Hey there, thanks for subscribing to Perpetual, and welcome to the 1st send.
What should you expect going forward? I’ll write about when I think a company is ngmi (like I tweeted about here), how creators should be viewed as the biggest opportunity — and threat —to media companies, and how the hell web3 and media might work.
So, why did I name this thing Perpetual? Media is a never-ending cycle of change, both by definition and intention. Is it marketing? Is it journalism? Is it some dude who loves talking all things media so he spun up a newsletter about it?
Yes.
As an operator, I’ve seen it all up close and personal. You’ll see me reference my own experiences, which IMO, makes the best industry newsletters (like Mario, Web, Jacob, Packy, and more).
I’ll do a deep dive most weeks on a relevant topic, but this week you’ll learn about my experiences and what has shaped my views.
If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, all you have to do is retweet this thread on Twitter to potentially win this beautiful shirt. I’ll choose 10 random winners.
So what’s my story?
I started my career in media at Spiceworks, a B2B IT community that was ahead of its time. Spiceworks grew from $30M to $70M during my time there, with only 250K monthly active users. Spiceworks was a great company, but raised way too much venture (clue to what I think about raising $$$ in traditional media) — about $130M —and sold to Ziff Davis for about $80M in 2019.
In 2016, I joined Under Armour to help them with their attempt to develop what Web Smith refers to as linear commerce: UA spent more than $800M acquiring various consumer apps, like MyFitnessPal, to build a deeper relationship with their customers. The TLDR? It didn’t work, but I earned a Ph.D. in how to do a really bad acquisition.
I moved on from UA to join The Hustle as their first Head of Sales. Throughout my time at The Hustle, I had a bunch of different titles like VP of Media, GM of Email, and President. Before leaving last fall, I oversaw all day-to-day operations, including editorial, growth, sales, and product. The Hustle was one of those special moments in your career when you're learning every. single. day. During my time there, we grew from less than a 100k subcribers to more than 1.5M and successfully built subscription, event, and advertising businesses. The Hustle still has one of the best online communities of entrepreneurs in the world. Looking back, we made millions of mistakes, which I'll dive into in a future send. In the end, HubSpot saw something they liked and decided to acquire the brand in Feb of 2021. It’s another linear commerce bet, results tbd.
After The Hustle sold, I started advising a few of my favorite media companies, like Section4, Every, The Plug, Pela, DoStuff Media, Payload Space, Sparkloop, and became a board member at 6am City. These amazing companies have helped me to understand where the industry is moving and what’s working (or not). In early 2021, I became an Operating Partner at The Chernin Group where I worked with their consumer ed team on various thesis developments and investments. Since July 2021, I’ve been an EIR at LightShed Ventures where I’m helping their portfolio with audience development and investing in some of the best consumer/media co’s in the world.
That’s where my latest venture was launched, Workweek. My goal with Workweek is to create a new blueprint for a media company, from utilizing (and elevating) creators to innovating new paths of monetization. B2B media is evolving rapidly and Workweek’s vision is to become the home for the very best, industry-leading creators, as well as a community full of world-class operators and investors.
You can read more about it here, but I’ll be sharing where we screw up and what we get right in these updates along the way.
If I worked with you at one of these companies I have a favor to ask: forward this to someone else we worked with and ask them to subscribe.
Next send I’ll go deep into one of these two topics:
Does buying your way into linear commerce actually work?
Distribution vs Content & Creator vs Operator
Respond to this email or tweet at me on which one you want me to write.
PERPETUAL'S PERSPECTIVE
If you don't already know...
Dave is trying to take everyone down at Business Insider (including the Morning Brew guys) because of serious allegations they outline in an extensive piece that took almost a year to produce. Portnoy feels like he is fighting for his life and his company (and found some holes in the reporting). Business Insider has stood by the piece and other pubs, like Defector, have started to dig even deeper into Dave’s background. No one has evolved their stance - making it a public stalemate. This represents a larger trend of “cancel culture” for those who have built fans by being polarizing on the internet.
Perpetual's perspective...
Long-form pieces like this that paint a nasty picture of a public figure are a fast way to gain subscribers (I resubscribed to BI so I could read the article). Will the blowback of the Stoolies hating on BI have a material impact? Meh, my guess is they have their best quarter to date because of it. As for Dave? His fans are even deeper in the trenches with him. He is using this moment to shill his One Bite pizza to prove to advertisers the audience still loves him (it worked, sales went up 50%). Smart move, Erika — ugh, I mean, Dave.
The Atlantic launched a creator newsletter program.
If you don't already know...
The CEO stated that this should drive subscribers to *hopefully* reach profitability next year. The CEO claimed it won’t be a loss leader and TBD if there will be ads. All the creators have a small base pay and are incentivized based on growth, but they aren’t FT employees. The Atlantic maintains editorial control. All the subscribers to the 9 newsletters will get 1 free year of The Atlantic.
Perpetual's perspective...
Why would a creator do this? Genuinely, I don’t understand. If you’re being told what you can or can’t write and you aren’t making enough to support yourself why wouldn’t you keep control and do it on your own? Sure, in theory, they can help you grow and take some operations off your back - but that’s a steep price to pay with little insight into what outcomes will come with those benefits. I have a feeling quite a few of the leaders launching these creator programs have yet to talk to any actual creators. Instead, they are rebranding contributor models and the program is being used as a “creator” headline tactic. If you have an opinion, reply to this email and let me know.
DAOs for media? It’s time to learn.
If you don't already know...
Twitter can’t stop talking about them. Boomers think they are an MLM scheme. Google search for “DAO” is up 100% the last 90 days. A company just sent a bunch of people ~$15K USD worth of tokens for being early users of the platform. 2021 is the year of web3 and media DAOs may be the next big wave. The infrastructure of DAOs puts an emphasis on the community of users rather than executives behind the business. This model fits perfectly into viral-driven businesses like media companies.
Perpetual's perspective...
I’ve been in the Jump DAO for a while. Jump is a community of advertising agency professionals, marketers at Fortune 1,000 brands, and web3 startups. Watching a media company operate with a bottoms-up decision-making infrastructure has been wild to watch. The newsletter is completely crowdsourced and all participants earn tokens. They aren’t worth anything (yet), but imagine getting equity in Axios in 2016 by helping them curate their first newsletters - that’s the comparison. The Jump community hosts events, has candid conversations in Discord, and is run really well by the Founder of the DAO (you should follow him). If you’re wondering where you should start to learn more about media companies and the intersection of web3 consider joining/participating in a DAO. Here are a few I’d recommend: Jump, Mad Realities, Decrypt.
That’s all for this week. See you in your inbox next Tuesday, and every Tuesday moving forward.
Make it a great one.
- Adam
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