#418: Dave Nemetz on The Current State of Media Companies

Dave Nemetz previously founded Bleacher Report and Inverse. Today he serves as the General Manager at BDG Media, along with spending time advising and investing in early stage startups. In this conversation, we discuss new media models, building digital audiences, the value of persistence, DTC media, the rise of creators, and new trends that Dave is exploring. ======================= Want to sell your wonderful internet business? Tiny partners with founders to give them quick, straightforward exits that protect their team and culture. We’ll make an offer within a week, close the deal within a month, and keep your business operating for the long term. Get in touch at tinycapital.com, and we’ll let you know within a couple of days. ======================= LVL is a new crypto investing platform that I'm an investor in. They allow anyone to trade an unlimited number of times per month for only $9. If you buy or sell more than $500 in Bitcoin on any exchange, you're spending too much on trading fees. Use LVL to save money and trade as many times you want, but only pay $9/month. https://lvl.co/pomp ======================= Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using http://www.equos.com/pomp

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Dave Nemitz previously founded Bleacher Report and Inverse. Today, he serves as the General Manager at BDG Media, along with spending time advising and investing in early-stage startups. In this conversation, we discuss new media models, building digital audiences, the value of persistence, DTC media, the rise of creators, and new trends that Dave is exploring. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dave, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Tiny. I absolutely

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  love these guys. Andrew Wilkinson came on the podcast earlier this year, and he was a fan favorite as well. If you want to sell a wonderful internet business that you've built, Tiny is the partner for you. Tiny partners with founders to give them quick, straightforward exits that protect their team and their culture. They make an offer within a week, they close the deal within a month, and they keep your business operating for the long term. If you've got an internet business and you're looking to sell it, there's no better person I could think of than to get in touch with Tiny. You can get in touch with them at tinycapital.com. Again, tinycapital.com, and they'll let you know within just a couple of days. Andrew and the team over there are fantastic. They've got a long track record

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  any other exchange. So go check out Level, lvl.co/pomp. Again, lvl.co/pomp.

• 2:24Anthony Pompliano?

  If you can go ahead and only pay nine bucks a month as a subscription fee, you will save in many cases hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars a year, by simply using a new type of model that Level is pioneering. LVL.co/pomp, go check them out. Next up is Digenex. Digenex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the United States. That exchange, which is called EQOOS, EQUOS, EQOOS, has been built to institutional standards, but it is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin in Ethereum spot as well as Bitcoin perpetuals,

• 3:03Anthony Pompliano?

  and you get a 5% discount on all fees by signing up using equos.com/pomp. EQUOS.com/pomp. Digenex, the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange that is listed publicly in the United States. Go check out equos.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Dave. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys, bang, bang. I've got Dave here with me. Thank you so much for doing this, sir.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, thanks for having me here. I'm pumped.

• 4:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's just jump right into your background. I feel like you have quickly become the king of new media to some degree. Just what did you do before you started all these media sites?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  So I started right out of college. I, you know, it was like, you know, kind of very fresh, very fresh. I went to, I went to USC Film School. I, I wanted to be a film producer or TV producer and then got out of school, went to work at Endeavor Agency run by Ari Emanuel. And this was like when Entourage was, was on and it literally was like that. You know, I was, I was Lloyd. I was working at a desk, you know, getting abused by agents. And, you know, on the side, some high school friends and I had started this sports website.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  And it was just like a total passion project. Like, hey, we, you know, we have an idea for a sports website that we would want to see in the world. So we were working on it and, you know, eventually it kind of got to the point where I was like, well, I can, you know, keep taking abuse, you know, from, from the agents, or I can go work on this thing on my own. And, you know, we, you know, we went all in and I started Bleacher Report and have been, you know, kind of off, off to the races ever since, you know, figuring it out as I go along.

• 5:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Where'd the name Bleacher Report come from?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  So that came from a brainstorm. You know, we were trying to figure out a name and just throwing a bunch of things out there and like asking our friends and had some really dumb, like one of the names that one of, one of the co-founders suggested was like drinkyourmilk.com. So imagine if that could have been it. And then my co-founder, Brian, you know, who now, now runs, runs BDG where I'm at. He was like, hey, what about Bleacher Report? And we're like, eh, we don't hate it. So we're like, we'll keep it on the list. And he said, oh, well, the, the domain's available. I can buy it for 10 bucks. So I'll just, I'll just get it. So we have it. And then, you know, if we

• 6:18Speaker 02

  come up with anything better later, you know, we'll just have that as an in reserve. And it stuck.

• 6:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. It's always, that's how the naming goes, right? It's like the best of the worst things you can come up with and then eventually you just make it into a thing.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And our investors hated the name. They, they really tried to convince us to change the name and they didn't let, they thought it was too long. They thought that they didn't like that it was like two Rs next to each other. It was hard to spell. And they tried to convince us to like hire this, like, I can't remember how much it cost, but some like, you know, naming branding firm to come in and like give us a new name. And this is like, you know, when all the, the, you know, web 2.0 companies had ridiculous names like Zingo and stuff. And who figured that's where it would end up. And we just kind of, you know, resisted that, that effort and, and, you know, stuck with Bleacher Report. And I'd say it worked out.

• 7:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it worked out pretty well. Talk a little bit about kind of when you guys started this, there's a lot of things in media today that didn't exist or weren't popular. So kind of going and building a website was, that was what people did. Talk through like how you financed the company and just kind of the decisions you guys made along the way that maybe in hindsight, given today's environment, people would be like, oh wait, that's like a weird way to do it. But at the time, like that was pretty much standard, how people financed and grew media companies.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, we, we bootstrapped it starting out and, you know, we were like, you know, college, uh, you know, just recent college graduates, you know, I think I was making like 25 grand a year at, at Endeavor. So, you know, we weren't like swimming in savings, but you know, I've had some leftover bar mitzvah money and stuff like that, that, you know, we, we put to work. Uh, and, and, uh, you know, when it was just a side project, we weren't paying ourselves salary. We didn't have much, many expenses. We, we outsourced the development to just like a friend of a friend, like we weren't engineers. We had no idea how to build a website. We outsourced the development to a friend of a friend who, you know, ran like a dev shop, which I'm pretty sure was just like all, you know,

• 8:26Speaker 02

  offshore developers that, that he was managing. Uh, and they built, uh, a site on, on an open source, uh, CMS called Joomla, uh, which might still be around today, but it was like, You know, it's pretty like bare bones, basic, like there's a lot better, you know, options out there today and, you know, uh, you know, we just didn't know any better, but it served its purpose, you know, kind of, we probably spent like a few thousand dollars to like build it. Um, and that allows to get it out there, uh, and start building a community, building an audience. Uh, and then, and then we, we kind of kept it going. Uh, we, you know, once we quit our jobs, uh, you know, we got, you know, friends and

• 9:08Speaker 02

  family to, to help out and put some money in, uh, you know, like I think, you know, less than, less than six figures just to like help, help float us and, you know, I moved back in with my parents and, and, you know, we, we had a, we got like a small windowless office that was like 500 bucks a month in the middle of, uh, you know, the summer in, uh, in, in Menlo Park. Uh, and so it was, you know, very classic startup type stories. And, um, you know, we kind of used all the, you know, that friends and family money in that time to build out, uh, you know, kind of a custom site and get off the, the, um, the open source thing. You know, we, we, uh, we hired, uh, you know, a couple Rails

• 9:52Speaker 02

  developers, uh, which, you know, Rails was pretty new at the time, uh, you know, to come build like a custom Rails app and launch like the first real version of Bleacher Report in, you know, maybe six months. Um, and then we went out and tried to raise money around it. And, you know, this was like, I remember at the time, like, reading from some of the first articles that, uh, the Vol was writing on venture hacks and things like that. And like, uh, you know, it was like super early days. There's no playbook for how you raise money a, as an early founder. Um, there was no like established community of angel investors. It was all like, you know, kind of looking for needles in a haystack. Um, so it was interesting. Like we went in and like pitched some venture firms that we were like way too

• 10:37Speaker 02

  early for, but it, you know, gave us some like good reps and like, kind of used every, every connection and intro we could get. Uh, and eventually we found, uh, these two kind of super angel investors, these guys who Who had made just a ton of money in like the first like dot com wave and and you know, kind of put together their own fund to fund early stage companies and you know, they you know, bought into our pitch. They believed in what we were doing and they put about a million and a half in and that you kind of got us started as you know, as a company, but we stayed super scrappy in those early years because you know, we were we were young,

• 11:18Speaker 02

  we didn't need much to survive and you know, we you know, we're trying to kind of make it, make it last as long as possible.

• 11:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And then obviously you guys end up building, you know, one of if not the preeminent sports site in terms of content and kind of really expand and scale this thing. Talk through like you eventually get to the other end of the journey, which is should we sell it or not? Kind of what was the thought process there? And how did you guys kind of think through that?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we went through this huge transformation, you know, it was like in the early days, you know, we got a lot of hate. I mean, we probably still get a lot of hate, you know, people love to hate things. But you know, I remember, you know, there was this like famous segment in the sports media world on, I think it was on Real Sports on HBO in the early days where like Buzz Bissinger was like going just like crazy over sports blogs and Will Leach from Deadspin and like talking about how those guys were like, you know, the the worst thing that ever happened to sports media. And, you know, we we watched that and we were like, all right, you know, we're part of this like upstart, you know,

• 12:29Speaker 02

  we're going to like prove prove like the sports establishment wrong. But even the sports bloggers hated Bleacher Report in the early days and like Will Leach and Deadspin, I mean, they, I mean, they were pretty, you know, they they tore everyone apart. That was their whole deal, but like. We got so much hate, we got so much, you know, kind of, and some of it rightly so. Some of the stuff we were doing was not, you know, it was like, we had to continue to raise the quality bar over time, but eventually, you know, we kind of, we kept building towards like the vision that we wanted and like, all of a sudden, the tables started to turn and we, you know, we, the quality went up, we started to bring in like more of the sports media establishment was recognizing what we were doing.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Uh, we brought on a couple, uh, executives, uh, to join the team who came from like Fox Sports, uh, Brian Gray, who was phenomenal, Rich Colaci, who came from CBS Sports as our, our, our chief revenue officer, uh, you know, really helped to like, put us on the map in terms of legitimacy, like we built this audience, we built this kind of new brand, uh, and then we had, you know, people from the old guard, you know, kind of coming in and, you know, things were just, you know, at that point taking off and, uh, and Turner kind of came in, uh, you know, with, with interest to buy the company and it, it was like, you know, it's definitely a part of, part of it was everything we had built, uh, and, but it was also just perfect timing and a perfect fit.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Um, Time Warner had, had recently, uh, spun out Time Inc., uh, so Time Inc. spun out as its own public company, um, and Time Warner, you know, kind of got, got out of that part of the business, um, Sports Illustrated was part of Time Inc. that was like the sports property, uh, that Time Warner owned, that they had, you know, kind of digital rights to, and all of a sudden, they didn't have that anymore. Uh, and so they were looking to kind of fill that, that hole in their portfolio, uh, and at the time, like the two big digital sports properties that were out there were, were us and SB Nation, um, and so they kind, you know, they, I'm sure they looked at both, uh, and, you know, our team, you know, through some of those execs that we brought in had

• 14:39Speaker 02

  really strong relationships with Turner and like we, you know, we were just, we were growing like crazy, we were profitable, so, you know, they came in with a pretty, you know, aggressive offer, um, and, you know, we were, we just raised a big, big round of funding from Oak, uh, you know, we were going after kind of a big like, go after ESPN strategy, uh, but, you know, it was kind of one of those offers you can't refuse and, um, you know, we decided to, you know, consider selling the company and, and things just, you know, kind of. You know, led to led to fruition from there.

• 15:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so as you think of it today, like the media landscape has shifted quite a bit, right? And maybe let's just start with like, if you guys were to rebuild Bleacher Report today, like, what do you think is different? And kind of like, what would you maybe look at doing differently than you guys did? It was obviously this this big success and you go from, you know, literally you and your friends kind of just passion project to eventually this company that everyone knows. But new environment, you got to take new tactics. Like, what would be the things that you would do differently?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the the, you know, couple of big things that have been, you know, big developments in in sports media or just media in general recently, you know, obviously, the rise of subscription and paid subscription has been huge. And, you know, I think the Athletic was was early on that. And, you know, a lot of other people, you know, New York Times on down have been going all in on that. So I could see that, you know, kind of as a route. And then, you know, kind of the rise of the individual creator, you know, the the POMPs of the world, and so to speak. And, you know, Bleacher was part of that. Obviously, Bleacher empowered kind of this whole, you know, kind of new, you know, kind of generation of of

• 16:30Speaker 02

  sports analysts. But it was much more like Bleacher Report started is, you know, definitely user generated content. It was kind of like, almost anything goes, you know, too much goes. And that's that's why we got some of the hate. But, you know, we kind of started to like, you know, level that up over time. I think, you know, what would be interesting to look at would be to look at some kind of subscription play, you know, kind of looking at like, the best individual creators out there in sports and kind of bringing them together on some platform where, you know, maybe some of it's paid, some of it's free. But, you know, I think, kind of that that core piece of like empowering a community, empowering people to create, you know, kind of owning the

• 17:13Speaker 02

  relationship, you know, I wrote wrote, you know, recently on on my site about how, you know, Bleacher Report really went all in on email newsletters early on. And that was like a huge game changer. I think those those pieces were still there. It was just kind of like, you know, some of the tactics have have have evolved over time.

• 17:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and you've talked a lot about like building audiences, this idea of like D to C media. Talk just through like some of these ideas that you've written about and maybe elaborate on like, let's start with just building the audiences today. It feels like kind of this multi-platform, you know, again, direct to consumer, like own that relationship is what everyone's talking about. How do you view that having built one of these large media companies?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's one of those things that like, you know, I get interesting reactions to it. Some people are like, yeah, you know, that's obvious. Of course you want to build, you know, your direct relationship to your audience and, you know, it's sometimes you need to say the obvious things because not everyone, not everyone realizes them or what seems obvious isn't, isn't as apparent to everyone else. So, you know, there's definitely been an era of media companies chasing scale at all costs. And I think, yeah, that's led to, you know, some of the biggest problems in media and digital media over the last 10 years. And some of what I've been writing

• 18:37Speaker 02

  about has been trying to make sense of that because I was a part of that as well. And, you know, looking back, Bleacher Report, a lot of, got a lot of positive press and accolade for how we built such a large audience, such a scaled audience, how we built on other platforms. Bleacher has been dominant on social for a long time. And looking back, I think in some ways, it's been given credit for, you know, kind of the wrong, wrong reasons for its success. And I think, you know, one of the keys to success was owning that audience relationship through the newsletters and then the TeamStream app. And so, you know, I think we're going back to that time where

• 19:22Speaker 02

  The scale at all costs is just, it's a strategy that maybe a few people can play in. If you're really big, if you're really well-funded, if you're going, I mean, you know, where I'm at, at BDG Media, we have a huge portfolio of brands, you know, we're reaching close to 100 million people a month. We're playing in the scale game, but few can play in that game and a lot of people who've tried have just hit a wall. But then you see a lot of other people who focus on a niche, focus on owning the audience relationship, owning that space, thinking about monetizing in different ways. And there's so many more paths to success there, you know, versus going to the like, you know, go big or book, go home strategy.

• 20:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it feels also like because of some of the changes to building the audience, that owning the relationship, it's also changed the funding environment. Like you don't see as many companies going out and raising these really large rounds on the media side. You've got everyone from kind of the morning brews on down. How do you look at that, right? I mean, there are still some, Barstool, you know, comes to mind and a few others. But it does seem like there's been this shift that, hey, you can build a lot of this without the venture funding, or maybe venture funding isn't the right path for some of these media companies.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's a chicken and the egg thing too, because then I can say this from direct experience with my last company, Inverse, the venture funding environment for media just dried up in the last three, four years. And a lot of that was because of the, you know, the well-publicized struggles of these overly funded digital media companies that raised a ton of money and just couldn't get profitable, you know, couldn't grow to live up to expectations. They were being given funding rounds at kind of tech venture valuations, but media lives on a different spectrum.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  And you know, you look at the Mashable, you look at Mike.com, and you know, there was just a lot of kind of well-publicized, even the ones who've done well, like no one knows, you know, when BuzzFeed is going to have an exit, or Vox, or BDG, where I'm at. It's an environment that's still very much in question. So that led to...

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Just a drying up of new funded companies and a new class of bootstrapped companies that were able to figure it out on their own and become profitable quickly and realize that that you can run a profitable, efficient media business if you aren't shooting for 100 million uniques and 100 million in revenue. And you might get there over time, but you can do it organically. And, you know, I, I, uh, early on, I'm at like Sam Par from the Hustle and became an advisor investor to him. And he's, he's raised maybe a million bucks and like, they're doing fantastic. And they've just been incredibly scrappy and focused on building the audience, uh, building different products that cater to that audience

• 22:28Speaker 02

  and being really smart and strategic about it. You look at Morning Brew, uh, you know, it sounds like they're, they're going to get acquired by, by Axel Springer for, you know, great valuation. That's, that's really the way it's done. And I think that's the way it should be done in media because, you know, venture funding for, for media, it's not great for the media companies and not great for the investors. With some exceptions, I mean, the early investors at Pleasure Report are very happy they invested. But, uh, you know, those, those, uh, kind of results are few and far between.

• 22:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I think that now we're starting to see media companies figure out other monetization methods as well. Right? So we talked a little bit, it used to be ad-supported. Now you've got kind of subscriptions. We're also seeing merchandise. We're seeing all kinds of products. Like, it just feels like, uh, when you don't have that venture funding, you have to focus more on revenue and profitability. What are you seeing on that front?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's the lack of venture funding and the shift in, you know, you have to be, you have to focus on being profitable if you don't have funding. So publishers are going to experiment more early on. I raised, uh, I raised money, venture money early for, for inverse, largely looking at, at following a similar playbook as I did at Pleasure Report. So there were certain things where I was focused on, I need to get to enough scale to be able to attract bigger brand advertisers. I need to focus on growing uniques because that's the primary metric that, you know, uniques and top line revenue are the primary metrics that, that most investors are going to care about for me to be able to raise my next round. What, you know, what has changed is that, you know, with that venture funding

• 24:05Speaker 02

  going away, you, you can, you can kind of focus on different things. You know, there were revenue streams I didn't focus on early on because I didn't feel like they were going to be impactful enough to Be able to convince a big VC firm to come in for the next round. So I think that's it just changed the whole, the whole strategy and the whole dynamic and led to people being a lot more experimental and really focus on building, building an audience that they really own and that they can, they can engage with in different ways. Cause if all you're looking, thinking about is the, you know, getting the biggest numbers possible. Most of those people are not necessarily going to be very invested in your brand.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  They're not going to buy a product that you develop or sign up for a paid premium community or anything like that. And, you know, they're really just window dressing to, to try to help you get bigger advertising deals.

• 24:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. In, in terms of, um, kind of when you see the audience development now, you were talking about uniques earlier. Is that maybe not as important, uh, kind of moving forward? And it's more of like how deep the relationship is with a smaller number? Or how do you kind of think about some of those metrics, whether it's for investors, it's for advertisers? Or just understanding the health of these media businesses, right? What, what are those metrics that you think now are important?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. Uniques, uniques really only matter if you're trying to sell brand advertising to big Fortune 100 brands. They care about that. There are certain brands that won't, won't even take a phone call from you unless you're at five million uniques or 10 million uniques or that, you know, the, the bar keeps going up. And when you're competing with Facebook and Google for some of those deals, it's, you, you can't even be in the same conversation until you're, you know, many tens of millions of uniques. So, you know, there's, it just, it, it kind of leads to this vicious cycle where you have to keep growing to be able to, to make the money. But as you grow, the goal keeps getting pushed further away. And meanwhile, you're not, you're not profitable. Uh, so that's, that's, that's a problem.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  And, and I think even in advertising, There's so much, Facebook and Google have also shown there's so much more advertising out there beyond those Fortune 100 brands. And they're, you know, the smaller advertisers, the, the direct to consumer product brands, they're willing to spend money with a lot of different partners. They're willing to test on smaller budgets and they're willing to scale those up i- if they see results. So it's, it's not brand advertising, it's performance driven and that's what's driven the success of the Hustles and the Morning Brews of the world. And I think, you know, it's starting to seep into just all the publishing in general. Brand advertising is great, there's definitely a place for that, uh, you know, it, it does

• 26:49Speaker 02

  work, uh, and there's a reason that the, the Pizza Huts and the Pepsi Co's of the world are, are spending tens and hundreds of millions of dollars on, on brand advertising to, you know, make sure you remember to buy their product. But there's, there's a lot to be said for this more direct response, performance driven advertising where you're actually getting someone to click and buy a product. Uh, and in today's world with e-commerce as big as ever and just taking up, taking over, that's just gonna become bigger and bigger. So, uh, email is such a great medium for that. That's why email newsletters are going off, uh, like no other right now.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and, uh, you know, even, even bigger publishers, uh, you know, that kind of direct response type advertising or affiliate has become big for places like Hearst and BDG and, and Conde. Uh, so, you know, it's definitely, it's kind of changing, changing the world, changing the way people think about things.

• 27:50Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like a lot of the monetization was previously pioneered by musicians, celebrities, you know, maybe even athletes to some degree, a kind of these individual creators. Um, and now the big media companies are like learning from that, right? So if you were a YouTube creator, uh, and you were getting paid a dollar or $2 CPMs on YouTube and, you know, 80% of your videos end up getting demonetized anyways, like you just have to come up with other ways to make money. Um, and so whether it was merchandise, affiliates, like all that kind of stuff became, uh, really popular and very, very profitable for those folks. Uh, then you give it to a large media company and say like, hey, here's the blueprint. Well, they just have exponentially large audiences, right? And, and it's almost like they can kind of use those, uh, creators as like R and D for

• 28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  what the, the large media companies do. Does that seem, uh, kind of accurate from what you're seeing?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. There was a big moment when every publisher was trying to get into the influencer game and launch an influencer network or try to bring in influencers to partner with on these bigger brand campaigns, which is still very much a strategy that's alive and well, but it's become kind of table stakes. Everyone does it, so it's not really that differentiated. I think the bigger trend that we're seeing is just these individual creators becoming their own media brands and rivaling the old school traditional media companies. And, you know, thinking about, hey, if I'm a tech advertiser, you know, should I be spending my money on, you

• 29:22Speaker 02

  know, an old school tech site like Wired or Gizmodo, or should I just go with Marcus Brownlee? And, you know, he's got the audience and the engagement and, you know, there's more authenticity there. So I think that's, that's a big trend. I think it's going to be interesting to see how that develops. Do some of these individual creators become media empires in their own rights? And, you know, you think about like Martha Stewart Media, it's started as one person, and now that's a media empire, or Oprah. So are we going to kind of start to see that develop with these, these digital creators where they, they build out larger horizontal media companies?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Or, or are we going to see either kind of mergers or like closer joint ventures, tie-ups, where, where the creators kind of blend in with the media companies, or media companies get more focused on building out their own suite of creators as opposed to really focusing on just like their top level brand?

• 30:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What are the areas in media right now that you're spending a lot of time thinking about or kind of, you know, interested in seeing how it develops?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  So I love the email newsletter space. I think there's a ton of open field there. And it's, you know, there's a, there's kind of a debate going on in the world of are there, you know, have we reached peak saturation in newsletters? Is there, everyone's got a newsletter? Everyone's got a Substack. But the reality is that's in like the Twitter echo chamber, and the vast majority of people are not, not feeling like they're over inundated with newsletters, and probably haven't even heard of the, maybe even the top 10 people on Substack, let alone the other thousands of people who are, who are trying to, to, you know,

• 31:17Speaker 02

  kind of build there. And I think that's, that's kind of led to just a more, similar to podcasts, a more intimate way to connect with an audience and build community. And I think we're going to see a lot more growth and development and new ideas and new models. You know, there's, media is very cyclical. There's kind of a tried and true, there's a clear set of media categories that, that resonate with people that have existed since the dawn of time in media. And they just continually get like remixed and remade. Yeah. So you had the, you know, the magazine era, then the cable, cable TV era, then, then the, the digital publishing era.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Now, now we're seeing it with, with newsletters and creators. So I think, I think that's kind of the, the, the area that I'm really honed in on is what's going to be the inflection point for newsletters or creators? What are the enabling technologies that are really going to allow them to build their business, build their audience? And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm super curious to see how it all turns out.

• 32:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I have a friend who's got this theory. This is all great if you can hand somebody like the playbook, right? So like, hey, here's how you build these like personal media companies. The only problem is that most people aren't prolific enough to, to actually do it. How do you think about that in terms of the success that, you know, the, let's say, I don't know, Hundred, a thousand people or whatever are having, doing this right now. Is it playbook and you can teach that playbook to just anybody and they should be able to do this? Is it, no, you've got to have the right creator and they would have figured it out with or without the playbook? Uh, or maybe is it kind of both, like some people will be really, really good and really big because they know the playbook and they're prolific. But also that you'll have people who have a very niche audience and you know, it's only a hundred or 500 people.

• 33:09Anthony Pompliano?

  But in that specific, you know, niche of the world, they're the thing. How, how do you think about that?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  The, the number one thing in, in media and probably in anything in life is consistency. It's just showing up day in, day out, even when it's not working, even when you're discouraged. Even when, you know, no one's listening, but, but your mom or even maybe even your mom is tuned out. And that, I mean, that's, you can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't do that, it doesn't matter. And that is absolutely true. I, I'd be curious to, to hear, you know, how you've experienced this is building your audience and, and building out the, the, the podcast. It just takes time. It takes months and years of putting in the reps.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  And it's, it's more, but you will, you will find the audience that, that you, you resonate with, whether it's a hundred people or 10 million people. And I think that's, that's, that's the number one thing. And it's, it was true at Bleacher Report. It's true. It's true for the other brands I've built. And, and you know, I think a lot of people will just, they'll, they'll try it out and they'll give up after a certain amount of time. Cause it's not for them or yeah, they'll get discouraged or they'll get hooked into something else. Uh, but the, the people who stick with it, who really find that like clear niche and like, you know, the, the, the personal monopoly is David Perrell calls it.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Or whatever, whatever you want to call it. You find that, that intersection of interests that you're super passionate about, that there is, there's demand out there. There's a community that exists out there that, that wants it, but doesn't know it yet. And you'll, you deliver it for them. And that's, that's the key in, in building any of these businesses.

• 34:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I can definitely confirm that the consistency is by far the most important thing. And I actually, in some weird way, always tell people it's persistence. Because consistency just means like, hey, you're doing it every day. And that's actually like the correct term. But this word persistence is much more like, you've got to do it. Right? Like, if you're going to be the creator, you've got to be the persistent one. And that leads to the consistency. And so it's interesting to kind of watch, I think, as, you know, I'm sure you get the same thing I do. People come and they're like, hey, I want to do this. You're like, okay, here's the playbook. Like, go do it for six months.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Two weeks later, like, you never hear from them again. Right? And it's just kind of like, that is probably the number one killer of all of these is just literally people stop. Right? And could be for a legitimate reason, family, you know, some situation, whatever. Or it could just be like, they didn't see results right away. Hey, I thought I was supposed to have thousands of, you know, readers or followers or views or whatever. I don't have that. It's like, it's not working and I just give up.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It doesn't make sense.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. And, and look, there's, there's, there's both a qualitative and a quantitative reason that you need to put in that many reps. Just by doing it, you get better. You know, you, you recognize your flaws or you, you, you just develop a better, better, better sense, better skillset. You have better sensibilities and, and it takes time and repetition to do that. And then the other part is every, yeah, everything you create becomes a data point. And if you only, if you only do it a few times or do it haphazardly, it's hard to really draw any conclusions from,

• 36:36Speaker 02

  oh, people really liked this one thing I wrote or this one podcast or video I created, but they didn't like this one. It's hard to know kind of what the reason is. But if you develop it over time, if you do it enough, you start to see patterns and you start to understand, this is how I'm really resonating with this audience. This is what they, they really, really get and, and like, and, and this is what I can uniquely deliver to them. And you just need to do that hundreds of times, thousands of times, maybe, in order to get enough, a large enough data set to really start to make some of those, those observations.

• 37:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it also feels in some weird way a comfort level as well. So it's like you can kind of learn to all stuff, but also it's very uncomfortable for people to write or to tweet a lot or to sit in front of a camera like, like whether you're a TV anchor or you're literally just on YouTube on your webcam, like there is this comfort level. And I think that one of the things that has been fascinating to me is like, I can now see somebody on camera and immediately tell you whether they've done it a bunch or not. Right. And you just kind of pick up on this whole idea of like, it's one thing to like, do an interview. And then it's a whole nother thing to like, sit there with the camera just on you with no editing and be entertaining,

• 37:52Anthony Pompliano?

  or to be to kind of hold people's attention. And to me, like, that is the biggest argument for just like, you gotta do it for a long period of time. Because like you're saying, like, anything else, you just have to improve at it. Right. And it just feels like that's kind of a lost piece of it. Everyone focuses on like, what am I saying? But if you actually look at like, the best people, it's how you say it. It's when you say it, it's delivery. I mean, like, every comedian, right? If you go talk to them about like, stand up comedy, they'll say, look, the joke is half what we're saying. But it's everything else that makes it, you know, just as funny. And I think that's what kind of creators and people in these like, personal media companies are learning right now.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, you hear all the stories. Everyone's heard the story about the stand up comics who did open mics for years and had no audience and everything fell flat. And they just, you know, did the reps over and over again. And they they built their persona and they built their delivery. And that's, that's the perfect, perfect, you know, kind of story for this is that you have to do it. And I think a lot of people worry about like, what if I'm not good? You know, what if people don't like what I have to say? I had those worries. I still have those worries when I go and do something like this. And I just wrote something on my site about imposter syndrome and dealing with that. And I think it's something that we all feel. But you think about, okay, you know, maybe it was Jerry Seinfeld had a, you know,

• 39:12Speaker 02

  would bomb for years and years before he achieved success. Does anyone go back and dig up those old routines of Seinfeld? Felds to to pick them apart. No, no one cares. No one cares about the the early mistakes that you make. No one cares about, you know, that your your writing or your videos weren't as polished as they could be. It's just, you know, it's part of the process. And I think if anything, people respond to that you're authentically trying to do something and you have something to say that, you know, you're you're you're kind of building it as you go along, just like everyone else. And that's that's a way to to build relationships and build community. And that's that's how the good stuff happens.

• 39:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. As you're kind of looking forward, what about audio? We haven't talked too much about that. Like, how do you see audio and podcasts playing into a lot of this?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I mean, audio is something that I don't I don't have a I don't have an answer for. Like, I'm still figuring out. I'd love to know your your what you learned through it. It's it's I would say among the most challenging mediums to build an audience for, at least in my experience. It definitely requires just putting in tons of reps. It's it's a very, very saturated space. Not unlike what people are saying about email newsletters. But, you know, I think there, at least in my experience, I know

• 40:39Speaker 02

  the playbook for how you build an audience around email, whereas audio, I found to be much more challenging to really break through. And I think, you know, part of it is putting in the reps and leveraging audience that you have elsewhere to to be able to bring up people onto a podcast. I'd love to learn how you built yours. I know, like, we've we have some podcasts at Inverse and Input that we've launched over this year. And they're, I think they're great and they're, but they're, you know, we have 25 plus million people visiting those sites every month and and a lot of people subscribe to our email newsletters. We're still trying to peel away people by the dozens to come listen to the podcast and just get them to to subscribe.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  And I know, like, you know, Morning Brew has has had similar experiences where they've got this huge email list and, you know, they've had challenges building out their podcasts. It just, it's definitely a long term thing. I think it's a great medium. And, you know, there, once you have someone, that's a super valuable relationship. But, you know, I think the, you know, the the growth and and kind of the the strategy around it's still still a little bit of a mystery to me.

• 41:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I am. I always go back and forth on this because it's one of these things where like when you've got a massive, you know, take Morning Break, you've got 2 million plus people on the email list. And when they're like, hey, the podcast, like cross selling is really hard. And what I think ends up happening is like, it's also how hard you push it. Like for me, because it's my name, I can push it really hard, right? But hey, if you like what I write, like, come listen to this interview, right? And the common denominator there is a person versus a brand saying like, hey, if you like our one product, like you'll like our other product, right? It's a little bit different. And so the other hard part is, it's very hard to be data driven, because you actually

• 42:32Anthony Pompliano?

  don't know in many cases, how many subscribers you have.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:35Anthony Pompliano?

  All you see is how many downloads you get, right?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you like, people forget that it's harder to do this stuff when you don't have access to the same information that you're used to on page views, emails, you know, these other platforms. And so definitely, there's days where either we, there's tons of downloads, or there's not a lot of downloads. And we're kind of scratching our head like, huh, you know, why do you think that happened? And, you know, everyone starts throwing out their opinions, and you start realizing like, there's no science going on here, right? Like, this is, this is complete estimation, or guesstimations in terms of what's going on. And you realize very quickly, like, hey, it's hard to grow if everyone's just sitting around guessing all the time, right? Whereas with email or anything like, you know, if you do something,

• 43:23Anthony Pompliano?

  it worked or it didn't work. It had the intended impact or not. And so I think that that's like a piece that people who aren't doing audio forget about a lot.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Totally, totally. Yeah, you don't know the subscribers, you don't know necessarily how long people are listening for, or what they're really enjoying or not. There's a lot of mystery there. And so you kind of have to fall back on, just keep doing it, and keep making it better. And over time, or, you know, there's, there's people, I think the biggest success that people have had, it's been leveraging multiple podcasts, or guests, or, you know, things like that, you know, which can be a great strategy. But, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a lot more of a...

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Anyone's guess type medium.

• 44:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What are you doing now?

• 44:14Speaker 02

  So I'm at BDG Media. They acquired Inverse a little over a year ago. So Inverse is a company I started about five years ago after selling Bleacher Report. Similar model, similar playbook, focused on science and innovation and geek culture. And we were acquired by BDG, run by my old co-founder, Brian Goldberg from Bleacher Report. They built out a portfolio of brands, starting with Bustle, down to the Zo Report, Romper, Elite Daily. And they brought in Inverse, along with Mike.com, and another brand we launched called Input, to build out this new portfolio of brands called the Culture and Innovation Portfolio. So we focus, we're the side of the company that focuses

• 44:59Speaker 02

  more on tech and culture and some of these other topics. So I've been building that out. I've been working with Josh Topolsky, the founder of The Verge, and famed from tech media on growing that and continuing to build out Inverse, which has just grown tremendously since we joined the company.

• 45:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome. Where can people find you on the internet?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  So I just launched my own personal site, davenimitz.com. Check it out. It's my first, I've launched big websites and done big launches. It's my first small, little, personal project in forever, probably since like the early days of Bleacher Report. And it was just a way for me to kind of get in touch with this new brand of creator-driven media and not necessarily throw my hat in the ring, but experience it firsthand. And I've been writing weekly essays on everything from the strategies that we used at Bleacher Report, to lessons from the media world, to

• 46:11Speaker 02

  just general personal essays. So yeah, davenimitz.com and then @davenimitz on Twitter.

• 46:18Anthony Pompliano?

  It's fantastic, man. And the essays are very good. So please keep writing them.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 46:23Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a bunch of people who are learning from them. So from a selfish standpoint, it's fantastic that you're doing that. I ask everyone the same two questions as I go to wrap up, and you'll get to ask me one. First is, what's the most important book you've ever read?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Oof. Um, I have to say Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. I'm sure that's probably a popular choice, but definitely had a big impact on me and and how I think about the world. And, you know, I've been in my, my, my recent more adult days, you know, doing a lot of reflection in the quarantine world and trying to think about, you know, how to have the right mindset and right approach to everything from raising a family to pursuing new goals. And that's, that's a book that just helped me stay very, very centered in a lot of that.

• 47:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that answer. Second question is more fun. Aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely believer. There it's happening. I mean, it's on the 2020 bingo card, so we've only got a couple of months left. I was very pumped when there was the news like a month or so ago that they found possible evidence of alien life on Venus, the, you know, the underdog for, for, for harboring life in the solar system. So I hope we learn more about that. I'm, I'm planning a cross-country road trip with my family for later this year. And Roswell, New Mexico is definitely on the list of stops. I made sure of that. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm all in on, on the aliens. I hope they come soon.

• 48:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Do, do your kids ever ask about the aliens? Like, do they understand Roswell? And kind of, is there excitement there? Or are they basically gonna be like, Dad, why are we driving so far out of the way?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, no, my five-year-old, she'll be very into it. She loves space and astronauts, and she's a little afraid of black holes. So we have to kind of tiptoe around those. But I'm sure she will be very pumped and, and we'll probably have to buy a bunch of alien memorabilia while we're there.

• 48:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. What, what one question you have for me to finish up?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  What's, what do you see for the, the future of the, the pomp media brand? What's, what's the, what's the long-term strategy of, of what you've been building? Where would you love to take it?

• 48:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Products. I mean, I, I think that, uh, there's, um, a ton of people who, and I've talked about it before, like the Joe Rogan deal or else, you know, other types of deals and they're like, oh, you know, I can't believe they did, uh, that type of licensing deal or whatever. To me, it's like, that stuff is the small details that don't matter nearly as much as just like, how are you monetizing? Right? And how you monetize? It's ultimately a vertically integrated kind of full stack, uh, build in reverse almost this product company, but you do it by first building out the marketing and finding the customers and then it comes much, much easier to actually go and build products that get

• 49:42Anthony Pompliano?

  product market fit. Right? Like I, I've always said, like, the idea that you build the product and then you go find the customers, like, that's a little, uh, weird, right? But it's been the best way for the longest time. Now the barrier to entry in terms of building an audience is so low that you can actually go build the audience and then figure out the products. Right? So I think that, uh, I, I think that's, you're going to see more and more of that. I, I don't necessarily have like some grand plan, but, but I just think like, that's an interesting, uh, kind of thread to pull on. And I think more, more and more people, uh, kind of in my position will start figuring it out. Obviously the really, really large creators, you know, if you consider Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, like, like those folks have done it. But even look at like a David Dobrik, right? He's got a, a mobile app now.

• 50:28Anthony Pompliano?

  You look at Mr. Beast, things like that. And you kind of just, again, it just trickles on down to, uh, the more and more niche you go, I think just more niche products, right?

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, definitely agree. Love that. I mean, I even on the media publisher side, I knew the guys at Futurism.com, you know, those guys, and they launched the Gravity Blanket. And I mean, that became the entire business. They ended up selling off the media business just to focus on Gravity Blanket. And of course, you're seeing that with big creators and celebrities. And yeah, I think you build the community, you build the audience, you build the relationship, then you use that as your R and D to figure out what they want, how you can serve them. And I think, yeah, there's, that strategy works. It works.

• 51:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Works very, very well. Listen, Dave, thank you so much for doing this. I think people really, really enjoy kind of all the content you're putting out. And obviously, you've got the great experience of building multiple media brands in different environments. So I think people will find this super valuable and will have to do it again in the future.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Thanks, Paul. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.