Thank you for reminding me, 'cause I, I just hit, I just hit record. I am a, a professional podcaster, and on at least three- [laughs]... at least three occasions, I have failed to hit the record button.
[upbeat music] I did Ben Lair. I don't... I think he still hasn't forgiven me, because he, like, showed up at my apartment in Cannes and, like, grinded through, like, a 40-minute podcast, and I was like...
The last thing I was like, I looked down, I was like, "Ben, I got some really bad news" [laughs] That's unbelievable. Ah. Creator economy. Yeah. [laughs] You gotta keep the infrastructure going, man. All right.
[laughs] I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. [upbeat music] All right. We ready? Okay. Welcome back to the Rebooting show. This is episode three of our first season, which is focused on modern B2B businesses.
Just a quick reminder of how we're structuring these seasons. I plan to go through, um, various themes and have batches of five episodes.
And so future seasons are gonna be devoted to topics like the creator economy, subscriptions, first-party data, everyone's favorite topic. Um, and I'm matching up each episode with a sponsor.
So in, in this season's case, it's Silver Blade Partners, and thank you to my friends at Silver Blade.
Um, and the p- the way this is working is that the fifth episode I'm gonna be interviewing, uh, Bernard Ervin from Silver Blade Partners, um, and talking about the problem that they're trying to solve, um, to help media businesses be more sustainable.
Um, that episode's gonna be labeled spotlight episode. It's my euphemism for, um, the fact that it's with a sponsor. But in all honesty, you know, I plan to make these just as valuable, um, as these other podcasts.
Um, so do give it a try and let me know what you think after next week's episode, and hold me to my promise to, to make them, uh, just as good. Um, but I'm gonna... With spot...
with, uh, with the spotlight with Bernard, I'm... we're gonna be talking about how cash flow is a problem in all digital media, uh, businesses, where 30- to 60- or even 90-day payment terms are pretty common.
Um, so always like to hear feedback. Again, uh, send me an email, uh, at byrc@gmail.com. One other final thing. If you have a chance and you, you use Apple Podcasts, uh, please do leave a rating and a review.
This, um, this helps my ego, and it also helps people discover this podcast allegedly. Um, building from scratch is both rewarding and challenging, um, but, uh, this is, you know, part of the growth.
Um, I wanna thank my man Alfred Wescott, uh, who I swear is not a relative. And he wrote, "Great new pod. Brian is one of the best interviewers in media." One up. That's, that's realistic.
"Cuts to the chase and doesn't let his guests shy away from the hard questions." Thank you, Alfred.
And Sean, that is a warning about what's coming for you, 'cause I gotta live up to [laughs] the billing that Alfred has given me. So let's get, let's get right into this. [upbeat music] You know, when I was, um,
planning on doing this series, to kick things off I knew I wanted to have, um, Sean Griffey on.
Sean is CEO and, uh, co-founder of Industry Dive, which is probably one of, you know, the most successful, um, of a new wave of modern B2B companies out there.
Um, Sean and his team have built an incredibly impressive company, the 25, I believe, industry s- specific publications now in 22 different sectors.
Um, personally, I'm an avid reader of Marketing Dive and Retail Dive, but there are many others, um, in areas, um, that I'm just simply not focused on at the moment.
Um, but I do think one of the tests of a media company is the ability to expand into several markets, and Industry Dive has, has pulled this off, so I wanna talk about it a lot more. Sean, welcome.
Thanks for having me, Brian. Excited to be here. Okay. We tried to do this, like, last week, but, like, I'm in Miami, you were in The Bahamas, and it was, it was a disaster all around.
But now you're back, uh, you're, you're, you're outside. You're in Washington, right? Absolutely. Yep. Okay. And sorry for the internet connection. It's, uh, dial-up speeds in The Bahamas still. Yeah.
No, it's not that different over here in Miami. Um, so let's start... I'd like to start off with origin. Um, so let's go back.
You and your co-founders were at a company called Fierce Markets, which I'm sure a lot of people don't know, but, um, is a very successful B2B media company, and then you decided to split off and start your own thing.
Talk to me about the, the origins, and what was the white space that you saw? Yeah. I mean, we, we had a, a really nice, uh, business with Fierce Markets. It's a great company.
Uh, many people know it from Fierce Wireless, which, which covers the telecom space and wireless space, uh, at the time.
Um, but their life science publications have, have eclipsed it since then, so Fierce Biotech, Fierce Pharma.
And it, it was a successful media company that we helped, uh, the original founder grow and, and then sell to Questex, which is a larger, uh, business media company, uh, at the time very event focused.
And, and what we saw is we, we were growing, uh, the Fierce part of the business really well. The, the founder left, and my, my partners and I stayed to run it.
Um, and then the, you know, '06, '07 recession came, uh, and while our business did really well, the, the event portion and the rest of Questex, uh, struggled a bit.
And, um, we just saw our ability to innovate, uh, get hamstrung.
So, you know, our spare cash was going to, uh, pay the lenders, uh, and, and we couldn't, um, we couldn't build something the, the modern company that we wanted to. Um, and so we, we decided let's do this on our own.
And the white space, I mean, I think a lot of it holds true. Uh, some of it is less important today than it was at the time.
But when you, when you think of when we ended up leaving, uh, which was 2012, it was right when Facebook was going public, and the, the knock on Facebook was can they make money in mobile? Right.
And all of the revenue was coming at that time. I read, I read some of those stories[laughs] A-absolutely.
And, and what we saw in media was just this view that, hey, if, if you-- if digital came to the media industry and, and people did one of two things, they either ignored it 'cause they didn't know how to handle it, or they tried to recreate their print magazines in a, in a PDF digital format that didn't work, and that gave opportunities for, you know, s- for new startups, for people to think of it differently.
We thought the same thing was gonna happen with mobile, and, uh, we thought there would be a chance to, uh, just us-user experience, uh, and the mobile experience to differentiate ourselves.
Um, we wanted to invest really heavily in design, um, 'cause we thought, you know, in, in business media in particular, uh, it was pretty horrific in twenty twelve, and, and in many cases it's not much better today.
Um, and then we wanted to use content, um, and, uh, you know, invest in content.
And I have all kinds of stories about how I thought, you know, the business media and, and some of these niche markets had abandoned that for lead gen and the rest over time. And so that was the thesis.
Um, today mobile is just kinda table stakes, right?
Like, everyone has to be good at it, but I think the other parts of thinking about design, thinking user experience, and, and definitely leaning in on the content is what's- Yeah... served us well.
But, uh, talk to me about the business plan that you're coming up with, 'cause I, I always find it interesting 'cause, like, asking where you come from, because like you mentioned the events thing, you-- a lot of B2B com- media companies are events companies at their heart with, like, sort of media as, like, a front, right?
Um, but you, you built the business differently, and I assume that part of that, if not most of it [chuckles] was spurred on by the experience of Fierce Markets with Questex. Um, much of it was, but I, I think, uh,
I, I think one of the things we realized is, um, there was this time in media where scale meant let's take a marginally valuable person or someone with very little value and get a hundred million of them, and then hope it's valuable.
And, and what we saw with our experiences and what we knew in the market is that, um, what's better is doing something valuable multiple times, and that there's real value in a hundred thousand incredibly targeted powerful people.
Um, and so we thought, hey, in each of these markets, you could easily create a ten to twenty million dollar business just marketing supported, but if you wanted a five hundred million dollar business, you had to do it a lot.
Um- Yeah... and so for us it was how do you build a scaled niche business?
And so we launched, it was, I mean, it was literally three of us in an old corner, uh, convenience store, uh, and we launched day one with five markets.
Um, and that was a, a bit, bit silly, um, maybe stupid, uh, and audacious, but what I didn't wanna do was, what I've seen a lot of people say is, "I wanna go into twenty markets.
Let me perfect the first one, and once I get it perfect, I'll do it nineteen more times." And then ten years later they're still on the first one 'cause they've never got it perfect.
So we launched with five day one and just said, "Let's keep getting better."
But talk to me about that because, like, I'm probably more, and this is probably-- it's interesting 'cause everyone comes at things from a different standpoint, and I'm probably because, like, my background is more editorial, like, I, I would be more like, well, I wanna get it, like, a lot better and like, you know, you get, you know how editorial people are, they're more precious.
[laughs] Yep. Um, and there's no one way, right, to do things. I really do believe that. But talk to me about the... First of all, how did you decide on the five markets?
And, and secondly, like, was this, like, sort of like, hey, we're gonna have five things and like, um, if two work, great.
Like, you know, 'cause if you have one thing, if it doesn't work, then it's like you will not get to step two, but if you have five, you got a chance of, like, a few breaking through. Yeah.
Um, well, start with the, the market. So w-we had a thesis on what would make a good market, and it, it came to our business model, right?
I think that's one of the things that people miss at times when they look at media, is that your market dynamics can really impact, uh, how you can monetize, and you can't take a marketing supported business or a subscription supported business and necessarily overlay them in any market, um, 'cause there are market dynamics that change.
And so what we thought is we, we really knew marketing supported businesses, um, and, you know, what we thought works for marketing supported is, uh, A, there needs to be, uh, a need to follow the news, so high regulation, high technology change in the in, uh, industry.
So we needed the readers to have to wanna read it every day because their job, their career, their business can change.
Um, we look for industries with high capital spend, and that's part of the marketing supported piece of this, right? Which is there needs to be buyers and sellers. Um, and then we really look for competition.
To me, that's a sign of the market. So I actually like when I go into an industry and there's twenty publications there, 'cause it means there's money there.
Twenty, twenty publications are supported, I just have to out execute someone. Uh, and then we look for trade shows, right? If there's a fifty thousand person trade show, those are fifty thousand potential readers.
If there's a thousand exhibitors, those are a thousand potential marketing clients. So that's how we started with the business.
We've gotten a little smarter over time, um, but, but that's still the core of what-- the way we think about it. Why do you say a little smarter? That sounds really smart, at least in retrospect.
[chuckles] Yeah, you know, so some of our industries, um, we've really leaned into the technology piece of it. Yeah.
And I, I really wanna know what the SaaS software components are in the industry, 'cause they're, they're great o-online advertisers, right?
And some of the industries, so waste industry was-- waste and recycling was one of our very first, uh, publications, and it's still a great publication. I mean, we have a, a great audience there.
It might be better as a subscription product, because there's not a whole lot of technology spent in the waste industry. Yeah. Right?
If, if the-- if something goes wrong in the waste industry, they just big a-- dig a big hole.And they solve their problems. Yeah. Um, and so you don't need the technology.
But I know, I know you prefer marketing supported versus ad supported. I'll go with the marketing supported. Um, but- [laughs] With, with, with- So if you, if you say ad supported, people- I know...
think it's programmatic- I, like- And they think it's banner ads. I get it. And, and we, we do zero programmatic. I get it. So I, I'm, I'm, I'm branding myself. I get it. I've learned that from- I know.
I wanna get back to, to mistakes. I think calling, calling your areas boring is one that you'll cop to. But- Yeah [laughs] So, um, let's, let's talk a little bit about, like, these markets that you chose.
So I mean, you, you did go, I don't wanna call them boring 'cause every- everything is interesting. You know, the supply chain was thought of as, quote-unquote, boring until [laughs] like a little bit ago.
Now it's, like, super interesting. It's a good time to have a supply chain publication. Yeah. [laughs] Um, so talk to me a little bit about the, the markets you did choose.
You came out with, with waste dive and what else? So we launched with waste, uh, utility dive, marketing dive, education dive. Um, yeah, those were the first ones. Okay.
Um, and that was, a- again, you, you went with that sort of- Construction, I'm sorry. I only said four. Construction was- Yeah... the fifth, yeah. So
explain to me the, the decision to have-- Because, like, y- the, the plan
always was to have a bunch of these publications because, like, you could build the best publication in, let's say, waste or something like this, but you're gonna hit a ceiling. Like, you just can't, like-- I don't know.
I mean, maybe you can, but, like, you just look at the, the existing publications, and it's really difficult to build a hundred million dollar business off of one B2B sector.
So you have to have a plan, I think, if you-- depending on how big of a business you run, it to replicate, uh, the model.
Now, you o- you obviously chose to replicate at the beginning, so, like, you're definitely going, um, for that.
But what were you looking to learn from that initial cohort of, of five publications before, you know, I think, you know, I just said you're up to like twenty-five now. Like, what are, what were you looking to learn?
I, I think we were trying to, to figure out how we, uh-- what the audience response was gonna be.
I mean, we were, we were really confident in the mo- monetization piece of it, um, and that's something, uh, that I think we're just really good at. But I, I... The, um,
the, the first, the first part of this is how can we build an audience? What are they gonna really care about?
Because we were, we were doing news, but we were also trying to do other things, which was building tools and aggre-- you know, we, we had this view of maybe we can aggregate and curate social media and different things for busy executives and put it in a mobile format.
And we had all these, uh, thought ideas, and it, it turns out over time that what people cared about was the insight that came from the news, right? And the, and the trends that we covered and the rest.
But we played a lot with those things. Um, you know, you talk about mistakes that we had.
I think the, the, you know, the funny thing is the first person we hired was an audience development, uh, person, 'cause we were like, "We need to build these audiences." And it turns out we had a pretty crappy product.
And, uh, the best audience development person in the world, if you don't have a product that people are gonna care about, uh, it doesn't do much good.
And so, um, you know, we, we've had to sort of regroup and figure out what does-- what do these execs care about? Um, what pieces of it do we keep? What do we lose?
You know, we, we, we lost a lot of the online tools that we started to build and just doubled down on content. Yeah.
So, but talk to me about the audience development piece, because, like, you're starting off-- like, starting from zero sucks. Like, it [laughs] just does, um, because you're at zero, and it takes time.
Um, so what was the approach to building these audiences? Um, I think everyone looks for a hack, but the, the reality, you know, is very few of us find it, and what you need to do is be everywhere in these platforms.
And, and we, even to this day, we're everywhere. We think about SEO, which is our, you know, SEO and, and organic signups is our number one driver of signups and pass-alongs.
But then we think about how do we facilitate sharing and pass-alongs with people? Um, we do some paid campaigns, uh, you know, on, on LinkedIn and, and other places. Uh, Twitter was at one point a good thing.
And, and you, you gotta be everywhere, and they all work, and then everyone figures out they work, and then we destroy it all, and it doesn't work again, right?
And so you just have to be one step ahead of finding the next thing before everyone else figures it out. Yeah. I mean, you see that a lot with, um, what was-- what's the company that, uh, uh, SmartBrief, you know. Yeah.
That was smart. Like, it was literally smart, you know, hooking up with, like, trade organizations. Um, you have a built-in audience. You're solving a problem for them and stuff.
And I think Morning Brew, in some ways, you know, succeeded, um, by being really smart about acquiring from Facebook and then adding on a referral program, um, that- Absolutely... made those incredibly valuable.
Um, but- But now there's like, every- everyone does the referral program now- Yeah... right? You know, like everyone who's got, got one, and, and I think it's gotta be harder for them going, so they'll find new ways.
You know, they're smart guys. They're gonna figure out the next one. Yeah. But they're also-- they're at like, you know, this sort of scape philosophy. Scale. Right? And, um- Yep...
so at what point do-- did you find the publications, like, could they be profitable in year one? Did you try to get them profitable in year one? Um- Or like, how did you manage them?
Well, we were bootstrapped, so I, I wanted them as profitable as fast as I could be. We, we could not in year one, it turns out. But, um, around, you know, the eighteen, nineteen-month mark, we could do that.
I think the, the great thing about scale is today we can get them profitable really quickly, um, and we're getting much better and faster, but that's, that comes a little bit with we have built-in audiences, and we can launch in adjacent markets, and we have track records with, uh, marketers now, and so we can pre-sell things, uh, based on what their experiences are.
But, but in, in day one when we launched, uh, you know, it was six months before we sold anything, um, and we were just grinding, trying to get, um-You know, get the, get a-- We launched with a website, which I thought was pretty good, and we were about a month in, and we said, "It's not good enough."
And so we were rebuilding the site and trying to think of content and doing the rest, and that, um, you know, that, that took time.
You know, the, the, the hard part of starting from scratch is you forget that you're gonna waste a day building desks and chairs, you know?
And you're- like, you get to the end of the week, and you're like, "What did we do this week?" You know? Like, build chairs. That was Tuesday and Wednesday, you know? Um, so it's, it was a slog. Yeah.
Uh, trust me, I know that. Uh, I don't build chairs. [laughs] I do everything else. Um, yeah, that's really interesting.
Like, so e- in, in getting it, like, some-- what level does one of these publications have to get to on the audience side before you're confident that you can, um, you know, sell ads against it and be, and, and be profitable?
Like, 'cause again, when, when you have very niche audiences, the numbers don't have to be that big. They just have to be the right people. Absolutely.
And, and it varies a little bit in the audiences, but I think for us, there's a... And, and we care about the email newsletter more than anything.
I mean, I think that's one of the things I've, I've not s- not said, but, um, it's kind of a given these days.
But, but 10 years ago, it wasn't a given necessarily that email was the most important thing, and we, we knew that, um, from our Fierce days for a whole host of reasons. But, so for me- But wait, wait...
you know, we, we really looked- Let's, let's actually go, and then we'll go back to this. Let's... Gi- give the rundown- Okay...
for those who have not gotten email religion, but particularly from a B2B, but I think everyone, everyone is sort of discovering this, the media has in the last couple years.
Give me, give me the, the, the reasons that email is, is so... Well, one, it's, it's a platform you own, and no one can take away, right?
And that's something that the media industry's, uh, not necessarily embraced the way they should for a long time. Um, but more importantly than that, it is a push platform.
There are very few things that you can push to audiences versus pull, where they come to you.
And particularly when you're an upstart brand where people don't neces- they may not necessarily remember that they were on Utility Dive the day before or what the site was, having something where you can convert them and push into their inbox every day is really powerful.
And, and so I think notifications and emails are about the only two things that we can control that do that.
Um, and then the third thing, you know, email's personally identifiable, uh, and the data that you can get from that, um, both in the sign-up process and collecting it, where people are, you know, particularly in business audiences, they're really okay with giving you their company name and title and the rest- Yeah...
as part of the sign-up. Um, but then you can start tying behaviors to that email, right?
If you open your email on a phone, and then you open it on a desktop, I can know that you're the same person and build rich profiles about what you care about and what you're doing. So I, I think there's...
It's a pretty unique, uh, unique platform for media folks that you can't do from a website or a podcast or an app or anything else. Yeah.
I always tell people, like, the, the one hack I do know, though, that works is ask people for their work email.
You can still take the Gmails, but just say, "Enter your work email," and you're gonna get, like, 30% more business emails which are way more important because you can learn a lot about from a business email. Yep. So.
It's, uh, you know, and, and the other, the other hack we always say is just ask for the email on the first page- Yeah... and then sign them up, and then the second page- Yeah... ask for f- five more pieces. Yeah.
Everyone fills out the second page, but if they do abandon- Yeah, who cares?... send them the email. Like, yeah. That- Yep... the, that, that is, that is part one. We'll get information later.
I always tell our product people, I'm like, "We gotta just get the email." Once... Let's deal with the other stuff, uh, you know, on the second screen or even down the line.
But, like, without the email, you got no shot, like, at, at learning- Yep... what you need to learn about, about these people.
Um, so let's talk about growing the business because, I mean, you, you talk about bootstrapping. You did have, like, a, I believe, a couple hundred thousand dollars in seed funding. Yep. So.
Four, f- excuse me, 400,000 to start. 400,000. So how long did it take before you had full year profitability? You did-- Did you get full year profitability year two?
Um, well, we were profitable on a monthly basis- Mm-hmm... about 18 to 20 months. I remember Jonah Peretti- Yeah, so-... telling me that, like, BuzzFeed was, like, profitable. I was like, "Which day?"
This is a few years ago. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] So, so the first month we were profitable was about the 18th, 19th month, and then we were profitable from that point on.
So first 12 month, you know, consecutive thing was, you know, take 12 months from, from eight- month 18, 19. Yeah.
And, and th- those were like, that was the sort of, wow, like I don't wanna say slog, but, like, you have to, like, get to the point, like, um, where, you know, you, you don't truly have product market fit or whatever the, the equivalent is in media at that point, um, because, you know, you're funding it with, with your, with your cash flow, and that's, you know, it's hard and stuff like this.
And, and you ended up taking venture capital and sort of, um, you know, the, the growth has, like, exploded, like, in the last few years, right? But- Well, we, we took private equity- Okay. Got it... not venture capital.
Right. Which, slightly different. Yeah. Yeah, so, so two, two years ago, um, we took, yeah, just over two years ago, we took private equity. So we, we hooked up with a group called Furious Capital Partners.
Um, the business, you know, at the end of, that was 2019. The end of 2019, we had done about twenty-nine million in revenue. Um, and this year we're gonna do, you know, between eighty and eighty-five million in revenue.
Yeah. So it has been a really e- explosive period. But talk to me, 'cause I was going back, and, like, the, the, I think it was, like, 2017, you guys were at, like, fifteen million. Um, and, like- Mm-hmm...
a lot of these businesses, you get, you get, you hit a wall.
Like, for consumer media, I feel like a hundred million is the wall, and for B2B, if you have, like, one ti- you, you do hit a wall.And, um, getting over it is, is, is difficult.
Um, but talk to me about, about the scaling and because I think that is, is really difficult to pull off, and that's why you don't see a lot of people who, who are able to pull off, um, the scale B2B model. Yeah.
I mean, I think the hard part for us was always do we-- you know, we're at the fifteen million mark, um, we see growth.
Do we add industries, um, with what we're doing and, and keep our product set basically the same and, and how we...
Hey, it's gonna be newsletters and websites and, uh, brands-- branded content studio in, uh, in another industry.
Or do we start to layer on new products and services on top of it, which is, you know, events or, you know, other digital stuff, you know, subscriptions, uh, other digital products.
And that was our strugg-- like our-- has always been our struggle. What we ended up doing was, um, sticking more to what we're really good at and not try to spread, um, spread ourselves too thin.
I was-- you know, at the time, I was definitely afraid of events because we're still a pretty small team, and I, I knew that there could be a real revenue jump if we did them right, but I also knew they'd take the focus of everyone, right?
You have a big event, and the entire company shifts over from what they're doing to the event for a month and a half, and then they shift back.
And we just thought we've been growing so much that let's just keep doing what we're doing and stay disciplined with what we're doing.
And so for scale for us in the early stages was let's, let's do more industries, let's dig deeper, let's grow the audience, and we can raise rates, right?
You know, if we, if we double the audience, we can triple the rates. And scale can be doing what we're doing there. I think now as we get bigger, we have to think about, you know, walking and chewing gum and doing both.
Yeah. But that's interesting what you say about events because, I mean, I have a lot of experience [chuckles] in how much work and, and how much organizational focus events take.
I-- It was my full-time, part-time job at Digiday pretty much from day one till the day I left. Um, and it comes at a cost.
But if you're, if you're built for-- Yeah, it comes at a cost, but if you're built for it, it, it's not bad. We just weren't built for it, right?
And so for us, we had to say, organizationally, do we, do we staff to do this? Do we build to do this differently, um, or do we do what we're really good at? Right.
And we decided to stick at what we're really good at at the time. Yeah. Yeah. And then down the road, you can, like, add on events and other services, but it makes sense to focus.
Um, and events, a lot of times, they're kinda crack for the B2B media world because, like, you know, it's this blog growing revenue, and you can pop up an event and, like, you can generate a lot of revenue really, you know, off, off events.
And, like, the margins are good, um, and so they always look good on paper, right? [chuckles] Absolutely. And, and I mean, they're great brand builders too, right? Yeah.
They're, they're a way to market what you're doing. Uh, you know, I think there's a lot of companies that are, you know, have done a tremendous amount.
The events have carried them, and the events established who they were. Um, and without them, they'd probably be a sh-- you know, a shell of the company, um, with them. It just wasn't our model. Yeah.
So let's talk about the model of, of, you know, it's industry dot, and, like, you have different dots, right? So, like, to me, it's like it's a monolithic brand to some degree, right?
Like, it's like, you know, instead of, of building unique brands for each, you know, area, you know, with, with different, you know, logos and different, like, you know, everything being a little bit bespoke, but then you use, like, a shared services model to take the infrastructure costs and spread them across a bunch of different titles.
You sort of went with almost, like, a portal approach to me. And there's a lot of efficiency benefits, I, I feel like with, with, with your approach.
Well, I, I think that was part of the, the thought, which is if we wanna be in twenty markets, if we wanna be in fifty markets or a hundred markets, you have to do it efficiently.
We, we can't, um, we can't allow each publication to develop their own product set.
We can't eva- ask them to put demands on the tech team to build out their, you know, one feature that's only gonna use, uh, on one site and the rest. And, um, but it has a ton of value for us in different ways.
You know, one of our biggest publication now is, is...
Well, our biggest publication from a revenue standpoint right now is Retail Dive, and we launched that primarily because an advertiser, uh, came to us and said, "Hey, I've been working with you. Our budgets are shifting.
Focus is now on the retail industry. Um, well, do you guys have anything, or are you launching anything in the retail industry?" And we just said, "What a coincidence."
[chuckles] You know, if you ha- if you have a couple hundred thousand, we were about to launch Retail Dive, right? Um, and so- Wait, what year was, what year was this? Oh, gosh.
It's, you know, I would probably say six or seven years ago now. I'd have to look. Okay. Um, it all blurs together. Yeah, I understand.
[chuckles] But it, um, uh, Retail Dive's been around for a while, so it, it was, uh... I actually think about where we were, which office we were in.
But it, it, it, it really came out of, like, an advertiser, um, in-- not advertiser, excuse me, marketing inquiry. Um... [laughs] You can say advertiser. It's fine.
I, I, I'll stay brand pure, but you can go any way you want. Sure. Um, but yeah, no. Someone comes in, and today we, we have, um... You know, I, I just looked at the stats.
I mean, we, we have-- one of our, uh, clients is in seventeen of our publications right now. We have others that are in, you know, I think we have over tw- you know, twenty that are in more than ten of them today.
And I think what they know is that, um, the product set's gonna be the same, the quality's gonna be the same, their experience is gonna be the same.
And so it allows them to sort of add on to their buys with us and to pene- penetrate more.From a reader's standpoint, we actually have folks that change industries and will email us and say, "Hey, I'm, I'm switching.
I've, I've been in healthcare, but I'm going to the food industry. Um, you know, can you, can you switch my subscription?" And we'll move them over.
And so I, I think just having those dives is, you know, having it be one brand and a brand promise helps us on both ends for those folks, you know?
The, the referrals, if s- if someone's a loyalist and they love us, they'll come and say, "I, I told my spouse, you know, who's entirely different industry, to, to sign up, um, because I, I love, you know, Utility Dive so much."
Yeah. So it's been, it's been, uh, great for us. So talk to me about, about advertising and marketing. We'll just say them both. But, like, um... And about why the business model's built on, on that.
I mean, obviously when you started there were not that as many, you know, people were not as, you know, obsessed with subscriptions as they are now as being.
And I find, like, it's kind of crazy 'cause it's, like, people get religious about these kind of things, and there's, there's... not religion, it's just business.
Like, ads can work, like, subscriptions can work, events can work, just, it just depends. Um, but this is a little bit, it ended up being a little bit, like, contrarian in that, in that you haven't had subscriptions.
Talk to me about that decision, because you can still have a very, very nice business without subscriptions. Like, the advertising business in a lot of sectors is really good.
I mean, look at what Axios and all the DC publications are doing, um, with all the lobbying influence money flooding into Washington. Yeah. Uh, I'm, I'm not one of the religious folk.
[laughs] Um, I wanna, I wanna have, you know, all the money. Um, so, uh- Sure... we will, you know- You're like a B2B Shane Smith. I love it. [laughs] Well, I mean, I, I think, you know,
earlier you said, "Hey, you can, you know, these companies get to 15 million, and then there's a limit somewhere in there." But the models actually you can do a lot more.
You know, Hanley Wood was over 100 million just in the construction space between their publications and events and other products, right? And I think for our roadmap, we, we have to do that at some point.
We wanna do that at some point. That's part of the, um, plan to go in, is to have subscriptions in, in the markets where it makes more sense.
I, I really, I'm incredibly bullish right now about peer-to-peer communities, uh, for our business and setting up something that, that matches sort of a World 50 or a corporate executive board that, that Gartner now owns and the rest that does that.
I think all of those things are the, the piece.
Wh- why we started with marketing is that's what we knew, and we knew there was a lot of money there and we, we n- it felt like people had abandoned, uh, had abandoned marketing at one point, and that they, you know, there was this, this conventional wisdom that said you can't support a business on marketing or advertising.
Can't s- can't support a media business, it just can't be done. And we just said, "I think you're doing it wrong," 'cause it absolutely can. Um, and the pen- and we thought the pendulum was gonna swing back.
Um, you know, if you look, but we're probably both starting to this in '05, everyone wanted everything was free, and then nothing could be free, and the, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I know.
I always, I, I, I always describe it as the children's soccer game. Like, you know, where- [laughs]...
clumps of people follow the ball, and like, [laughs] you know, now the ball is subscriptions, so, like, everyone is, like, clumped around that ball. It's actually, you say people used to, but it's still happening.
I saw, uh, on LinkedIn, of course, the badlands of LinkedIn, uh, um, some presentation photo of someone saying, like, "You're not a publisher if you don't have subscriptions, and you certainly aren't doing journalism."
And I'm like, "Really?" Like, who, who believes that? Like, I understand, like- Yeah... you wanna say things at, at, on stage at conferences to, um, elicit, like, people taking photos of your slides.
But come on, nobody can really believe that. Um, so you took e- the, the private equity investment. At this point, you had a ve- you had a very profitable business, right? I mean, your margins have been great,
so- Absolutely. We're, we're, we've, we've been between 20 and 30%, you know. We're kind of in the upper, upper range, uh, of that now. Early days was down in the 20s- Okay... uh, EBITDA margins. Oh.
But, like, so t- talk to me about taking on the private equity, um, and that decision. Um, because, you know, you're making a bet to go a lot bigger. I mean, you had a really nice business. Yeah.
You know, um, so my, my co-founders and I, we sat down a couple years ago and we tried to decide what, what is it that we want and what we enjoy. Like, wh- why do we do this?
Um, we had a business that was really healthy. It was a, it was a nice business.
Um, it probably could've been one that we could've cash flowed and lived off of a nice, you know, nice salaries for ourselves for a long time. And what we just said was, "We, we really enjoy growing."
And I'm a, I, I'm a competitive guy, and to me, growth is, is winning. Um, and if we're not growing, I don't feel like we're winning.
And, and so, um, that, that growth and that feeling of winning is part of the culture of the company. I think feeling success and feeding off the success is what makes Industry Dive part of Industry Dive.
You know, a couple years ago when we thought about private equity, um, I, I honestly kind of naively was going to try to raise money on my own.
So we were doing all the financial things of getting an audit and the rest, and I was gonna go to these middle market lenders and try to raise money 'cause I, I knew that there were acquisition opportunities and things that could, could grow us.
Um, and when that, while I was doing that, um, you know, Fast Furious showed up and, and they showed up by, you know, trying to reach out to me, and I, I, I honestly ignored them- [laughs]...
'cause I thought, you know- Well, it's hard because you get, you get, you get all of these, like, I don't know if people know this, but you get all these crazy, like, you know, emails from people, like, and you're not sure if it's like-A scam or like a big opportunity?
Could be both. Absol- absolutely. It's, it's like random people's like scam or big opportunity, but even the biggest private equity companies, you're like, oh my gosh, some, you know, someone from KKR has just called me.
Like, this could be, this could be huge. And then you realize like, oh, it's a twenty-two-year-old analyst who's just filling out a spreadsheet- Yeah... so they can keep track on you, right?
Like, they just wanna know what you're doing and what your revenues are, and they'll, they'll get back to you someday.
Uh, and so I really thought that's what Falfurris was, and it turned out that second-degree, third-degree contacts started pinging me saying, "Hey, these guys really wanna talk to you.
Um, you should get in touch with them." So were you like- And I sat down with them... were you like playing like hard to, hard to get by accident? Like, just... [laughs] I just was too, I just was too busy.
You know, I'm like, I don't... I'm not gonna take this random... I don't know these people. I'm not gonna take a random, you know, I, like, I'm sure everyone does. You get like twenty messages of let's partner- Yeah...
you know, every day. Like, you can't respond to them all or, you know, do the rest.
And so I sat down with them, and they started talking about our business the way we talked about it internally, and I actually went back to Ryan and Eli, my co-founders, and said, "Have, have we shared these slides with any conference?"
'Cause I really thought that they had cribbed it to sort of, you know, this vision of what we should be building. I thought they stole it from something we presented at a conference and were feeding it back to me.
It was so closely aligned. And so we ended up just realizing that this was the path that was gonna be better for us. Yeah. These were the partners at the time, and it worked out. But so
up until this point, it had all been organic growth, right? Like, you hadn't done acquisitions. Mm-hmm. And then like with- Well, some, some, some small ones. Small, but like- You know, but-...
not to the degree that you've done in the last few years...
ac- acquisition by press release, I say, which it makes it sound bigger, but it's really like a tiny, tiny deal that you put out a press release and people ooh and awe, but it, it's not a big one, you know, up until then.
Yeah. So like talk to me about like taking on the, the funding and what, um... 'Cause obviously acquisitions have happened, but I mean, you've grown tremendously since then.
So w- what, what has the, the funding e-enabled you to do? Well, it, it is... I mean, the, the organic growth has eclipsed the acquisition growth.
So part of this allowed us to so- you know, put, uh, you know, push, push more on doing some of the things we were doing. Um, but the acquisition growth has been important to us in terms of, um, adding capabilities.
So we, we purchased a content studio from, uh, NewsCred, business called NewsCred, which is now Welcome Soft- Software.
Um, and that allowed us to go deeper, uh, deeper client relationships, solve deeper problems for, for our marketing partners, uh, and go the rest. We, we also have used the acquisition to buy some really great brands.
So CFO, uh, was a brand we bought at the end of last year, and it's had a imme- immediate impact on us. It, it was something that, uh, The Economist owned for years.
Uh, it had been sold to, uh, an event business that, um, ha- had some rough spots and, and really hadn't been invested in much.
And so we were able to take that, which was a thirty-five-year-old really established brand in its marketplace, and add it to the portfolio and then do some of the things that we know how to do in terms of audience and monetization and really kind of take it, you know, put it on a path back to where it was.
Mm-hmm. Um, so what are the plans going forward?
Is it to continue acquisitions and then organically launch new publications, or is now the time to start adding in, maybe it's both, to adding on, um, subscriptions, events, peer-to-peer communities, and the like?
Has to be all of the both. I mean, I think if, if you, um, if you think where we're investing, um, I think we've got to invest a lot in data. I'm a big believer.
I, I wanna come back on, on your first party data series- Yeah, please... 'cause I, I can talk about that for hours as well. But I, you know, I, I think we need to really invest in data and what we're doing with it.
Um, I think we're going to, uh, you know, launch-- we're definitely gonna launch into new pu- in, into new markets, um, and we're debating a few of those, uh, right now.
So we'll launch into multifamily, uh, construction in Q1, uh, and then we have a couple more next year. And th- those will mostly be organic, uh, launches. But I do think I, I'm, you know...
I wanna get into peer-to-peer, I wanna get into, uh, subscriptions, I wanna grow our e- event.
I'm, I'm still trying to figure out what events mean right now, um, and where we are and what the new event model is, 'cause I think they've had their Craigslist moment where things are, are gonna change in the event industry.
Um, but I think I wanna do all of those and, and, you know, next year you'll see us, you know, probably tackle at least one of the meaty pieces, um, there, peer-to-peer events or something.
I'm intrigued by the Craigslist comment. I think Rafat called it like Napster moment. But like, do you really think so? Napster. Like, I mean, it's Art Basel here. Like, people wanna get together no matter what.
Like, it's-- Zoom's not gonna replace that. I mean, I... So, but, but I... Rafat probably did it better with Napster, but my, my view of Craigslist is it came in and just took very specific use cases- Yeah...
out of a newspaper, right? And I think it didn't mean that the newspapers were going away, it didn't mean that there wasn't still a need for them.
It just meant some of the things that you would go to a newspaper for, you might be able to do more efficiently somewhere else. And I think some of that still happens in the-- I think some of that's gonna happen.
It, it's not gonna replace events, 'cause you're gonna wanna see people. You're gonna wanna get out of your hometown on the company's dime.
You're wanna gonna network with, have drinks with the crew that you hang out with every... Your, your event things. Like, you're gonna want all that, but I think some of it can be done. Yeah.
No, that's what I, I had ca- I don't know what it is yet. I called it like the unbundling just 'cause it was good marketing, um, for it. But, [laughs] um, because it is.
It's like, you know, things are being hyped off from events. So like, I'm not sure, you know, like even like the, the trade shows.
Like, I mean, I would think like-With a lot of your brands, like, uh, you might- must have to resist the, the temptation, the trade show temptation, because they're made for it.
And like, you know, you look at like, you look at like shop.org and like how big that thing was, um, I guess it will be again, hopefully.
Um, but you can make- That-- But they, they were our biggest advertiser, uh, for years, um, to the point where we had to tell them they couldn't buy more ads. Um, so they did shop.org, they did, uh, Grocery Shop.
Um, you know, the founder's back with a fintech one is, is advertising in, in some of our ones. So we, we have the building blocks to do those things.
You know, I, I know that I've watched people build events off of our audiences. Um, and there's-- there'll be a time that we come do it. I don't, I don't know what the right model is for us.
I mean, I think hosted buyer events fits with some of what we're doing, and I think could fit with some of the peer-to-peer plays that we want, that I'm really- Yeah... excited about.
But there's an opportunity there for sure. I mean, if you think about matchmaking, I mean, uh, like the best B2B publications are based on communities, and they have a clearly defined buy and a sell side to me.
Like, and if you can sift between a buy and a sell side, like you can do a lot of-- you can make money, you can do a lot of stuff [laughs]. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. That's the plan. I think you'll be okay.
All right. So let's talk-- let's, let's, let's, let's wrap it up with the numbers 'cause you're as, you're admirably promiscuous with the numbers, so I like that. Um, I've seen eighty million in revenue this year.
Is that correct? Yeah. Uh, yeah, I mean, let's break, let's break news. Um, I've been saying eighty publicly, but, but we'll be above that. I mean, I think it'll be closer to eighty-five.
Um, we'll see how December- Okay... you know, goes, but it's looking closer to eighty-five. So you're on a glide path to, to breaking the hundred million dollar mark next year. Come on, you got it.
Um, we-- That's the plan. That's the plan. The plan is over a hundred million, for sure. Yeah. Okay. Um, how many... And that's awes-- Like, that's amazing. Like, you know, that's a, that's a sizable media business.
There's a lot of media businesses that, um, a, a lot of publications talk about ad nauseam that are not that big or certainly do not have, um, what are you talking, twenty to thirty percent margins. Yeah.
I mean, north of twenty-five. Yeah. There's a lot of media companies that do not have, right? Um, how many email addresses do you have? Um, so
I, I want to temper it because we, we did some acquisitions, and we're probably gonna dump a bunch of the people, right? I mean, one of the things that's important about when you're in email- Yeah...
is you keep the list clean. Um, you know, I, I would say we're, we're north of two point five million emails.
Um, you know, it's probably closer to three right now, but, but I suspect, you know, we're gonna get to the end of the year, we, we've been mailing some of these folks, we're gonna probably dump, you know, dump a good amount of subscribers- Yeah...
that just are, are dormant or inactive that came over in acquisitions.
So were you able to, and maybe in, in, um, [clears throat] you know, uh, uh, the discussions about an investment you were gonna do and like, what is like the-- how do you work out like a lifetime value of an email subscriber and, and in a, in a specific vertical?
And what is, what is the range? Do you have like a range? It's fuzzy ma- I mean, it's fuzzy math, to be honest with you. I mean, we- Oh, this is-... we have numbers- This is AVF, Juan... if you look at it.
I mean, come on. Yeah. So I, the, the spreadsheet geek in me hates it 'cause there is a, there is a fuzzy, fuzzy math to it, but I, I, I will say this, um, it, you know, we're in the
hu- hundred to a couple hundred dollars is a lifetime value for these sub-- for the subscribers. It varies wildly based on the industry. Um- Yeah...
you know, some of the industries, the subscriber, the, the value of the subscriber is, is much higher. But yeah, we're, you know, you're looking at hundreds of dollars, uh, if not more. Yeah.
Part, part of it's, you know, like someone says, "What's the average churn of these subscribers?" And it's like, well, there's no end date for some of these.
Like, you know, what, what's the, you know, what's the length of time a subscriber's gonna stay?
So a lot of our subscribers have been with us for five or six years, and what, what do you say about what, you know, that they're gonna be gone at some point, like that they only stay on five years? I, I don't know.
You know, it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing math equation. Right. So final thing is I wanna get back to, to B2B, and B2B not necessarily being boring. Although B2B historically has been boring, I must, I must say.
Um, and talk to me a little bit about, about that.
I know we had talked earlier when we did a podcast, and you were like, "I'm, I'm not calling this stuff boring anymore because [chuckles] internally it doesn't go over well." Um, but it's true.
There is still this, this idea that B2B is like a back walk. It's like a junior, um, it's not like...
I think we're seeing some of this with like the commerce stuff, but like there's a bit of snobbery when it comes to, um, B2B, um, at least in the broader media discussions. Yeah.
You know, I leaned into it in the early years 'cause I, I actually
kinda took pride a bit in the, "No, we're, we're actually covering markets, and, and I know you wanna go to a party and, and I, I can't get, you know, the, the Wall Street Journal or anything to cover my business, uh, because we're not big enough yet.
You know, a smaller consumer magazine that's doing, you know, ten million in revenue, they will cover up ad na- ad nauseam." Yeah. Um, and I, I leaned into it and said like, "Th- this is a better business, you know?
And, um, it may be great that you're, you know, targeting millennial fashion, you know, consumers, um, but I'm in the electric utility space, and you know, you know what ma- you know who that matters to? Everyone.
You know, everyone, you know, the, the industries we touch, you know, we, we write about touch every single person in this country.
You, you-- Waste and recycling, you may say, 'Oh, it's boring,' but it's like y- you all need it. Everyone needs it. And these are industries that are shaping it."
And so I leaned into the boring because I leaned intoYou, you don't think it's important. I know it's important. Um, and you call it boring, I call it profitable.
Um, and, you know, I, I leaned into that, but it did a disservice to the journalists and the reporters who lived in it. It did a disservice to the people who work in it, right? 'Cause these are really dynamic industries.
There is important stories and an intrigue there. And, um, I'm, so I'm not gonna say it anymore. I mean, you're right. Like, I'm just not gonna call them boring. Well, 'cause it- They're not boring...
it makes, it makes a point 'cause, like, I remember talking about DotDash, and I remember calling it, like, um, before buying Meredith and all this stuff, like, you know, boring business.
Like, in some ways, like, DotDash is, like, a boring business compared to, like, a Vice or something like this, and I remember talking with Neil about it. He was...
I was like, "No, I mean, like, it's good, like, because, like, y- you're, you're making money, and, like, you know, it, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't totally matter.
Um, just because something is sexy doesn't mean it's a good business." [laughs] Absolutely. You know? Um, so you may not wanna talk to me at a cocktail party because I'm gonna talk about the industry.
You know, like, you wanna talk to the people who are covering the consumer stuff, and I'm gonna tell you about, you would not believe what's happening in the supply chain industry right now. Yeah.
Well, I guess that's a good conversation today. Well, that's the thing. But it wasn't three years ago.
Like, you know, like, like I talked with Craig a couple weeks ago, and, like, what he's doing at, at, at, um, uh, supply chain FreightWaves is amazing. FreightWaves. It's amazing what they've- Yeah.
They're fan- And- It really is... um, and even, like, you know, like, you know, e- obviously everyone, you know, Craig's on, like, um, you know, Today Show and stuff like this talking about supply chain.
'Cause like you said, like, with, with waste, like, nobody, like, thinks about it until your trash isn't picked up. Um, and the same thing with, like, stat.
Like, you know, we had, had Angus on, like, last week, and, um, you know, health is something that obviously touches all of us, and, um, now we are all very, very focused on mRNA and spike proteins, like that.
[laughs] Um, so I mean- We, we know a lot more about that than we did a year ago. We know a lot more about the shipping containers and where they're, you know, what the backups at ports are. Yeah.
It's, uh, it's amazing the things you learn. Yeah. Now inflation. We're getting, we're all getting [laughs] deep into the inflation. [laughs] I know, I've been trying to learn crypto. We talked about this before.
So, um, I'm, I'm, like, deep into, like, uh, the future of money and trying to understand stuff that I should've understood back in college.
Um, so final, final, final thing is, 'cause you had tweeted this yesterday, and I found it actually kinda interesting, um, about, like, this alumni, like, newsletter you do.
And I think it's important, um, a little bit to talk about, like, culture, and particularly as you grow, um, you're gonna have, like, alumni that go there because, like, the test of a good publication is, to me, is do the people who come and, and whatever time they spend with you, do they grow?
And, like, you, you should celebrate their success elsewhere, and I've seen instances otherwise where, like, I think people give in to their sort of, like, um, almost ego thing when people leave, just like, "This is a betrayal."
And, like, it's not. It's, you really want a strong alumni network. The most successful companies in the world have extremely strong alumni networks. Absolutely. Um,
it, it, as an employer, I mean, that's part of the, you know, unwritten contract you have with people is you help them grow, you help them develop skill sets.
You make 'em so valuable in the marketplace that everyone wants to hire 'em, and, and hopefully you can keep 'em. Um, but you're not gonna always keep 'em, right?
And so you gotta, you gotta cheer 'em on when they go do different things. When, when their goals don't align necessarily with where the company's going, you, you gotta provide 'em, you know, opportunities.
I, I think to me, I mean, see- seeing people do really important things, and our journalists have, have gone, uh, done great things.
Um, but what I really love is there's a lot of the people we've worked with that have started their own media companies, um, you know, both out of Fierce and starting to see some potentially coming out of here, and I, I love seeing that.
You know, I love seeing them go do things and, and the rest. So we have an alumni l- newsletter. Um, we try to let them know what's going on.
I mean, I think it's, uh, A, it's just, you know, be sad not to keep in touch with some of these folks. I mean, they're an important part of what, you know, made Industry Dive.
Um, but there's also business reasons, right? They're, they could be potential, uh, referrers of people, uh, coming in. They can be, uh, they may wanna come back themselves if you keep it up, and they could be clients.
Yeah. You know? You, you never know where they're gonna go, and so, um, you know, I selfishly wanna keep in touch with them just 'cause I enjoyed them. You know?
And there's a lot of people that I, you know, they leave, and you're kind of just like, "Oh, they, they were, you know, they were fun." You know? And I miss those people.
Um, but it's also, there's business reasons to do it.
Yeah, no, it's definitely, there is some self-interest in there because particularly, like, you wanna have a big alumni network also because, like, when you're, it's competitive to hire great people, and they're gonna talk to your alums, so keep them on your side.
Absolutely. All right, Sean. Okay. We're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for, uh, spending the time. I'm glad we both got our internet, uh, in shape to be able to make it happen.
[upbeat music] Uh, love the new podcast series. [laughs] And glad to be a part of it. So thanks, Brian. And thank you all for listening. Um, again, if you can, like, leave a rating on, uh, Apple, that'd be great.
I said you could do it on Spotify, and then actually I got a note from someone at Apple Podcasts pointing out that Spotify does not allow comments, which is true, but, like, I think they should allow, like, comments and reviews of songs 'cause I think that would be actually pretty, pretty cool to tab.
Um, we'll be back next week with a new episode. Again, it's gonna be with, uh, Bernard, uh, Urban from, uh, Silver Lake Partners. [upbeat music]