Pod Insights Decoder Can Puck’s CEO reinvent the news business for the influencer age? About this episode Sarah Personette is the CEO of Puck, a media company that's been around for about five years. Puck hires big star reporters who write newsletters as part of a subscription bundle. Those newsletters are often must-reads in their industries, and those reporters get equity in Puck and a share of the company's revenue.
It's a place where the financial incentives of the influencer economy crash right into the rigors of traditional journalism — and as regular Decoder listeners know, I have a lot of questions about how those two things work (or don't) in the modern media landscape.
Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.
Links:
Puck buys Air Mail in deal valued at $16M | The Wrap
The man yelling ‘iceberg’ on the Hollywood Titanic | New York Times
Sarah Personette joins news startup Puck as CEO | Variety
Are we past peak newsletter? | New York Times
Two new newsletters bet they’ve got Hollywood covered | LA Times
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Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.
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Transcript 12,527 words · 13 speakers
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1:24 Speaker 03 Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking with Sarah Percinet, the CEO of Puck, a fancy newish media company that's been around for about five years now. Puck has a really interesting model. The company hires big stars and gives them newsletters that are all mostly part of a subscription funnel. And these reporters and their newsletters are often must-reads in their categories. Everyone in Hollywood reads Puck's Matt Bellany, for instance. Those reporters then get equity in Puck and a share of the company's revenue. The idea here is to combine the financial incentives of the personality-based influencer economy with the rigor of old-school journalism. You'll hear Sarah say, "Journalists were the original influencers," which is basically Puck's catchphrase.
2:09 Speaker 03 And if you're a Decoder listener, you'll know that I have a lot of questions about that and how that fits into our modern media landscape. See, in my view, the creator and influencer economy work very differently than journalism. If you really look at the business of most creators... Well, they all kind of look like little ad agencies, doing brand deals and negotiating rates directly in a way that has always, to me, felt incompatible with journalism. But to be clear, I don't begrudge anyone this reality. That's where the money is, especially since the big platforms that distribute content tend to pay very little for it, if anything at all. And since the biggest audiences are on those platforms, finding a way to bridge the gap is basically the challenge in media. How do you find new people who are willing to support your work without accidentally giving your work away for free on platforms that don't seem to value it very much?
2:54 Speaker 03 Now, I've had versions of this conversation with lots of media people over the years. Everyone from the CEO of The New York Times, to the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, to streaming service executives, digital media folks, and of course, a bunch of creators. Usually, these conversations are pretty loose and pretty fun. Because, well, I'm also in the media, and all of us share these same basic problems. I was really hoping to get a fresh view on this from Sarah, because before she became the CEO of Puck, she actually worked for the platforms, first at Facebook and then for Twitter. So I asked her a lot of questions about Puck's business and how it operates within the platform environment. I have to admit, though, I'm not sure I got the answers I was looking for. Have a listen and let us know what you think. We really do read all the emails. Okay, Puck's CEO, Sarah Personette. Here we go.
3:47 Speaker 03 Sarah Personette, you're the CEO of Puck. Welcome to Decoder. Thank you, Neelai. What a pleasure to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you. I have a million thoughts about the creator economy, journalism, and the information ecosystem. You're a fascinating person to talk to about all that. Because you worked at the big platforms, you worked at Twitter and Facebook, and now you're at Puck, which is a media company that has an interesting perspective on being integrated with the creator and influencer world. I just want to start at the start. You've been the CEO of Puck for a little over two years now? Correct, about two and a half. Before that, again, you were at Facebook and Twitter during some periods of pretty rapid change there. You spent a minute at Refinery29. Quickly describe your experiences at the platform companies.
4:29 Speaker 04 Very different, actually. I think when I first started at Facebook, that was back in around 2009, 2010. And so the company was around 1,000 people. And even though that sounds like a large company, it actually was more of a startup and operated with a startup mentality. You used to hear Zuck say a lot, move fast and break things, and then fast forward three or four years post-IPO. And it was move fast and build good infrastructure. So just even in that that small amount of time, sort of seeing the maturation of the company, the growth of the company, it moved from being a singular big blue app to also
5:10 Speaker 04 being a family of apps and services, where we had acquired Instagram, we had to integrate that appropriately. We spun out Messenger, actually, into a singular application. We acquired WhatsApp. We acquired Atlas and used that as sort of our measurement tool and foundation. And then with that, you also had this massive technological shift, which is actually really applicable, I think, to the rise of the creator economy and sort of the impact on publishers and media companies that I know we'll get into. But during the time that I was at Facebook, which was over about an eight-year period, we also had the
5:50 Speaker 04 shift from desktop to mobile. And that was a really profound technological change that had an impact, I think, certainly on employees and the way that the company was run, and also had a significant impact on the way that businesses operated, the way that they became mobile first, the way that they interacted and communicated with consumers in a totally new and direct-to-consumer way. So that was sort of my Facebook experience. And then you take the Twitter experience, where I was the chief customer officer for about five years, through to the sale of the company to the current ownership.
6:30 Speaker 04 And that was really interesting because the pattern recognition of having gone through so many different stages of growth and to zoom out for a second, when you think about organizational change and organizational change theory, there is a belief that systems, structures, and processes break in threes and tens. So when a company grows from three people to 10 people, 10 people to 30 people, 30 people to 100 people, et cetera, that those those systems, tools, and structures essentially need to be rewritten. And within the Twitter sphere, the Twitter ecosystem, I came in where we actually had the opportunity
7:12 Speaker 04 to sort of rewrite a lot of those systems and structures and really rebuild the ad tech stack. We had the opportunity to really think holistically about how we were serving the public conversation in each and every engagement. We also were able to really think through how do we serve and deliver value for our advertisers when they're trying to launch a brand or connect with what's happening in the world. That shift, I think, was really powerful because the the evolution and the stages in gating that I experienced in the Facebook world were some of the things and the best practices I was able to bring to my Twitter experience, which was just truly one of the greatest honors of my life
7:56 Speaker 04 was to be able to lead that be a leader in that company during that time.
8:00 Speaker 03 You mentioned Twitter's current ownership. Obviously, it's X now. It's owned by Elon Musk. You left when Elon bought it. What was that like?
8:06 Speaker 04 Excellent question. I can't really speak about the current state of the company for several reasons, but what I can share with you is that during that acquisition, which was obviously a very, you know, public acquisition, you know, I talk about it being one of the greatest honors of my life, and truly it was. In so many ways, we live in a very volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. And that acronym is not by mistake. VUCA is actually a type of leadership structure that I've used in almost the entirety of my career to help lead teams. And during that time,
8:49 Speaker 04 I think my team was around 2,000 people around the world. Being able to communicate with them around what was happening, why it was happening, how we help customers understand the value of the acquisition and the reason to stay on the platform. Being able to navigate those types of changes is something that makes every single individual just a much better leader. And as those folks have both stayed at the company and as clients have continued to stay on with the company, as well as those folks that have moved on to other roles inside of the industry.
9:34 Speaker 04 I know that they look at that time and I think they look at the way that I try to communicate with real deep transparency and empathy and sort of surround things around evidence-based decisioning that has stayed with them and made them stronger leaders over the course of time. So really just a powerful, powerful part of my career.
9:57 Speaker 03 Wait, can you say what that acronym is again?
9:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's called VUCA. And the origins of VUCA actually come from the National War College following the Cold War. There was a realization that there's no longer this sort of stability in a bipolar world and that when you were thinking about how to structure for like a new system of enemy, if you will, that you needed to be more planful and more capable of navigating within a highly volatile,
10:40 Speaker 04 again, very complex, ambiguous world. And so I've sort of taken that philosophy.
10:49 Speaker 04 And applied that at significant moments in time in my career with my teams, because I think if you're operating in a world, in a VUCA world, and you're leading in a VUCA world, you're always really mindful of establishing a plan, communicating clearly with each other, developing trust inside of your organization so that when things like Cambridge Analytica occur or things like a public acquisition occur, that you're ready for it. And those things can be large and globally proliferated. And those things can be really small
11:31 Speaker 04 because in so many ways, I think work in business is the most personal thing. And how we manage ourselves is a big part of how we also collectively manage a team.
11:42 Speaker 03 I do like the idea that your approach to the Twitter acquisition by Elon Musk was to compare it to Cold War bipolar power dynamics.
11:50 Speaker 04 Not at all a comparison. VUCA I have been using well before. I actually was introduced to the concept from the CEO of Build-A-Bear, Sharon John. She is just, she's an exceptional human and an exceptional leader. And she, at some conference that she was asked at, she was introduced to it and I used to sit on her board. And she brought that back to a meeting. And I was like, this is something that really certainly has had staying power for me.
12:21 Speaker 03 Okay, now I'm just dying to know why the Build-A-Bear CEO thinks that she needs Cold War era political philosophy. But we will do that episode. The producers will book that another time.
12:30 Speaker 04 You should book her as a guest. She is phenomenal.
12:34 Speaker 03 You mentioned the idea that some customers stayed on. I actually just, I'm curious about this. Right, your roles have been more advertising focused, I'd say broadly, right? Making people spend money on the platforms. Elon's approach to advertisers who had concern about that platform after he bought it was to sue them and to threaten them and to tear down their brand safety initiatives. That's all stuff that, you know, in the administration that you were a part of, Twitter actually built up, right? That in Facebook at some point was a big part of, right? The idea that we're going to have a wide open spread of content from our users. We will build the tools to make sure you're in the right places at the right time. You're not next to the bad stuff. We love content moderation to make sure that people don't see the bad stuff at high rates. That's all basically been torn down, particularly on X, but even maybe on Facebook.
13:20 Speaker 03 How do you see that world playing out? Because the idea of a company like Puck or any other premium media organization, the pitch to advertisers is like, we're special. And that's, that's bad. Like, it's very bluntly, like, that's noise and it's full of garbage and they're tearing down the things that make your brand special and you should come over here where you have a smaller audience that cares for the kind of premium journalism we make. But you built all that up and now it's being torn down and now you're at Puck trying to make that sale. How do you feel about all that stuff being torn down?
13:51 Speaker 04 Well, I can't comment on the current state of the company, but what I would love to zoom out and, and talk about is, I think some of the technological shifts that impacted and have impacted where we are today as a talent-led journalism organization. And so I'll, I'll kind of start you with these, these four numbers or five numbers. Thirty-eight, fourteen, seven, four, and months. Thirty-eight is the number of years that it took radio to hit 100 million listeners. Fourteen is the number of years it took TV to hit 100 million viewers. Seven is 100 million for the desktop internet. Four is the migration
14:33 Speaker 04 of 100 million to mobile. And then months is the adoption of AI by 100 million people. So now the reason why I bring that up and, and why I think those numbers matter and the progression of how they get incrementally and deeply smaller is because we have lived through in our lifetime and certainly in our careers, some of the fastest technological shifts that have ever occurred. Now, why, like, you might be like, that's, that's great. And yes, you did, the techn, the different platforms go through that, but why does it matter for news and media? Well, if you go back to the 1970s, which was the industrial
15:15 Speaker 04 media model, you had a really interesting, very neat landscape. You had 90% of viewership for news. Was concentrated in ABC, CBS and NBC. You had local newspapers thriving, like absolutely thriving from a circulation perspective. And it was actually a good business model to be in. And you had trust at an all time high. Trust was at, I think, like 72% when Gallup was doing the, the research at the time. And so that's particularly interesting because distribution was really scarce.
15:53 Speaker 04 It was quite controlled, but you also had a lot of these very clear shared experiences between people. And when I walked through those, those changes and those shifts from a technological perspective, the first thing that happened was really the rise of the internet. And the, the internet and, and digital disruption didn't just, you know, dismantle journalism, it actually rebuilt and reshaped journalism sort of layer by layer. And I think that, that's only the first shift because that's where new voices emerged. That's where local stories traveled faster.
16:35 Speaker 04 I'm not sure if you're familiar with the, the Panama Papers, but that was like a great example of the internet and journalism at its best. You had reporters from multiple different countries coming together to report around corruption. And, but at the same time, you've sort of had some, some challenges. You had this, the system starting to break. That very capital intensive world now no longer was capital intensive. With a keyboard and with access to wifi, you could be a journalist and that was awesome. But you also had scarcity disappear. You had attention fragment.
17:13 Speaker 04 You had sort of the gatekeepers, the editors of the world's move from being capable of editing to, to really editing being dominated by algorithms. And so the, you know, it's just like quick numbers during a 15 year period, 2,500 local newspapers closed and 36,000 newsroom jobs disappeared.
17:38 Speaker 04 So that that sort of rebuilding was just starting to get under control and then mobile disruption occurred and now all of a sudden information is in our pockets. And that is there's so much power in that. But what also comes with that is that now news and media, which used to be invited into our homes for, you know, the 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock news, became a little bit more disruptive and interruptive. And then rise of AI, which has experienced the steepest acceleration curve out of any
18:19 Speaker 04 technological shift and presents many powerful and very positive aspects of what it can do for workflow, what it can do for operational excellence. I mean, there's there are many positives, but at the same time, there was, I think, with this another challenge in that if anything, any object, any article can be created by something that is artificial, and then who can we trust? Because trust, I think, like 2023 Gallup did another poll and trust had declined from that 72% in 1970 in the 1970s to 32%.
19:03 Speaker 04 So very seemingly obvious, the answer to who we can trust is people. And that is why for Puck, being a talent-led organization and John Kelly, the founder of our company, you know, he had this thesis years ago. I don't know if he went through the technological shifts that that sort of my mind goes through, but he knew that journalists were the original influencer. And he knew that in order to really, I think, reclaim trust for the reader, it required putting talent at the center for so many different reasons.
19:48 Speaker 04 But but in particular, I think that reclaiming of trust was really, really important. And so The now, when, this is why Puck's, you know, talent-first model, I think, is so influential and why we actually see others trying to copy it, is because when you hear from Matt Bellany, you know that he has deep-seated relationships in Hollywood and in entertainment. You know he is extremely well-sourced. You also know that because we have a primary distribution model of newsletters, you know that you can respond to his email and he's going to respond back to you.
20:32 Speaker 03 Wait, is he gonna respond? He responds to every single email?
20:35 Speaker 04 I mean, I can't speak for him. I don't have access to his inbox, but he prides himself on both listening to all of his readership as well as responding to his leadership. And it's not just Matt. So, you know, within the Puck ecosystem, we have eight different franchises that serve the professional elite. We have the entertainment franchise under Matt Bellany. We have Lauren Sherman, who leads our fashion content and our fashion franchise. Marian Maniker, who leads our art content. We have Bill Kohan, who leads
21:14 Speaker 04 all of our finance content. Ian Kreitzberg, who we just brought on last year for the introduction of our AI and technology franchise, who is exceptional. All of these individuals are people who have points of view and relationships and sourcing capabilities that put the personality and the person at the center, so that our subscribers, that direct reader relationship, can really thrive in a high-trust community. And that's, you know, I think the story of
21:53 Speaker 04 how we got to a talent-led business and a talent-led business model where journalists are at the center and equity incentives are aligned. Each of our journalists have ownership inside of the company, which is not anything that used to exist in legacy media before. That is a really, really powerful sentiment and a really powerful point in
22:20 Speaker 04 I think where to the, you know, the top of the question, all of these technological shifts have really driven to where we are today and, and why I wanted to be CEO of this company. Because I, you don't have a lot of CEOs in media companies that come from technology companies, but I, I think the pattern recognition that comes in that scale and the influence of what we tried to do inside of those companies matter so much today and what we're designing.
22:49 Speaker 03 We have to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.
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25:04 Speaker 03 Welcome back. I'm talking with Puck CEO Sarah Personette about the structure of the company. You've kind of gotten to my structure question. I ask everybody on Decoder to describe the structure of the company. It seems like you've got John Kelly. He's the editor in chief?
25:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
25:17 Speaker 03 And so he operates deputy editors, it sounds like, in a bunch of verticals. Do they have reporters?
25:22 Speaker 04 Yes. So I'll zoom out. So John Kelly is the both editor in chief, as well as the founder of the company. And he is truly just one of the smartest individuals that I've ever worked with. And I say that having worked with Jack Dorsey and Cheryl and so many others. He is, she's really exceptional. So he oversees the entirety of our content organization. That's inclusive of Puck as a media brand, and that's inclusive of Airmail as a media brand.
25:56 Speaker 03 That's your day acquisition.
25:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we acquired Airmail back at the end of October. So I know you'll have questions around that. But Airmail was run by editor in chief Julia Vitale, who grew up underneath Graydon. She is absolutely exceptional, and she's come over to lead that team.
26:14 Speaker 03 That's Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair who started Airmail. Okay.
26:17 Speaker 04 Correct.
26:18 Speaker 03 Just making sure our audience, like, one of the things that's really interesting here is we have a young audience, a big audience. I'm not sure that they know what Puck is or what that history is.
26:26 Speaker 04 I love that.
26:26 Speaker 03 And I think this is one of the bigger questions I have for you as a whole, right? This is a pretty storied legacy that you're trading on. Buying Airmail is a big deal that I do want to talk about because it was Graydon Carter, because that was his venture after Vanity Fair. I read his memoir. It was very fun. But I know my audience doesn't know any of these things. And actually, the dynamic between do I follow Matt Bellany, or do I care about Puck as an institution? I think is one of the most challenging dynamics in all of media. And I will tell you, I actually disagree with a few things you've said already. One, I think it's the platforms that have torn down the institutions. I don't think that they are a good partner for any media brand. And I think the idea that journalists and influencers are the same or should be the same. It's actually quite dangerous.
27:11 Speaker 03 And I would actually, I would pull those ideas as far apart as I can. Because I think journalism is a process. It's a way of working.
27:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
27:20 Speaker 03 Being an influencer is a way of making money. And like, those things are not aligned. And I'm very curious how you can pull all of these ideas together and try to have the cost structure of the old way, the prestige of the old way, the Grayden Carter way, with the economics that are pulling everyone towards integrated brand deals and influencer world. Because it doesn't matter if the journalists are influencers. If they're not doing the direct brand integrations, the influencers are actually doing to support that level of work.
27:49 Speaker 04 I appreciate your disagreement and a mix for a very good podcast. I would disagree with your disagreement. The, the thing that I would say is challenged in legacy media. And you can't really say that legacy media had it figured out. Because as you look around, we've seen just constant layoffs happening inside of the industry for the last, you know, five to 10 years. And Dylan Byers, who runs our media content, has written about it. One of the challenges with that is that the majority of layoffs were not coming from the sales teams, were not coming from the operations side. The people that were being laid off were the people that made the product.
28:33 Speaker 04 The people that influenced society, the people that helped to create a world that ideally would define what trust looked like in journalism. And that was the journalist. So for me, on the technology side, when I think of heroes inside of the organization, it's usually the product and engineering folks. But for whatever reason, the way that, that media grew up, it wasn't the, the people that were making the product. It wasn't the journalists. It was actually, like, those were the people that were ultimately being let go.
29:08 Speaker 04 And so where I think
29:11 Speaker 03 Right, but I just But the reason they were being let go is because they cost money. And there was no money associated with their product. Because their distribution was torn down by platforms. Right, like Like my biggest problem in my cost structure. And my reporters know, I say this to them all the time. Is that I pay them money and then they tweet for free. Right, this is like the dynamic in every newsroom in the world. Is that we give our work to other people's distribution for free all the time. And I know that you have a subscription model and that's different. But that is specifically the dynamic that has led to the hollowing out of newsrooms. Is that we don't control our distribution.
29:50 Speaker 04 Can we put the platform piece to the side for one second and just
29:53 Speaker 03 We can try, but I'm really not sure how.
29:56 Speaker 04 No, no, I will, I will address that, but I, I, I don't. Because I don't think those two things are connected. Um, and the reason for that is we do have a subscriber based model. We're, um, our subscription revenue grew over 50% last year. And that is really critical. We do control distribution. And our journalists are not a cost center. The way that we look at each franchise is thinking through the economics of each of those franchises. And we do a business, biannual business review with each of those reporters. Who anchor each of our franchises.
30:37 Speaker 04 So the operating leverage that we bring into this system still allows for this, the, the job to be done. The, the job to be done is not, and I, I wouldn't define influencers and creators only as those that do like integrated brand partnerships, but like
30:54 Speaker 03 But that's how they all make their money.
30:56 Speaker 04 That, that might be how they make their money, but Matt Bellany is very influential in the Hollywood, in the world of Hollywood. Because he is reporting on it. And that influence matters, but also the relationship that he has. This is why I started out by saying he goes so deep into his sourcing. And this is not, that's an illustration of all of our journalists. But when you are in that industry, you know, you have to read him because he is reporting on the inside story. He's giving you access to information that you would not normally have access to. And, and he does that with a high margin business.
31:39 Speaker 04 So, yes, our, our revenue model is, is twofold. You know, we have a subscriber revenue model and we have a commercial revenue model and advertising model. Those things like that, that you're describing, that you can't have a, a profitable business that is talent-led and journalist-led, I, I would disagree with. I think that is, is absolutely possible. And that is the reason why each of our journalists have equity and ownership in the company is because we want them to be incentivized to make hard decisions around cost.
32:23 Speaker 04 Like we're, we, we are very diligent in those things. We also have the luxury of being four and a half years old and not having been built, you know, for the last 20 years. And so that's also why I, I consistently say I, it is again, a real honor to be able to lead this company and to lead it through significant advancements in growth from a revenue perspective, from a content perspective, from a talent perspective, and then also from a subscriber growth perspective. We just hit over 100,000 paying subscribers. We have, you know, upwards of a million, you know, folks overall that are reading the publication. And that, that's significant.
33:07 Speaker 04 To get to your platform piece.
33:09 Speaker 03 Wait, actually, can I just ask you, the last public number from 2025 was 45,000. So the 65,000 is from the Airmail acquisition?
33:21 Speaker 04 The
33:21 Speaker 03 I'm sorry, 55,000 is from the Airmail acquisition to get to over 100?
33:25 Speaker 04 It is the last public number we announced with Brian Morrissey and the rebooting. I announced that we had hit 100,000. We don't break out actually the difference between because that 45,000, I think, was a 2024 number. But with the acquisition of Airmail, we well exceed 100,000.
33:45 Speaker 03 Okay, so you can just kind of back into it. You had one public number, you made an acquisition, you had a much, you had a big jump to another public number.
33:53 Speaker 03 Is, does Airmail have the same structure? Do they have equity? Do they have a revenue share?
33:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, so right now with the acquisition, we're working through all of the employee-based comp for equity and ownership. It's all one collective company and all one same compensation structure.
34:11 Speaker 03 Airmail was a brand, right? Grayden Carter is a brand person. Vanity Fair was a brand. You were not really supposed to know who Grayden Carter was unless you were the sort of person who needed to know who Grayden Carter was. And then he was very important. Airmail was kind of built in that model, right? How many people worked at Airmail?
34:25 Speaker 04 I think we have 45, 45 to 50 people from Airmail and 45 to 50 people from Puck. We're about 50/50 in terms of talent overall. Although with the integration as, just for your listener base, as you do an acquisition, one thing that you think about is the post-merger integration and how you bring two companies together, how you think about centers of excellence, where you might have four finance people on one side and you have four finance people on the other side. So we did a lot of that synergy work and
35:06 Speaker 03 Usually when people say synergy work, they mean layoffs. Did you lay people off?
35:09 Speaker 04 We laid off a few people from the Airmail side and a few people from the Puck side. Yes, absolutely. We did. We were really thoughtful and really careful. We communicated that within the first 24 hours of the acquisition and reviewed where we felt like we had too many people within one team and then where we would port folks over from either side of the business.
35:37 Speaker 03 And then the, so the total split between the talent who's supposed to go out and be the face of the company and make all the money and the management is what now?
35:44 Speaker 04 Management, we have nine people on our leadership team. And then we have across our journalists and editorial teams, probably 40. And then maybe, yeah, 40, 40 to 50. And then the rest are in sales, marketing, our technology team. We have a very small strategy and ops team.
36:11 Speaker 03 One of the reasons I'm asking this is, you know, I have friends who've left big media jobs to go to Substack or Ghost or whatever. And then I have friends who have left Substack to go to another email provider because they think Substack's 10% is too much. They're not getting the value out of Substack. You're taking more than 10%. Like I just describing that overhead for an individual journalist, that's a lot to pay into to support a sales team or whatever else might you might have compared to the revenue you might get back. How do you justify the split you're taking from the individual reporters?
36:40 Speaker 04 From a compensation perspective, and we do on an annual basis, we look at our, our comps on compensation relative to the industry and our journalists and editors.
36:52 Speaker 03 Wait, the industry is the media industry or the Substack industry or the Instagram influencer industry?
36:57 Speaker 04 The media industry. And our comps are well higher than at or very much above the current comps. And then also our journalists, but all of our employees have equity and ownership in the company. So I feel very confident that the way we pay our people is very much aligned and incentivized with the holistic company. I think on the, the Substack side, so.
37:28 Speaker 03 Wait, can I just ask about that equity? Are you paying dividends on equity? Or is that just paper money?
37:33 Speaker 04 No, we are not because we're not a public company right now.
37:37 Speaker 03 I'm asking what the equity is worth. I, I'm the person who owns a bunch of paper equity in a media company. It's great. Sometimes I think about it. It doesn't pay the bills, right? Like, does it pay the bills for your people?
37:47 Speaker 04 Well, I appreciate that, not at the current moment, but the value and especially with the recent acquisition, but what everything was built on prior to that has made the value of the equity significantly higher. And as someone who was also at another company pre-IPO, I believe in ownership as a component part of a compensation structure. For your listeners, I would also encourage them to really consider that as well. There is a ton of value to think about your TTC, your total compensation package. So Neely, while I appreciate your point, I just want to make sure you're guiding your young listeners.
38:31 Speaker 03 Sure. I mean, if you're gonna get equity and it's gonna pay off a huge number, you need an exit event. What's your exit event look like?
38:37 Speaker 04 That's a really good question. And right now, we are completely focused on continuing to grow the successful company that we've built thus far and feel really good about that. So no exit strategy at the current point.
38:50 Speaker 03 Right. So I just wanna stay focused on this for one second.
38:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:54 Speaker 03 We're saying we're doing better than the media industry, which is dying and pays at low rates. We're not maybe doing as well as the influencer industry, the Substack industry, which if you're a winner at the level that you might need people to be a winner at, pays at extraordinarily high rates and that you're making up the gap with equity that is not liquid and there's no stated plan to be liquid. So should your employees expect an exit to pay that off?
39:18 Speaker 04 Let me just clarify, because that is not what I said.
39:21 Speaker 03 Sure.
39:22 Speaker 04 I said that the base compensation is at or above the industry level. And I feel very...
39:29 Speaker 03 The media industry.
39:30 Speaker 04 The media industry.
39:32 Speaker 03 People leave the media industry because they can get more money on Substack. That's what I'm asking.
39:36 Speaker 04 Well, so I think that's very interesting because we've actually done, two of our Aqua hires prior to came from Substack. And that's because they don't feel like they're capable of monetizing the platform as well. It's also because the world of Substack, and I actually think Substack's a very interesting platform. I don't have a ton of...
40:03 Speaker 04 Internal knowledge about the company. I think what they're trying to do in terms of democratization is really interesting. But what we've found is that Substack tends to be a platform of solo operators. And many journalists are actually looking to be able to be independent and really be
40:27 Speaker 04 free to express the stories that they want to express, but also have infrastructure around them where they do have a sales team. They do have a growth marketing team. And that's the part that we've built out. So a lot of the calculations that you just went through are incorrect. And another example of that is our, each of our authors get bonused based on the subscribers that they acquire and that they retain. So they are incentivized to continue to grow. We're incentivized as a company to help them grow.
41:08 Speaker 04 And that comes back to them. So your total compensation package, I think you oriented it a little bit too much around equity. But again, the purpose of ownership is that everyone should feel like they have a voice in the company. And that's a big part of what we're trying to create. But I think that the challenges that you're painting relative to the broader industry are very real. And I can appreciate that.
41:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm just trying to understand what the value of being a part of the organization is. And you know, Matt Bellany, we've talked about him several times here. Hi, Matt. We're big fans over here. He was profiled in the New York Times in November, and this is a quote. He said, "It's safe to say I could make a lot more money if I were independent, at least in the short term, but I don't know. Do I want to be on Substack?" That's some ambiguity, right? Like, the thing that you could do on that platform, and I have a lot of problems with that platform, as listeners of the show know very well, but the thing you can do on that platform is collect a lot more revenue without the overhead. All of my friends who go there say, "I don't need all this stuff." "I have fans on social media and I can convert them to get paid over here and I will make all the money for myself."
42:20 Speaker 03 So I'm trying to really just nail down, what's the value of being part of the greater organization and paying a higher cut even than you would pay to Substack for their marketing? Is it your sales team? Is it the growth marketing team? Is it product? How does that work?
42:34 Speaker 04 I think it's the collective whole, and again, I don't agree with your calculations, but that's okay.
42:41 Speaker 03 I'm sorry, what calculations have I made that you disagree with?
42:43 Speaker 04 I don't think that we take a greater cut of...
42:49 Speaker 03 You don't think the overhead of working for Puck is greater than Substack's 10%?
42:52 Speaker 04 I think that what we provide relative to scale from an advertising perspective and a subscriber perspective, as well as paying benefits, as well as providing bonuses, is higher. So that's where I'm coming at it from. I appreciate you continuing to pick at it, but I just, you know, I disagree with that statement.
43:19 Speaker 03 I mean, if you just said, "We provide health insurance," I think that's meaningful for a lot of people. Like, I get it, right?
43:23 Speaker 04 We provide health insurance.
43:24 Speaker 03 I have two kids and that's always on my mind, you know, whenever someone asks me about going independent. I'm like, "No, I have two kids, like, and I love running my newsroom." But the dynamic for a lot of people I know thinking about this isn't, "I should go work for another company." It's, "The rewards for me are very high if I go out on my own." And I think you're trying to sit in the middle of that, and I'm just trying to find the edges of how that model works. Because if you end up in, you know, a traditional cost structure, it won't work. And if you end up all the way over here, you're competing with a cost structure where the platforms get all the content for free. Or in substack's case, people pay them for the content, which is maybe the best business model of them all. And I, somewhere in the middle is Puck, and I'm just trying to figure out how that model actually works.
44:09 Speaker 04 So you are correct. We do sit in the middle, right? And that's why we are able to get the incredible generationally talented individuals that we have, because we allow the, and support journalists, not just Matt, but Bill Kohan, I mentioned Ian Kreisberg on the AI front, Lauren Sherman, we just brought on Kim Masters a year ago, Marian Manneker, Dylan Byers. These are incredible journalists that have some of the foremost
44:50 Speaker 04 voices inside of the industries that they write about and that they lead. They're a part of an organization, but they're also able to be independent. They do get healthcare, right? And that does matter. And they do have bonuses and they do have feedback that they get, but they're also not told what stories to chase. And the benefit of moving from a large media organization through to a substack of it all, the motivation for some might be money, but the motivation for many is independence. And we try to capture the balance between being able to be independent, but also having a support infrastructure
45:31 Speaker 04 in place that allows you to take some of those risks. It's quite special. And that's, again, I think, the reason why we have a subscriber base that's also incredibly loyal and growing, because they can feel that in the authors.
45:52 Speaker 03 When I talk to people at Substack or the people who've moved to Substack about that 10%, the justification is generally that Substack drives more subscriber growth than any other platform. And the people who've left Substack have seen a pretty rapid decline in how fast their subscribers grow. Substack has turned its app basically into a walled garden. They say they do email, but now you open it and it looks like a Twitter and there's podcasts inside of it. And they've made a little social network, even though they claim they haven't made a social network. And that's fine. And it's working because it's driving a lot of subscriber growth for a lot of their people. When you subscribe to one Substack, they like sign you up for seven more. Like they have dark patterns in that app. That is their 10%. They will look you in the eye and say, we know people
46:35 Speaker 03 think this is a high number. And we say, if you leave, your rate of new subscribers will go down. And that's worth the 10%. And the second we stop delivering that, we know people are going to turn off. Is that the same for Puck? Is it, is it health insurance plus subscriber growth? What's the mechanism for subscriber growth for you?
46:50 Speaker 04 I'm not an expert in Substack. What I can say is that many of the subscribers on Substack, at least from the aqua hires that we have made, are not paying subscribers. The subscription revenue that I mentioned before is from paying subscribers and the growth is from paying subscribers. And so the additional benefit from having great base comp and then also having equity and having healthcare and, and health insurance and vacation policy and all of that good stuff and folks to support you when you do want to go on vacation. Aside from all of those things, it goes back to the incentive
47:33 Speaker 04 around the subscriber bonus. So as I mentioned before, for the, our, our growth is driven by marketing. Our growth is driven by the content that our journalists create and the stories that they are, are selling. And then it's also created now because we're, we are building sort of multimodal franchises around these individuals, whether
48:01 Speaker 04 It's through event businesses. Also, all of our talent gets bonus on the events that they are a part of. So you have the subscriber acquisition bonus, you have a retention bonus, you have an events bonus, and that is our talent getting incentivized and paid for the work and the time and the energy that they're putting in. And that's really the like crux of the value proposition. But again, I would go back to like, if you have any aspiring journalists on your pod, like, what's the motivation that they have around wanting to be a journalist?
48:45 Speaker 04 And if it is to be capable of reporting and telling independent stories and also being able to be financially compensated, I think that we are a rare breed of trying to create a company that fosters that. And that, to me, again, when I think about the career choice to come here versus going to another big technology company, I it was a strong motivator for me was that mission.
49:22 Speaker 03 We have to take another quick break. We'll be back in just a minute.
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51:24 Speaker 03 Welcome back. I'm talking with Puck CEO Sarah Personin about where new audiences for Puck come from. Where does your growth come from, right? If your folks are getting paid more, if they're getting bonuses on subscriber growth, where does the net new customer come from?
51:39 Speaker 04 Net new subscribers come from content that is, that is like interesting and breakthrough. I think a lot of the work that has been done-
51:50 Speaker 03 So scoops, right? Right, I understand, but you have to distribute the scoop somewhere. Where does it come from?
51:55 Speaker 04 I think, are you getting back to the platform piece that-
51:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, where's your top of the funnel? Is it, do you, when you make it, when, whoever, when Julia Alexander, who's one of my very favorites, when she has a great story, is it search traffic that converts? Is it her tweeting about it? Is it Facebook reels? Like what, where does the net new subscriber come from?
52:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, it, there's, and you're- I would imagine you would understand this as well. It does not come from one singular place. We have the both organic side of leveraging social platforms. We absolutely encourage our authors to tweet about the stories that they have. We also have a social team of one that develops all the organic content and leverages the various platforms for that. We also have an incredible comms team that also helps to distribute the stories that are coming out of all of our political content, all the way through to all the other franchises.
52:57 Speaker 04 And then also on the experiential side, whenever we are doing any type of event that obviously is talent centric, we're talking about the work that they do and that those interviews are coming to life. So I think in this environment, and I walked through at the top of the hour, the transitions that have occurred, there is no longer a world where distribution is centralized into one, two, or three places. There is not a, like a, there's not a singular television network that you can advertise on and drive product and growth. There is not a singular platform that you can advertise on and drive growth.
53:39 Speaker 04 That fragmentation and disruption has been happening for over 20 years. So if there's anyone that is saying it comes from a singular source, that's amazing. But we leverage each of the various platforms and we leverage paid and we leverage organic in order to get the work out in front of net new subscribers.
54:05 Speaker 03 What's your biggest channel? Like if I go and ask a YouTuber, what's your biggest channel? They will say the YouTube algorithm. If you ask a Substacker, what's your biggest channel? They will say Substack. Right, they're integrated with their distribution in very particular ways. They don't always love it. My joke is that every YouTuber gets their wings when they make a video about how mad they are at YouTube, right? This is a tense relationship between creators and their platforms. But if you ask them where the followers come from, it is the platforms themselves. What's your biggest channel?
54:32 Speaker 04 I would say our biggest paid channel would be the, would be social platforms as well as SEO. Now, within the industry and sort of the migration to zero click, we, we are transforming a lot of the way that even our, our site is developed and the way that we optimize for GEO. I mean, that's, that's a big shift in the industry.
54:55 Speaker 03 Wait, I just wanted to find some terms. I'm the person who came up with the phrase Google Zero, so I think that's me. They love it.
55:04 Speaker 04 Did you really?
55:06 Speaker 03 I sure did. On the show, as a matter of fact, there's a whole episode about it. I think our listeners understand Google Zero is when Google stopped sending search traffic to publishers. You've heard me talk about it a lot. GEO is generative search optimization, which is, I would say, as yet unproven and mostly snake oil.
55:21 Speaker 04 I don't know if it's snake oil, but I do remember when I was at Facebook and all, at least many people across marketing and businesses said that social was snake oil. And then I remember that same shift happening with mobile and that no one, great example, no one would ever watch video on their mobile phones. And now it's one of the number one consumption formats. So I can tell you this, as a business leader, I can't ignore the changes that AI is driving more broadly in the, not just in the industry, but in consumption.
56:03 Speaker 04 But I, I think you're, you're very correct in saying that it, it's not proven out yet. And so it's not the singular channel and/or the singular investment. But, but we are continuing to work on what does it mean to be organically discovered in a world that's, you know, Google Zero. So I, I, again, I think that's really neat that you actually, that you came up with that language because it's, it's widespread across the industry.
56:32 Speaker 03 You can watch Sinopachai react to me saying the words Google Zero on this very show. It was a fun moment for everyone. I guess my question there is, you don't have a singular top of funnel like a platform does. You don't have the bad model that they hold media companies do. I'm not in any way saying that was a good model. Like, they're dying. We're watching them die. You can read Matt describe how Hollywood is dying, like, very specifically. The cost structure there is bad. Somewhere in the middle is your cost structure, and I'm just trying to figure out where you find the big growth from, or if the plan is to remain small. Right? Because that, it feels like the, there's two choices to be made right now.
57:10 Speaker 04 Our primary distribution model is newsletters. We're not a technology platform. I, so the comparisons to YouTube, or Facebook, or Substack, we're not a technology company. We are absolutely a media company, a news and information company, a journalist-centric company. And the, again, the primary distribution is that our talent anchors a private email or private newsletter that gets distributed to an audience that is consistently growing
57:51 Speaker 04 related to paying subscribers. And then we also have a long leads list, and we use channels like CRM in order to continue to market to hot leads, new leads, that come in through discovery, whether it is, again, through, through our social platform leverage, whether it is through a referral that's coming from another reader that is excited and intrigued about a story and wants somebody else in their industry to understand what's going on. All of those things fill the top of the funnel that ultimately drive to ideally conversion
58:31 Speaker 04 of becoming a paying subscriber. So that, that top of funnel, I think, the way that I think about it is really, there's, there are paying and unpaid, and the conversion of unpaid to paid leads to subscribers is also a component part of that.
58:48 Speaker 03 You talked about social channels. One of the dynamics I think is really interesting in the world you're describing is whether or not the institution is important, or the talent's important. It very much feels like your emphasis is on the talent. Do you run paid social on your talent's social media feeds? Because that's where the followers are. Or do you have the Puck channel and you want people to follow that?
59:09 Speaker 04 Right now, we do not run paid social on the individual talents. As I'm processing it, I'm like, that's a really interesting conversation to come back around on with talent internally. The way that we've managed in the past and through conversations with them is that a lot of talent wants to own and run their own channel. And that, and when they have questions or when they need support, they have a person that they can call on for that. But our primary growth has been through our owned and operated channels. But I like the provocation. So something I certainly will take back is if folks are open and interested in that.
59:52 Speaker 03 Well, this is the, this is the dynamic that I think it just is for everyone. The reason that a reporter leaves, as I say, I have however many tens of thousands of Twitter followers, I can monetize 2,000 of them and I'll make more money than you ever paid me. I've had this conversation. I'm sure you've had this conversation. There's a lot of this in the world. The platforms incentivize the people to participate, right? There's an infinite supply of teenagers who will make content for Instagram for free. And so they don't want the institutions to be powerful because you can't, there's not an infinite supply of news organizations. And so, once you have a little bit of power there, you can't, you might have to pay some rates, right? The original sin of digital media is Jonah Peretti believing he goes so viral that Facebook
1:00:37 Speaker 03 would pay him money. And we all, that's where you're talking about the pivot to video, that was that moment right there, and it was not going to happen. And I think a lot of people knew it wasn't going to happen and we all lived through it anyway. How do you operate in a world where you want the brand to be central to do the audience acquisition and the subscriber acquisition you're describing with the methods you're describing, when all of the platforms want all the action to be by the people?
1:00:59 Speaker 04 I can't speak to the motivation of platforms today. I, I think you're correct when I was at both of those platforms. What I saw is actually a real deep desire to actually support publishers. But again, I can't, I don't work at those companies. I can't speak to the motivations of them today.
1:01:21 Speaker 03 I think we can all see their motivations pretty plainly today.
1:01:24 Speaker 04 What I can say is for us from a Puck perspective, I'm not trying to compete with YouTube. I am like, I know I've already said this, that we're not a technology platform. We're not a technology platform. We have, we are focused on covering the stories inside of the industries that have, you know, the opinion elite and people that deeply care about what's happening. That is what we are doing and we distribute those stories. Yes, through newsletters and then also through a variety of other marketing channels.
1:02:09 Speaker 04 I, I, I know I'm not completely and totally answering your question, but I think it might be.
1:02:16 Speaker 03 Well, I'm not really, I think you're talking, might be talking about the audience. I'm talking about the people who make the work.
1:02:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:02:22 Speaker 03 Right. And the economic incentives of the people who make the work. I mean, you're describing Puck as sort of like the fanciest collection of trade publications that has ever existed in the world. I don't know if that's how the people, I don't know if that's like what people want to do. Right. I think people want big audiences. Like I think every reporter wants to be the most famous reporter in the world. And that's great. Like I think that is a perfectly aligned incentive with go get scoops, go get attention, write the best analysis, be, go be famous, right? And that's going to make everybody a lot of money. A collection of small trade verticals for the opinion elite is very different than that impact. And it's.
1:02:59 Speaker 03 I think media organizations are losing people to platforms because that impact is so alluring. And then the opportunity to do things that are not journalism, to do integrated brand marketing, to do sponsorships, to go on the job, all the stuff I won't let my people do that I won't do. I won't even read the podcast ads, but it's all right there, right? You can get the big audience and you can get the big payday. And again, I'm just trying to find the boundary for puck, right? You're you're kind of making it smaller. And I'm just wondering if that if that size is as lucrative, is impactful and is incentivizing across all the metrics is maybe the big platform exit.
1:03:33 Speaker 04 I'm not quite sure if for the journalists in your world, it sounds like you're trying to encourage them to go to the platforms.
1:03:41 Speaker 03 I'm just seeing what's happening all around me.
1:03:43 Speaker 04 I
1:03:44 Speaker 03 I've run this newsroom for like 15 years. You know, it's like we we sell what we sell here. Like my joke is that we sell our ethics policy and that's what people subscribe to us for. Like again, we just like won't do the sponsor reads. It drives my company crazy that I won't do the sponsor reads. Everyone can see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow labeled Neil I does a sponsor, but I won't do it because I think what the audience pays us money for is the fact that you you can't tell the newsroom what to do. I would like to believe my newsroom is bought into this and, you know, the economics makes sense inside of that. But you're describing this like talent led journalist as influencers model without the corresponding payoff that the influencers get. And that's the that's the tension I'm just I'm just sitting on.
1:04:24 Speaker 04 I I appreciate that tension and appropriate stat to to consider because I I think you're describing a world and and again, if your listenership is relatively young, it would drive everybody into the only career that they should have is to be an influencer. And I I, you know, fundamentally disagree with that. What I do know of of Substack is that it's about their top 10% of authors make 90% of the revenue. So, but but I want everyone to hear that. The the model that you are describing, that everyone is like getting massive paydays
1:05:05 Speaker 04 from these other platforms, the top 10% are making 90% of the revenue. What we provide
1:05:14 Speaker 04 Is a platform in quotes, not a technology platform, but a company that does support journalists. And yes, I would say that journalists are the original influencers, but influencers oftentimes just pop up a phone and make content about anything. Journalism is a fundamentally different profession. You make the point from an ethics perspective, from a fact checking perspective, from a legal perspective, knowing that if you write a story and somebody else comes after you and that you have legal support, those things matter in journalism.
1:05:59 Speaker 04 And that in addition to being able to have audience growth that is a core focus of the company, being able to have commercial growth, being able to get paid for the events that you are a part of, for the subscribers that you are bringing in, I don't think is small. I actually think it is quite exciting and can be quite large. When you say the, if you look at the various categories, yeah, within Puck, Airmail is a little bit different. That's sort of the, I think that the brand that drives cultural advantage.
1:06:43 Speaker 04 And I think Puck is the brand that drives professional advantage because it does go through each of these categories or industries that are anchored by our lead talent. And they're telling stories and they're reporting on what's happening. The top of the companies that drive these industries and the people that are making the decisions within it. But I don't think any of these industries. In and of themselves are are small and I certainly think that the Puck portfolio is one that is not just about the individual industries, but actually about the interplay and the intersection of power and decisions that's
1:07:26 Speaker 04 that occur across each of those franchises. And that's also the unique value proposition that Puck as a brand brings. And that is very much supported by our talent. And I continue to be incredibly proud of the fact. I appreciate the tension between brand and and talent. But I I I I don't feel that tension internally. I I feel like we are a a a brand and a company that supports talent so that they can they can do. They they can do their job, which is to report.
1:08:02 Speaker 03 You you mentioned Airmail is a little different. How is Airmail a little different?
1:08:05 Speaker 04 It is not focused on the professionals inside of an industry. It is because Puck will report on, you know, again, the business of fashion, the business of art economics, things like that for the professionals that ultimately are in those spaces and or those that are very curious across those industries. Airmail, from a cultural advantage perspective, is reporting on style, fashion, wellness. It has a global perspective on what is happening in the world. And that audience base is certainly opinionally, intellectually curious,
1:08:48 Speaker 04 but it's less of a B to P, a business to professional offering and more of a B to C, a business to consumer offering. And that was one of the reasons why, from an investment thesis perspective, it made so much sense. We had less than like 6% audience overlap, even though both both very affluent and elite audiences, but but very limited in terms of overlap overall. And so it's a it's a awesome add to the portfolio.
1:09:21 Speaker 03 So Puck is, I mean, you're describing it this way. Puck is a collection of trade publications that people will pay high rates for. There's a lot of value in that. I I I love a good trade publication. I can, I won't rattle off all my favorites, but there are some very small, very focused trade publications that I think are maybe the best. In the entire industry, Airmail is not that. Airmail is like a big fancy culture magazine for, it's called Airmail because I think it was meant to be read on airplanes. Like, there is like a moment for that kind of magazine to exist in first-class airplane. Are you trying to move audience between them? The thing you don't have here is a bundle, right? You have a collection of individual newsletters and you can't actually bundle them all up and say, here's the whole stack of value we provide. How do you move audience between individual trade publications where there might not
1:10:06 Speaker 03 be overlap and then from that world to Airmail, which is a glossy culture magazine?
1:10:11 Speaker 04 On the Puck side, we actually do, like a Puck subscription gets you access to each of the individual franchises categories that organically came up through through Puck or that we've acquired and launched. On the Airmail side, you're right that currently it's a separate subscription and we're working through the the product roadmap to figure out what the, essentially what the the either bundle offering is, the sample offering, those are all underway. So probably within the next few months, you'll see more from us on that side.
1:10:50 Speaker 03 Last few questions, we're running out of time. Thank you for being so generous. Are you profitable right now?
1:10:55 Speaker 04 We are very close to profitable.
1:10:57 Speaker 03 Like a dollar away or like a million dollars?
1:11:00 Speaker 04 I'm not going to answer that question, but we're very close to profitable. I feel very good about our operating leverage as well.
1:11:05 Speaker 03 What's the, what's the runway to being profitable?
1:11:07 Speaker 04 I'm not going to answer that question, but I feel really good about our, where we are at and what we will deliver this year.
1:11:15 Speaker 03 The reason I ask about profitability is profitability is usually what allows you to drive growth, or you can choose to be really unprofitable and drive a lot more growth. Are you looking at more acquisitions? Are you looking to be acquired? How does this, how's this going to work for you?
1:11:28 Speaker 04 On the acquisition side, so well, one on the growth side, I think it's just good to state, so for growth, you know, total revenue, we grew at 40% last year. Ads, we grew at over 35%. Sub revenue, we grew at over 50%. And when we look at our Our like fixed cost or recurring revenue, we're in a really solid place. And we also look at revenue per head just to think about structurally, whether or not the organization is lean and driving operational excellence. So that's, I think we're able to drive top line growth with real cost discipline
1:12:11 Speaker 04 in order to create a system that is scalable over the course of time. And that's why I feel good about being very close to profitable and the goal of that this year. Related to acquisitions, we are, we're actually always thinking about various brands that could be additive to the overall portfolio. As I mentioned before, we've done a few Aqua hires prior to in order, and the investment thesis behind those Aqua hires was really to either break into a new category. So we did that with Mary Ann Manneker coming over from Substack
1:12:50 Speaker 04 in order to break into the business of art through to the acquisition of Retail Diaries in order to drive more coverage for the readers and the subscribers that we had with Lauren Sherman's Line Sheet. So those are more like tuck-ins and smaller acquisitions. And then there are transformational acquisitions like Airmail, where that is additive to the collective portfolio and to the piece that you were getting at before, where we see that there's opportunity certainly for bundling and for access of readership across the various media brands.
1:13:29 Speaker 03 One of the reasons I ask about acquisitions is we live in a time of media mergers, like massive, earth-shattering media mergers. In acquiring Airmail, I think you have Jeff Zucker on your cap table now, because he was an investor in Airmail. There are rumors that he wants to build the big thing. He wants to buy Versant and have a newsletter division and run a big news operation again, like he had at CNN. Is that something you've talked about? Is that something you would entertain?
1:13:53 Speaker 04 I'm not going to talk about who's on our cap table.
1:13:56 Speaker 03 I'm just curious.
1:13:57 Speaker 04 Yeah. I love curiosity. Yeah.
1:14:00 Speaker 03 What's next for Puck? What should people be looking for?
1:14:04 Speaker 04 A few different things. First, the investments that we've made in DC around our both our Washington correspondent with Leanne, the experiential business that we have there, I think you're going to continue to see just more and more emphasis in our dedication to that market. Same thing with AI and with tech, the launch of that vertical this past year at a moment and time that we went AI first instead of tech first for, you know, very specific reasons. I think you'll continue to see more from us there. I think a lot of folks in the industry all migrated really quickly to video. I've been in this, I've been in the media landscape for quite some time and I believe deeply in video, but I
1:14:45 Speaker 04 also believe deeply in, in doing it right and doing it well. And so, you know, we're, we're spending time sort of thinking about what does that mean for our talent? What does it mean for our brand? What does it mean for our portfolio? So more to come there.
1:14:58 Speaker 03 I could do another full hour on how you planned a monitized video, but I won't keep you any longer. You have been very generous and very game to answer the questions. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being on Decoder, Sarah.
1:15:08 Speaker 04 Thank you. I appreciate it as well. Have a great day.
1:15:13 Speaker 03 I'd like to thank Sarah Perce for taking time to join Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. To let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us at [email protected] . We really do read all the emails. Or you can hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky. We're also on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, all at DecoderPod. They're all a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you really like the show, hit us with that five star review. Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It's edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.
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