YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Mather

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35
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2020-07-10
most recent
2020-07-10
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Watched yesterday. But this idea that we're covering the world's most popular sports, how do we bring what we're doing to more people? That's number one. And number two, and this is the thing that I'm most passionate about long term with our business, is so few companies are obsessed with how people consume news. And I believe that we're going off the rails with how people consume news, whether it be Twitter or Facebook or these platforms. I think these platforms are unbelievable negative for how people consume news for all the obvious reasons. And we're a company that is committed to innovating on how people consume news. And we've invested most of our capital into the newsroom to date, but we've started to really dedicate ourselves to investing in ways, or I should say new ways to consume news. And we'll have a lot more to say about that later this year.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, to me it's two things. It's first, as you mentioned, we went into the UK pretty quickly is how do we bring the athletic to more people in the world? Sports is such a unifier, and I think this pandemic has given us a taste of what life is like without sports. And I'm sure you missed watching Chelsea. For sure.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, so lately, it's definitely Michael Horbath, the founder and CEO of Strava. And I think it's a really simple lesson. And I mentioned it in relation to the board discussion too. And it's caring for the business you're creating, caring for the people you hire, caring for your customers, caring for every part of the thing that you're giving to the world and really, really making that a priority.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, I mean, I mentioned this earlier, but it's committing to the job of communicating all day long. I mentioned I'm pretty antisocial by nature. And I think the job of communication is so important. And I have to repeat myself 50 times a day. And I think everyone should just have all the context that I have. But I'm learning just how hard the job is of communicating to so many people.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So, to me, I'd love to see more pragmatism over principles a little bit, which is like thought is becoming too much of a religion right now. And I really love just, we talk to our newsroom about this a lot, like add nuance, don't take nuance away. And how can we solve problems without just picking a side, right? Everything feels a little bit too bifurcated for me. And there's so much nuance. And how can we get more complicated and solve problems by working together on things? And I think it comes down to pragmatism over principles.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, this one is so easy for me. It's both a strength and a weakness. And anyone who's worked with me in the past will validate this. It's my passion. It is absolutely what drives me forward. It's what makes me a good leader. It's what also gets me into trouble 99% of the time.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So, this is not my favorite book, but it is the book that I'm rereading right now, and I think it's super relevant and it's a very old book. The kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy. And I remember reading it a decade or so ago and being fascinated by it. And it's about nonviolent resistance. Leo Tolstoy became obsessed with this concept of nonviolent resistance. And it wound up being the foundation of Gandhi and much of the civil rights movements in the 60s. And so it's been a really thoughtful read for me and really internalizing some of the things going on in the US right now and has been a wonderful read.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Controlling your destiny there is how to do it. And we pay these companies, we advertise. And the way we do it is we look at things like in the first 20 minutes of an article being out to the public, how's the conversion? How many people are clicking on the paywall? How many people are looking at our plans page? How many of our subscribers are scrolling down the article? How many subscribers are clicking the article in their feed? Right. All these little signals, they all add up to information that we can then use to say, well, this article is worth putting money behind. And then we can go put more money and we're starting to automate a lot of it. So within minutes of an article being out, we can learn, is it worth putting money behind and that it's automatically posted to Facebook and we learn in the first couple hours if it's working on Facebook. These are examples and like we have an entire team dedicated to this.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I think that's going to hurt them way down the road. And I think that that could be a big problem in media if folks are counting on Facebook and Google for revenue. It's not, I totally agree with you. So I said that was the last question, but just one more, I promise. Speaking of reliance on Facebook and Google there, bluntly, I always question tax, especially I get very nervous when it's so predominantly focused on Facebook. For you as a media subscription business, does it work from a unit economics perspective to have like customer acquisition strategies centrally focused around Facebook or do you find actually bluntly the cakes are just too high now on these platforms given just how kind of proliferated they are? We have had an incredible amount of success using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google to acquire users. And the cool thing that we're doing, and I think that this is where hopefully more companies will go, which is how do you use your content to grow your business? Well, mastering these platforms in terms of you control.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And he's obviously nailed it on this topic. But, like, we should be paying Facebook and Google as media companies, not the other way around. If you can't make your business thrive in this world where Facebook and Google exist, that's on you. Stop whining. Like start figuring it out. You've had 30 years. The internet isn't new. And to me, that's where I see a major opportunity for the athletic within it all, which is we're not whining. We're figuring it out. We don't have all the answers, to be clear, but we're dedicated to figuring out how to make Facebook and Google work for our business and how we can exist in a world that's now. And I think too many media companies are focused on 10 years ago and they're run by executives thinking 10 years ago and taking money from Facebook and Google has not worked out for anyone. So my worry about these companies thinking they're winning the war when they've won a small battle of receiving money from Facebook and Google.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Journalism, right? We have editors that can guide your stories into better places. We can give a writer the ability to not have to write every day to really drive that subscription value. And for many folks, the economics work better under the athletic than they might on substack. Now, for others, it might be the complete opposite. So I don't see it as a competitive force at all. No, I totally get you. And I see the benefits there. Final one before the quick forest. We set about kind of how the landscape changes there. When you look at it moving forward five to ten years out, are there elements that really concern you in how you see the landscape evolving? Yeah, I mean, what is so frustrating to me in media is just this kind of ridiculous focus on blaming Google and Facebook for the woes of media. And I see that as a problem. I really do looking forward. And I think it's easy to blame others. I'm a big fan of Ben Thompson, who isn't, right?”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Is it competitive? I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, you know, if you look at a single writer at a single moment in time, perhaps, you know, on the margins, but we're building a massive bundle for a very specific category. And we like where that stacks up versus a single writer on substack. And I think if you look at what happened with Substack to just take a second to look at that business and it's a wonderful product, a wonderful founding team and they're much more competitive with, say, medium. And we don't necessarily look at them as competitors. They're probably capturing the opportunity that medium had and missed. And we look at substack and say, hey, if there is a great writer that left the telegraph and is writing on substack and they get to a certain scale, then heck, we're going to reach out and try to get them on our platform. And they may not join. They may say, hey, I really want to be on my own. And I like that. But we have an art department. We have a legal department. So you can do deeper.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, I mean, if you think about when you build a platform, and I'll use Substack as the example, SubStack takes a cut of the revenue from the folks using their platform. And I think Apple has proven that model to be very, very lucrative if you can get scale. And you're taking a cut. But you need scale to build adventure scale business. Incredible scale, frankly. On our side, we own the entire experience. And so we're capturing a lot more of the value of our smaller category. We don't cover everything. We just do sports, but we own every penny from the customer. And so to us, it's like about margin from the customer as opposed to building out a much bigger platform that is cutting or skimming part of that revenue. Can I ask, would you see substack as compared to”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Categories. You don't need 600 people. We'll be in the thousands of people, hopefully, over the next couple years. And sports is just one of those areas where the empire makes sense. I'm a big Star Wars fan, and I always like the Empire. I thought the costumes were cooler. There are modes of transportation way cooler. And I think there is a place for both. I really do believe that. And we're in the business of building out empires in the media sense. The athletic being a global sports brand for millions and millions of subscribers. Can you help me understand?”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, so I listened to your talk with Chris, and I generally agree. I think I've chatted with him and Hamish as they've built their amazing company. And I generally agree with his statement. And what's interesting is we're on the other side of that. We are the empire as opposed to the rebels or the Amazon as opposed to the Shopify, right? And you do see that unfolding. And I think it's a really great conversation. So on one side, you absolutely have the rebels and they're all over the place and some of them are doing X, some of them are doing Y and they're building their own businesses for themselves. And to me, it's about scale versus margin. And we think about what we're doing as a margin business, right? We build an incredible bundle for sports fans and hopefully a bundle that can't be replaced. And we hope to build a very profitable business off of that. A large profitable business off of that. Most categories can't get margin or scale like sports. And so the rebel model to me makes a ton of sense. I think many categories.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, so I'm a big listener of your pod. And so I'll try not to repeat a lot of the things I hear from folks on this one. And the thing that I would add to the dialogue is just care. You know, if you're on a board, you're smart enough. You've seen enough. You can recognize patterns quickly. Those are all like baseline attributes of a board member. Yes, you'll get some folks with lots more experience. But I think one of the most valuable things on a personal level is you can tell so quickly when the board member cares about the company, about you as a founder, about the journey. And the difference between someone who cares and someone who doesn't is so meaningful to the founder because this is our life, right? This is everything to us. And when you care, you tend to be honest when you need to, but always have a little spoonful of sugar. And the incentives just all start to make sense when you both care. So that's what I would add.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, I mean, I would say that I look at them subtly different than that categorization. I would say like they believe mostly that founders can drive biggest returns because they have the biggest ideas and that the more investors medal, they tend to destruct value rather than create. And what's amazing about founders fund is they believe in you as a founder and they trust you as a founder. But that doesn't mean they just disappear. They hold you accountable. They have an incredibly high bar and they're all so different and smart. And it's a situation where when you want them, they tend to be some of the best folks to talk to when you need advice, but they're not necessarily just lobbying it to you every time you talk.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, I can. I mean, Michael Horvath, the founder of Strava, was our first check, but it was a smaller check. And then the next check was Charles Hudson at precursor. And Charles is amazing. And he went through a completely different process than anyone we talked to at that stage. And he learned about us as people as opposed to the idea. The idea was still very, very, very small and unproven. And so he did his research on my co-founder Adam and I. And that was really cool. And I'll never forget when he said, yes, any entrepreneur will say this, but like, it really gives you wings. You start to believe in yourself. There's so many moments early on where you don't necessarily believe in yourself sometimes because you've gotten so many nos in a row. And then even one yes can carry a thousand no's. And that was just such an amazing moment.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Really, in that if few investors are interested, if you can cross that hurdle, it creates an incredible moat for you because you can be the pioneer. And that is one of our core values at the company, which is just like be the pioneer and convince others to follow. I think of that as one of our bigger moats that we've had years and years of a head start of most folks in media because no one believed in what we were doing and the folks who did hopefully were going to make it worth their while.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, I mean, Eric should know because I pitched him. But it was very difficult. Very few investors had an interest, quite frankly. And some of the reasons like subscription at that moment in time in 2016 felt subscale. Oh, subscription, that means people have to pay you. That's not going to get big enough, right? Media was definitely out of style. You had some previous media companies at that moment in time that were in a spot of bother and perhaps like just the category itself was a little bit off limits. Not just humans journalists. And those two things with investors and journalists, it's not the obvious match, right? And I remember at that time that someone had written about power law and that was like in a blog. And so everyone was like sheeping around that. And they just couldn't see like a $500 billion company. So we were cast aside by most people and understandably that makes total sense. But I think of it as a big advantage.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, I mean, there's the obvious time management stuff, but the thing that has really shocked me about having a child, and I had a son, his name is Gabriel, and everything I do now, I think about what he would think about me if he knew. And I have to live up to what I aspire to be for him in a way that perhaps I didn't expect and I don't ever want him to be disappointed in me. The thought of that, it just breaks my heart. So that's probably the biggest change for me is really holding up to the standard that I think I need for him.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Convince people that you see this massive vision and it's a situation where then you go to the press and some of that confidence bubbles out and it's not really something that plays well in this modern media environment.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, I mean, this one is pretty easy. Early on in the company's history, I did a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times. And we were young. I think we had five or six people at our headquarters, maybe 20 people on our newsroom. So quite small. And I said some things that blew up on Twitter, made me the sort of center of attention in a negative way. And it all came from a place of perhaps a little too much confidence. And I think as a founder, there's this crazy moment where you go from just a person writing code, convincing investors to give you money to being of interest to the world. And it's a little bit like a high school athlete getting on ESPN for the first time and they stumble with their words and they don't know exactly how to think about what they need to say. And here I was pitching and being really confident. There's this crazy aspect to how you have to.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Look at this and say, I have to be myself. And so the way I communicate is passionately, honestly, transparently, sometimes to a fault directly, sometimes to a fault. So all these things, I think it has to be natural. If you're faking it, if you're trying to be someone you're not, it's just not going to work. And so all those aspects and my co-founder Adam, you know, we share a lot of these aspects, which is wonderful in that we are really, really transparent with our staff. We keep them up to date when the pandemic hit, for example, every other week we're doing deep all hands where we're showing them the metrics of the business right away, giving them insight. And folks in journalism have never been given this access. And we're just including them in for the ride so they understand how we're thinking, why we're doing X, Y, or Z. And those are just some of the things that have really helped me just be me.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Out the channels of communication in your company, making sure everyone feels focused, everyone feels energized, everyone feels just like we're building something meaningful, durable, all those things. That's the job. And every bone in my body wants to get back and write code. And I'm pretty antisocial generally. And like my job is communicating and making sure of all those things happen. And that is an insane challenge.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, I mean, I've been the CEO for four and a half years. The major thing I can say is the job changes every single month, every hour some days. What made sense at 10 people makes absolutely no sense now. And I think the thing that I really focus on now is just looking at it as a craft, like anything else and really being committed to being great at it. And that means reading, learning, talking to the people on the team, talking to other CEOs, talking to investors, learning as much as I can. And the biggest shift now going from zero to 550 employees is I used to write code. And thankfully, they don't let me anymore. But now my job is communication and all day long I must focus on communicating. And that is absolutely a full-time job. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but building.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Fast well, I think the challenges are almost always different as you go into different countries. And I think in the UK, we went in thinking folks would be more conservative in how they think. That was totally incorrect. We were worried about costs. We were right around where we thought it would be. So that was incorrect. Where we learned there were problems were things like garden leave, right? Folks have like things in their contracts that are very specific to the UK. So we had to wait a while for a lot of people. But overall, the challenge mostly was just flying back and forth. I had had a child for four months prior and just back and forth back and forth. It was grueling, but absolutely worth it and a blast.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “It comes. I think that really getting at what makes you different is going to put you on a path that hopefully will create a bigger, more durable company.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Unbelievable speed and focus because we had already hired so many people in the US. We knew exactly what we were looking for. And so those advantages, they seem small on paper, but here we are a year later, paying subscribers in the UK building a really great product for fans all over the world. And that's an example of us saying, hey, this is one of our biggest advantages knowing that we can move quickly and have all this capital. Let's go and compete with companies that are over 200 years old. And we look at that broadly and say, well, what are other advantages? Well, we've got 500 folks in our newsroom, right? That are some of the most amazing sports writers and editors in the world. How do we combine them with our tech team and the Silicon Valley DNA and build really cool experiences? So really for us, it's like, let's focus first on how we're different and how we can win that way because all the other stuff can come when”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah, I mean, it is the fundamental question of an early stage or even mid stage startup, which is like you can waste your time on so many things. And I think the way I look at it is what is unique about us? What are the unique characteristics of our company where we can absolutely differentiate whether it be a user experience, whether it be market expansion? So if I take the example of the UK, we really felt, hey, one of our biggest advantages as a company is how quickly we move and how well we're capitalized. And so we said there was a board meeting in March of last year or something. Maybe it was late February. And we said, let's do it. And 119 days later, we had 55 full-time employees in the UK, and we were launching. And so we set out to do something. We went over to the UK and hired 55 of the best journalists, editors in the country, and moved with”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “And if there are any cyclists listening, cycling can be a very exclusive sport. And it's probably one of the downsides of the sport. It's very complicated. It's a dangerous sport. And there's a culture around it. And it can make people feel like they're on the outside if they're not as dialed in to all the little tricks or culture aspects. And at some moments in the company's history, we were probably a little too exclusive. We should have talked to more of the weekend warriors versus the folks already riding 200 miles a week. And I think that that lesson to me has really carried into the athletic and saying it's not just for the fan who knows every person in the farm system of a baseball team or the development program of a soccer team, right? It's for everyone. How do you build for everyone and make it feel like a place for everyone? And so really, really dialing that in has been something that I've taken from Strava to the athletic.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “My time at Straddle was so good. I look back at that with such fond memories of learning how to build a subscription business. And one thing that comes to mind for me is focus. There is a little bit of a curse when you're so passionate about what you're working on in that you see every idea as worthy of deep exploration for your team. And so there were definitely a few years there at Travel where we were running around trying to build so many things at once, whether it be nutrition or finding a route to ride or things like that. What I came back to as we got better in the company was focusing as many people in the company on a shorter list of things that have an objective as opposed to like, oh, that would be cool. That would be cool. That would be cool. Kind of like a dog, you know, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. So that to me is a big one. And the second one that I might add on is this idea of inclusivity versus exclusivity.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Take this business model into something of my own, and I'm also a passionate sports fan, whether it be the Philadelphia Eagles here in the US or Spurs in the UK. I love sports and thought, hey, media is an opportunity. It looks like subscription hasn't really been attempted by many companies and there could be an opportunity in sports. And off we went.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Building stuff for consumers. Never really enjoyed building stuff enterprise. And I moved out to the West Coast and joined Strava. I was an avid cyclist. I just loved it. I loved California. I loved just getting on my bike and riding. And Strava felt like such a natural place to work. And I was lucky enough to be employee number seven there, the first sort of design and product hire and built out those teams over the years at Strava and helped grow that company from 1500 users to over 10 million. And it was a subscription business and just became so passionate about subscription as a business model. And I'm sure we'll get into it in the course of this conversation. But subscription is just one of these things that allows you to focus directly on the consumer. And I just fell in love with that model and cycling and running were a personal passion. And as I got more experience with Drava, I felt that I could.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Yeah, for me, I started as an engineer early on in my career and kind of actually all goes back to the palm pilot. I was pre-med in college. I forget what class I was in. And a gentleman came into our classroom and I went to Penn State and he came into the classroom and said, hey, everyone, I'm launching a new program at Penn State called IST. And if you try some of our classes, we'll give you this thing called a Palm Pilot and you can write computer programs for it. And I remember in high school writing some simple programs for my TI 85 calculator. And I was like, oh, that's cool. I'll check it out. And I just felt at home in that world. And I became an engineer through that experience and loved it. And as my career went on, I got into design and worked at Xfinity TV, building out a lot of the underlying tech and user experience around things like HBO Go and stuff. And was just so passionate about.”

    2020-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source