Tomorrow - The Outline CEO Josh Topolsky: Online ads are stuck in the '90s (Recode Media with Peter Kafka)

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

Josh Topolsky, CEO and editor in chief of The Outline, talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about the importance of good internet-native design for both advertising and editorial content. Topolsky dismisses the idea that everything publishers put out will move behind paywalls, arguing instead that when ads are well done, they can engage readers and support free content. Most of the time, though, online media companies have forced boring ads on their audiences, who have learned to ignore them. He also talks about his past life as a music producer, picking a fight with Mike Bloomberg, and what it's like to raise money when you have a reputation as someone who can be difficult to work with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, this is Josh and I've got kind of a treat for you this week. We've got a special episode of Tomorrow, which is not tomorrow, which is actually a podcast that I did with Peter Kafka at Recode, where he interviewed me about the media business and my history and all sorts of weird things that I think are pretty interesting and we had a really good conversation. And I wanted to share it with you guys. So take a listen. Today's show is brought to you by HBO. Here's my friend and colleague, Cara Swisher, to tell you more.

HBO's Silicon Valley is as timely as ever as Pied Piper founder Richard Hendrix pivots to build a decentralized internet, free of ads, and data tracking. But as the saying goes, new internet, new problems. Watch new episodes of Silicon Valley Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO. I watch it every week. But as the saying goes, new internet, new problems. Watch new episodes of Silicon Valley Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO. I watch it every week. This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That's me.

I am part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm here at Vox Media headquarters in New York City. Before we get started, one very quick request. Tell someone else about this show. You're smart. You listen to recode media. You know how to do it. I will stop asking you now. Okay, I'm back here with Josh Topsky. My script says, formerly of the verge. Also, formerly of Engage, formerly of Bloomberg. Yeah. Many other things. People describe me as a co-founder of OX media. First time in this building. First time I've ever been in the new building.

And before we go into history, you're currently the CEO of the outline. That's true. Josh Tpulski, welcome. Thank you. Describe the outline. The outline is my attempt to make something new on the internet in media that doesn't subscribe to many as many as possible

of the old bad ideas we have about digital media. Before we get to what it is. Let me tell you, I'll tell you. What is it? It's a publication, a cover, a digital media publication. Digital media publication covers kind of like, think of like a digital magazine. The covers three areas and typically the convergence points of those areas, power, which is who has power, who wants it, and what do they do when they get it? Culture, which is the arts, food, how we live with one another, film, TV, et cetera, and the future, which is technology and all the cultural trappings of technology

and where that's taking us. These are things you've written about and edited about and published about in the past, kind of combined. Yes. One condensed idea. This is usually at recode media. This is a free podcast where we talked everyone about their paywall strategy. Yeah. What's your paywall strategy when you start charging? Oh, yeah. Do you want to talk about that for real? It's a joke. It is free. Yeah. I say paywall. I mean, do you want to actually have a conversation about paywall? We are going to have a conversation about paywalls, but here's we don't have a paywall strategy.

And our paywall is we have ads. You have ads. And they're really fucking cool. Am I light as swear? I swear it up. Okay, get whatever the fuck you want to say. Great. So we could mediate an adult podcast. I love talking to adults. My kids are sometimes on it. Okay. Well, that's fine. They don't listen. They're getting older. You are you are swimming against the stream. Yes. I'm up stream because you are not only not putting up a paywall or asking for subscription fees for your website.

You are deliberately not trying to build a giant website. Strategy today are either charge and or do a giant scale website. You're saying, kind of want to be boutique, niche, a couple million unique. Yeah. Well, maybe a little bit more than a couple, but not like 100 million. Not mega. Not mega millions. So, you're batting against two kinds of conventional wisdom.

You're going to need massive scale or you need to charge customers. You're doing neither. Yeah. How's that going to work? So, we monetize about nine to 10 times higher per user than most publishers. Our typical deal size is six figures with advertisers. We build a product, a platform that lets us do really

creative, beautiful advertising really quickly and easily. So it makes it a lot easier for a brand to, brands love custom content. I don't know how much people listen to this know about this particular stuff, probably a lot. A lot because they're kind of dirty. Right. They're nerds. They're media nerds. Like, custom content is actually the thing that brands pay for, but banners is what they get because the internet model of advertising is so broken that we haven't figured out like what it's supposed to look like. So Google, like 20 years ago, was like, hey, just do a lot of it, put a lot of it out there.

It's pennies on the dollar, but if you have enough of it, it'll make you money. And we've just been doing that for like 25, 20, 25 years, or whatever. So our model is like, do the stuff that is really good. Do it in a scalable way, make it easy to create and show the people are actually interacting with it, put it in a system that

allows them to come to it naturally instead of in some weird alien way. Like most advertising on the internet is this looks like a post, but it's not actually a post. It's a trick or this is a box you have to chase or there's a thing over here you should check out because it's a really cool experience. Now click on this box and it'll take you there. Please watch this video. Yeah, please. Oh, video appears. It's playing. You're like, I guess I'll look at it. I don't know what it is. But I'm trying to turn it off. But meanwhile, it's like, yeah, it's like I'm trying. You know, there's a thing in the corner. I've gone to the bathroom. I video is playing the internet advertising is very aggressive

and often bad. And for the smartest, most, most savvy of the consumers on the internet, they are blocking it or tuning it out or or avoiding places that have it all together. Anyhow, so our stuff is part of a very holistic system. We built a totally different, weird platform for content that doesn't even work like a normal website, really. It works more like SnapChat or Instagram. And so yeah, it's just a very, so I think I'm rambling now.

But I'm gonna pause you for a second. So your pitch is, we're gonna make really cool stuff. People like the consumers like. The, well, good one, right? Which most publishers would say they want to do. Sure. Two, we're gonna create stuff that advertisers like. Yes.

Which again, most publishers would say they're doing. Yeah. Three, we're not gonna chase after a really big audience. We don't want to be obscure, but we're not trying to get really big. And this is where you split off from most conventional publishing wisdom today. Yeah. It's one of the ways you're talking about it. It's very easy to be big if you want to be obscure, but we're not trying to get really big. And this is where you split off for most conventional publishing wisdom today. Yeah. It's one of the ways you're talking. It's very easy to be big if you want to be. I mean, traffic is easy. Good traffic

is hard. That's just the basic rule of the internet. And so to be big would be very simple. I can write a lot of Avengers Infinity War posts. What time is Avengers? Well, that's the easy stuff, but you can go another level, which is like takes about Avengers Infinity War. And actually like in defense, like our culture either showed me a piece today that he wrote about just comic book movies in general. I wouldn't say it's an Avengers Infinity War take, but it's in that world. Do you know that today you could write about Avengers Infinity War plus Fortnite because

they are combined? Yeah, I hear this a huge mashup that is just- You could write 10 stories about that. Well, it's just like, so those stories are, there was a period on the internet, I'll frame this a little bit, there's a period on the internet when, if you were writing a story about something

and you wanted to reference, like you wanted to research that topic and reference something that had been previously written on it, you might go, there's a certain number of sources you might find, like for instance, the Virge, or let's say, Engage it before, it would have certain stories that no other website would have.

It would be like about some weird detail about the new iPhone. Only Engage it would have that story. Maybe gives mode of the recovery of others, but not a ton. They were enthusiasts, who were first-precious. And we're writing for a very specific audience. And so you'd have to go to those places.

Now, if I'd need a story for research, if there's any possible topic on any possible thing that's happened, like any specific thing that's happened, if you Google, you just find like dozens, if not hundreds of sources for that story, so you can just pick and choose whichever one fits. Like, oh, this CNN story is good. And then I'll link to CBS Heavy.com, which used to be a bro side. And I guess still is, but their new specialty is mining SEO. So if you type in Michael Cohen, heavy.com will

got com will tell you who Michael. They have also. Yeah, super weird. I tweeted the other day, everything wrong with the internet and one screenshot. And it was a screen grab of so I saw all these stories. There's this apparently webs. Okay, spoiler alert for we're talking about Avengers spoiler alert. Apparently Thanos kills a bunch of people in Infinity War. And then he has a website that will tell you if you got hypothetically, would have been killed by Thanos. And I saw stories about it, like dozens and dozens of stories about it.

And then I saw this thing that was like, from northjurzy.com, Thanos does an internet sensation. Did you die in his cataclysmic event or whatever? And it's like, why is NorthJurzy.com writing about whether or not Thanos killed you? I guess maybe he's like, they're like people in North Jersey. I suppose there's a 10 gentle, like, link there. So I have, I've written what time is Super Bowl posts? I've written about people writing about what time is Super Bowl posts? And you've signed Mountaineering, you see, feel it, doing it.

And you go, you know what? If someone wants to know what time of Super Bowl is and I tell them, what's the wrong with that? You can argue that it's not the best use of my time in particular, but whatever, I did it wasn't hard. What's the problem with that? So, it's fine if you want to do it. I don't want to spend my life making shit. You know, I don't want to spend my life writing what time is a super bowl because my days and

hours are very valuable. And I think that it'd be a bad way for me to spend my life doing it. And frankly, that should be automated and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if no one else did it, then I would be happy to jump in. Right. So what I was saying is that good traffic is hard. Bad traffic is easy. Traffic is easy.

Like, you can buy it if you want. You can just, like, I could have taken my seed round and just spend it all on traffic. And I could have told you I have 20 million uniques. Like, that would be no problem. What is difficult is to get like the right people to the right story and that's basically what we try to do. And it is, and we think I think there's a higher value in that. I think there's a higher value in the stories that we tell,

the way that we tell them, and that I think that they naturally attract an audience and we have data to support and support. And so, when you go to the, the ad world and you go, I don't have a big traffic. I have great traffic. I really smart people. I have well educated attract to people who want to spend money on your product and they

go, great, but I want 10 times more of those. Yeah. And so and so it says I can get them. And by the way, so and so down the street from him says, I can get them without even going to a website. I can just do a programmatically through Google Facebook, etc. I mean, there's definitely arguments against our premise, and some of them may be appealing to some advertisers, I think, increasingly what has been sold to brands and agencies as

the magic solve to reach their audience is less and less true. I think we see that in many ways with what is happening with Facebook right now, we've seen it with programmatic, and there's like like brand safety stuff and there's viewability stuff. I mean, banner ads, banner impressions are really, I think, in the long run are much, much less valuable. There's certainly a scale game to be had there. If you're Yahoo or maybe Buzzfeed or who, I mean, there are big, big players

that can make a lot of money on that, just, you know, pure scale. But I think, so to answer your question, not every advertiser wants will advertise with us, but there's some really good ones who will, you know, pure scale. But I think, so to answer your question, not every advertiser wants will advertise with us, but there's some really good ones who will, you know, brands like McCallan and Cadillac and, you know, MailChimp and Samsung and there's a, you know, big list of folks that are blue chip smart brands

that want to speak to an audience really directly. Here's one of the key differences because we built this platform and this different ad platform and literally our stuff works differently. We, this is really like in the nuts and bolts, but on custom content it's very hard to get people to look at it. We actually have more views of custom content than some of the biggest publishers in the world. Like we can do millions of views on a piece of custom content where a lot of larger publishers that have 20, 40,

50 million unique, will struggle to do 100,000. All right. You got me. How does that work? Because you're, again, a small website. How are you getting more views for the same content than the other companies? So people see, the way people get through content on our website is, like, by swiping through stories, and you naturally hit full-screen custom content ads when you're doing that.

And often people engage with them. They tend to engage pretty deeply. And they just show up a lot more. They're much more visible. They're like, when you think about ads on Snapchat or ads on Instagram, same idea, right? But it's not like you're pushing out your ad form at somewhere else. It's not. You're not creating ads that live on another site.

No, that's right. I'm saying on platform. Yeah. So that's like an interesting thing to talk about when you speak to companies that brands and agencies that are trying to advertise to these like really good audiences. They want like, you know, I think it interesting when it's McCallan did a campaign with us and they're like, look, there's a few million people in America. They wanted to sell a bottle of scotch.

It's $300. So like, there's a few million people that we think are even going to think about buying this kind of thing. And like, it's very hard to reach that. How do you reach those people directly and how do you tell them a brand story? How do you tell them your story? And so there was a really interesting overlap, like our demo and their demo met really nicely.

When one of my former co-workers wrote about you launching the site, he referenced Monaco. Yes, which is a magazine. So fancy, I've never read it. I just know about it. Are you scared of, you know, you buy it? I'm afraid that I might buy a $300 scotch

after I pick it up. But the idea was this is kind of a niche product and that works and attracts a certain kind of advertiser, which I can't see. I get that as a physical product. It seems like in digital world that tends to not work. Conceptually, it's a good idea. Also, conceptually, you can usually get people

to sort of try a new thing, whether it's a new ad format or whatever and they'll put some of their experimental money into it, and the trick is getting them back. You're here today, in part, because you just announced you raised more money. We did. So that's an indicator it's working, right? Yeah. I mean, it's generally not thrown around. We were, you know, we're, we have a new valuation. I mean, it's like, you know, that is an indicator. It's an indicator also that we have really great investors who support a different idea about media. I mean, it's, you know, there is a, we're still playing,

this is a crazy game. I mean, what we're doing is, like what we're doing is, not normal, for sure. Like we're definitely, like you said, against the grain. But it is working. I mean, we've been closing some really significant deals. We've just built out, like we've hired a bunch new people on the revenue side because we have an influx of proposals that we need to deal with and people who are interested in advertising

with us. And, you know, the monocle comparison is interesting only because monocle build a very strong brand on not every single person. They build a really strong brand and a valuable one on focusing on just telling a certain kind of story to a certain kind of person. Now I'm not saying that those are our people necessarily. I think Monica has a different audience than the one that we're aiming at. But there is, for instance, their audience is much less savvy when it comes to technology

and the internet than our audience is. It would be a really interesting differentiator there. But like- The main idea that you're not the giant restaurant, and you don't aspire to be, and you don't aspire to- Not only be to jackfrog. You want to be the 12-seat cool David Chang thing, or maybe a more profitable version of that.

Yeah, and yes, and that there probably are a bunch of those that should exist in the world, not just one of them. And that is the long-term plan, which is like, I mean, it's basically like, I think that there is something that no one has really figured out yet, which is what, how do you build it? What is it? I love the New Yorker and I love a lot of the Conte and Ask brands, but nobody's figured I had to build brands like that in the 21st century in digital.

And I think that we actually have some of the raw materials really like figured out. And again, a subscription cost, how much? So, subscription, I mean, here's the way. Wait, wait, wait, wait, just leading in. You're going to say it's free, Peter. Yeah. I'm going to say just like this podcast, because this podcast is brought to you by Fond Sponsors.

We're going to hear from them in a minute. I can't wait to hear from them. So look, we're, no, no, no, no, we're really going to go on. Oh, you need to get it right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're going to help me segue way to that. Okay, great. We're back here in a minute with outlines the EO, Josh Tepulski.

Here's a treat for you. It's my friend and colleague, K Cara Swisher, with a special interview from our advertising partner, HBO's Silicon Valley. Today's show is brought to you by HBO. And today in the red chair is Russ Haniman. He's one of Silicon Valley's most notorious investors and he's recently emerged as an aggressive player in the cryptocurrency market.

Welcome to the podcast, Russ. Thank you, Cara, and you're welcome, by the way. For what, exactly? Let me for what? I basically invented the podcast. For what? You invented the podcast? I put radio on the internet. It sounds like a fucking podcast to me.

I thought I'm making shit off it. That actually brings me to my first question. The standard internet funding and sales models have served you pretty well over the years. But now you're jumping feet first into ICOs. Why? Cara, this town is filled with assholes getting rich off crypto by doing jack.

The Winkelvoss twins put in some loose change five years ago. Now they're Bitcoin billionaires. So yeah, I'll buy a ticket for that fucking ride. You don't feel like you've already missed getting in on the ground floor. If I could change the past, I wouldn't have a kid at home right now snorting up my ADHD meds. I can only focus on the future. H-O-D-L bitches.

So I'm hearing you already have taken 36 companies to ICO. How have you fared so far? Well, you know, I'll be honest, Cara. It's been down, you know? It's been up. It's been mostly down, you know, 35 of them of, you know, fucking tanked. 35 out of 36, what happened?

I mean, this is the game, all right? First, it's the SEC. Then it's one of your founders running away with your cash. And it's a bunch of fucking hackers deciding that instead of edging in their basements that afternoon, they're gonna come after your blockchain. Then one of your CEOs dies, like a pussy. Anyway, listen, I'd rather focus on my successes, my success, one of them worked. And what was your ROI on the one that worked?

Radio on internet? No, return on investment. Return on investment. Yeah, I know. It's 300M, all right? That's a million. And it's on something that's not going to be a big deal. And what was your ROI on the one that worked? Well, radio on internet? No, return on investment. Return on investment. Yeah, I know. It's 300M, all right? That's a million.

And it's on some thumb drive in the middle of a landfill. My boys are on it, though. You ever lose a drive with a ton of crypto on it? No, Russ, I haven't. Yeah, you have. No. But thanks for coming on the show and good luck with that thumb drive.

Watch new episodes of Silicon Valley's Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO. Today's show is also brought to you by IBM. We live in a world that's creating AI enabled everything, a world with more IoT devices than people. Today technology has never been smarter. But smart only matters when you put it to work where it matters. When we put smart to work, we can help say species increase crop yields and make progress, not just for a few of us, for all of us. So let's get to it. Let's put smart to work. Find out how at IBM.com slash smart. I'm back here with Josh DuPolsky talking about underwear. Okay, and also the outline. As you can hear from that last smooth segue. We did This is not a subscription business. Josh is running everyone else except for most of my colleagues here at Fox Media

I think all of them at Box Media all the box media properties are free. That's true Everyone else in media is other put up a paywall. It's about to put up a paywall They're not putting up paywall. They're calling it a membership model Everybody else need it need a Facebook video play when Facebook said, jump. Listen, I talked to you. There's a version of this business that works great. I talked to a lot of VCs when I was raising money

for both rounds and they were like, isn't it gonna be all about subscriptions? And whenever I hear anybody say, isn't it gonna be all about X? I know that that is definitely not the thing. Just like people said, it's all about video now, isn't it? It's just all about video. Just like people said, well, if it's not all about Facebook,

there is no one size fits all solution to this problem. And I think one of the big problems is that everybody goes, like, paywall, like, yeah, we should have one of those. Why don't we do it? It's like, there is a version of the outline maybe in the future, like that could imagine going, like, look, you guys have been reading this a while, we've been doing this thing a while,

like, is there a component, some piece of this that's worth charging money for? Like, I'm open to the idea of like asking for money from people, but I don't think we have, I think there's like an unapproached opportunity in advertising that has been like bungled for literally for 20 years by most people in this industry. And I think that good advertising is good and when it works, it's great.

Like, also, we have to prove there were worth spending money on. I'm not going to like come out of the gate and tell you that you should give me, you know, $100 a year because I promise you it's going to be perfect. It's going to be awesome. Trust me. That's part I get. There is a line, there's a lot of smart people have come through here talking about their subscription models become that kind of podcast. And there is a line of argument that I don't want to get. Nick Thompson from Wired. Oh yeah. He's just a lesson from Condi Nass. Condi Nass. It's weird they go to subscription models.

Jessica Lesson has a trade publication. Yeah, it's weird they'd use a subscription model for a trade public. There's an argument they make that says, hey, if you have a subscription business, you're automatically aligning yourself with the reader, instead of the advertiser, there's a, have Williams version of this on medium. Oh, have Williams. Yeah, his business is,

that's a perfect business where he doesn't need ads at all and he definitely gave it the old college try on doing an ad model. He did a bunch. We can have a different ad. He ran banners. He ran banners. I'd love to debate about the future of the ad model. He did a bunch. We can have a different of what we're telling you. He ran banners. I'd love to debate about the future of the ad business.

By the way, I think a lot of ad suck in our very bad. I agree with those people. Right. So this is where I'm getting at, which is it seems like there should be a middle ground that says subscriptions can work for some kind of products

and has ought to work for some kind of products. I don't see, maybe this is, I guess, your point. I don't really see ads working generally very well on the internet. They seem to, frankly, work better on TV. Police people are making movies that are designed to capture my attention. And they realize, if they're not good, I'm going to walk away. Right. Imagine if you, instead of putting a television ad in between segments of a TV show, you put a magazine ad on TV. Imagine if the ad for Budweiser was not

an amazing 30-second story about how Budweiser is gonna make you cooler and more attractive, but was a 30-second shot of a magazine ad. That's basically advertising on the internet. It's probably actually, that's actually better than advertising on the internet. That is what most advertising on the internet is. It's like, people built the Model T

and they're like, that's as good as a car's ever gonna get. And now they're like, we need to invent some kind of plane or something. Like this is never going to work. It's like, now there's a Tesla version of this that's really awesome. But nobody seems to be working on the Tesla. They also need to be doing a different,

they're like painting the Model T different colors. I don't know if this analogy makes any sense, or if this metaphor makes any sense. The TV ad works because it's good for TV. The TV ad works because it's good for TV. The magazine ad works because it's good for magazines. You know it, Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook to some degree and Pinterest figured out, there's an internet ad that works really well.

It just isn't the box that is on every website. And like figuring that out is like the key to unlocking what advertising should be on the internet and the key to unlocking what good advertising looks like. And very few people have done it well. And almost no one, I would say, zero publications have built a system that is holistically like from the ground up designed around the marriage of both, like, interesting digital first content,

interesting digital first advertising. We referenced this at the top of the podcast, used to work at the Verge slash Fox Media, before that you worked at Engaget. Those are both sort of scale advertising plays. Then you went to Bloomberg and we can talk about that. How much of what you're doing today is a reaction to what you did at those sites versus this is what I always wanted to build.

I just could never do it. I mean, look, we started Vox media. I, you know, I'll be very blunt. I don't think our planet Vox media, in the early days, when we were building things like the verge, and when we were asking Ezra and Melissa and Matt to come and do Vox.com, and when we brought in people to do Polygon

and ask them to build something, we weren't like, we're gonna just get every single person that could possibly be on the internet to look at our stuff. It was not about scale, it was about what's a really good product that we can create first and foremost, right? every single person that could possibly be on the internet to look at our stuff. It was not about scale, it was about like, what's a really good product that we can create first and foremost, right?

And I think that that ethos runs pretty deep in what Vox is built. But I also think Vox got into a place where it had to compete with the BuzzFeeds of the World in terms of size. Because when you get into scale ad deals, predicated on Vox is on pages, it's very hard to not say,

I can offer you 30, 50, 100, million X of whatever product exists. So that certainly informs me how I think going to Bloomberg was partly my reaction to some of the stuff that we were doing here, which was scaling up really rapidly. And I don't know as much focus as I would have preferred. Certainly, but I'm a pain in the ass. I also probably was being annoying about things that I wanted to do. And those aren't always the perfect idea. Notting my head. You know, but I went to Bloomberg partially because

they were like, we don't care about getting all the people we want this very specific audience. We're going to build. We have a funnel of money. We don't care. And we want to come here and build all these exciting new brands. Now they're doing a paywall. Yeah, well, that's good stuff. I'm excited about their paywall. They have a paywall product. It's called the terminal. If you want the Bloomberg paywall product, I suggest you get the terminal it rips.

So anyhow, so I went there to kind of do brands at Bloomberg with the same sort of underlying concept, which is like, make something really radical for the web, for digital audiences, and don't worry about trying to serve every single person. And yeah, I think that the outline and independent media, which is the parent company of the outline, is a reaction, and also just a part of like learning what it is I want to be doing with my life and what I don't want to be doing. But let's go back in time.

Okay. You have the first Wikipedia entry I've seen, I'm sure there are many more, where there's a reference that if you click on the link, eventually gets you to a birth notice, like the Pittsburgh Jewish Gazette. Is that true? Yeah.

Like you're actually like, you haven't seen your Wikipedia page. I mean, that sounds like I'm trying to think if that's like, is that really on the Wikipedia page? Yeah, that's the first link. Okay. That eventually get to a PDF. That's interesting. It's like, is that really on the Wikipedia page? Yeah, that's the first link. Okay. That eventually get to a PDF. That's interesting.

It's like page 38. Mm. I do deep research. This is the thing. But you put that there. It's a, how do you do my mother? I think that's you, Josh. Mm.

A lot of people come in here and they have been in media all their lives. They've been publishing all their lives. That's not your story, right? That's right. So you started off doing what? I was born in Pittsburgh. Yes.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, beautiful town. I started off, I mean, my first? I was born in Pittsburgh. Yes. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a beautiful town. I started off, I mean, my first, I may have done a bunch of stuff, but like I had a career as a musician and a music producer for, you know, about a decade before maybe a little bit less than a decade before I started getting into writing. I started writing as like a professional musician slash producer in Brooklyn. That's correct. And before Brooklyn, I did it in Pittsburgh and then I moved to Philadelphia I started writing as like your professional musicians slash producer. Yes. In Brooklyn.

That's correct. And before Brooklyn, I did it in Pittsburgh and then I moved to Philadelphia for a couple of years. And then I moved to Brooklyn. I mean, you're to the fifth bar. I did. I made like dance records for a while. I had a top 40 hit in the UK.

Like just red of stuff. I went around the world DJ and then what's the name of the jet, Pulski, top 40 UK hit? It's so seems so horrible. Now this is from 1998 or something? The, it's so, seems so horrible. Now this is from 1998 or something, or no, it was 2000, I think, was the year that it was, it's called Pistol Whip, which was meant to emote the how the song made you feel,

not the actual act of pistol whipping people. Please don't. Yeah, we're gonna try that. It's like a nine minute track song. We're gonna try to, we're gonna try to call it up for the end of it. It's a nine minute track song that has a completely like badass build up in the middle of it.

But anyhow, so I did that for a while when my brother and I made music together. We had a studio in Brooklyn. We recorded bands like Chick, Chick, Chick, and like Professor Merrill, all these like indie bands. And were you someone who aspired to write or thought it'd be fun for a day? I've done some writing when I was younger for myself.

I did some writing for music magazines, like reviews, like record reviews. And then I, look, I'm just a nerd. I was younger for myself, I did some writing for music magazines, like reviews, like record reviews. And then I, look, I'm just a nerd. I was a huge nerd. And Engage had an open call for writers and Engage at AOL. And I was like, this would be fun to do, like once in a while, I write some stuff about gadgets.

This is back when Engage in Gismoto have surpassed or replaced popular science and popular mechanics and all the other sort of nerd blogs and then nerd publishing businesses and gotten much bigger. This was in the age of blogs being still like a second class citizen. You couldn't, the, and Gadget wasn't invited to Apple events. Right. Like we were not invited and not like. And also Apple was a marginal company at that point too.

Apple was, well, they were the iPod company at that point. I mean they were not totally marginal but they weren't like they are now. Right. Not the most them are in those valuable company in the world. So yeah, so I started writing part-time for Engaget and then I got obsessed with it and then I took a full time job there and then I became the editor-in-chief a year later and then I took the entire team and we went started the verge. No, no, no, I know the Vox Media Corporate History. You left and gadget and went to do your own thing and then magically reappear because there couldn't be any poaching.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. That sounds exactly what happened. One thing I've noticed about your career at the verge and you can see traces of it, traces more than traces of it all over Fox Media, and then your work at Bloomberg and out the outline, super, super design heavy, you're very, you care a lot about the way things look, you like them to look different than the way things look on the internet. It's sort of silly for me to describe it, you can just go to the outline.com and check

it out. While you were at Bloomberg, you guys did crazy weird presentations. Yeah. Why is, and this is beyond just making it look good, right? Like you want it to look kind of, whoa, what's, I'm not expecting that on my browser. Why is it important to you? So I mean, the way things look is important,

just period to me, like I'm aesthetically interested in things like is important, just period to me. Like I'm aesthetically interested in things. Like I am design matters, design like the visceral way we see something and understand what it's communicating before we know what it is. It's like, I think, very valuable. I also think that the web is a very, has been a traditionally, very, at least in media, not a very expressive place. You're totalitarian. Yeah, just a look, we've been re-create.

I actually have a slide in my old My Original's deck from when I did my seed round of snippets of front pages from the paper from the 1900 to Buzzfeed News in 2016. And they literally, the design is basically the same idea. It's like very unoriginal, very uninspiring, and replicating something that is created on a printing press, which seems insane.

Like the web and the internet and digital technology and mobile phones have these incredible capabilities to be more than black text on a white background. And we just, I don't think we do enough of that. And I think that for human beings, and I think as like things like Instagram and Snapchat have taught us even like Tinder when you think about how people interact physically with the product of

Tinder, like the visuals of it, the way it makes you feel before you even know what it is you're doing matters to the overall impression of the thing. Yeah, again, I think about print magazines and there's still these stores of handful of them left in this in the city where if you go and especially if you see like the European magazines, they're still trying out weird designs and typefaces if the American ones are pretty similar. Whereas the web, things generally look the same, goes in and out of style. But right now it seems like more than ever, people want stuff that's sort of as easy to

read. It's going to be at their phone. There's really not a lot of room for design. Yeah, but there's more room for design. A little bit, but also, and then sort of mechanically, the way stuff gets pushed out now, if it has to go to Facebook and Apple News and wherever else. I mean, just a little bit of it.

What a criminal act to let a bunch of tech companies that don't give a shit about storytelling, dictate how stories should be told. And they're argumented we want stuff to be clear and easy. And you should read it. I mean, something should be clear and easy and something shouldn't. I mean, that's like, you know,

that's like using the same shot for every movie. Like, why does Star Wars open with one shot and, you know, Citizen Kane opens with a different one? Why not, they just use the same framing? I mean, you know, this is like, to me, like, actually, that gets under my skin more than almost anything. It's the idea that like Facebook has a better idea

about how to tell a story. Like, that it can be distributed, this wonderful. But what are you serving by distributing it in this like basic, black and white way? I think you're serving Facebook's needs, you're not serving the needs of the story necessarily. Some stories, by the way, should be a bunch of text, but some shouldn't.

Some should be other things. And I think if Snapchat has demonstrated anything, it's that there is an opportunity to do different kinds of storytelling. And- Sure, but then Snapchat has a format, right? Their format looks radically different than the story on Facebook. But eventually it's kind of a format.

You kind of swipe up. It's kind of all looks the same eventually. I mean, you know, but that's getting into their groove as that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the only way to use that space. I mean, I think Snapchat has asked publishers to do things over and over and over again. And by doing that, you've formed repetitive habits.

And that's where you end up with a style. But the space is actually wide open. You can't do anything you want inside of a snap. And I'd increasingly like to see people be able to do kind of whatever they want inside of a story. Is that something, if you're harder hearts laid in that, looking yourself in the mirror, something which I do. I get up in the middle of the night and look at myself in the mirror.

Is that focus on design something that gives you pleasure or do you think this is genuinely something that the consumer wants and responds to and they are actually responding to the font weight you're used on this layout? I think it's both. I think that you have to tell somebody who you are in a lot of different ways. You have to tell somebody what a story is in a lot of different ways. And I think that happens through design. It doesn't always happen perfectly.

And it sometimes happens in a way that is annoying to some readers or to some viewers. It is very pleasurable to do things that are designed. Like I like that. But also I think that there's an importance to having design be an element of storytelling. And some stories don't need it at all, and some stories need it a lot. I do think that there's a reaction to it. I think if the outline had launched on a WordPress blog with WordPress style posts, I think it would be a lot.

There people would not have paid as much attention to us as they did at the beginning. So for you, it's very part of the marketing, right? It's part of the business plan. We want to stand out. Well, yeah, who are you? And what do you you like do you can you promote who you are through your visuals like i think that's important we did that with the virgin a lot of the brands at box was a big part of like figuring that i mean i remember building you know seeing the system come

together for polygon and yeah realizing like this is an idea it's very specific you know polygon very clearly you could see it in a row of other video game publications or game publications i think since you've gone that is the pendulum is switched switch back to gone very clearly, you could see it in a row of other video game publications or game publications. I think since you've gone, that is the pendulum is switched back to. And he's kind of kind of looked the same and it might really upset the editors of various publications that there, that publication, X looks like publication, why? But if you're a reader publication, why you're probably not reading X, also you probably don't care.

You know, this is a, if you're, I don't want to, and this is, by the way, no way meant to shit talk Vox, but Vox certainly engages in one charger for this water. On some publications, like, you know, around all the publications, there is a certain engagement of like, there's content people want and like, the, what time is the Superbowl is actually something that historically SB Nation did and got a bunch of good search traffic on because they did like, what time is the Superbowl, which is totally fine. And again, like, I think there's like, there's actually utility to it. If it's a thing that's just meant to be easily shareable and you just need to find it in search and it's not like the story itself,

like again, there's a hundred versions of it and you've got one of them. There's lots of publications that works for you know, like what we do is not for everybody. Like very, very literal way. Like what the outline is doing and what we will do with independent media brands, you know, it's just is not, not everybody's gonna be, can a need it or want it. Like that's both from a consumer standpoint and from like a kind of editorial and business standpoint.

I think about this a lot. And one of the analogies I think about is when you listen to music with a professional musician or at least a real serious music enthusiast and you're listening to a song, you both like the song, person who doesn't really know anything about music because I like this song. They enjoy the song, they enjoy it 100%. And the person who's an enthusiast or professional go, and I also really like the way those

drums are recorded, the fills, etc. Neither is wrong. Yeah. Right. I mean, there's many more people who just like the song. But what's actually interesting is what you just said is like the way the song was created matters to both people. One person listening recognizes the differences and one person just knows the song fucking rules. And I think that like the way the song is produced has a huge influence on how you feel about a song, but like not everybody knows that,

but that's actually the point of design. Design doesn't have to be, you don't have to think about it. You have to feel something when you see it. Like the point of design is like, you're communicating something through art essentially, right? Design, because if design were purely art, like then communication is different, it's like you can kind of get what you get out of it,

like you do from a great painting. Design is specific in the sense that it's got a utilitarian purpose, which is communicate these ideas. But there are a bunch of different ways to communicate the ideas and communicating them differently makes you feel different things when you come to them. But some of this is also style and what a class of people who create stuff

are into at the moment, right? Which is why if you listen to music on the 70s, it's very produced, right? You get to Prog Rock and you get to very ornate stuff. And then the counter reaction is punk, right? Which is super stripped down and deliberately has no frills around it and goes back and forth. Yeah.

And there's a version of that with media. Wow, this has gotten. I mean, there's an argument that like what we do as a styles called is brutalist web design, which I don't actually subscribe to I don't think it's what we do because brutalism is actually quite it's an architectural term and it's quite torn down and it's like Ross By the way, you've got you've got a post on your site today. Yeah, it goes in some of these directions I literally couldn't understand it. It's about it's about I think it's about Kanye It's about no I mentioned he's that much Pinterest.

Yeah, so I understood the headline, and then I looked at him, covering this. Yeah, but like, look, so anyhow, the things go in cycles, but I think for us, like for me personally, but also just generally speaking, building a design language that is differentiated is important. I think that there is actually a large amount of the audience that responds to that, but also giving ourselves

a design language and tools to manipulate things within that language, lets us do things that we couldn't do without it, right? And so, like we built a platform to have design be a part of story making, and that is very important to sometimes to the stories that we tell, you know. Did you think we were gonna have this conversation when we started today? I had no notion whatsoever

about what we were gonna talk about, except I thought it was gonna be about media. We'll get there. No, I mean, we're talking about it. We're definitely talking about it. I mean, I love this conversation. It does design matter, I think, is what you're asking. Yeah.

Yes, it does. Think about that for a second. You know, it does. We're gonna have a native advertisement now. All right. Would you, Candor, cannot participate in it? It's your choice, Josh. Josh, do you see you at the outlet? in. It's your choice, Josh Tablesky. See you at the outline.

Yeah. Josh, do I look comfortable to you? Um, do you want to my honest answer? Yeah. Very comfortable. I feel very comfortable, you know what? Why? I'm wearing Mac, Weldon socks.

Oh, Mac Weldon makes socks? I make the most comfortable hoodies, sweatpants, underwear, and socks you'll ever wear. Wow. I am a long time Mac Weldon fan. I bought them with my own money and then became sponsors of this very show. You could wear an entire Mac Weldon outfit if you wanted.

Yeah, be expensive. Wow. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, if you want to discount on this fine Mac Weldon stuff, go to macwoldon.com. You could 20% off your order with a promo code, recode, that's macweldon.com, promo code, recode. Can you imagine not liking Mac Weldon products? Yes, yes, I can, but I'd, but that would be, you go to, you should go to prison if you

don't like Mac Welden. If that weird thing happened and you ordered something from Mac Welden, they'll comment you didn't like it, you know what you do? You sent a prison because nobody should dislike Mac Welden. It's much better than that. You just say, Hey, Mac Welden, I don't like what you sent me. I'm going to hang on to it, send me my money back. They just keep it.

They will do it. Seems wasteful, but that's fine. Look, they've been advertising this for two years and obviously it works. I hope they give us. If you do that, I hope you give it to someone who needs some underwear or socks. Keep the underwear.

Don't share your underwear. I'll wash them and then give them away to someone in need. They're gonna love this ad. Go to MacWeldon.com, use the promo code. Reco, you will get 20% off. That is good for you. It is also good for me, the're going to love this ad. Go to Macwellden.com, use the promo code. Recode, you will get 20% off. That is good for you. It is also good for me, the person who is reading this ad for you. Go to Macwellden.com, promo code, recode.

Today's show is also brought to you by HBO. I'm not going to tell you about HBO though. Kara Swisher is going to tell you all about HBO and Silicon Valley, right now. Wired magazine says HBO's Silicon Valley captures all the dick moves and dick jokes. I would agree with that, and I enjoy them quite a bit. It happens to be eerily timely as startup founder Richard Hendrix pivots this season to launch a decentralized internet free of ads and data tracking. It turns out that the road to an autonomous peer-to-peer network, whatever that means, is

paid with misguided car purchases, stealth acquisitions of Pizza App, and a lot of public puking, as well as an ICO. No one said launching a startup was easy. Watch new episodes of Silicon Valley Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO. For back here with Josh DePolsky, he's got more on his mind. Is there something you want to get off your chest, Josh? That's for here. No, I'm definitely getting stuff off my chest. No, I'm excited and enjoying this conversation.

I didn't think we'd go as deep on design, and I'm happy to talk about that. You are a very design guy, and I will say that, um, um, yeah, three years ago, uh, Vox bought Rico at about three years ago. We got here and to go from an organization that had been working on WordPress and variance of it and had zero interest in design, really most parts of well, other than just typing stories and putting on there and getting to Vox which at the time was very, very, very, very, very, very design oriented. I think less so now.

I'm sure my coworkers would argue with me about it. It was a really interesting experience. Yeah. I mean, but you know, think about a recode for a second, like look, you have to balance like necessity, right? I mean, there, I don't know the recode, there's a ton of stories that it should look nice.

Yeah. But there's, you know, recode is very, you forgive me for saying it this way, but it's a kind of a trade publication in the sense that it is very specifically focused on a narrow area of business, you know, media and the tech world. And, you know, there's stuff kind of satellites around that. It's not like you guys are rolling out like big, ambitious, like features that require,

you know, photography and nothing you're not doing big, big features. Yeah, no, no, we, I will say that well. That's, that's where like we've tried it a few times. Oh, we haven't really figured this out. But that's not why we're not doing them. Yeah, and I'm saying that I think that day-to-day, there's a utilitarian nature to the design that really functions for recode because you need to get information to people who are like busy and need to read stuff.

But also, it's not like we thought about it. We just type stuff up on a WordPress blog and publish it and run went out. Right. But I mean, like, what did you, do you think there's a need for more design on ReCode? Not that a key ReCode, I read it. It's low on my list of things we need. Right. And I think it's probably low on the list of things that it actually needs.

We have it astonished when we popular in newsletter because a bunch of our readers want to read our stories, deliver to them via email. There you go. And you have no frills on it. Email is very low. You can do very few things with that. Yeah, so we're happy.

And we're happy to deliver it that way. In the case of some of us, Hey, we should add a photo or some kind of thing on them. That's fine, but not if it screws up the delivery of the words in any way. I mean, the information's important. Like you got to get it, you got to get people information. Right.

And there's always making an argument that like just get me the, I wanted a text file of this and there are sites that do it. And like make a text file of this article and that's fine. Like if that's how you want to read things, I just like, I love when stories actually have like a design element that elevates the storytelling and takes me deeper into the story. And I think there's a lot of room for that on the web. And particularly on mobile that we haven't really well explored.

What do you think of VR and AR and the next star? Is that stuff appeal to you? From a storytelling perspective? I mean, look, the thing with VR and AR and anything else that's like a hot new technology that somebody's telling Kahn-Denass that they need to use. I mean, Kahn-Denass that what New Friends last year were like, we're doubling down on VR, right?

And New York Times did their thing. And there is, again, it is never going to be, there is this awesome new thing and it is going to be the answer to all of your problems or it going to be the answer to like, what comes next? It is a component. If a story is best told in VR, you should tell it that way. If you get a story that can't be told any other way and that you feel strongly that that's the way to do it, you should have a mechanism to tell that story. Because part of me thinks, oh, that should really appeal to Josh, because if you can play with text on a static screen, imagine what you could do with immersive stuff.

And yet I can think of a one story, maybe two, that have been told with VR where I was like, this is a really amazing use of this thing. I needed this to see the story differently. And most are just like, isn't it cool that you can do this? And I don't think that's a good justification for telling a story in that manner. You mentioned earlier that you can be difficult

by your own admission. Very difficult. And I won't want to read something here. Oh, God. This is the New York Times, so you know what it is. I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know what's in my Wikipedia page. I don't know what the person the New York Times, so you know what it is. I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know what my Wikipedia page, I don't know what the person in the New York Times wrote about me.

This is when you're at Bloomberg. There's a well-told anecdote, and everyone has told this anecdote. Where you and Michael Bloomberg, who is the property, are having a discussion about what's going to happen with the web, Bloomberg says something that's effective, maybe we shouldn't have a website. Topolsky responded sarcastically, making fun of the suggestion according to three people knowledge of the exchange who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Bloomberg who often challenges subordinates with provocative questions, with provocative

questions has grown accustomed to deference that people said. He was serious and his relationship with Mr. Topolski subsequently deteriorated and then you left. Um, yeah. serious and his relationship with Mr. Tepolsky subsequently deteriorated and then you left. Yeah. Did you realize when you sort of made fun of Michael Bloomberg in the room that the front of the people

that the event was gonna happen? I didn't make fun of him. And actually, look, there's a point in everyone's life that you get to where you're in a room and Mike Bloomberg is telling you something and you disagree strongly with what he's telling you and you have to ask,

you get really to look inside and say, am I going to argue with Mike Bloomberg? Because he's like the 10th richest man in the world, maybe ninth now. And my boss. And you know, the answer is, yeah, I guess I'm going to argue with my book. For me, the answer is, I guess so, you know, as you start that process, you know, dance like doesn't want to go into it go into slow motion. Oh, no, I responded. I responded honestly to, you know, without going into great detail, because I'm sure I'm probably violating some kind of FDA or whatever. You know, I responded honestly to I thought a point that was meant to be provocative, but wasn't serious. And I responded with a non serious response. It's like, yeah, that's a cool idea. You should do that. Like go for it. And you know, the truth's like, yeah, that's a cool idea, you should do that. Like, go for it.

And, you know, the truth is, we actually, that story tells a part of the story, but Mike and I actually had a really good and interesting relationship. I just think that I went to Bloomberg to make something great for Bloomberg, where Mike Bloomberg's name is on everything, and it is like, ultimately, he will receive all the glory

for having those things made. But I went there with a mandate from Justin Smith and from Josh Turingel and from Dan Docteroff who hired me. They wanted me to do what I do best, which is build really great things in media on the internet. And I felt very strongly we were doing that part of it was that Bloomberg wasn't hands on that because he was right. And then he came back and you know he had to get acclimated. And that part of it was that Bloomberg wasn't hands on that because he wasn't and he came back and he came back and you know, he had to get acclimated. And that by the way, I'm sure for him, it was like kind of a giant transverse. And he finds this mad side is snunking around. Well, yeah, I'm that Josh Topolski's there.

He's like, what is going on with this guy? And you know, but like that conversation was one of many where we had like very heated and I felt like ultimately valuable exchanges, but the reality was, you know, it was very clear that what I wanted to do, and what Mike wanted to do were very different things. There were things that I could have done at Bloomberg, but it wouldn't have made me very happy. So that incident, the poorer the nearer times,

was not the thing that led to you leaving? I don't think so. I mean, we had a, there was a lot of stuff that, what led to me leaving to be perfectly honest was like the increasing feeling that those types of conversations were going to be the norm. Right. And for me,

I don't want to fight with people. I mean, even though I do, often, my goal is to actually make stuff, like I'm trying to make stuff. So I was like, look, I'm not gonna do what I wanna do here. You're not gonna be happy with me

because I'm gonna say no to the things that you want to do. You don't want me to do this stuff that I wanna do in vice versa, so what are we doing? Right, and so there were options there, like, I look back at the different options, they were interesting, but for me, I was like, you know what I'm gonna do, so I'm gonna go start my own business

because I'm kind of tired of arguing with people about the way I think the business should be. So when you go out and you leave Bloomberg, and again, this is the New York Times writing about you, and other people are writing about you, and people who aren't writing about you are talking about you. Yes.

And so reputationally, you have a reputation as a difficult person, and I've talked to people who have actually given you money since then. But when you go out to ask for money, and you're the guy who makes cool things, but also can be a giant pain in the ass. Yeah. Do you take that into account as you're going out to people

with money and say, here's the deal. I know you've read about me, and you've heard about me, but, or do you just go, here's the deal. I'm doing what I'm doing. Um, to be honest with you, it didn't, I didn't think about it that much until I started raising money and met some investors who were very interested in what I was doing,

but we're like, we hear you're insane, and we wanna find out if that's true or not insane, but you can be a handful. And I think that, and without naming names, those people invested money into my business after talking to a lot of people about what I'm actually like to work with, and they were like, we actually heard a lot of really great things about you,

which I was pleasantly surprised to hear. And after that, you know, I, well, I mean, you know, it's hard, it's hard to like, I have no professional training in management or in frankly, any of the things I'm doing, you know, I'm a high school dropout. So I'm probably also emotionally not perfect, I would say, like I'm probably a little bit weird.

And so I'm like on doing a lot of on the job training, doing things that are very strange. But you're well into it now, the things you're doing now. I mean, how are you as a manager different now than you were three jobs ago at Engageant? I micromanage less. I, when I'm annoyed with, here's one of the things that I realized about me that's bad management, that I would never have understood unless somebody had actually

brought it to my attention. And it actually happened when I was a Vox, which is I get, I can be very mad about something and then not give a shit about it five minutes later. Like, I can be like, this fucking thing is a nightmare. You need to fix it to you. And then I'll be like, I'm asking me to take care of him. I'm not worried about it at all. And there I know that if it's well, you know, it's in good hands. The person who I'm like, this thing's a fucking nightmare. Take care of it.

It's freaking a fuck out. It's like, oh my god, I'm going to get fired. This is a terrible what am I going to do. And I made no connection between like, because I'm like, it's all fine. Like now that I have, expressed how I feel. So, you know, that's a thing that I've worked on. I don't think I have perfect, but like, figuring out like what the right level of rage to express, when, like, my rage doesn't mean anything.

Like, I'm, I don't, I'm like a grudge holder. It's like, I don't stay mad for very long. I don't even, like, things I'm mad about. I'm not even that real, really mad about, like, I just want them to be fixed. So, like, just figuring out like, where, how other people perceive that has been a big deal. I micro-man that real, really mad about, like I just want them to be fixed. So just figuring out where, how other people perceive that has been a big deal. I micromanaged last probably not as much as I should,

but I've tried to correct that. And look, the one thing that is definitely true is that being an editor-in-chief or CEO or whatever, the answer to the solution to all of your problems is to hire really good people who are autonomous and let them do their thing and only occasionally check in on them, like talk to them and have good conversations,

but don't babysit them because good people don't need babysitting. They need to just know what their mission is and go do it. Was there any thought either from you or from people who gave you money or were thinking about giving you money that we'd like to work with you Josh, but we'd like you to bring in a Cheryl or Eric Schmidt or someone to manage stuff.

Yeah. They were like, can you bring in Cheryl Sandberg? And I was like, I got busy. I'm going to call her up right now and see if she's available. That didn't come up, but I think. Did you ever think about, like, well, what if I seem up with someone? I think about it every day. I mean, I have great, you know, like my COO alliance Rothblatt is really, really talented

at figuring out like the business side of things and how to manage. Like I'm not, don't put me in a spreadsheet. Like I'm not going to be that useful. Like there are some CEOs who are very good, the crack open ex-alongers go for it. That's not my thing. You know, I've got really smart people around me. You know, but I think all the time, like, is there a person who could do this better than me? Maybe?

The problem is that so many media companies have CEOs that are totally disconnected from the thing that they make. Like, it's easy to be a CEO who doesn't know how you make things. It's really hard to be a CEO, CEO, who knows how things are made, and to appreciate the production process of making things and to think about production process of making things and to think about that when you're making decisions about the business.

And I think that's important. There's a reason why I'm the editor in chief and the CEO. That's an unusual combination of roles and that's by design because I think that when you abstract the business away from the things that the business makes, it can be really dangerous, particularly in media. Particularly when you have that question about ads. Like, who's, you know, is the tail wagging the dog? You know, that you want to be really careful about like, where do these things intersect? And where should they be avoiding one another?

And I think that to have insight into the process of making things and putting things out into the world and telling a story and like having a scoop that no one else has and knowing that you've got something that is very sensitive and you've got to be take great care with and knowing what it feels like to put that out into the world and to feel the feedback from the world on that thing, as a CEO is highly informative. So, you're pumped, as you can tell, if you're listening to this. I just have to die half a die of coke,

so I'm feeling really good. You have very specific point of view, you know what you want to make, and you know a lot about the media business, and so you know that one of the problems with a lot of these media companies is they are venture backed. So it's not just they've taken money from investors, they've taken money from investors who want to get a 10x return that some kind of scaling

that has to happen. And all these things that you care a lot about, eventually are going to run up against the thing the investor cares about, which is getting 10 times their money back. So having known all that, why not try to figure out how to do this without taking venture money? I would have loved to, and in fact, my original conversations with investors were non-venture investor conversations. Early on, I actually came very close to doing a deal with somebody who was in the publishing world that was not a traditional venture investor whatsoever. I think maybe it might have been mentioned in a recode article at some point, but that did not ultimately end up being the best deal

for the business and when I started to talk to, I mean, particularly like when I talked to RRE who reached out to me after I wrote a kind of manifesto about the media industry and wanted to talk about RRE who's invested in, who's our lead investor and has invested in BuzzFeed and Taffy Nimpost and Business Insider. Lots of big-scale businesses.

They were very interested in having a conversation about what I thought was really important to build now. And that was very encouraging to me. There actually were VC investors out there who were not just looking for the $10X billion valuation, but also wanted to find something new inside of their nuts. So they're betting on you, but again, their job is to get a 10 X return.

And if they don't with you, they might still think you're a good person, but it will not be considered successful. So inevitably, it seems like you're going to have that conflict. The only things that you care a lot about are eventually going to, even if it's the most well-meaning, grievous VC ever, they're going to go look eventually, we've got to get a return here. So the outline is a year and five months old, we launched in December of 2016. I don't know if that math is quite right, but it's like a year and five months of being

live. We're in striking distance of profitability. I think this end of this year will be there. It's going to, you know, we're going to be close, but I think we can do it. Now every media business is always like, we're going to be profitable this year. And like every year, they're like, we got it.

It's so close. I actually think we can get there. We have some really interesting efficiencies in like how we do things, which means that we built products with scalability in mind. Weirdly, as a company that is interested in sane scale, we also thought about scale. Like, how do you actually make these things work

over and over again for different teams in different ways? So we've taken a total of 10 and changed million dollars in investment, which is not nothing. It's a ton of money. And it's every day, I'm like, I can't believe that I actually raised as much money for a business. You're in Java to deliver 100 million. And yeah, and I think that we will have a lot of flexibility going into 2019 with

like how we decide to build the business and what 100, how you get to 100 million and beyond that. I think that there is another type of business that is not, yes, VC funding can be very destructive to businesses, but it can also be obviously very useful to businesses. What I'm trying to figure out the balance is like what is the same part, the same way that you do this, right? Is there a way to be, in just invest it in enough that you have enough runway to build the thing

you wanna build that actually has lots of, can pay off in lots of different ways without having this huge burden of investment and like sort of endless growth and endless scale hanging over you? Cause I think that's going to be then. That is one of the answers, right? It's that it's one thing to raise 10 million, nothing to raise 100 or 200.

Yeah. Yeah. But like look at all the companies that raise tens of millions or more, all the media companies. Right. That's how I'm saying the pressure on you now, now they better get to billion dollar publishing business, which is a difficult thing to do. I just think there is just the world is, we're in a different place. Like we should consider like what we've built on the internet and think like, is there

another way to do this? Is there a different kind of business? That's what we're basically trying to do. Is there a different and better in some ways business that doesn't serve everybody but is actually quite valuable? Like that's the concept. And I think we have gotten there in some ways. We still have a lot of way to go to prove it out completely.

But to me, it's a very exciting idea. Like what if Facebook didn't matter to you, like in the long run? What if Facebook was just a part of something, a small part of something, and you actually had control of your business in a way that was sane and in a way that you felt like the things you

did mattered to an audience, you know, and that it wasn't just you weren't just playing somebody else's game. That's a very exciting idea and that you could make money doing that and work with really good brands and talk to really smart good people. You know, that's kind of exciting. Anyhow, so that's a great pause. No, no, I was going to say that's a very good way to go out. I love going out.

Really good. 56 minutes into this. Yeah. You've got the her shore level. Well, I have this clock every here to it. Turns out it's really good for me to see a clock. I can really time it up perfectly. But no, look like, you know, like I think it just, we're not in any way.

It's a, we're not a sure thing yet. We're young. But I actually think I see a clear path to making it work, and that's really exciting because media needs something new right now. It needs help right now because I think if we leave it in the hands of Facebook and Google and Twitter, it's going to work out great. Come on. I think, I don't know, I've got to take, I've got to take back power.

I've got to take back control. I was going to quote a rapist. I'm not going to do that. Um, Josh, this is great. I had fun. I hope, I'm not gonna do that. Josh, this is great. I had fun, I hope you had fun. I love this. I hope you guys had fun listening. Thank you for listening.

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