YouSaid · the spoken record

Jessica Lessin

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27
first
2016-05-27
most recent
2016-05-27
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Think it's just growth. I mean, we our product is simple. It's information you can't get elsewhere that's valuable. It's a community of subscribers that you can talk to about that information online. And I do not see that changing in 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years. But I think our community, the readership and also the areas where we can cover will grow not in the sense that like we want to start a sports page tomorrow, but in the sense that I think if we're covering technology, we'll inherently be covering all sorts of industries and areas and our coverage will broaden from that as well. So that's kind of what I see when I look on the horizon.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I'm into Snapchat. I think find the sort of story experience really compelling. Don't use it for a lot of marketing of the information, but as a consumer, I really enjoy the product. And my usage has gone up significantly. Definitely interested in the company, whether brands can use it to fundamentally change their trajectories or acquire customers. I think it's early, but we know that Snapchat is committed to building the tools to help them. So definitely a place people should be experimenting.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “My new one I've been following a lot is actually someone based in Beijing called Doug Young who writes about China and business and I find his stuff awesome and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to follow tech trends globally.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “There are a lot. It's very hard to pick one. I think any place that is hiring and training journalists is doing a great job. I tend to be most interested in some of the individuals who are writing these days too and kind of respect the businesses and brands they're building as well.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Make early decisions faster, sweated a lot of decisions like what payroll provider to use that turned out not to be that important, I would have made those a lot faster.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Very excited about email. I think we have orders of magnitude than emails and we have subscribers right now, maybe one order of magnitude more, just from people who have expressed interest in the information. These are people who want to learn more about the information. They've literally given us their email to help us, you know, to express interest. And I think the opportunity to let them know more about us, bring them into our community is awesome. These days from a technology perspective, The sky's the limit with email. There are a lot of challenges with email too. And it's amazing me how hard our engineering team works on things like the right margins for the right phone and the, you know, it's a tricky platform in a lot of ways, but I think there's a ton of potential to communicate with potential subscribers over it. So I'm incredibly excited about that.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Exciting to me because again, it gets to the sort of scalability of the model. And I think we also have the opportunity now to change the slope of the curve even more through other initiatives. But I be hard pressed to find one moment.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So it's so early for us too, it's hard to say. I mean, our business has been one of steady organic growth, which, and by organic, I mean we've grown through word of mouth and through our stories reaching new people, being picked up by other news outlets in a given week, maybe a given month, most major publications will pick up information stories. So actually to date, our growth has been the organic word of mouth side and incredibly linear, sort of eerily linear. Actually, one of the things we're focusing on now is how we can turbocharge that with smart email marketing and other kinds of business-led initiatives. But honestly, those are in the very early stages for us. And so more than an inflection point, I think it's been this very consistent, predictable pattern stories breeding growth. That's incredibly.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Any products that you can use. We have an awesome engineering team, and I think we can continue to do a lot to even make that easier than it is today. And so we certainly put a lot of thought into the product. So once someone decides they want to subscribe, that becomes very easy. But we don't lose sleep over the fact that some people don't want to subscribe to the information. We think, you know, we'll focus on the ones that do and then take it from there.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think it's a good thing that we're not writing for every person. You're right, that there's some barrier to entry. Now, obviously, as we've been rapidly growing our business, I mean, I certainly want to, and we see the information as a publication that, you know, can reach massive audiences over time. We don't want to write for all people. We want there to be a sense that we're writing for a community that has a certain set of interests where we can have a certain value proposition. And that's a big difference. I think if you're writing a publication or building a tech product for a billion people, that's going to look a certain way and we don't want to build that product. I think that's a first important conceptual thing to understand. Absolutely. You know, from a product perspective, you want the subscription to be as seamless as humanly possible. Obviously, these days, and that's totally possible with technology, they're great.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It's serving your end reader and your customer. It's also insanely scalable, right? It doesn't tap out at how many business development deals you can cut or how many ad packages you can sell, right? It taps out based on the inherent value of the product. And so our excitement for that business model that caused us to start the information. And so it's never been a sort of thing we arrived at through process of elimination. very core in our identity.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “To me, it was the only model because it's the only model that is going to align doing stories that people have to read that have value to them with the business. And if you're not writing stories that people feel like they have to read, you may get blips and traffic here and there. You may even grow your audience for a couple of years, but you're not going to be around years and years and years from now. The subscription business to me is very core in the history of news and journalism. It's worked very well for a very long time. And it's the business aligned with the kind of stories and publications we want to build. And I think if you're in a world where you're dependent on advertising, you're going to serve multiple masters. You're going to serve the traffic master, the advertising master. You know, if you're dependent on events, you're going to serve the sponsorship master. And the subscription business is pure.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That is obviously excellent journalism as well. And then a third bucket, sort of the great columns, the great analyzers, the people who maybe aren't focused always on getting the facts first, but they piece them together and connect the dots. And at the information we do all three, and I think they're all incredibly valuable. And there are commonalities. I think there's a lot of curiosity, a lot of keenness to ask questions, but the styles of reporting are very different. I think it's been really fun as we've grown our reporting team to now eight journalists to get more variety as well.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I love that question because I think it's a couple of things. So myself, I am a newshound. I love breaking news, getting stories before other people have them. My personal style of reporting is less long-form narrative and more staying on top of and working a beat. And we have other reporters at the information who are similarly sort of cut, who love that. And so what makes them great is grit, competitiveness, really deep curiosity about the beat they're covering and they just kind of want to be all over it. But then we have reporters like Reed Albergati, who is a colleague of mine at the journal who just published a 4,000 word piece on Nest that took a very long time. It was a narrative of all the troubles that that company with interviews with all the key players, including Tony Fidel, a much more narrative story that took longer that”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “But also their habits, how they're using the product, what they like, and our job is to make them happy. Our job is to be valuable to that group. And it's a broad group. It's not any one person. But that customer subscriber focused approach to journalism, I think does help in making our stories pack a punch and be valuable because we know who we're writing for. We know the questions that story has to answer. And I think that's another key aspect. of quality journalism that stands out that a lot of other publications don't think about.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Now is that so many other publications are having their great reporters spend their time on less than great stories. Again, on these stories that are real-time regurgitation written because, you know, they're trending on Twitter and God forbid a publication doesn't have a story to go with it. So even if we had the same quality of reporters, and I think we have much better reporters, but even if we did and we were letting those reporters spend 100% of their time on stories that were going to have a real original angle, we'd have a higher hit rate of those stories. And so I think that is where it starts. It starts with the great reporting, the ability to really get trustworthy, accurate inside information about these companies. The second thing goes back to the audience point. It gets back to knowing who we're writing for. As a subscription business, we get a ton of information about our subscriber.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It starts with excellent reporters who are deeply sourced and knowledgeable about what they're writing about. And our team has been covering companies like Google, Facebook, and others for pretty much longer than most other tech reporters out there, period, more than a decade, which in tech land is a short period of time. We have networks and relationships and just reporting that I think is a huge advantage in terms of experience. At the same time, we hire excellent reporters who maybe have less experience in technology, but can sort of work collaboratively with our team that does have more experience in technology to help them come up the sourcing learning curve faster. That's what it starts with. And it's surprising because you may say, well, that can't be that much of an advantage. Lots of places have great reporters. But one just abnormality about where we are right now.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And the need to get a competitive edge, that trumps pretty much everything else. It's sort of very competitive but very open, I think.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Said, if you're writing stories that have new information about business and technology, it's not like our audience will only read one of those. They literally have a thirst for as much that's valuable to them as humanly possible. It's not like there are only X hours someone's only going to read a business publication about technology. I think it's more that people are craving stories that are different, relevant to them, and that it's not as much of a zero sum among the kinds of publications that are doing that work. So on one hand, we feel the intense competition trying to capture consumer attention in a digital age. On the other hand, I think we actually feel quite a big opportunity in open field if we can consistently do the stories that we want to do. Because I think if you just look at the thirst for knowledge about how tech is transforming business,”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “So, anything that takes our subscribers' time that they find valuable from Instagram to the economist is in some ways competitive, right? I mean, I think that is actually the bar for anyone in the media business. There's a lot of things you can do with your time. anything that saps that is going to something we're going to be thinking of as we're trying to write our stories that are that are worth reading. I think when you get into the news industry, yes, you've got analysts like Ben Thompson and Ben Evans who were wonderful, who give you their take on some news that's already happened. You've got major publications. You have the research arms inside banks and companies and venture capital firms that are publishing their own newsletters. And I think ramping up the amount of content they're producing, often analyzing other content that's been written. I think the thing about being where we want.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Absolutely. So it's a decision maker in tech media or finance. Our subscribers range from entrepreneurs who are just starting out on their first Y combinator company to executives in the management teams at the most highly valued public tech companies to 10 out of 10 of the founders of the most highly valued US private tech companies. It really does range in terms of”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “That is abstract, it's based on the value of that information to a particular audience. So the way I look at the world is less, here's one type of publication, here's one type of medium. It's what is this information or who is this information trying to reach in terms of an audience? Is it business professionals? Is it techies? Is it politics walks? And then what are the relative values of information to those audiences? And that can be print, that can be digital a different way of looking at things. But anytime someone talks about quality, it raises the question for me to whom and in what way, right? And I think that's an important thing for news organizations to start thinking about more deeply who their audience is and how they're serving them.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think I've always separated, so yes, because I think you have to separate the medium from the content. So just because something's digital, it doesn't mean that it's inherently better or worse than something that's dead trees, right? So I think what's behind Mark's observation and point is that, again, this sort of this idea of sameness and also that you can have an experience that you used to have reading the economist by reading a web page, right? It depends what the content is. And so I think we've certainly seen that. I think that behind his comment too is when I hear a statement like that, it exposes no one's thinking about who the audience is. So for me, any statement about the quality of something converging towards the quality of something else ignores the way I think about it, which is who's this supposed to reach, right? Quality is it something.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Observation is one of sameness, one of things looking more like each other and kind of converging to an average, if you will.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “In so many ways. I think most of it comes down to the fact the industry is getting very broad and shallow. And what I mean by that is there are more publications by the day, but they're all essentially covering the same kind of news for mass audiences. And that's simply a business model function, right? If you're trying to drive traffic for advertising, you're going to think of a broad group of readers. You're going to try and hook that reader into clicking on your story with a sexy headline, and you're going to write about Donald Trump, the iPhone, the proven traffic drivers. And so I think we've seen broadening of the number of publications, but those publications, they're shallower and they're looking more similar. I think that leaves a huge opportunity for other types of businesses that aren't doing that, that want to go deeper and focus on things that aren't being written about. But to answer your question, my main”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So, the journal obviously has some fabulous reporters and editors who I think were instrumental in training me as a journalist. And I think we learned a lot from about what constitutes great reporting. In particular, when I started at the journal in 2005, the emphasis was on reporting no one else was doing. So we didn't just write the same news of the day. We didn't write the press release. We looked for the stories no one was doing. I think the journal and other publications have broadened their focus away from that kind of journalism, but it's something that I've certainly taken from the journal and half our reporting team spent decades collectively at the journal as well at the information. So I think that's one of the things that we still think of to this day.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Sure. So I started the information about two and a half years ago after eight years as a tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal. And we did it because we believe there's a huge opportunity to build a business publication that is deeply focused on the business of technology. And as technology literally transforms every industry out there, we think there's a huge market for not necessarily just more information, but more good information about tech and business also to do it with a subscription business model, which is something that has kind of gotten a bad wrap in the digital world, but we think is the model that's really aligned with delivering a quality product and something that can ultimately thrive in the digital world as well. So we started out two and a half years ago and it's been a fun ride since.”

    2016-05-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source