Navigating media's ups and downs with theSkimm co-founders

Key Takeaways

hello and welcome to found Tech crunch's podcast that brings you the stories behind the startups from the folks that are building them it's me your host Becca scac and sadly I'm flying solo in this interviews there will be no fun and witty banter after the conversation we missed D A Lot in this episode but of course I was not completely alone for this episode I talked with both Karly zaken and Daniel Weissberg co-founders and co-ceos of the skim which is a digital media company that Aggregates the news in a multitude of newsletters year for Millennial women it was a really fun conversation we got into things like how they divide responsibilities as co-ceos how they've weathered a bumpy media landscape over the past decade and what they would do differently if they could go back and do it all over again let's get right into it hey Carly how's it going good thanks so much for having me having us oh thanks so much for coming on Danielle how are you doing hey Becca thanks so much for having us excited to be here definitely no I'm really excited to dive into this one it's so rare on both this podcast as well as in general that working for a digital media company I get to kind of talk to an alert digital media company so I think that might be a good place to dive in why don't you guys start by just telling us a little bit about the skim sure well we started the skim from our living room couch in 2012 and it has become and grown from there into a digital media company dedic ated to giving women the information they need to navigate life's most important decisions mhm and I'm curious cuz I know before we got on this call I looked into it a little bit cuz I was trying to remember the timeline of this knowing you guys launched in 2012 certain other media companies focus at women like bustle and I was like did those come first did you guys come first and it seems like you all launched within the span of a couple of years and I'm curious when you guys were thinking about getting started why did you guys decide to launch the skim and what whole in the digital media landscape were you guys looking to fill with this yeah so I think first of all you know Danielle and I came from working at a Legacy Media company that it's funny to kind of go back in time there were at the time with every kind of T company Town Hall was about was like digital media and like New Media so you know that kind of Ages us a little bit but we also literally never heard the word Millennial so imagine that like it wasn't overused yet at all but what we did know very quickly was like these Town Halls we were going to the programming that we were even working on was not reaching our friends and the New Media that had kind of popped up our friends were not engaging with and so when we kind of like actually literally Googled like Millennial because we that's our demographic and we really understood the stats of millennial women and the unique power of Our Generation which honestly only compounded over time we were like oh like this is a huge business opportunity this is the generation that's about you know at the time about to become the bread winner now she is the bread winner that is about to be influencing trillion dollars annually now she is influencing three and a half trillion dollars annually we were like this is going to be the most important demographic to our economy why is there not information being not just like catered to her but catered to her daily routines that's why we were like we have to do this in email it has to be first thing in the morning at the and that really kind of gave us the focus to start with then became the daily skin I was just going to say Becca when you talk about it's so funny in terms of like entrepreneurship and years right because for us your question was around who started first given that you know we started it from our couch and we bootstrapped it for a long time so we didn't hire a team until we were almost two years in and so I think that there was a real authenticity to our story and to the fact that there were two women behind a new kind of venture in media and that felt very different than companies that were also tackling women's lifestyle but didn't necessarily have that same sort of founding story the other thing is that we started from a news background and the skim has really grown to serve her and meet her where she is from entering Workforce through all of the stages of adulthood but when we started it was really the idea was recreating morning television in a much more digital friendly environment what do you use to wake up what do you need to know in those few minutes before you jump out of bed or hit the snooze but hopefully we were really part of that oneeyed open routine and that habitual sense of feeling like a friend starting your morning uh we were putting in front of our audience and getting getting them at that moment in time through a newsletter was a really different part of the digital media landscape at the time there was still a lot of kind of these print brands that we had all grown up with and had a lot of affinity for and then you had other companies starting that were going after the same audience but going after her from much more of the fashion lifestyle angle and our angle was really about what are the gray spaces what are the things that she needs to feel like she can trust someone to get information and no one is serving her specifically her and that's really where we focused and we grew from there and since you've already brought it up a few times the fact that you guys really launched this through a newsletter format is super interesting because thinking about it now it's like everyone has newsletters newsletters are everywhere but back then I mean like I wasn't reading newsletters back then it just wasn't a thing that was as common was starting this as a newslet are always the plan or did you guys think of other potential ways to get started and added on later sort of like how did you guys land on newsletter being like the right format for this yeah so you're right at the time there were very few newsletters that people enjoyed receiving or or companies were using so we do like to say we started that trend for sure but what we did realize as Danelle just mentioned like the oneeyed open routine routine was like the key we were like how do we reach our friends what our friends represent and we knew we were like okay first thing we all do like wake up I like I had sneezed many times but like I look at my phone literally with one eye open I'm like do anyone like you know any family or friend like text me something important I would check my email to make sure like my boss at the time didn't email me or you know like my mom didn't email me something and from there like get up do my thing and then like actually like sign on and like you know look at the other stuff and so we were like we have to be a part of that first part the before you get out of bed part and so we knew we like well the way to do that is it has to read like it's from your friend like from your best friend and it's got to be an email from your friend and so that's why we did email that was kind of the origination of or the origin rather of the voice of the skin was to make it sound like this is your best friend and I think that turned out to be maybe the smartest thing we've ever done if I'm giving us a lot of credit for for making long-term DEC decisions in in those first moments of of building the company for years brands have been built on thirdparty data and now we are seeing with Google phasing third party data out it's a real issue for a lot of those companies who have been able to Scale based off of that and they're trying to figure out how to maintain and build their audiences and in the bigger picture that means Brands will be looking at newsletters as a primary way to reach Their audience and you know that's something that we're obviously very familiar with they've been the backbone of our business for many years which allowed us a really strategic Advantage because we weren't subject to the SEO game we weren't subject to having to build around you know a platform and I'm using Google in that way but it can also be applied to social algorithms as well our business model has always been centered around zero and first- party data because we were able to create a direct line of communication with this very sought-after audience no and what you mentioned about the newsletter format is so true because I actually was just talking about this with our producer Maggie I think literally yesterday and she was like how do you start work so early and I was like oh I start work by waking up opening my phone and reading about 12 newsletters then I get up and go to my desk so it's like it's very interesting to hear you guys talk about it from that because like being the user on the other side I'm like yep nope that's correct like that's literally how I like engage with the news in the morning but I also want to take a step back to something you guys said a couple minutes ago regarding that you guys didn't hire for quite a while when you got started and you booted up the company and it really was sort of this two women show for a long time and I'm curious if you could talk about what that was like cuz you hear about other companies like oh we were grinding away we're two Engineers doing this and that but you rarely hear of like a digital media company being like yep we just rode it all ourselves we built the company at the same time for a couple years while fing it on our own what were those first few years like for you guys both professionally but also personally trying to get this off the ground Danielle I'll let you take this I'm having I'm having real flashbacks of of the level of exhaustion I was just thinking it's been a while since we kind of mentally oh Revisited that period Well the first thing to know is that we quit our jobs with a couple thousand dollars saved up you know we were in our we were like 25 years old we had no business background we had no Tech background and I think that level of naive was probably the most helpful thing that we had because we had no clue how hard this was going to be and I I think that's true of any entrepreneur first-time entrepreneur but we also had the excitement and the knowledge that there was no safety net there was no safety net financially emotionally it was the Two of Us in it and were the only ones that were going to be advocating for it to get off the ground so we have raised the skim in over 11 years under $30 million in funding and we have notable investors GB R Great craftt Disney at the time when we started we had raised a small amount of money which was basically enough for us to pay our our WordPress fees and and be able to send the newsletter out design a little bit and for us to actually be able to quit our jobs to do this that was it and with that everyone talks about like a friends and family round you know that was not I would say we had to pitch this was like we were new to the game and we had people really believing in us and that meant a lot so what that looked like was that we were working around the clock we slept in shifts we wrote the newsletter through the night and updated it until it went out at 6:00 in the morning and then we would get a few hours of sleep and then we would try to get the business off the ground during the day and we got very good advice a a little bit further along in our journey that when you are building any sort of business you can either go for audience growth or you can go for Revenue growth we decided to go for audience growth and that meant to us because we had no budget for audience acquisition we had no budget for you know thinking through do we advertise here or there we would print out t-shirts if we saw that a celebrity or influencer posted about us we would print the one-off t-shirt and send it to them oh my God we send it to our friends across the country and just ask them to wear it you know when they work out or when they go out for a walk we did a college tour which meant that we were not invited to any of these campuses but we were we show up in our skim shirts and kind of leave Flyers under the door in different dorms or sit in the cafeteria or stand out on the walk we launched a a brand ambassador program that definitely had College age students which was amazing but it was also a lot of women who were interested in entrepreneurship who wanted to be part of the journey and they helped us really grow it through a Grassroots way so after after about a year and a half of doing that and getting a lot of nose when we were trying to raise money despite this really Grassroots viral audience growth story which we saw in the numbers we would celebrate like every Milestone we know when we wake up this is how many people subscribed and when we went to bed this is how we ended the day and that is kind of how we lived and breathed success so we finally met Homebrew Ventures we were their first New York investment and hun and SAA were our lead in our seed round and through that we were finally able to hire a team which meant I think we hired five or six people got a very very tiny office above a bar and that started you know the next phase of the journey and since you mentioned the investor piece of it too it sounds like you guys like you said you got a lot of NOS like what did people think about this idea when you guys were fris getting off the ground especially because you were new to this Cate this wasn't something there was a lot of examples or success stories you could point to in the category already what kind of feedback did you get as you were going out to pitch well again like not to AG us but if you were going to raise money it was coming from San Francisco like there was no Venture I mean like you could count the three funds on your hand of like the Venture funds in New York and there were a few celebrity funds in in LA but the money was in San Francisco and Silicon Valley hated us they didn't get it they we would go I mean I honestly like I haven't been able to go back to San Francisco without like literally like physically remembering the feeling of hearing no because we were told you know you need a technical co-founder you have to find one it was large at this time like I don't think we ever pitched a room that had a woman in it and so what we would hear was my wife likes this I think or let me see if my wife likes it and I'll get back to you and we're like is your wife an investor like I'm happy to have her sign up for this gim but like why is your wife who we don't know anything about going to determine whether or not you're going to write us a check right we were told that this was not scalable we were told email was dead that was my favorite because that was usually emailed to us like they would send us an email that would be like email is dead and I'm like it's amazing you revived it to to send us this note so those were like the main themes of why and and I think there's one other one which I I really love to laugh at today and certainly laughed at then is women are a niche market why are you focusing on them just a handful of us you know yeah you know it's only like 10 of us so like you'd be shocked how many people said that and so I think because so much of that feedback was so ridiculous to us that we were like we don't like this place Silicon Valley we're going to just keep going I think if the feedback had been like the writing really sucks or like you guys like don't seem like you could work together together like maybe we would have like taken it to heart in a different way but we just so vehemently disagreed or didn't understand the feedback we were getting that we were just like we got to keep going because and I think this is where we were lucky that it was you know we were in a consumer product space we would get nose but then we would get that same day like you know 5 new thousand people that would sign up and right you know we were getting notes from our readers being like where has this product been all my life like can I be a SK Ambassador for you can I work for you and so the fact that we were hearing directly from our Target user how much they loved it and how sticky this was then getting NOS from people that weren't our Target at all kept us going no it's so interesting to hear that cuz we just did a recent like a year and wrap-up episode for 2023 and one of the things that my co-host Dom and I talked about a lot in that is that we felt like every time we talked and not just to women entrepreneurs either but mainly women entrepreneurs it'd be like oh I've landed Chipotle as a customer and VCS are like I don't think this no one wants this and they're like I've landed Chipotle as a customer and VC's are like oh no no one wants this and like that clear divide of demand is so interesting and it seems It's still I mean it still exists today I hope less so but it is very interesting to always like hear about more examples of just that weird disconnect with investors yeah but one thing I did want to ask you guys about because I know you guys both worked in the news industry Legacy news companies before starting this gim but you guys knew each other from prior to that if you want to talk about kind of like how you guys met and did you ever think you guys would start a company together we are happy to talk about our meat cute I think in the beginning you know in in New York in kind of like 2012 when everyone was starting a company or going to like the meetups to try to to meet a business partner that was one of the advantages that we had it was like okay we found each other let's figure out everything else so Carly and I Carly grew up in New York I grew up in Chicago we both both grew up obsessed with storytelling and that showed up in terms of internships and a real passion for news and journalism and politics so we both worked for NBC news but how we met actually was on a study abroad trip in Rome so we went to different schools and we wound up on the same program we had a lot of fun in Rome we did not talk about how you know years later we were going to start start a company and create this but we did know each other and a few years later when we were in our our early mid 20s we were working for NBC News by that time we had reconnected in DC then we had both moved to New York and we were working at 30 Rock we were working at different parts of NBC news so between the two of us we've kind of crisscrossed both NBC News MSNBC CNB BC long form documentary and we were also roommates in a very small apartment and I think one of the things that I would say the main thing that separates you know entrepreneurs from people that have good ideas is doing it and the best way to ensure that you are going to do it is to come home to someone every single day who also has the same idea and we just talked about this like we called it project TBD that was the name we knew that it was never going to get easier for us to start something that you know by no means does that mean it was easy right there was a huge amount of risk and honestly Terror kind of an out of- Body Experience quitting our jobs that we had worked and honestly never thought that we would leave but it was a recognition that we were at a point in our lives that the only people we had to look out for were ourselves and that may not be and probably wouldn't be the case forever and so let's try it now more from this conversation right after a quick [Music] break and I'm curious so you guys are co-ceos and was that always the plan from the beginning or did that why did that make sense cuz you always we've gone back and forth on the show about co- CEOs vers some places it really works some places it doesn't like it is such an interesting structure why did that make sense for you guys it was always the plan and I think one of the best pieces of advice we ever got was from a lawyer who was not even our lawyer who we like interviewed and he said you guys are going to need to like have a prenup we were like what like we're not married like what are you talking about he's like no you need to go get a bottle of wine and you need to talk about every like you're creating a pramp so we literally like got a bottle of wine and we talked through everything like what happens if one of us needs to take a break what happens if one of us you know this happens and like or we disagree on this like what happens and we kind of you know we talked through pretty much everything and that was like our LLC partnership agreement back when we were in LLC and we we knew that like we we came into this completely equal and way that you could be equal in something both in ideation with finances with workload all of it and that that was our red line and that actually was again when you look back like what are the smart decisions that we made like think God we were like stubborn on was this was one of them it made it really easy to not work with certain people that were like you know push like you're going to need to only have one of you and the investors that we did bring on completely got why this worked you know I'll say home brew Ventures like Sati and Hunter have a very similar relationship to Danielle and I like they got it for sure and I think when you think about like what's the magic of the skim and how did we get the company from where it was back then to where it is today it is because there have been the two of us as co- CEOs we make like you know now I sound like we're writing a romantic movie but we make each other better um and I think that that is the secret sauce we get asked all the time people looking for advice about like starting a company give me advice and like starting a company with my friend and we're always like don't do that like I think we we know that that is it is a very rare thing that this works I don't know how to tell some like give somebody the advice of like how to make it work for them because I think we're really lucky but I think at this point it's like our friendship is like family and you know our co-ceo relationship has made the company as strong as it is today and how do you guys think about about dividing responsibilities especially because as the two co-founders you do hold the same role as co-ceos is one person more focused in some areas than others are kind of like how did you guys divvy that up if at all or do kind of like work on everything together no we did I think the company grows in different ways you know quarter over quarter in some cases month over month and definitely year over-ear and because of that there were stretches of time where one of us would be more focused on a single area than business and we would divide and conquer that does not mean that you know one of us had a engineering background and the other one had an MBA it was really I would say twofold one was what does the company need right now what is the area and who has the time given the other things that were going on to tackle it the other thing I would say is that Carly and I have different personalities and we have different ways of leading so there have certainly been areas and periods of time where one person's approach has been better suited for the needs of a part of our organization that really needed more Focus then so that was something that we talked about we would start each we still do we start each week with you know what are our priorities we go through our schedule we talk through what we need to get done at the end of the week does the schedule map that and who is taking what I think as you know the company has evolved and we brought on really phenomenal leaders it has now become much more of these are the things that we do really well together we love brainstorming we love working on Creative Direction and marketing and that is what I think kind of has brought a certain level of magic to the skim and we are lucky that we also have phenomenal leaders who are very much focused on the functional areas in the day to-day and something I wanted to ask you guys about just I mean same with me I also work at a digital media company and have gone back and forth between print and digital media companies my journalism career thus far but digital media companies have had sort of a roller coaster of a time for the last decade just the category in general it was really hot for a while and then people were pretty bearish on it people have been bullish on some areas it's just hasn't been a smooth say up into the right line not that any category actually has that but it's definitely been a bit more of a roller coaster and I'm curious for you guys the space has changed so much perception has changed so much since you guys got started how do you guys feel you've been able to navigate it up until this point I know you guys had layoffs last year which is common across the space as well but kind of like how do you guys feel like you've been able to sort of stick around this long and lean in when the industry behind you has changed it's a great question and I think as you're kind of delicately putting and I'll say it more bluntly like media is a dis F right now you know in every industry is going through a lot of turmoil I think media in particular is having kind of an identity crisis if you will because so much has changed and I think we've been around long enough to have seen certain Trends come and go and when I look back I'm like what are the thing what are the decisions that we made that I am so grateful we made there were years where everyone around us investors advisers peers Etc were pressuring us to like just go big get as many people as possible to sign up stop worrying so much about like your engagement and your open rates and like just go big go much bigger on the social platforms like be using you know all the social Platforms in a different way and for lots of reasons but honestly I was you know lots of very like smart reasons and then one was just like a gut reason was like we did it and I think one of the smartest things that we ever did and I'm so grateful for is we built with real engagement like when we say our user numbers like that's real those are real users that like we know we engage with that actually read what we put out that follow us and transact with us when it's time to make decisions in their lives that trust that we built as like a foundation is our greatest asset as a brand and that trust has allowed us to scale Beyond here's a daily skim newsletter that gives you the news you needed in the day into a company that has a digital ecosystem that touches on her Financial Health her wellness and mental health her starting a family and parenting and her purchasing decisions and that scale has allowed us to be in a place where we can go deeper with our audience and be in a place where you know we like to say like we're about the calories and not the clicks when we've seen a lot of places really struggle is that they went for the clicks and I think that the other part of kind of having this Foundation of a relationship with our AI audience is that you know Daniel mentioned this earlier we've been built on zero and first party data well before like those were industry terms like I don't even think anybody phrased zero party data and what that like literally means is we've just had a direct relationship with our audience that has allowed us to know like here's how we can better serve her and what that also means is it's insulated us a bit from a lot of things changing with third party platforms you know specifically the social media sites and and think get all Al has meant that that relationship is real and and it's there and it's insulated us a bit from a lot of what has affected the industry at large so certainly we haven't been immune to add Market fluctuation and you know macro Trends but I think what it has done is it has really set us up in a very strong way to this direct engaged relationship with our audience where we've mastered the ability of like actually how to create action with her and transaction with her and sort of looking back at how far you guys have come so far you've talked about a lot of good decisions you guys are happy you have made from the beginning looking back at it now but if you were is there anything you would change if you were to say start the company over that's a different podcast yeah so much yeah I think I think that the biggest decisions think it's always about leadership style and the decisions that you make regarding who you work with and who you spend your your time and your energy on I think that Cari and I always have had really good gut instincts and the times that we think about going back and redoing something it's usually because we knew what was right and we didn't do it for whatever reason we had a feeling we went against it and that shows up in dozens of different ways but if you go back and you diagnose it I think that that's really where a lot of the things we would R do stemmed from I think also like very tactically it took us a long time to kind of understand this but should always be six months ahead of when you think you're going to need to hire somebody and so I think some of our earliest leadership hires came six months too late and so when I look back of like when we should have hired the SE Suite team or the exec team like we were too late on that and I you know those are things I would have gone back and you know done at an earlier time and we just have time for one last question so before we hop off today I definitely want to know what you guys are thinking about for the Future skm's been around now for 12 years what does the next 12 look like well we become the go-to source for this audience and continue to anticipate her needs this year we've not only been able to grow our audience offerings with our skim well newsletter and and parenting content but we've also Diversified our Revenue strains so we also have skm lab our in-house creative agency and skim shopping which really leans into our Commerce brand so we've grown you know so much in the 11 years since we've started and I can tell you the common thread in that has been anticipating what this audience will need looking at what's going on in all of our Lives how we are going to be affected from what's going on in systemic changes to the rise of certain Technologies looking at AI and making sure that our audience is prepared and feels like they understand the critical things that they need to know and that we give them both the information and the confidence to make choices that are right for them well I think that's a perfect place to wrap so thank you so much Danielle and Carly for coming on the show this was a pleasure thank you so much thanks Becca found is hosted by myself TechCrunch senior reporter Becca scac alongside senior reporter Dominic madori Davis found as produced by Maggie stamitz with editing by Kell our illustrator is Bryce Durban founds audience development and social media is managed by Morgan little Alysa Stringer and Natalie chman Tech crunch's audio products are managed by Henry pikovit thanks for listening and we'll be back next [Music] week