Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Ryan came to me one day and resigned and was going to go take a job somewhere else. And he was the revenue sales guy. Right. But I realized Ryan is the best person I work with day in and day out. I need to put on my sales shoes right now. And I convinced him that actually I was thinking that we would start something. So instead of him going somewhere else and being part of a founding team, I said, why don't we do it together?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: This is Dare to Disrupt, a podcast about Penn State alumni who are innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders and the stories behind their success.
I'm your host, Ryan Newman, and on the show today we have Sean Griffey and Ryan Williamson. Shawn and Ryan are co founders of Industry Dive, a digital media company that publishes business news and original analysis through digital newsletters. The company covers sectors such as healthcare, energy, transportation, retail, and more. With over 14 million North American users and a client portfolio that includes Amazon, Salesforce, Uber, IBM, and American Express.
Industry Dive help decision makers stay ahead in competitive industries by producing the business world's most respected journalism. Industry Dive was acquired by Informa in September of 2022. Sean has a bachelor's in economics from Penn State University and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
Ryan graduated from the Penn State Smeal College of Business, which a bachelor's in finance and international business.
Welcome, Sean and Ryan to Dare to Disrupt. This is a first for us on the show. You're our first guests who have grown not just one, but two companies together. We're excited to talk to you both about your stories. Thanks so much for being with us.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Thanks for having us.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: So, Sean, why don't we start with you? We always like to start at the beginning with our guests. And so can you talk to our listeners about the early years in terms of where you grew up, those early formative years, and ultimately what led you to attend Penn State?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Well, I'm a Washington, D.C. native with a lot of ties to Philadelphia from my dad's side of the family. And, you know, I was a typical kid that played lots of sports and, you know, was on my high school wrestling team and football team. And I'm old enough to have grown up watching the 1980, you know, 82, 86 Penn State football teams as a kid and then fell in love with the atmosphere first, the school spirit. I always knew I wanted to go to a big school. And really it was, you know, Penn State was the only school I ever applied to.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Wow. Only school you applied to?
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Absolutely. It was Penn State. Or nothing for me. When I was leaving high school, I didn't know really what I wanted to do. You know, most of my family was government employees, either in the military or energy or CIA, you name it. It wasn't until I got to Penn State that the business school and Schreider Honors College sort of opened the world up to me in thinking of something different that I could do for myself. So I started exploring different paths there.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Love that. And before we get to your time at Penn State, Ryan, how about you? Can you talk to us about where you grew up and what those early formative years were like for you?
[00:03:10] Speaker C: I was born in California, lived there till I was about 12.
My dad has a background in art history. At the age of 12, he got a job at Penn State. So I moved from LA to central Pennsylvania, and it was a big culture shock.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: But I love growing up in State College. And I. I lived there till obviously through senior year. And I actually played basketball for the high school team and got recruited to play at Carnegie Mellon. And so I went to Carnegie Mellon my freshman year and liked it there, but it was very, very expensive and I didn't want to have any debt. So my dad worked at Penn State, so obviously you get discounts for going there. And I transferred back at a friend that was transferring back at the same time. And I am really happy I did because it ended up not just being a financially good decision. It was a blast. I met a ton of friends and had a great experience at Penn State.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: That's amazing that you went from LA to State College. That's quite an adjustment. What was that like for you in terms of your first winner?
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Oh, man, I. I don't think I'd ever worn jeans. A B. This was the time of Saved by the Bell. So I was like the California Zach kid. And I was popular for a couple weeks before I think people turned on me. Yeah, it was just a totally different world. But like I said, I, you know, I feel super lucky growing up in State College. It's a great, great place to grow up.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: So, Sean, you arrive on Penn State's campus and in terms of your adjustment socially and academically, beyond just being a big fan of the sports teams, how was that for you when you first got up there and got settled?
[00:04:36] Speaker A: You know, I actually came up the freshman summer in between high school and fall, which I tell everyone that they should do. It's a. It's a great transition to spend that summer up there because it's a. It's a big School still, but it's much smaller. I met probably eight or 10 people that became core friends. But when the fall came, we all sort of went our separate directions. So it was a way to make a good group of friends. And that were then connections outside of campus in different spots than I sort of planted my flag for my four years. So that was. I'm trying to convince my kids to do the same thing. They're not listening.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Well, they just need to hear from somebody else, not their dad, Sean. That's the secret to that.
That's great. And so, Ryan, in terms of your experience, when you initially left State College High to attend Carnegie Mellon and you get there, what was it like your first year adjusting to college and just being in that college environment? Going from a high school environment in.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Ways hard and ways easy, the school itself was. Was difficult. Computer science at Carnegie Mellon is no joke in the class. I also was more socially inclined, say, than I was academically inclined. Not that I got bad grades, but I just was more interested in kind of the social aspect of it. So that part was really fun and more easy for me.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: And in terms of your actual basketball experience, was that something that was really very demanding right out of the gate for you?
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Demanding enough. I mean, I enjoyed it. I had good teammates and good coach and a good experience overall. Like I said at Cardinal, I didn't really transfer necessarily because I didn't like it. But I did realize at the end of freshman year that I could probably play in an IM league and have just as much fun, if not more fun, especially Penn State where you get to play against all sorts of good, good players. Not a small school and football players are there and sometimes basketball players come in. And I think in the end I probably had more fun playing I am rec while than actually formally playing at Carnegie Mellon.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: So, Sean, you are now in Penn State. You're a student there. You're well versed in the football games, you know where all the parties are. You got an early head start as a summer session student. How did you decide what to major in and what was your academic path throughout that experience at Penn State?
[00:06:47] Speaker A: You know, I actually changed majors halfway through. So the answer is I didn't know what I was doing. I started as a health policy administration major and then I realized I actually don't like healthcare. I like the administration and the policy part of it and I liked the business side of it, but I don't actually love healthcare as an industry. And I switched into the smeal college and I took the Most generic major that Smeal has, which is economics, which just fit the way my brain thought. Hpa. I thought, this is gonna be really limiting if I don't. If I find out I wanna change my careers, HPA major may not be the best bet. Economics, you could probably get away with doing anything. So the truth is, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And so I picked a major that I thought wouldn't hurt me either way.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: So, Ryan, when you're now on Penn State's campus, you're getting settled, you've had this transition from Carnegie Mellon. How did you think about what you decided to study in from a major standpoint? And where did that take you academically?
[00:07:42] Speaker C: I think similar to Sean, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I was a finance and international business major. I got into a bit of the tech bubble and trading stocks when I was, like, in my late teens. I had a little bit of money that I could play around with, like thousand bucks sort of thing and would buy and sell stocks on E trade when the Internet was starting to allow you to buy and sell stocks. So I was learning stuff about that and then came into college and thought I might be able to be a wealth advisor. You know, someone that helps people retire earlier than they're planning. And so finance, international business was the way I went about it. I had a few internships along the way that helped me realize certain areas of finance I didn't want to go into and certain ones that I liked.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: And so, Sean, how did you decide on your first job out of school? And what were those early formative experiences like?
[00:08:26] Speaker A: I did a classic thing and moved to Atlanta primarily because of a girl. So I started looking for jobs down there and got a. I got a job in consulting. This is, you know, near Y2K time. Went to Anderson Consulting, Accenture at the time, and they promised me that I do all of this great strategy work and planning and the rest. And they sat me down and told me I was going to code interfaces to prevent, you know, Armageddon when the clock struck 2000. So the early years, you know, Atlanta was a great time in that I went down there and actually hooked up with a. With a nice community of Penn State people that moved down there at the same time. I think if you go to New York or D.C. or Philadelphia somewhere, the Alumni Association's too big to manage. But if you go somewhere 10, 20 hours away, the Alumni association was just a. Was a great time. We would tailgate in the parking lot of a bar before every football game, before they opened and have a community there. And, you know, professional consulting at least lets you see a lot of very big companies and gives you a grounding in methodology and how to approach problems and see what people are doing well. So I think all of that was a great start for me.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: And so you have this. You're doing this consulting, you're in a new city again, making a big city feel small by virtue of the fact that you're connecting with Penn State alumni again. And then after your experience at Anderson, did you stay in consulting? And where did you continue on after that?
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Went to business school and got an MBA after did consulting at Anderson and then another practice at what became PwC. I went to Northwestern, got an MBA and started an entrepreneurial journey after that.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: What was the motivation for you to get the mba?
[00:10:09] Speaker A: I think there's a lot of jobs that you can be a smart person and talented and you can be successful at. But I didn't think I'd ever be great at the job I was doing as a consultant because I wasn't passionate about the work. There were people that I was working with would go home and they would think about the problems and they would work on the problems, and I'd go home, you know, in those days and try to do anything else. And I woke up and realized that you could have a successful life, but it certainly wouldn't be an interesting one. And so I knew I wanted to change careers somehow. And the MBA was a way to open new doors and kind of explore some new paths for me.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: And so when you went into the MBA program, Sean, were you really entering with the idea that you just wanted to use the degree to do something that you were more closely aligned to your passion, or at that point you had figured out what really was going to align with your passion was something that was truly entrepreneurial.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: I knew I wanted to do something where I'd have more of an impact. Actually, at that point, I didn't think that I would start a business with someone and be a co founder. Like I said earlier, I was a government employee when I went to get a job with Accenture, you know, that was viewed risky for a bunch of people whose family worked in the government. At that point, I wasn't ready for entrepreneurship. But I also knew that I didn't want to work on something for six months, hand over a PowerPoint at the end of it, and know that nothing was going to happen. Right. And that's the unfortunate part with some of the consulting work you do, you spend six months on something, you pull together an Excel spreadsheet model, PowerPoint, you hand it over and then you leave. And you either never see the impact of it, or you cynically know that they're actually not going to do anything with the work that you've spent six months. And that really wasn't satisfying.
So my original thought coming out of business school was I wanted to join a smaller company and maybe that's 10 people, maybe that's 500 people, but I didn't want to be working at a Fortune 20 company, Fortune 10 company, helping them do mergers and acquisitions analysis.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: So Ryan, as Sean, is embarking on consulting, having a couple of different consulting jobs, pivoting to get an mba, and then realizing what he's looking for is to really work at a smaller emerging technology business, you yourself are then getting ready to graduate Penn State, thinking about doing something in finance. And so Ryan, take us through that first step about you had said you had a couple internships that sort of helped you figure out what you did and didn't want to do. How did you take that initial plunge into the job market post graduation from Penn State?
[00:12:29] Speaker C: Ryan? So I studied abroad the last semester of my senior year, and I didn't really want to look for a job while I was abroad. I wanted to travel. And so I came back jobless and lived with my parents for like a week or two. And then I just moved to the D.C. area because a bunch of my friends were there. And I figured I'd figure it out from there. I had two or three glorious months of unemployment where I was totally free and could do whatever I want until I actually needed to get a job. Things in life, you just don't know why you think something's bad in the moment and then you realize how lucky it was that it went that way. But I had a final interview at a major consulting firm in the D.C. area that hires a ton of 22 year olds. You know, everybody had a job there and I was sure that I could get a job there. And I didn't get it based on the last interview. And I was really kind of like dejected. And then I went on Craigslist, which at the time was a place you could look for jobs, and saw a job at this company called Fierce Markets and went in and they had a sales position for someone on the finance publication. So I was like, oh, this is perfect. Like, I don't want to do sales for the rest of my life. Of course But I do want to be in finance and this will be, allow me to have a job, you know, while still doing it. Went in and there were eight people in a room and I was just like, oh, man, this is awesome. Like, I really, I've always had kind of an entrepreneurial bent. My grandfather was an entrepreneur. I was like, okay, this is my speed. So I probably should have been writing follow up notes to every job that I applied to, but I was a little ignorant at that point. But I went home and bought cards and wrote follow up note to the founder of the company and told him I was going to help level up his company to the next thing. I really wanted the job and I got the job thanks to that. You know, I met Sean. It's just amazing the way the dominoes fall sometimes. It was a great job, great company. Love my time there and it helped lead to tons of relationships I have in my life and of course the company we started. Industry dive.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Sean, while Ryan is sort of backing his way into this job, discovering it as he kind of arrives on the scene that, hey, I really like this and want to do this. Sean, you're coming at this from a much different perspective. You've had the years of consulting experience.
You're saying you're looking for a smaller opportunity set just definitionally, a person entering the market coming out of an MBA program tends to be more serious and researched and what they're doing than an undergrad. Sean, talk to us about how you arrived at Fierce markets.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: You're right. I had this incredibly measured approach where I said, I want to do something smaller. I want to do something where there's more impact. I was networking with venture capitalists so I could learn about their portfolio companies and different pieces. I was going to every meetup. I was doing all of the networking and planning and targeted outreaches. What I found was coming from consulting. I was a generalist, right? And most of the startups were hiring for very specific skills. They wanted someone who could run the finance department or the marketing department or the sales team. And I, I would try to pitch myself. I can do any of that. But I didn't have experience in doing any of that. I had experience helping generalist consulting. So I was hitting some roadblocks.
And then, like Ryan, I found this job on Craigslist where they were looking for what at the time was a VP of operations.
And I went in and the founder was trying to think about how to scale the business. There was 10 people in there when I joined. He was a young Guy. And I was not yet 30. About 30.
And I got hired for this job and I'd gone from being the youngest person in every consulting room I was to by far the oldest person at First Markets and the adult in the room. Right. That was supposed to solve the problems and said like, hey, we got, you know, like, how do our books look? You know, And I'd go in and like, I think we've got a revenue recognition problem. Like, we're gonna like, why don't we call like a real accountant? You know. And so it was, it was an interesting time. But we both in 04. You can find jobs on Craigslist now. I guess it's just couches.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Amazing.
So, Ryan, Sean shows up. You've already been there for a while. The company's expanding and growing. I'm sure he wasn't the only person to show up. But what was it like for you, being kind of a younger, newer person, taking on responsibility, having somebody coming in with kind of more experience, sort of quote unquote, above you, so to speak. And what was it like from your perspective? And what was it like meeting Sean initially?
[00:16:45] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, There was a 30 year old in the room. We all needed to snap into focus.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: No, I mean, honestly, like what you learn about startups is. And you know, everything was so new to me at that point. Like, Sean was months after me. It's not like I had tons of experience under my belt at that point and I was still just figuring out how to do my job. But the more you kind of are in this world and growth companies, the more you realize there's just constant change. So, yeah, Sean at the time was, was someone who was hired, but I had no idea when you zoomed out, like, what, what that meant or anything like that. I was just kind of surviving and trying to hit my goal. In the first year I was, I was doing sales for this publication. Looking back on it, it obviously was a massive hire for the company. And a huge part of why we found success over time was having someone like Sean to help guide us through some of that growth, some of that change.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And so, Ryan, as you're growing in this experience with this business and as you're learning more skill sets, what were some of the things that you really enjoyed about the job and what were other aspects that you thought you may want to do it differently or other areas where you may want to take things?
[00:17:52] Speaker C: I think it's rare to find someone coming out of college saying, I want to be a salesperson and I Wasn't that I figured it would be a kind of placeholder. But what I quickly realized was that the sales that I saw on TV shows and movies was not the sales I was doing. I was. I was basically doing business deals. It was really fun. I enjoyed it. I was motivated to hit goals. I was competitive. I think a sales job, if you. If you want one, is a fantastic job for someone early in their career because you have to learn how to verbally communicate, written communicate, negotiate, manage internal resources, understand the business of the person you're on, on the other end of the phone with, deal with contracts, deal with, execute. Like, you have to do so many different things, and it's like a crash course in business. And so I really liked it. And I think I just generally started to realize, oh, this isn't just a placeholder. This is something that I actually think I might really like and might want to do long term. And I kind of had to have a talk with myself about that and eventually came around.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Amazing. So, Sean, you're arriving on the scene. You talk about the number of changes that have to go. How did you think about the impact you had on the business and where ultimately did you take the business in your role with. With First Market?
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's funny when you're asking Ryan about some of these questions about how is the change. Like, I remember the big change for me as I walked in and they're like. I was like, can I get a whiteboard in there? They said, there's some down the hallway. And I realized, oh, I've got to go get it and I've got to hang it up. Right. There's nothing. Someone here that's going to drill a hole in the wall and hang the whiteboard for me, which is a lot different than the places I've been. Right. Where there's someone that solves those problems. So I came into something that was really scrappy, and I appreciated that because I think there's a. There's a component of me that I still to this day, like getting into the weeds of something. If I can carve out a couple hours and really dive into a spreadsheet or model or something. Something. I love that time. It's kind of clears your head and refocuses you. But we went in there and I.
This is my first, you know, fierce markets and the businesses we've been in, digital media, I wasn't necessarily convinced at what kind of businesses these would be because I did the classical lens of is there. Is there a barrier to entry. You know, how hard is it to compete? Like, why, you know, what is our unique piece? And I wasn't, I wasn't 100% convinced the first time that we've got something really special here. My first goals we got there was basic blocking and tackling. Like, let's just make sure we've got the foundational pieces in terms of how we send contracts, how we serve clients, how we respond to pieces, how we book things, recognize revenue. We're all in there. And it was only a couple of months later that I really appreciated the problems we were solving for our audiences and our clients and realized that there's something actually really sustainable and differentiated and unique here.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Interested in hearing about impactful Penn State alumni? Go check out the People of Penn State Podcast, the podcast from Penn State Alumni association that brings you the incredible stories of Nittany Lions making their mark on the world. Each episode, a rotating cast of hosts sits down with Penn State alumni who are changing the game in business, science, sports, the art, arts and beyond. You never know who you will hear from next, but you do know it will be a conversation worth tuning in for.
Listen to the people of Penn State on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your podcast platform of choice and be sure to follow the Penn State Alumni association on Instagram and LinkedIn for updates on each new episode.
And so, as you're thinking about this business and the way in which the industry is going alongside of you, did you find yourself really thinking that the business was well positioned to take advantage and capitalize on all those things in the industry? And if so, was that sort of scratching the entrepreneurial itch for you because you felt fulfilled in what you were doing? Or did you feel like there was something more that was beyond that business that maybe wasn't the right time to think about that, but it still kind of was underneath the surface for you.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Sean, a little bit further into the fierce markets. You know, story is we, we grew the business and the original founder wanted to sell it and so we sold the business to a private equity backed company right before the great financial crisis. What happened in the financial crisis was the company that bought us left us alone. We stayed, the founder left and I was promoted to run the business. We never integrated into the rest of the portfolio throughout the crisis. We kept growing. The problem is the rest of the portfolio got in a lot of trouble. We thought there was something really great with what we're doing, but all of the cash and capital that we were generating was going to pay down debt of the rest of the portfolio. And I think around that time it was scratching the itch of wanting to grow something, but it started to feel more and more constrained with where we were.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: And Ryan, how about for you? I mean, you're in this business, it's rapidly growing. You're really excited, you're starting to get your footing.
And now, as Sean mentions, there's all of a sudden this liquidity event that occurs where private equity comes in, changes the nature of the game, and you've got the fear around the financial crisis sort of looming over you. How did it feel for you in terms of being involved in that business and feeling like that was a really place to have sure footing versus thinking about doing something else?
[00:23:15] Speaker C: I think in a way, I had an ignorance is bliss sort of situation going on. I'd never been through a purchase of a company. I knew what private equity generically was, but I never had interactions with them, thankfully, like, we. They left us alone, as Sean alluded to. So it didn't feel like something fundamentally changed, minus the founder leaving, which was a big deal. But I was promoted to run the revenue side of the house, and Sean was promoted to be the president of the company. And I was working for Sean. I like Sean. So, like, it didn't feel bad to me through that. And we had had years and years of growth. And so the financial crisis to me felt like an opportunity more than it was scary. Like we were entirely online, no print, no real overhead with events, anything like that. And so it felt like, okay, this is an opportunity for us to capture market share in a time of uncertainty and difficulty. And this is going to be a win for us. Not. Not something that actually scares me. I'm leaning in sort of a thing.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Very cool. So, Sean, you get to this. You get to a point at. At some point where you're basically pick your head up and say, this is. This is great for what it is, but this is not what I'm looking to do. I'm looking to do something else. Where did the idea come for the next business that you formed, and how did it come about in terms of having Ryan as not just another key employee, but perhaps a co founder?
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Well, I think let's start with the Ryan question, because Ryan came to me one day and resigned and was going to go take a job somewhere else. And. And the revenue sales guy. Right. But I realized, like, Ryan is the best person I work with day in and day out, so I need to, like, I need to put on my sales shoes right now. And I convinced him that actually I was thinking that we would start something. So instead of him going somewhere else and being part of a founding team, I said, why don't we do it together? That's the. Professionally, the number one sale I've made in my life is convince Ryan to come do something with me. And said, so at that point, we started explaining, exploring different ideas on what could the business be. We had all sorts of just crazy ideas. But I think we came back to the foundation, which was, there is a tremendous opportunity in niche media and in niche markets and marketing supported markets, you know, gathering pools of incredibly valuable executives and audiences and then monetizing them by connecting them with marketers. We tried to think of, how do we do this differently? And at the time, you know, it was the buzzfeed days of media, right, where everyone was going really broad and really wide. And for us, I think there was a fundamental disconnect there, because for me, scale always meant not doing something that's not valuable a lot and hoping it becomes valuable when you do it in bulk. But scale really for us meant, how do you do something that's valuable and find ways to do more of that? And we knew that small niche markets were valuable. And so our goal was to monetize these small audiences, small markets, but set up a business in a way that we could do it repeatable and make it a billion dollar idea.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: So, Ryan, you just got done telling us that you love working for Sean and he was a great boss and ignorance is bliss, and then you dropped the resignation bomb on him. Take us through that, Ryan.
[00:26:32] Speaker C: What were you thinking?
[00:26:33] Speaker B: What was the opportunity there?
[00:26:34] Speaker C: I was working remote in a time when remote wasn't a working situation that most people were in. And I'm a pretty outgoing person, and I also like to bet on myself. So I loved working for Sean. I loved working in fierce markets. But it had been six or seven years there and I had been promoted, and I didn't really see a higher level I could go. And as we said, we're owned by private equity, so it's not like they're handing over pieces of the business to employees beyond what they already do at the outset. So I was in North Carolina and I wanted to work, go into an office and make a bet on myself. And that was kind of the reason that that happened. That said, I like taking risks, bet on myself and. And this was even a bigger risk, and Sean was a much more known quantity, and I thought we could do it great.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: So from a geography standpoint, how did you solve for that? How did you actually get to a place geographically where you actually were able to interact with employees? Because clearly Sean's already professed his love.
[00:27:30] Speaker C: For dc, so, yeah, I moved back to dc.
It's very simple.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: Yeah, no, which just for the record.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: You probably could have done at first markets too, but the one decision then was the impetus for the other. Is that fair?
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it definitely was. Was almost all of it was why we moved back. Yeah, it was just necessary to be together to be able to start this business.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: So, Sean, you're. You've got this idea about niche markets and everyone's going wide, you want to go deep. And so what was actually the formulated business plan and, you know, sort of the unit economics behind what you were setting out to try to do that would then allow you to not just have something that's valuable at the micro level, but then sort of be able to be scalable.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Our idea really built off of what we were doing at first markets, which was, you know, also in. In niche markets and marketing supported businesses. I think we. We wanted to leverage two different pieces, right. And we saw some trends that happened early on. When the Internet came on. We saw the response of traditional media companies to that, which is they either didn't know how to make money off of it, so they ignored it, or they tried to recreate their magazines and newspapers in a replicated form. And when we launched, it was a time when the big question for Facebook was, could they make money on mobile? Right. Facebook was a desktop app and it was going public, and that was the number one question, because mobile was becoming big.
And we thought that if we could take a forward lean on mobile in niche markets, we could really differentiate ourselves. That was part of this, you know, part of our thesis was the same response is going to happen. And sure enough, it was right. The iPad came out and everyone tried to create flip magazines on the iPad because they wanted to put the genie back in the bottle. And we said, there's going to be new use cases for all of this. And so we leaned heavily into mobile. We also said we want to be scaled across industries. And so there were three of us on the day we launched, and we launched five publications. And the idea was that they're not going to be good on day one. But the trap that we saw a lot of people was we're going to launch one niche publication and as soon as it's great, we'll launch the second one. And then people never get out to launch the second one. Because it's never good enough to launch the first. So we launched five from the start and sort of iterated and built right.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Away, which is really insightful. Right, because that whole idea of like perfect is the enemy of good.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: And this idea of execution, of just sort of getting started and this idea that it's the start that stops most people. And here you are starting five out of the gate. Ryan, was that something that you were on board for and what role did you play in initially starting the business?
[00:30:13] Speaker C: Yeah, no, 100%.
We all thought this was the play right off the bat. I mean, we all did everything. Over time, we kind of got more specialized. But at the start, there's just so much to do and it was really about building the product itself. So I would actually do some writing or aggregating, I would chime in on product, I would sweep the floors, you know, like it was run out for lunch, anything. Like we were, we were all doing the stuff that we needed to do. You couldn't really monetize something right off the bat. In media, if you have a newsletter that takes X hours to put together and Y employees, you can charge a certain amount if you have 500 people reading it, and you can charge a certain amount if you have 50,000 people reading it. So we were more at the 500 side, and you just can't charge that much for. For that. That amount of readers. And so it was more about getting audience, getting partnerships that would lead to audience building products and managing the employees that we had.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Incredible. So, Sean, sounds like you're back in another job where nobody's hanging your whiteboard again.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: But, you know, it's amazing how little you get done the first month of starting a company because you're like, today I built desks, you know, like, and tomorrow I'm going to stand in line for a business license. And, you know, it's like you don't get a lot done those first couple days because you're doing all the small things.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Well, Sean, how did your strategy of doing the multi pronged approach of five newsletters out of the gate, how did that take hold? And ultimately, where did the business go from there? In terms of the initial ascent?
[00:31:44] Speaker A: It wasn't an overnight success. Right. This was a small, slow burn in the first 18 months. And I think one of the things that I would say we got incredibly lucky. We raised a couple, you know, angel investments, a couple hundred thousand in angel dollars. But we were trying to raise VC money and it never quite worked out for us, which I Think turned out to be one of our really big blessings. We launched an electric utility pub and a construction pub is our first five. And at the time of buzzfeed, no venture capitalists wanted to be in the niche waste and recycling industry. Media things they wanted BuzzFeed. And so we really grew slowly that first 18 months. The thought process was we can go back and raise money later once we show some traction to these people. We started showing traction and then the business really took off and we never actually needed to raise any venture. Got to the point where we could cash flow the growth. I think in media it takes time to grow an audience. You can grow traffic really quickly, but you can't grow an audience. You can't grow loyalty except over time. And not having the venture capital timeframes put on us was really helpful.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: I would add also that I think it's really helpful to the culture of the company to not have a ton of money floating around. I mean it required a certain discipline in decision making, in hiring, in job descriptions, all this stuff that when you don't have a ton of money and you're surviving on a day to day basis, you know, I tell a story that this one guy who was interviewing for an editorial job, we were in this row house with minimal air conditioning and he was being interviewed on the fifth floor because we didn't have room for anything beyond that. And in between interviews while people running up and down the five floors, he's got a fan in there and he's lifting up his shirt because he's sweating so bad. And he accepted the job like he, he, he went through that interview process and he accepted the job like those are the kind of people I want to hire. He loved the grittiness of it and the idea that he could help build something. And if we had VC money, I guarantee you we wouldn't be on the fifth floor with a fan and him, him lifting up his shirt because he's sweating so bad.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Love that. This idea though of using cash flow to fund growth means basically you're describing as bootstrapping, right? And the ability to bootstrap a business. And so what you're saying is that the discipline of that that comes in place, the force multiplier, if you will, of bootstrapping the business causes you to count every dollar and sort of be conscientious about growth in a different way. On the flip side, you've got to deal with the wall of money that may be sort of funding the pockets of your competitors or of other people. You mentioned BuzzFeed a couple times here. So if you're bootstrapping a company in an industry where you have well funded competitors that are operating under different unit economics than you, how do you still optimize and mobilize and thrive and ultimately win in that environment?
[00:34:34] Speaker C: Well, I mean, it obviously depends on the industry and the company and things like that. From our perspective, I mean, we really valued the steady earned growth that we got. We didn't romanticize the hockey stick. You know, we were looking to level up every month, every day, every year and say, all right, like we're not trying to lose money for three years and then, you know, flip it. We want to make money along the way, earn our growth, earn the hires that we make, all that stuff. In a way, I feel like that was helpful to us. So, so you're, you're viewing the wall of money as like an advantage and it may be right, like if, if you told me I had to compete with Uber, I'd need a wall of money, you know, I'm expanding internationally, etc. But often the wall of money actually is like cotton candy when you should be eating meat and potatoes and we just fed ourselves meat and potatoes.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Not having money makes you be very careful about where you're spending it. Right. So we did things, we, we put a lot of money into design, attention into design, because it's one way a small company can look bigger. Right. And so when we're competing with people, it was, where do you spend money in ways that gives you something scale in different places than them. And so we focused very much on growing specific audiences and caring about the job title of the people we wanted. Whereas other people spent a lot of money saying, I just want the Google fire hose or the social media fire hose to wash over us. We said, here's our bet that 100 of the right people are going to be worth More than 10,000 wrong people. There's a lot of people we competed with at the time that didn't really have that view.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Amazing. So at a certain point, you're building and growing and you do decide that there's a point at which you want to have some type of a financial event, whether it's taking in capital or growing the business with outside capital, or whatever the case might be. What are some of the statistics you can share about the size and scale and impact of the business you had, which really gives our audience members a sense for where you took this business and then ultimately what was involved in the decision making to bring in outside Capital into the business.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no, we're, we're pretty open with the numbers up until we sold to a public company and then we can't say anything about that. But we bootstrapped the business and got it to just under 30 million in revenue doing, you know, 25% EBITDA margins. And at that point, some strategic would start, you know, poking their head around, looking at us, you know, industry players about doing acquisitions. We would get, get private equity that would come.
There was a short, A short time where I had this fantasy that we could raise debt on our own. And so we started, you know, getting professional accounting, bigger accounting firms to come do formal audits. And I started talking to lenders about could we raise money to accelerate our growth? Because I think we knew that there was growth in front of us. And what we realized is that a private equity company can borrow a lot of money on an existing asset as an underlying existing asset more than that existing asset can borrow for themselves. Right. When that was discovering private equity company came to us and they presented a thesis. You know, I went out and had coffee with them by myself. Usually this is something Ryan or other co founder, the three of us would go do, but we thought it was sort of a waste of time that this private equity showed up. But they presented a vision of the future that was so similar to ours that I went back and asked Ryan if he had been sharing our slides at a conference or something that I didn't know about, because I really thought they had taken our internal strategy documents, changed the circles to squares and were feeding it back to us. Turned out they hadn't. We just found the one private equity company that shared this contrarian vision of media, the same as we did, and really believed in what the future opportunity was. And so we did a short courtship, but ended up doing a deal with them.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: I think another thing we did that was smart was we talked to people along the way that were interested in the business and we kind of forced ourselves to think about whether we wanted to sell at that point or not. And along the way it was always no. And we'd have to explain to each other, like why? Why is the answer no? Well, because of this. Because.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Because of that.
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Because we think the upside of the business is too high. And so when it came time to actually make the decision, we had had that discussion a few times and were familiar with what we knew we wanted and what we didn't want so that we could say yes when we were ready.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: And so ultimately, what was the path like Sean, you take in private equity capital and then how did it sort of go from there?
[00:39:20] Speaker A: A. A great experience. We had a great partner, some incredibly sharp fair partners and you know, I said we were doing about 30 million in revenue. The last public number that we disc disclose was we, we got IT to about 100 million in revenue, doing 30% EBITDA margins. Probably 15 million of that was via acquisition. But the rest of it was organic growth through the, through the process. Really a tremendous three year run. It was a transformative time of the company. When you sign up with private equity, you know that there's going to be another exit at some point they're going to want to get out. And so in 2022 we went to market and sold to a company called Informa, which is a UK based listed company.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Amazing. And Ryan, what was it like for you in terms of that experience of ultimately selling to a private company and watching your business that you worked so hard to co found a scale really from that $30 million revenue number all the way to 100 along with the private equity partnership before ultimately selling to a private company?
[00:40:17] Speaker C: It was fantastic. You know, I think when we partnered with Thought Furious, one of the things that we said, the reason we did it was because we think the company deserves it and we think that we can take this to the next level. I think during those three years that Fafurious owned us and we, we made some acquisitions and leveled up the company. We really did. We, we took it to another, another level. So the ultimate culmination of that is some strategic saying, hey, we think you guys are incredibly valuable and we want to add you to, to our mix. I mean that's just one of the greatest compliments you can get.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Thank you Sean and Ryan for taking the time today to share your entrepreneurial journeys with me.
Now I'd like to hand things over to our current Penn State student, Lucy Bickel. Lucy Bickel is an incoming senior majoring in advertising with minors in entrepreneurship and innovation, new ventures and digital media trends and analytics. As lead ambassador for the entrepreneurship and innovation ambassadors at Penn State, Lucy is passionate about sharing the amazing Penn State entrepreneurship ecosystem with the community.
Lucy, I'll now hand the interview over to you.
[00:41:22] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:41:22] Speaker D: Thank you so much, Ryan. It's so nice to chat with you, Ryan and Sean. And Sean, like you, I only applied to Penn State, so that really resonated.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:41:33] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So one of my questions for you guys, in a world where fake news is one of the topics that we hear all the time, what were some practices that you guys established to maintain ethical journalism in your publications?
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Well, I think there's a couple of things that, that really matter in there. You know, one, we had a code of conduct and ethical statements that we defined at the newsroom, defined at the time of sale. I think we had about 120 journalists working for us across the markets. It was a big organization. I think structuring that, you know, really mattered. I think the other piece is we were very deliberate about defining who our audiences were. Like, who exactly are we writing for, what are their job titles, what's their industries, as well as what are the stories that are important for us to cover. Right. And that's a roundabout way in the talk about ethical journalism, but being very focused about what you cover and what you don't and what you're going to be experts on and what you're not really defines the focus for the newsroom, which sort of keeps the guide rails around it.
[00:42:41] Speaker D: And so as an advertising major, something we always learn about is like digital marketing. So it's super interesting to hear this from your perspective and media partners.
So because media and advertising go hand in hand, how did you work with your advertising partners to ensure that everything was mutually beneficial for both you guys on the media side and the advertising?
[00:43:06] Speaker C: Well, I think one of the main things that when I was talking to our sales sales reps is that to your point, for this to actually happen where we run marketing campaigns, it has to work for us and for them. Right. And so we would build our products to solve their problems. Ultimately, we would talk to the marketers and we would say, hey, tell us about how you're positioned in the marketplace, what your goals are with your marketing. What's the hardest thing you have to talk about as a sales team? Just ask them a ton of questions and then basically help them solve their problems. And we built our products to be repeatable and to be easily understood to our clients. So there wasn't a lot of misunderstanding over time.
I think the other thing that is lost often is the idea of getting someone as a partner is the first thing, and it's very hard to do. But then executing and actually making sure that you're making their lives easier and delivering what you say you will sometimes it's taken for granted. And I think we had an amazing team at Fierce Markets that was on the execution side, both adopts and program managers, and they just did an amazing job helping marketers once they actually had made the decision to make it so that we were the Best partner they, they were working with. The easiest and smartest partner they were working with.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: I think one other thing that I would say to this. You know, Lucy, as someone who's studying advertising, one of the big differentiators for us at industry dive was we did zero programmatic ads. And when you listen to Ryan talk about how we dealt with advertisers, I think one of the big mistakes that people have made in media is they've put this ad tech layer between themselves and the customer. Right. If we walked into Smeal and said, I've got a business idea, I'm never going to talk to my customers, I'm never going to hear what their problems are. I'm never going to explain the benefits of my product like the professors. It's me would laugh you out of the room. Right. That's literally, you know, what program programmatic advertising is for most of this. And so we said, we're going to do something that's much more high value, much more small touch. And Ryan explained it perfectly with what we're doing is we, we sold your direct so we could hear what their problems were, we could solve them, and we could build relationships.
[00:45:09] Speaker D: Yeah, that's such an awesome way to put it. And that adds more of a personal touch to it as well.
[00:45:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:16] Speaker D: No, the fact that you guys didn't do any programmatic just speaks to the character of the. Your business too. And my last question for you guys is, so you have worked together for a very long time, so what is your secret to successful business partnership and building strong teams along the way?
[00:45:34] Speaker A: After our martinis.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: You think he's joking?
[00:45:42] Speaker A: It's. That's only a half joke. I mean, I think there's a, you know, there's a part of this a lot like any relationship. Right. You need to step out of the day to day and sort of reconnect at times. And I think we did a great job of, you know, stepping back just as, as co founders, that, and relaxing and resetting. Resetting what we were doing quite frequently. And I think a lot of times, you know, those nights that go out for a drink or something were the most productive times that we had in terms of us getting back into the office and making real headway.
[00:46:18] Speaker C: I think also, like, we didn't make a decision to work together initially. We made a decision to go to the company. So it's not some master plan for us to work together. But once we did work together, we could tell that we were good at our jobs, that we were ethical, that we were honest, that we were transparent with our communication. We respected each other's management style. I think about when I'm talking to entrepreneurs and people think about starting a business is start thinking early about the people around you that you work with, that you really respect, because those people can come back into your life in a different way, whether they're hiring you, whether you're starting a business with them. This going bad personally would have been extremely surprising to me because I knew Sean very well, I knew Eli very well, and I didn't think it would go wrong personally. Now, would we be successful from a business perspective, like, much lower chance. But personally, I knew them. I trusted them. I knew they were honest people. I knew I could work with them. I knew we each brought something different. We weren't two marketers starting a business. Sean had an MBA and a financial background, obviously ran fierce markets. I had the revenue side. Eli was on the technical side. And we each owned a different part of the business. And so we could kind of be freed up and allow each other to run in our lanes and just have a more leveraged kind of team. When you trust each other to do.
[00:47:39] Speaker D: That, that's so awesome. So you guys have inspired me to look at my friends at Penn State, and maybe one day I'll be on this podcast starting a business with them.
[00:47:50] Speaker C: So there you go.
[00:47:51] Speaker D: Thank you both so much for your time. It's so awesome to chat with you guys. So successful and motivating and inspiring. It's just been an awesome experience. So thank you so much.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Thank you, Lucy. Thanks for having us.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: That was Sean Griffey and Ryan Williamson, co founders of Industry Dive. This episode was produced and edited by our executive producer, Katie DiFiore. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Dare to Disrupt wherever you listen to podcasts and look out for next month's episode. Thanks for listening.
The Dare to Disrupt podcast is made.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Possible by the generous support of the.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Penn State Smeal College of.
