeah...in dating, right? It was phenomenal.

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And so we said, "Well, these are industries or spaces which tend to be very talking head-driven, and there's not a lot of data. Why don't we just put some data out there?"

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We, m-m-- you know, basically found every journalist that covers these areas and emailed them all and said, "Hey, if you're ever covering, you know, venture capital or tech or something, like hit us up. Here's a report."

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Right? Uh- Yeah...and, you know, and so that's why we- That, that's a cla- it's a classic model, right?

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Like I was, I've been- Yeah...I've been quoting, I was quoting Net Ratings back in two thousand bec- Yeah...for this very reason. [laughs] Yeah. And so that worked, right?

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And so we said, "Okay, let's just lean into that," right? And so we started leaning into that. Then the second piece was starting to have a voice, right?

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So I think in general, B2B content is generally like just horribly boring.Right? And so we said, "Okay, well, what can we do to actually, you know, make it interesting?"

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So I think what we try to balance is sort of irreverence and authority. Um, and then we just leaned into that, and so we started hiring teams to build out.

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You know, and the, and the rule in the beginning was we won't publish it unless it has a graph. Like, it was very simple, right? Like, it has to be data-driven, ideally it should be using data on the platform.

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And then over time it's just grown and grown, and so now it's, you know, it's our... It's sort of our front door to CBI, right?

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Like, people discover the newsletter, they might read the newsletter for a bunch, and then they realize, "Oh, I have a need for this in my job or in my company."

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And then they become, you know, they sign up for a webinar.

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That gets them into our sales funnel, and then we've got, you know, we score every lead that comes in, you know, based on their organization, based on their title, based on what they've done with us to date.

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And then we kind of... The best leads end up going to our sales team, who then, you know, kinda try to show the value that we can provide to those clients. Right. Explain the decision to put personality in it.

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'Cause, I mean, you put your own personality a lot in, in the newsletter, I, I remember. And, um- Yeah...

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I'm sure it's not for, for everyone necessarily, because as you said, like, people are used to B2B content being dry and dull. Um- Yeah. So there's some risk there. I mean, I think... Yeah.

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I mean, I think the thing is, like, plain vanilla is sorta death in my view, right? And I think that's what most B2B is, right? It's like, like, you w- you don't wanna read it. That's just the reality.

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Because it's written for... It's written as if the buyer, that's the only part of their personality. Yeah. Right?

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Like, that's all they do all day long, they just think about ABC little problem, and that they don't look at cat memes on the internet, and they don't, like, read, you know, BuzzFeed articles of top 10s and all that stuff.

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Like, you know, people are multifaceted, so let's make it interesting and make it authoritative. So I think that was sorta the number one thing. And it, it was just like, would we wanna read this, right?

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Like, if, if I, if... Like, I don't wanna put together a newsletter that I find boring. So, you know, and so often we try to think about who...

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Let's think about the one person we're writing for, and, you know, we wanna be their friend who's, like, knows the most about tech and who also, like, will throw in random hip hop lyrics and other random memes into- Yeah...

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into that newsletter. So yeah, it just kind of, you know. It was sort of like we, we were... It was the discussions in our Slack, in our HipChat before Slack. We basically said, "Well, those, that's where all the fun is.

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Why don't we just move that into the newsletter," right? Yeah. Um, and yeah. HipChat. You're really, you're really taking us back. [laughs] Yeah, yeah, I am. I am. So yeah. I miss HipChat.

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Uh- [laughs] But, uh, but, um, yeah, that's, that's all it was. And that, you know, and then it's kinda worked and, yeah, the newsletter sort of continues to grow, which has been good. Yeah.

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I think, I think feeds actually changed that.

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'Cause I th- uh, 'cause I think it changed the expectations in that, like, when, um, people started, like, going to Facebook and, um, a little less LinkedIn, but Facebook and Twitter, like, they started getting y- comfortable with seeing all types of different content displayed in the same place.

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And there was just a switching that went on. It's like, here's, here's a family photo. Oh, here's some- Yeah... call for an insurrection. Here's, like, you know, a meme- [laughs]... and stuff like this.

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So it just all sort of feeds into each other. But I think that when that happens, you compete with everything. And so- Yeah...

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like, B2B, you can't just compete to, like, oh, I live my normal life, and then, like, you know, oh, here's, here's work stuff, and I have a different set of expectations for the work stuff. Yeah.

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I mean, we have to earn the right to have you open our email four times a week, right? Yeah. And so I th- I view it as, like, a very intimate relationship with the reader, because it's, there's no cost to them, right?

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They can always just hit unsubscribe. Yeah. Right? And so, like, we have to bring it every time. And I don't think we do bring it every time. Like, I wish, I, I, I wish every one was amazing. But- Well...

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you know, more often than not, we try to try to do that. Um, but yeah. I mean, i- it's like a very pure relationship. I love it because it's like an, you know, the owned versus rented thing.

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Like, that's the other big thing for us, is that we have 800,000 people on the main newsletter now. Like, you know, I, I don't like the term owned audience, but I mean, like, it is our...

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It's an audience we have a direct relationship with, which I, which I do think is pretty powerful.

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[upbeat music] One takeaway here is that CB Insights is a great example of what I think of as the casualization of pretty much everything. I sorta stole this from a tweet from Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

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People just want good stuff, even if it's for their jobs. And we're seeing lots of new media brands emerge, particularly in finance, that are the polar opposite of stuffy.

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They're conversational, some of them are very meme heavy, and they all use a very heavy dose of humor. Kinda like normal life. Yeah. I mean, that's 800,000.

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So explain, 'cause you do not have 800,000 clients, I would guess. Like, so- No, no, no. 1/10th of 1%... so the fu- the funnel goes [laughs] the, the funnel- Yeah, yeah... the funnel narrows towards the end. Um- Yeah...

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but with 800,000, I mean, do you look at this as a marketing expense or as a revenue, uh, center? It's, it's marketing. Yeah. But why, why not- Yeah... make it a revenue center?

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I mean, obviously the, uh, that would be preferable than, uh, it being a cost. Yeah. I mean, we've, you know, we get inbounds, for example, you know, "Hey, we wanna sponsor the newsletter," right? Like, and so- Yeah...

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I guess we could...

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You know, the, the challenge is, you know, they'll p- I don't even know what they'll pay us, but l- you know, they'll pay us something, but now we're fracturing the attention of the reader away from CB Insights research, right?

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And that CB Insights research, if they click on that, they come to an event we're doing, whatever it might be, you know, that marketing qualified lead or that sales qualified opportunity is $60,000 with a recurring revenue element to it, right?

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And so when we do the bus- when we just do the math-It would like, we'd have to charge you so much for sponsorship that- [laughs] -like nobody's gonna do it, right?

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And so when people do write, I generally just give them like a crazy number, and I'm like, you know... They're like, "Do you have a media kit?" I'm like, "Nope. Here's the number.

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You know, if you wanna do it, like, let us know." And, you know, it, it basically kills, you know, ninety-nine point nine percent of inbounds that way. So yeah, just I don't think...

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It's hard to beat a recurring revenue model with sponsorships, in my view, right? Yeah. It's also like not my zone of excellence or the team's zone- Right...of excellence.

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Like, we know, we know how to build technology, we know how to sell recurring revenue subscriptions, but like selling one-off sponsorships is not something we know. Yeah. And then it g-it gets, th-there...

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I think it's one of those things where it's, it's better in theory than, or on paper than in reality, and that like it presents all kinds of conflicts. Like, it's hard to operate both, both businesses.

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And they're similar, but they're, they're different at the end of the day. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, if I had, if I had any do-overs in the growth of CBI over time, it was actually, it was fracturing our attention.

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Like, I regret kind of all the things we might have done that like felt like diversions, right? Like, I think double, you know...

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Yeah, like, you know, until this business has, is multi-hundred millions of dollars, like, you know, having new SKUs and having new product lines, you know, we just see so much room for this to grow that like, actually, you know, kind of the other things just serve as distractions in my view.

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So we've kind of, we're really sort of doubling down on the core re- you know, recurring revenue subscription model. Right.

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So y-you don't have plans to take the sort of newsletter and build it into a bigger media offering at this point? No. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I see like subscription research products, right?

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But I think the challenge there is that I, I just don't know if we could build a big enough business, right? Like, and, you know, as our, as we've gotten bigger, like what is big, like that keeps changing, right?

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And so, you know, can a consumer or prosumer research subscription business be twenty-five, thirty million dollars in a few years? I, I like I don't see a path to that.

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So it's not like an area we spend a lot of time on just 'cause I, it seems like a... You know, I'd rather us innovate on the product and figure out how to get sixty K up to a hundred K, right? Yeah.

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And like that's gonna be, that's just a much more fruitful use of our time. Yeah. So how are, how do you end up evaluating then the content, um, operation to s- You know, because it's...

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You know, it'd be easier if you were selling subscriptions or e- or had an ad business.

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Um- Yeah...and like you said, you, you qualify leads, but like what are the, like so what are the KPIs that you have for, for the content operation? Yeah, so it's, it's two pieces.

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So we call it, you know, we call the research team the intelligence unit. So they're, they have, part of their research is behind the paywall. Mm-hmm. And so there we're looking at, um, team retention.

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So how many people, how many teams are coming back to read research on a weekly basis, right?

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And so if we're writing good, compelling research that helps you make decisions, you're coming back weekly, and we wanna look at, you know, weekly active teams going up over time, right?

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And so that's, that's kind of the north star for us on the behind the paywall research, right?

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In front of the paywall, they're gonna work a lot with the marketing team, and it's about, you know, a little bit about tra- a little traffic. I, I would say like that can be kind of vanity, right?

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It's ultimately what we call marketing qualified leads that lead to sales qualified opportunities. So, you know, that's not a exclusively intelligence unit or research team goal.

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They're gonna share that with the marketing team. But those are kinda like the two, the two primary metrics that we'd look at on behind the paywall or in front of the paywall. And it, you know, ev- there's, there's...

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You know, I'm always fearful of like picking a god metric that like everybody just that's the one. So, you know, you have to look at it with some nuance, right? Like we, we do want traffic, right?

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So sometimes you have to do the things that like, you know, have general kind of, uh, you know, we cover unicorns a lot, right? Like the world cannot get enough of unicorn tech companies, right?

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And so like that isn't necessarily what our paid clients care a lot about, but there's like a trade-off there where like just to be relevant in tech media, tech, you know, journalistic media, we have to cover that quite a bit- Yeah...'cause we have a lot of good data there.

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So is it hard to balance like that part, that sort of quote unquote "owned media" part with the sort of earned media marketing of, of having CB Insights regularly, y-you know, quoted and have, having its data cited?

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Because- Yeah...you know, look, you're sitting on a lot of valuable data that could be the jumping off point for content, right?

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And so you can do that yourselves, but at the same time you could also, you know, give access maybe on an exclusive basis, say, to like a journalist and, you know, that helps get CB Insights' name out there and ultimately will end up leading down the funnel.

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Yeah. I mean, we always, we'll always opt for the latter, right?

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So we're, we're, you know, as an example, we parse all these regulatory documents, and we'll see so and so's raising, you know, some interesting thing has just happened. We, we'll never break that.

147
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Like, you know, we could, it's just not our business model, right? Our business model is research about what's going on in technology.

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What we'll do in that case is say, "Hey, here's a bunch of journalists that we know cover that space or that company or whatever," and we'll just ship it out to them saying, "Hey, here's a filing we saw that looks like somebody's raising a round that wasn't disclosed.

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You know, go do your thing," right? And they'll go cite us, and then they'll go get a bunch of color and do first party kind of analysis and, and interviews. Um, so yeah.

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You know, I think we, we're trying to stay in our lane, right? Like actually the media, or, you know, journalistic media I'll call it, has been a really good partner for us.

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So like, you know, there's, there's really no need for us to blur the lines there. I think there's nothing that good that comes of that. And yeah, it's, it's, it's beneficial to us to get them to cite us.

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It leads to sort of social proof. They'll link to us, you know, and all the good domain authority things that come along with that happening happen. So yeah. I, I, I like this model quite a bit.

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You know, I think we wannaI, I would say like now there's other kind of influential voices in tech that go beyond, you know, Wall Street Journal, FT, Bloomberg, et cetera.

154
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So it's kind of thinking about how do we build relationships with, you know, those types of individuals or organizations. That's probably like our next kind of thing we need to ladder up to. Yeah.

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So ha-having done this for a while, like what do you think when you, you see...

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Uh, like, a lot of people say, "Well, now, you know, Andreessen Horowitz is really a media company that's, that, that happens to make investments," and it's like it's, it's a regular meme, I, I feel like- Yeah...

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that keeps coming back every few years. But- [laughs] Yeah... um, but it's more popular now f-to, for companies with a dif- with a non-media business model, um- Yeah...

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to use media usually to lower customer acquisition costs. And but, you know, they'll... We see it in crypto. I mean, all these crypto companies are starting all kinds of publishing arms. Um- Yeah... what is, what...

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I don't know. You've been doing this for a while, and like you said, like- Yeah... you decided not to go too far into it. So like what would your advice be for these kinds of companies?

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I think if you have a high lifetime value of customer, right, like buying media assets or building media assets is, is a no-brainer, right?

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Like, and you look at like HubSpot bought The Hustle, JP Morgan bought a comp- uh, bought like a restaurant, I forget the name of it. Yeah. The Infatuation. The Infatuation, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

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Uh, DraftKings and all these, you know, online gambling, you know, they all are buying media, right? Like, if you... Like, it's... Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a great business model.

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We actually wrote something about like this, just the math behind lifetime value versus customer acquisition cost.

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Like, I think more and more SaaS financial services companies should be acquiring media properties, you know, uh, because like the economics are just so much better with these media properties, that being part of a large, you know, high lifetime value company that, like a SaaS company or a fin services company.

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Um, yeah, I think there's a ton of room there. Uh, I don't think enough... I, you know, I...

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HubSpot, I would say, is then, you know, like their, their hustle purchase, what they're doing with like the, you know, the HubSpot Podcast Network, like I think they kinda get it.

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I think that's a pretty enlightened move. Um, yeah, I don't... You know, Stripe has their publishing group. I think Coinbase launched something. Mm-hmm. You know, sometimes it's like they have kinda...

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Sometimes the folks doing it have somewhat of an adversarial relationship with traditional media- [laughs]... so that's what's driving it. But I, I, you know, putting those- It's good for PR. It's good for PR, you know?

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Yeah. I think those are kind of the edge case. If you start to, if you poke at journalists that are like, "Oh, we're gonna go around journalists," you know journalists are gonna write about it. Yeah.

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I think those are the edge cases, though. I think like in general, like, you know, it, it just, it's a math problem.

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You know, like, these audience development teams at media companies are phenomenal at getting people to come into, you know, a property.

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Like, you know, like, you look at a credit card, you know, I used to work at American Express, the cost of acquiring a credit card customer is in the thousands of dollars, right? And like- Yeah...

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that's craziness, right? And so if you can acquire a media company that does it in, you know, double-digit dollars, like that's- Yeah... you know, you take that trade all day long. So I think- I mean, look at-...

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it should happen, will happen more. I... Yeah. If you think about, like you talk about like, um, uh, Infatuation getting bought, like, I mean, American Express should have bought The Points Guy and not Red Ventures.

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Like, you know? I mean, if you think about like- Yeah... what they end up... I mean, you know, The Points Guy, most people don't like talk about these businesses are massively profitable because- Yeah...

176
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you get a lot of money for credit card sign-ups. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's a ton, you know. Like, yeah, I think you just gotta pick the right niche, right? Where there's like a high value audience.

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And so, um, so I think some of these metrics around like- Right... you know, let some of these vanity metrics around visitors or subscribers or something tend to be actually not the right ones.

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If you could get, if you could get all of the people who care about clinical trials at pharma companies to get on your newsletter, like you can mint money off of that, right? Because the cost- Yeah...

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the, the lifetime value of a clinical trial software company is, you know, bajillions of dollars. Yeah. So, uh, so it's a good, good trade. Hopefully Deborah Conn is, is listening here.

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Uh, Deborah and I have ta- She's got this site, Being Patient, that is, um, focused on Alzheimer's. And, uh, uh- Okay...

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I remember we were talking, I'm like, "If you could get people into Alzheimer's trials, like that is a- Yeah... massive business model." Like, um- Yeah. Absolutely...

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and it fits with the editorial mission of helping people who are coping, um, with an Alzheimer's diagnosis or- Right. Right... one for a family member. Um- Yeah...

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so I think what's interesting about it is, like you said, the high LTV, right? Because I think a lot of early- Yeah... um, a lot of early efforts at this didn't work out because they had LTV that was too low.

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Like, it doesn't work I-if you're, if... I, I would think it'd be hard to work if it was like soap or something. Yeah. It'd be hard there. I think the other thing is, like, you have to,

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you know, again, like a focus, if I go back to the things that CBN Insight should have done, like just go really niche versus like, you know, trying to be all things to all people, right?

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But yeah, high LTV, narrow scope, I think that's like... Yeah, I think there's huge- Yeah... huge opportunities there. Um- So explain, explain the narrow sort of focus. Did you guys go too broad at some point? Yeah.

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I think, you know, like we- we're a horizontal platform, right? So we have- Mm-hmm...

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aerospace and defense companies, we have tobacco companies, we have financial services companies, we have healthcare com- like, everybody uses us, right?

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But when, if I, you know, if I look at it, which industries are seeing the most technology-driven change? That should, that, you know, now, and that is, it's kinda the way we think about it now, right?

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So where is there a lot of tech-driven dislocation? Where there, where is there a lot of vendor kind of activity? And then where, um, where is there a lot of new insurgent competitors, right?

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Like, that is what creates uncertainty for incumbents and creates a need to act, right? That's where we should w- that's, you know, I think now what we are doubling down on is those specific industries.

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In the beginning, and we were bootstrapped for the first six years, so I think that-You know, you have to be sort of opportunistic, so anybody shows up with money, you're like, "Yeah, I think we can do that."

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[laughs] And then you figure out afterwards what you do, right? So I think part of it was just, you know, it was out of necessity.

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But yeah, I think if we would've narrowed in on specific industries or even specific sub-functions within those industries, you know, I think, you know, who knows, you know, it's a counterfactual, so I don't know exactly what the impact would have been.

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Yeah. But, um, but I think it could have been... You know, it, it might have changed our trajectory. You know, I'm pretty happy with the trajectory as it's been, but, you know, I always want more growth. Yeah.

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[upbeat music] My takeaway here is that getting into publishing isn't for the faint of heart. I think too many companies underestimate just how long it will take and how hard it is to have impact.

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Perseverance is the name of the game, always. That's why we see big talk and press releases and, and then companies end up cutting the publishing group because it's a nice to have, not a must-have.

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You have to be in it for the long term. I th- I think for the approach, it's, it always needs a data angle, and like a proprietary data angle for it to make sense for you guys. For us, yeah.

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Y- 'cause ultimately, like, we want to be able to say, "Hey, you wanna know where this came from? You can get it on the CBI platform.

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You know, if you wanna do research or if you wanna do an analysis like this, you can do it on the CBI platform." So we're always trying to tie it back to something we have on platform. Yeah.

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Um, yeah, that's, that's pretty important to us. And then the other big one is, you know, because of the newsletter and other things, companies actually give us data that's kind of what we call off the grid.

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So, you know, data that's not publicly available about who their customers are and their pricing and their revenue.

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So that becomes, like, another, you know, big thing that we wanna point back to is, "Hey, this is information only available on CBN Insights." Right. But the, but the ambition is not to build, like, the new Bloomberg,

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Bloomberg News. [laughs] I mean, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Not Bloomberg News. You'll take, you'll take, you'll take the Bloomberg data business. [laughs] I'll take the Bloomberg... Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

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I'll take that d- uh, data business all day long. [laughs] But yeah, I, I don't think, uh... You know, I think we'll do-- we'll continue to do more content and more research, but news, uh, you know, I...

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There's just so many people who are good at it that, like, I'm not sure we have any right to be doing anything there. Well, it's also a headache.

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I mean, like, uh, [laughs] you're, you're in the, like, media business, like, the first time you lose a major client because of something you wrote. And, like, most, most companies- Yeah... have zero,

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zero interest in that. So that's why I sort of... You know, I do roll my eyes a little bit when people are saying, "Oh, we're building, like... You know, we're gonna disrupt journal." I'm like, "No, no, no, it's fine.

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You're, you're experts." Yeah. "You have unique data sets.

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You have absolute value to bring to, to, to your audience and to help your business," but at the same time, like, you've got zero interest in losing business because of something you wrote, so, you know. Yeah.

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I mean, I, I will say, like, we've lost clients 'cause of stuff in the newsletter, right? But, like, that tends not to be because of a, uh, of breaking news. It's because we made some offhand comment about- Yeah...

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you know, this market, and folks were precious about that. So- Right. You know, but yeah. I- But that's a sign- Yeah... of what to come.

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I mean, that's just the reality of a publishing business is you regularly lose clients 'cause of what you write. Like, it's just... You know, whether they say it or not, like, it's just a- Yeah...

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part of doing business as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Like- Yeah. I, I'm thankful when- And I think most people are in different businesses, they don't wanna deal with that. They're like, "We didn't sign up for this."

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Yeah. We, yeah. We signed up for lower CAC. [laughs] Thankfully we don't deal with that. Yeah, yeah. We want, you know, high LTV, lower CAC. [laughs] You know, stick around for many, many years as a customer.

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Like, it's a... Yeah. It's, it's... There's some nuance and complication below, be- you know, behind the scenes, but it's, it's a math equation at the end of the day. Yeah. So what, what is the...

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Uh, like, how do you end up boiling down the LTV? I mean, you say 60,000 is the average, so I mean, you can-- you don't have to convert that many people for your publishing to be worthwhile then, I would guess. Yeah.

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I mean, I... You know, again, when we...

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Initially, you know, when we would look at sponsorships and stuff and, you know, based on a, a simple kind of, you know, "Hey, what, what, what's that, uh, price per million or whatever kind of- Yeah...

220
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you know, media metric," right? Like, we couldn't find a way that that would ever look as good as the subscription, right?

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Um, and so our job is to acquire you and then keep you happy and retain you for a long time, right? And so our- Yeah... LTV is just how long we're gonna keep you around for.

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Um, yeah, and then the cost of research, I mean, I think it... You know, if we were to go try to cover a new vertical, right, that...

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There's some setup costs there, right, in the sense of we have to go hire people who are familiar with, who are passionate about that industry. We have to make sure we have data coverage in that area.

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But right now, that's not what we're doing. We're doubling down on the spaces we already know well. So yeah, it's a really high leverage kinda model in the sense of we just need to cover more and more.

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So, you know, you think about, uh, you know, retail, right? Before we con- thought of it as retail, now we're thinking of it as store operations versus supply chain versus merchandising versus, you know, any num- HR.

226
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And so we're thinking about, like, sub-functions within and how do we go deep on those.

227
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Um, so yeah, just continuing to kind of peel back and, and build li- we call it liquidity, build liquidity for each persona within these large industries that we already go after. Um- Yeah. But yeah.

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The economics work well at, you know, our price point. You know, we have to figure out how to continue to add value.

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And, you know, when we started the company, our price point was, you know, a few thousand dollars a year, right?

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And so, uh, and, you know, we realized that was a terrible pricing model and, you know, figured out a bunch of things around who our customer is and how they think about buying and, yeah, we moved that up pretty materially over time.

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[upbeat music] My takeaway from this part of the conversation is, again, the power of focus.

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It's easy to get pulled into a million directions, but there's tremendous leverage in understanding who you are and what you're trying to accomplish and not getting pulled o-off course by the latest flavor of the month.Yeah.

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How big is the company now? Uh, we're four hundred folks. We're gonna do- Wow... you know, with some, you know, we have to execute, but hopefully a hundred million ARR this year. Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations.

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Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. So, uh, yeah, no, it's been, it's been good. We've been kind of boo- we've been-- we raised some money, but we've essentially been revenue funded. We've never touched any of that.

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So yeah, we're kind of a atypical company- How much have you raised in total? We, we raised ten million in twenty fifteen, and we've not- That's it? It's... We... Yeah, we have, and we have that all in the bank still.

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So, uh, so yeah, we've, we, you know, we maintain the revenue funded ethos, I would say. So, um, yeah. So let, let- Customers make them happy. So on that, like, explain the, the, um...

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I mean, you obviously must be really, really happy that you went through the first six years mostly bootstrapped, right? [laughs] Yes. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. Yeah.

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Although you probably wouldn't wanna do that again. It's not fun in the moment. I can look back on it now fondly because I've forgotten all the bad stuff, and I just remember all the good moments. Okay.

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So what are the good... What, what were the, like, the, at an, like an honesty, like the pluses and minuses of, of doing that? And did you think you got the timing right when it was like, "Hey, we can pour gas on this"?

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'Cause, you know, businesses, like, they can grow, but then they, they hit a wall at some point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think the good thing is, the best thing was you have to stay really close to customers.

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And so our realization that enterprises care about this data came because we were bootstrapped. Hmm. We reali- we, you know, they were signing up, and I was like, "Well, who are, like, who are you?

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Why are you signing up? 'Cause I don't understand your use case." And then they would tell us, and it's like, "Ah, that's the insight," right? So I think, one, bootstrapping just keeps you close to the customer.

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That was huge. You build product for the customer. So I think, like, that customer obsession is really important. You know, the big negative of it is that,

244
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yeah, you're running lean, you can't invest ahead of growth, right? Yeah. You're, like, always looking at, okay, how much is the balance? How much is cash is in the bank? Okay, we can put, take a, a bit more risk.

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Our fundraise in twenty fifteen was pretty atypical. It was a customer.

246
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They sent us a term sheet by email, and we, like, we held them, you know, we said nah for a year, and then we were like, "Hey, the market might soften in tech." Clearly we were wrong 'cause it just kept going up.

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[laughs] So we said, "Let's just take, let's just take, let's put some money on the balance sheet just in case." So even that process was atypical.

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So, like, we've just always, we've always focused on building, and I think that's been good. But yeah, like, deprivation, like, creates motivation, right? Like what, you know...

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I think our early team, like, you know, didn't have a lot of pedigree, and I didn't either. Like, I'd put them head to head against any team in terms of what we were able to do with limited resources, right?

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And I think, like, scarcity is a, is a good thing. And I s- I still think we run like that quite a bit. Like, you know, we're... The offices are a bit nicer.

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There's not mice running around in the offices anymore and stuff like that. [laughs] But, uh... And nobody's really in the office. But, you know, like, I still think we run kinda lean and mean.

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When we hire folks, if you're not used to sort of a scarcity mindset, and you're used to just, like, "Hey, I can just have money and throw money at this problem," like, you're, you're- Yeah...

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well, you, one, you're probably not gonna get hired at CBI, but if you do, it's unlikely you're gonna be successful. So I, I think it's, like, been a good thing culturally for us.

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But yeah, like, early days, I just got married when I started the company. Like, yeah, kind of not fun to, like, just personally, it's not as much fun for sure, 'cause your friends are hitting their prime earning- Yeah.

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[laughs]... time in their life and going on vacation, and you're always like, "Well, we're busy." And it's like, well, the reality is that we're just poor.

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As my favorite philosopher, the Eagles center J- Jason Kelce says, um- Okay. [laughs]... "Hungry dogs run faster." So... [laughs] There we go. I like it. Yeah. Awesome. Anat, thank you so much.

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Appreciate you taking the time. Absolutely. Thanks, Brian. This was great. Have a good day, guys.

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My final takeaway is that overnight success stories are rare, and building something meaningful and sustainable takes a long time. I can empathize with impatience. I certainly have it often.

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But in the end, persistence and perseverance pays off in spades. Thank you for listening this week. We will be back next week with a new episode. The Rebooting show is produced by Podhelpus.

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Podcasts are a great way to expand your client base. Podhelpus lets you focus on having engaging conversations, giving your brand the full stack of services needed for a professional look and sound.

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Start your podcast today at podhelp.us.

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