YouSaid · the spoken record

Roger Lynch

lines on the record: 65
first: 2026-06-11
most recent: 2026-06-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Know it's, I always tell people I've started a number of companies, like most of the companies I run are companies I've started. And even companies I've started, I gotten bored after maybe four or five years. And I know when I get that feeling like, okay, I'm starting to get bored. Time for me to do something. I never get bored in this job. Honestly, first of all, always really challenging problems to solve. And also the most interesting intellectual people to deal with. So I have no plans on leaving. I really enjoy it. And I'm definitely not bored.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, short form video is a much bigger part of our business than film and television. So in terms of revenue, certainly short-form video is very important for us.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that business has. Shrunk as an industry. The number of new shows and films being produced has shrunk and the time it takes to get something approved has shrunk. But for us, we had seven shows and movies premiere last year. We sold 11 new ones. So our team, it's a very small team, but our team does, I think, a really good job punching above their weight with that. But it starts with all of that IP of our journalism and our content. What's more important for you?”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know for a while every publisher, and we talked about this, said, hey, we make all this amazing. We make great stories, et cetera. These things are often turned into movies and television shows. You really got to lean into that and figure out ways to get these things made, either by ourselves or with partners. And for a while during the streaming boom, the extremers were buying literally anything you guys could make, that does not happen anymore. How have you rethought sort of the business of getting into Hollywood and television and streaming?”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that movie is their movie. It's not our movie. And we have no direct. Participation in it, but we certainly have a lot of fun with it. And I think Anna and Merrill going over on the cover of Vogue, and as you may have seen, Chloe, our editor of American Vogue, had to work hard to convince Hannah to do that because that is not who she is was fabulous and that cover of Vogue with the two of them was iconic. But what I would say is that movie has generated a lot of interest, not just about Vogue, but about Conde Nast. So it's been good for our business. It's certainly been good for our business.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We revise them every year. We go through a formal process where we evaluate it every year and some names are added and some names drop off.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, the standard process for every company I've run is you have an emergency successor identified, you have a list of people who could be ready now or in the next year or two. You have a list that could be three to five years and a list that could be five plus years.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no. I mean, it's very funny because one of the things I also implemented when I joined was succession planning. And it was very clear that this had never been done before it got in acid. It caused people to be very uncomfortable to start talking about. Who could ever possibly replace them? But we always look to have a broad selection of potential people who could fulfill a role. But you never know whether they're going to be available or what the situation is. So, you know, and we also work to bring in talent specifically with the idea of succession. So it's something that we run a really disciplined process every single year. I report it to my board. We spend time going through. We have our editors.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, first of all, for people that are in this field, those are the pinnacle jobs. They really are. You're talking about two of the most successful editors ever. So it will be very, very difficult to find people who could ever replace them. But guess what? I'm sure the same was said about Grace Marabella when she ran Vogue for several decades before Anna came in or Tina Brown or William Sean or any of the great editors that have been attached to these brands over many, many, many decades.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, we've already seen a lot of that damage done today. So, you know, of the publishers that are left, you know, it's a higher percentage that will survive than it was five years ago. But certainly they're not going to all survive. I think that writing is on the wall, or at least not in the form that they are today.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I would want to give the impression that it's only very big brands that can be. Because we have some very small brands like Pitchfork. It's less than 1% of the GQ. But it has a high. We put it under GQ, but it has its separate editorial team and operates. Under its own brand, and has been very successful. It actually has one of the largest direct audiences and now has a subscription product, which is doing very, very well. That's a brand that will do well in this era because it has authority. It is more niche in its content area. It's never going to be as big as Vogue, but it has a point of view and it has a loyal, dedicated audience. So it's not just big brand, small brand. It really is, does your brand have authority? Does it have connection with audience that is really deeper than search or discover traffic?”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it is more likely than ever with AI for brands that don't have the authority that our top brands have. I don't worry about AI putting Vogue or the New Yorker out of business. It just will never replicate what those brands and what the editorial teams can do with those. You have, and you mentioned some of the companies that have sort of gone by the wayside, look, I think they were the darlings of These platforms when they were sending them all the traffic, and they did a really effective job of arbitrage and taking intent-driven searches or video, whatever, and turning it into commerce transactions or ads or things like that. But they were entirely reliant on That traffic continuing. And when that traffic went away, what they didn't have was brands that had the level of authority that frankly our brands have. And so...”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started to become used more and more, these companies started to realize that our content was being used in their answers much more significantly. So they started coming back to us like, oh, okay, we see your content really matters in certain areas. And now there's a whole debate about whether AI has taste or could ever replicate taste. Perfect, right? Because that is our core business. Creativity, taste. And I think that creates much more opportunities for us now and how we can work with AI companies.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finding that navigation, it's very effective, the AI summaries for answering really simple questions. But less so for things that involve taste. And this is one of the big things that I've seen in the discussions that we've had with AI companies. Three or four years ago when we started negotiating with them. It was a bit surreal because We literally, one company in particular told us. Okay, we need to know how many words you have. Like, okay, do the words matter or just any words? Can you tell us how many words you have? Because we pay by the word. We're like, okay, this is going to be a long discussion. But we got through it, negotiated these deals. And then as these services answer engines.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're doing, but I think it was also in part because People, like, if you think about the example I gave, I said vogue shopping recommendations or something like that. You type that in in a search algorithm. If what you get in return is an AI summary or a bunch of Google links to, you know, Walmart or whatever the deal is. That's not a satisfactory outcome. You might just type in to a search bar vogue.com and then find it that way. So we've been seeing direct traffic grow dramatically where it's the majority source of our traffic now. And I think it is our teams would like to say, oh, it's because we've done such a great job. And I think that is largely true, but I think it is also because people are finding less relevant search results than they used to. And so where they used to use Google in some ways as a navigation tool.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there's an interesting dynamic that we see. You mentioned, you know, that I said search is going to go away. We chased it for a number of years and each year we do our budget and we'd say search is going to decline just because we don't know why, but we know there'll be some algorithm change that will cause it to decline. And each of the last three years or so, we underestimated the decline. And so last year we said we're going to take a different approach. I told all of our teams, you need to plan your businesses around there being no search. And if you don't have a plan for that, you may not have a business. And we took that approach. And I think it was very effective because it caused people to really think about how do we generate audiences that have strong intent and strong engagement. Now, as search decline, we saw our direct audiences grow. I think it was in part the work that we”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, not just pay us, but agree to terms on how you're going to use it. Just like, you know, when I was in the music industry or we did, you know, film and television, these license deals, you could think about two main components. There's the money, but there's also the use, the grant of rights. How can you use it? And most importantly, how can you not use it? So as an example, we would never do a deal with an AI company that says, take all of our New Yorker content and just show it verbatim to your customers. That wouldn't be in our interest. We would put conditions around it. So the terms of the license deals are just as important as the money that's generated from them. We don't think that they will be refer traffic anywhere near the rate at which search did.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we get off this call, I'm going to slack some people I work for. I'm going to say, here's what Roger Lynch, the CEO of Cande Nass, says about Google Discover Traffic. I'll let you know how you bet Jim.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because if somebody Goes to Google and types, you know, vogue shopping recommendations. There is real clear intent with what they're looking for. If they're going to Google to search for something and they see an article promoted that catches their eye and they click on it, it's much less committed. It's great. We love to get traffic from Google Discover, but that person is much less likely to become a vogue subscriber or New Yorker subscriber or even transact in commerce than someone who shows much more intent research. So it is not a replacement, even though”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do get traffic from Google Discover, but it is very different traffic than search. Search is intent driven traffic. Google Discover Traffic doesn't convert for subscription, doesn't convert for commerce. You may be able to sell a few ads around it, but it is far less important.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is very difficult for a publisher to do. I think that's anti competitive. I think it's wrong that they do that. But look, these companies are also our partners. So we can have disagreements in some area of our business and strong alignment in other areas. Again, with Google, we're one of the largest publishers on YouTube. We have a very, very good, strong relationship with YouTube and it's really core to our business and really important for them too.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, if they want to negotiate with us and enter into a license agreement like OpenAI has done or Amazon or Microsoft or Perplexity, fine, then we can come to terms on how that will work. Those that don't do that or worse, frankly, in the case of Google, they tie their scraping of AI content to their search scraping. So Google's been found to be dominant in search. They don't let you opt out of scraping your content for AI unless you opt out for search.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always a risk. So, as I mentioned, it starts with the audience. In terms of these platforms, I don't believe that any of these platforms owe us an obligation to send us traffic or customers or audience. I also don't believe that they have the right to use our content to come and compete directly with us. So, you know, if Google wants to change its search algorithms and stop sending traffic to publishers, as we've all seen, the amount of traffic that comes to publishers from search has declined precipitously. That's fine. They can have their business reasons around it. It doesn't give them the right to use our content to then come and compete with us for those audiences. That's the rub there. And so for AI, the risk is these AI companies use the content that our journalists create. And use it to compete with our core business model.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was no revenue. There was no revenue model that we had for this. But it was important, I felt, for us to be there because our audiences expected us to be there. And we'd figure out, you know, that's been the history of the internet. It starts with engagement and then monetization figures itself out later. And that's what's happened with us in TikTok, because now we have ways to sell ads around our content, and it's become a good business for us. So it starts with, where do our audiences expect our brands to be? Let's make sure we're there. Now, your specific questions around AI, I think.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing is start with our audiences and I've always been a believer in you have to observe what your audience or your customers are doing and try to craft your business model around that. And audiences are on these platforms. And so it's very important for our brands to be where our audiences expect them to be. I think TikTok was a great example of that. When TikTok launched in the US, we saw a growth of Vogue on TikTok, but not by us. Yes, people were producing content under the vogue name, putting it on TikTok. That was a really strong indication that audiences expected Vogue to be on there. And so we jumped in in a big way.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it is. But again, it doesn't mean there's not an opportunity for them to do that and to work with us in certain ways.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, we haven't had a lot of that happen, but I think that the unfortunate case with Substack is there aren't that many that really can make a good living doing it. And I think those that do find that also it is hard work. It is you are constantly having to produce, you are constantly having to think about how you grow your business. And for some people, that's exhilarating and can be very successful. And some it's exhausting. And so I think there's a limit as to how many people will be able to do that in a way that really supports their lifestyle. Yeah, there's many.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Publication, yeah, and it's great, and he does that, but it's a limited audience that he'll reach on his own. It's also working with us at Conde Nasser at Vanity Fair gives him access to a So, to me, it's a pretty good model to have where you can have somebody as talented as he is and connected as he is, building his own business, but at the same time collaborating with us in a way that works for both parties.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, look, I think for them, for most of them, they may have a substance. Let's take someone like Lachlan Cartwright at Vanity Fair. You know, he has breaker, which is his own.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Look, I think that these new outlets for creatives or journalists are very good. This is an industry that's been under pressure. There are fewer jobs in it than there were five years ago. That trend you've seen year after year. And so new outlets and new ways for journalists or creatives to be able to develop businesses that can sustain them are only good. For us, it does make us think differently about how we operate and how we work with journalists and creatives. We have to be more creative. We have to say, okay, there may be somebody who's got a substack who is in an adjacent field that we can work with in some areas and they'll have their substack and it's not necessarily competitive what we do, but it's not part of our business. And that's okay. And so I think you'll probably see us do more of that rather than less of that”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being either impacted directly by the government or by the ownership group or whatever. This is one of them. That is a source of competitive advantage. In the seven years I've been at the company, not once has our owners have our owners or our board come to me and said, hey, don't publish this, don't publish that. And therefore, not once have I done that to our editors because we have the best editors in the world. And the way to keep the best editors in the world is to stay out of their way and support them. And I really believe that that is the key to our success. And I'm fortunate that we're owned by a family that believes in that too. And so I talk about it publicly because I want people to know, especially journalists who are maybe at places where they don't feel that they have that freedom that should there be an opportunity to work at Condy Nest, they'd be welcomed here and they would not be interfered with.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The audi Our own employees and our future employees. You know, we have a talent brand that is very important to us. And I think if you're a journalist today, I always tell our employees, our journalists, that right now there's fewer and fewer places where you can practice your best work without.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that companies that aren't under the type of political pressure that you mentioned earlier who abandon these, it just says one thing. It was never really a core value. It was a response to a moment. And one of the things I'm most proud of with our company is that we've retained it as a core value and we report on our progress every year. And every year we make progress. And we have publicly stated goals and we track ourselves to those goals. And I think our employees really appreciate it. And as I said, with fewer and fewer companies doing that, it puts us in a position of, I think, great competitive advantage.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, I think there's a couple categories of companies that have backed away from the commitments they made. One is companies that are under threat from our own federal government and the FCC. I certainly have sympathy for the threats that they face. I wish more of them were willing to stand up because I do believe that the fears that they have are overblown in terms of what the government can really do. There are other companies that just abandon them because the wind's change. I have no sympathy for them, none whatsoever.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, dropping these initiatives, but that only says one thing that it never was a core value, it was a convenience. For us, it's a core value and it is a source of competitive advantage for us now.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can create teams from around the world of employees who are really vested in this. Help advise the company and help drive forward progress in these areas. So that work resulted in a diversity report and goals that we set in 2020. And so we were, by the time this hit us, we were already had a lot of work underway. But it was work that we needed because I think the company was not showing up well in these areas. And so do I think we overcorrected? No. I don't think we overcorrected it. I think we had a lot of room for improvement and I think we seized the moment. And so today when you see so many companies abandoning these efforts, you know, we just last month published our diversity report again and we showed the progress that we make. And as I stood up in front of our company last month at our company meeting, I said, look, this is a core value of the company and it's discouraging to see all these other companies.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it really hit us in 2020. And it started right around the time when George Floyd was murdered. I knew when I joined that we had a lot of cultural issues to deal with. And one of the first things that I did, again, because we had all these separate businesses around the world, there was no one company, there was no one even executive team. I wanted to try to find some things that I could get this newly, what was about to be combined company, focused on some global initiatives. And it can't be like we're going to be profitable. That's not inspiring. But what I found talking to our employees was they were really interested in a couple areas. One, what are we doing on diversity? And two, what about sustainability? So I thought, great, these are really two really important issues for us to work on. And what we can do is even in advance of changing all the org structures or how we do our editorial.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you feel like at any point you sort of overcorrected to accommodate staff? It seems now that the cultural pendulum has swung a lot and a lot of the stuff that people were complaining about in 2020, 2021 aren't things they would at least voice publicly now. And I'm wondering if you look back in that era and go, maybe I overdid it.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, most of, I mean, your peers don't really exist anymore. It used to be Conde Nast and Time Inc. and Time Inc. doesn't exist. It's been chopped up and renamed a bunch of places. A lot of most, I think, of all the digital brands that we're going to challenge the Condane asked the world. I just wrote about basically the end of BuzzFeed yesterday. Vice has gone bankrupt. Vox media, who makes this podcast, is splitting itself up as we talk So, I guess what I'm saying is you did a good job. If you can sit here and say, yeah, we have grown revenue and we've grown profitability while other folks have been falling down. Not really a question, I guess. I guess that's a compliment.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. What I'm saying is when you said this is a solvable business problem, and now you can point back and say, yeah, we solved it. But in 2019, you had that same level of confidence that we're going to figure this out, where most people have not.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's true, but Peter, when I joined, it's been widely reported that the company was losing money and not a small amount of money, and today we're profitable. And when I joined, we were majority print revenue, and today we're majority digital.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wait, wait, wait. It is because the traditional line, as you know, for every company going through analog to digital is you're trading your analog dollars for digital dimes, pennies, whatever it is. And so it's a business problem that has really bedeviled just about every media company.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I asked for a lot of data on that. I wanted to see principally around digital platforms. And what I really quickly realized is they're definitely becoming more connected with audiences. We're growing audiences and therefore, okay, what we have is really a business model problem that is very solvable.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I knew that we had some big challenges, and frankly, that's what attracted me to this. I like really big challenges. I like transformation. I like connecting the dots and strategies and then going executing against it. The thing I knew is that there was going to be a big messy transformation just in terms of the structure of the company and that those changes were going to be cultural as much as they were organizational and that we were going to need to do a lot of innovation around creating new businesses and revenue streams. But what gave me hope that we had that opportunity was the strength of our brands. And so the number one thing for me when I was considering whether to take this job was to try to understand where our brands becoming More connected with audiences or less.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely because the trajectory that we had overcome was, again, the majority of the revenue of the company when I joined being print, advertising, and print subscription newsstands as a declining business. It's a small minority of our revenue today because all of these other revenue areas have been growing and they grow every year. And so now they've surpassed the decline in the traditional business and they're only going to continue to grow. Our revenue will continue to grow because these new streams like digital subscriptions and commerce and events and all of that are growing at double digit rates.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's be clear, our revenue is growing. Our revenue grew last year, and our revenue already this year is growing again. So we do have growing revenue.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I guess what I'm asking is are your owners okay if you come back to them and say at the end of this year say, listen, our revenue didn't increase much or we're still where we were in 2021. We had some declining businesses. I've replaced them with growing businesses. And you, the new house family, you get to enjoy X percent more profits. Is that a win for them and for you?”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Events so far are up 60% over last year, which was up 50% over the year before. Those strategies around leaning into digital subscriptions or our commerce business or our events business has really paid dividends to us.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the real trick wasn't to change the trajectory of that because that wasn't going to change. It was to develop new revenue streams at a fast rate so that you can offset the decline that was going to happen in the legacy business. And we've done that. And so if you look at our big growth areas, certainly digital subscriptions, that grew 29% last year. I think there are not many companies that wouldn't be thrilled to have 29% growth in digital subscription revenue or events. We started the conversation today about events. Our events strategy has really paid off. And every year, these big 10 pull events grow more than we expect. So if you look at last year, our big 10 pull events last year grew about 50% revenue year on year. Huge. And these are not small revenue activities for us. This year...”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think if you look at what we have revenue streams that have declined structurally and revenue that has grown. And coming in to the company I came into. Print advertising, print subscription, newsstand revenues. That was just going to decline. We knew that. And that was by far the majority of the revenue when I joined.”
2026-06-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT