Ami Gan, Stephanie Mehta, and Rafat Ali on the business of media | The Juggernaut Summit 2024

So I have to start with this question, which is what is media these days anyway? How do you define content?

Yeah, I tend to agree with that answer. I think media is now anything that is a platform for content creation and distribution. What I would say is that there continues to be an important role for what I would call news media, and that's across all different platforms, whether it is online only, like the juggernaut, or a company that has some traditional print like our business, or broadcast television. There continues to be an important place for news media. And I would define that still as journalistic and fact-checked content that is created specifically with the purpose of informing.

Thank you for inviting us. Oh, thanks for being here. I'm a huge fan of all the work. He's also a lifetime subscriber. So the business of media hasn't changed. There are only two or three ways you can make money in media. It's either you sell the audience or sell to an audience, or you do it for influence, like the All In podcast. They don't make money, but they channel that in 20 different ways. So that hasn't changed and will not change because there are only so many ways to make money. The thing for me, having been in digital media for 25 years now, is just the continued proliferation of the types and forms of media, and more to come. And so that's the fascinating part.

The most fascinating, important change that's happening is the shift from mainstream media to these alternative forms of media. You're certainly one of them. And the most powerful media company today in the world is YouTube. I would argue not even TikTok, it's YouTube. Because of what has happened over the last three to five years and how little trust there is in mainstream media. We can have that discussion if you want to, but YouTube has emerged to be this giant force. You can call it a company or platform, but it's where the action is for pretty much everything happening in longform or anything beyond really short form.

So we're live streaming on YouTube right now, actually. And I think TikTok is banned in India too, and YouTube is one of its biggest markets. So I like that hot take right there. Let's talk about this, because there's always been this tension between an individual creator and the aggregate or the platform. How does a platform like Skift or Fast Company succeed? And the counterpart to that is how do creators succeed? I'm curious how you guys view this tension.

I would say we continue to succeed in spite of the concerns about trust in mainstream media. We continue to succeed because we try to provide content that you can't find anywhere else, that our readers and communities are looking for. We're no longer just looking for eyeballs. We're looking for people that we consider members of the Fast Company community. And that goes back to the founding of Fast Company. It had almost a cult-like status when it started almost 25 years ago. We succeed by providing content that you can't get anywhere else. And that's true of Inc magazine, which is our sister publication. Inc is able to create the Inc 5000, which is the 5000 fastest growing companies in America. We get that because companies trust us. They provide us with three years of audited financial statements or tax returns. These are privately held companies, and they trust our brand enough to give us information that they don't even share with their employees or their accountants. And yet the value of becoming a member of the Inc 5000 is so great that they are willing to share that with us. Machine learning cannot replace that. I cannot replace that. Readers are going to come to us because we are the only place that can compile that information. So I think that's how traditional media brands like ours continue to succeed.

How do you view the tension between a creator and an individual and fame versus the platform and the aggregator? Because even in typical news media, it can manifest as a star reporter like Taylor Lorenz separating from the company. How do you manage that?

So, I mean, we're a little bit in a bubble, and I'll take that bubble. B2B media. I don't know if any of you know what Skift is, but Skift covers the business of travel. News, research, conferences, marketing services. We bought a consulting company last year for the travel industry. We had our event last week. Our biggest event coincided with a bunch of our speakers going back and forth. Most of the time, I don't think of ourselves as a media company. We are in the travel industry. We're serving the industry. So it just happens that the manifestation of what we do happens to be a media company. We do get reminded of it at events like this, or if you look at our margins compared to software, but that's a different conversation. Because companies like ours are so hyper-focused on providing daily value to the user, they're less B2B, they're more business. We're more B2B. For us, it's very much about how do we become a bigger and bigger part of the daily life of people in the travel industry. I don't care whether it's media or something else. As I said, we just bought a consulting company last year. Doing very well, will be 17 or 18% of our revenues this year. So the fastest growing part of our business is almost better to figure out what your audience wants versus worrying about media or not.

Going back to what audiences want, I know you know this number. OnlyFans paid out $6.6 billion to its creators in 2023. And I think a lot of people after those numbers came out were kind of shocked. They're like, why does OnlyFans work when other content is free? So I'm just curious, what do you think about that business model worked while others didn't? And what are the things that people can take away from that perspective on creators and the creator economy?

Well, I want to talk also using that example. What are some of your wildest successes? Stephanie, Rafat, and Ami, when we think about monetization and monetizing content, what has been an idea that maybe you didn't expect to work that well and has surprised you in being so successful?

Yeah. I've got one of my colleagues from Mansueto Ventures here, Zeleny Persaud, she's in the back. She contributed to something we had a hunch would be a success, but thanks to Zeleny and some of her colleagues, it has exceeded our expectations. And that is community. When I got to Fast Company in 2018, I created something called the Fast Company Impact Council. It was designed to be sort of Fast Company's version of the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit or Fortune's CEO Initiative. It's clear that if you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 or Global 500 company, you have plenty of clubs you belong to. You go to Davos together, you go to various business roundtable meetings together. And we said Fast Company has an audience of fast-growth CEOs, but also chief design officers, chief technology officers, and chief innovation officers. None of those people have a home, and none of them actually ever interact with each other. Sometimes the designers all go to the same conference, but they don't necessarily get to meet with fast-growth company CEOs. So we said, how can we create a really cool dinner party where all of these people get together? Initially, it was frankly slow going. We didn't know quite how to turbocharge it. Then Zeleny and some of her colleagues said, why don't we take advantage of another asset we already have inside the organization, which is our recognition programs? Fast Company often honors the most innovative companies in the world. Every year we recognize the most innovative design companies. And we said, while we're in the process of recognizing these companies, let's extend an invitation to their CEOs or relevant executives to become members of the Impact Council. And we've seen tremendous growth. What we love about that, going back to what Rafat was saying, is you can either get money from your consumers or from your advertisers. These are people who love us. They love the fact that this company honored them. They respect the journalism and the communities we're building. So it's a lot easier and frankly more rewarding to tuck those people into membership than trying to service an advertiser who may or may not have budget and is going to nickel and dime you on every single piece of fulfilling the contract. Like, I wanted micro-targeting and I wanted to reach chief design officers in North Carolina who have 13 employees. No one can service that client versus somebody who is a chief design officer, loves Fast Company, not only wants to be a member of your community and pay a membership fee, but is going to write stories for you, come to your events, and give you content. It's a great model for us.

A couple of small things that come to mind. LinkedIn has become our probably biggest channel in general outside of owned channels like email. Between my following and Skift's following, we're like a million something. It brings in a lot of readership. People I meet at our conference say we love Skift, I read your LinkedIn. I say, no, no, no, go to the site, don't read my LinkedIn, go to the site. But we do focus a lot of attention on LinkedIn. For us, there's only one channel that matters, and we're B2B, so it doesn't really matter. But LinkedIn has really emerged as a powerful channel. We market everything through it. We launched our first ever India conference this March, the Skift India Summit. The Indian travel market is booming, domestic as well as outbound. You go here outside, half of the tourists in Times Square are Indians these days because Chinese haven't come out in the volume that people thought they would post-Covid. We thought, US dollars versus Indian rupees, they want to make tons of money, should we put the effort in? We made money hand over fist on this, hugely profitable, probably our best ever year-one conference we've done anywhere in the world. We've done in Singapore, London, New York, a bunch of other places. We made tons of money. So the general myth that Indians cannot pay equivalent dollar amounts that we command here, while not completely gone, there's a lot of money in India from that perspective. So that's another example.

Wow. So you heard it here first. There are at least three tips from these three panelists. One, put up that paywall early. Two, figure out how to create your own community that isn't being served. And three, go to India. But also, you've been advising so many different companies through Hoxton. Tell us a little bit about what Hoxton is, and if there are any other leverage points or wild successes you've been seeing in this industry.

So I want to hear from the audience. How many of you are working in a company that's thinking about how to build more community? Okay. And how many of you are individual influencers or creators trying to figure out how to build your brand? Okay, so we have a mix of everything here. And has anybody been thinking a lot about monetization and how to actually earn a little bit more? Okay, I've seen a lot of nods but no one raising their hands. We love a side hustle. So this is a question I'd have for you all. If you were to start a content company or a media company today, what would you do?

This is going to sound like a very boring, dutiful answer, but I got my start in local media, and I've been really saddened to see the hollowing out of local news media and ethnic news media. So I've had this idea, and I don't know if it would ever be possible, but if I were to start a new media company, what I would love to do is build a consortium of college newsrooms and have college students report on the local communities in which they operate and live, and then use that to create a national news organization focused on local. So you'd have the ballast of a local or national backer, but having college students fill the gap that local newspapers can no longer fill.

That's a really good idea. That's a great idea. If there are any funders out there, come see me. There must be some in here. Well, she also knows there are no funders out there, unfortunately, just philanthropists.

I have a similar local network idea, but this is my second company. I'm not doing another company ever again. It's a lot of work. I would... I know B2B, so that's where I have the most advisor perspective. There's still a lot of white space in serving professional communities. And they have built-in business models because they have built-in advertisers, subscription, community. To learn from the best of the consumer web and bring it to the business web, whatever you want to call that. In general, the thing about media is that you look at markets and you say there's no way another company can go into whatever CPG, retail, or energy drinks, but media always has a white space, always. Because it's a personal creation, your point of view, your worldview that you're bringing to life, and that resonates with people. That's why you see people keep launching new stuff. The tech media of 25 years ago, when you and I were doing this, CNet, look at what happened to CNet, it just got sold for pennies on the dollar to Steve Davis, which is ironic because CNet bought Ziff Davis 25 years ago. So the tech blogs that came were disrupted by the next wave. So point being, there are tons of ways to look at the professional world, whether fashion, music, or boring back-end B2B, and create media and content businesses. It doesn't have to be traditional news-based media. It could be any type of media from the spectrum of what we're talking about.

What are some trends that you're excited by? I feel like recently we've been hearing about these multi-hundred million dollar podcast deals. Everyone says investors say media is dead, but then another media company pops up like Semafor and raises $19 million off the bat. What is this back and forth we're seeing? What are some trends you are seeing and what's the reason behind why we're seeing that?

Very, very little. So all of these deals that you see, follow them through, because at some point most of the people will lose their shirt on most of these deals. Success stories on actual exits for people who are invested in media, that number is shrinking. So in general, raising money is one thing, being able to deliver on it is another. So I'll caution on that part. What was the question again? What are some trends I'm seeing? I'm seeing these hundred million dollar podcast deals. I mean, you may know more about these podcast deals. I saw there's a new wave of people wanting to launch subscription podcasts. There was a wave three or four or five years ago that didn't work for paid podcasts. And it turns out the New York Times is about to launch something I saw yesterday. Maybe it's going to work this time. These deals are talent deals essentially. Do they give the return to whoever's paying that $100 million five times over, ten times over? It's still doubtful. It's still too early to say.

Yeah, I would say the trend I'm seeing is I'm neither bullish nor bearish, but just stating an observation, there's a real bifurcation. I think the scale players are just going to get bigger, and the niche players are going to have to get more and more specific. I think it's going to be very hard to live in the middle. And by the way, the middle is not that small. But I look at a Washington Post or a CNN. Those are not small sites, and yet they are definitely going to have to figure out what their path forward is, and it's not entirely clear. I don't see this changing in the foreseeable future. I think the big are going to get bigger. The niche are going to continue to have to mine their specific communities or their areas of interest, or get even more crisp and have a clearer identity. I think Junkrat is a great example of a media property that knows who it is and knows who its audience is. If you're in the middle, it's tough.

That's actually wild to hear you considering CNN in the middle, which is a major news outlet. But at the same time, it's like, how are they evolving? When you have all of that, the podcast industry is just so saturated, but then you do have these breakout talents coming through. So there is this real polarization happening in media. And I agree, it's going to be dependent on maintaining an audience and maintaining quality content and keeping the audience engaged, but also educating them depending on what the media outlet is.

I mean, I think CNN is mid-sized compared to what I think you're saying, like Facebook or Meta. For those who are streaming, I did not mean to imply that CNN is small, but compared to the big being the Metas and the YouTubes. But even within news media, you've got the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which have their specific niches, and then it falls off very quickly. They push their subscriptions very hard. You only get like two free articles. But look at the size of their organizations too. All credit to both of those organizations. Certainly before Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, I was there and it did not seem like it was on a growth trajectory at all. And similarly, I remember when Carlos Slim was bailing out the New York Times. That did not seem like that organization had a bright future. And because of subscriptions, both have really thrived. That is the thing those two brands have in common and have been unwavering in pushing.

One of the trends that seems interesting is the email newsletter and where that's going. As you can probably attest, both of us, and maybe OnlyFans, email is going through a tough time with privacy issues and all the changes from Apple and others pushing on email. That said, email continues to be the mainstay for companies like ours. It's the biggest owned channel. But then you realize at some point it's not owned because it really depends on the mercy of Apple and Google and others. So ultimately, there's no real owned channel unless you're bringing people in in real life. And that's kind of where people want to go. But email continues to be interesting, and whatever new things emerge in it will be there.

It makes a ton of sense. I only have one last question for you, and I hope we can incorporate two because I know we're running a little behind. How are you all incorporating AI into your processes? What seems most exciting, what seems most challenging? And to connect it to this audience, I feel like I continuously meet such amazing creative souls who still want to go into journalism, or the creator economy, or start their own brands. What's your advice to them?

We use a lot of AI in our work. Similar to you, in my daily flow as the CEO, memos not to write but to structure for me. So we do that a lot. I do that a lot in my daily use, just as a thinking partner for a lot of stuff. We launched something called Skift in May last year, which was a chatbot trained on every piece of Skift content that has ever been created, news, research, conference transcripts, public company filings because we cover a lot of public companies in the travel industry. It creates a chatbot for you to ask, for instance, what are the last five years of Airbnb's marketing spend? Instead of hunting for stories, we have all of that buried in stories. So we launched that in May last year. Its new version, Skift 2.0, we launched two weeks ago. We pivoted from a chatbot paradigm to an answer engine paradigm because it's a different way of thinking about it. We're using OpenAI's APIs to do it. It's the newest version, a lot more advanced. Internally, we're doing things like headlines and we launched summaries on our research reports, which are long. So there are auto summaries and a bunch of other stuff. We're using it quite a lot. We're not using it for image generation, we've done a little bit here and there. But as a CEO with almost a hundred people in a company now, for me, it's never been about cutting people and replacing AI. It's that my people better be supercharged using this. That's the attitude.

Yeah, and really quickly, I would just double down on that. We created an AI working group inside our company, and I was really careful in creating the group to say, this is not an efficiency committee. This is not how we are going to use AI to eliminate positions. It's really about how do we get smart about using it in our organization. One of the first things to emerge from that committee was, let's put some guardrails around it too, because we don't want our artists or creative directors asking for art to be created in the style of Andy Warhol, because that's a surefire way to run afoul of copyright and IP protections. Also, we are an intellectual property company, and we don't want anyone else saying, let's do an article in the style of Stephanie Mehta. We want to make sure we have good hygiene around that stuff. As for your question, I would not say don't go into a career in media. I'm specifically saying journalism, even journalism. I'm not going to discourage people from a career in journalism. I'm Pollyannaish, a practical optimist. I still think it's the greatest career ever. So I'd say go for it.

Thank you so much, everyone, for sharing your wisdom, your insights, and some secrets about how to keep growing and monetizing. I'd love to open it up for questions. A huge round of applause. Who wants to go first? Any questions? See, I told you, it's a depressing world.

Yeah, I feel like I... There's one in the back. Bill.

Go ahead. Hi. Thank you very much. I'm Phil, I work at News Corp, so I appreciate all the kind words about the Wall Street Journal. I would love to know how you're thinking about young audiences and how you're thinking about getting them onto your owned and operated platforms, because that's the challenge for so many legacy publishers. When you're getting hundreds of millions of views and tens of millions of UVs on platforms like YouTube, which is incredibly important for publishers like us, how to get them to then convert to buying a subscription or going direct? I'd love to get your view on how you're viewing all that.

Yeah, I mean, I think it is a question that we think about all the time. And quite honestly, I don't think we have cracked the nut on that. There are a couple of things. One is, we do try for both of our sites to have a lot of content that targets early career folks. So at Fast Company, we have career advice. We call it Hit the Ground Running. It's very specifically written, and I wouldn't say it's gendered, but we do believe we attract a very large percentage of female readers who are in their first or second jobs trying to understand how to navigate the workplace. I think it's a really rich audience for us. And that's kind of a gateway to other content on the site. On the Inc side, every young person coming out of college or high school wants to be an entrepreneur. And Inc really does exist to serve them and empower entrepreneurs. So we are hoping we can create content for that creator, for that entrepreneur, or for that aspiring person who maybe is trying to take their side hustle and turn it into a business.

Any other questions? Okay. Well, oh yeah, go ahead. We'll make you the last question and then we're going to move on to consumer.

Perfect. Thanks. Hi. My name is Farhad. I'm wondering how each of the folks on the stage thinks about churn. So we talked a lot about subscription models and advertiser models. How do you think about churn with each of those?

I think that's a great answer. Hopefully you don't have to think about it too much. Thank you so much, everyone. Huge round of applause yet again. Thank you.