The Rebooting Show

Industry Dive's Sean Griffey's guide to sustainable media businesses


Listen Later

⁠Thanks to Kerv ⁠for sponsoring this episode. To see Kerv's technology at work, ⁠check out Peacock's MustShop TV⁠.



If you’ll be on the Cote d’Azur next month. The New Attention Economy, presented by Kerv, will have speakers from the Financial Times, Uber, Paramount, Havas and more. Let’s talk ‘Active Attention’ Economy at Cannes Join us for three days of exclusive thoughtful conversations and cocktails with the industry’s best to discuss the Attention Economy and the future of publishing, streaming, AI & creativity. Register here.




Last week, I traveled to Washington DC to record a podcast with Sean Griffey, CEO of Industry Dive. I’ve known Sean and Industry Dive a while, mostly because two of its 33 publications – Marketing Dive and Retail Dive – were in areas in which my previous companies had publications. Sean was also the rare media CEO who would come onto my podcast and not rattle off a bunch of talking points. The big numbers he talked about weren’t Facebook video views of ComScore uniques ginned up through traffic assignment schemes. He spoke about revenue and, imagine, EBITDA


Industry Dive went on to be bought not once but twice. First in a transaction to growth equity firm Falfurrias Capital in 2019 and then last year in a deal to events giant Informa last year that Axios reported put an enterprise value on Industry Dive of $525 million. That would make Industry Dive’s value at over two Vices and five BuzzFeeds.


What Industry Dive got right is something I covered after the Informa deal. I was long impressed by Sean and Industry Dive’s management ability to stay focused and disciplined in their business model. It helped that Industry Dive didn’t raise venture capital. Constraints can be good. It meant focusing on what was working, notably newsletters and being good at putting first-party data to use for B2B marketers.


In B2B, the pull to do events – have you signed up for The Rebooting’s Cannes events yet? – is strong. That’s because B2B doesn’t have advertisers per se, but marketers. And B2B marketers serve to get their sales teams prospects. That leads many B2B publications to go heavily to events.  Industry Dive skipped events because it was very good at building publications in high value industries with tons of regulation and tech-driven change and acting as a critical marketing partner. That isn’t revolutionary. But it’s hard to execute.


Another aspect that impressed me about what Industry Dive did was it executed its playbook not once but across multiple industries. It didn’t wait until it perfected its playbook in one industry, because as Sean told me, you will perpetually put it off because you’ll never feel like you’ve gotten there. Building a leading publication in a single industry is hard but also has a fairly low ceiling, if you’re trying to build a big company. (I tend to think more people should be OK building a great company that’s smaller and skip the lure of massive exits.) Industry Dive was able to pull that off.


And finally, I think there’s something to be said about how Sean and his team went about building their work without all the PR nonsense. I hope of the many things that are left behind from the previous era, it’s the out of whack ratio between sizzle and steak. Fake it till you make it always struck me as a terrible strategy. Ask Ozy


...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Rebooting ShowBy Brian Morrissey

  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9

4.9

54 ratings


More shows like The Rebooting Show

View all
Decoder with Nilay Patel by The Verge

Decoder with Nilay Patel

3,128 Listeners

Pivot by New York Magazine

Pivot

8,911 Listeners

Channels with Peter Kafka by Vox Media Podcast Network

Channels with Peter Kafka

542 Listeners

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway by Vox Media Podcast Network

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

5,203 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,114 Listeners

The Powers That Be: Daily by Puck | Audacy

The Powers That Be: Daily

348 Listeners

The Town with Matthew Belloni by The Ringer

The Town with Matthew Belloni

954 Listeners

People vs Algorithms by Troy Young,  Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer

People vs Algorithms

49 Listeners

On with Kara Swisher by Vox Media

On with Kara Swisher

3,127 Listeners

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin by Rick Rubin

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

976 Listeners

More or Less by Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, and Sam Lessin

More or Less

84 Listeners

Prof G Markets by Vox Media Podcast Network

Prof G Markets

908 Listeners

Mixed Signals from Semafor Media by Semafor Podcasts

Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

202 Listeners

The Varsity by Puck | Audacy

The Varsity

50 Listeners

The Grill Room by Audacy | Puck

The Grill Room

29 Listeners