E1003: The Athletic CEO & Co-founder Alex Mather is building a paid online sports media publication, shares insights on attracting investors in a seemingly dying industry, managing 500+ remote writers, creating interesting angles through unique coverage & more

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2019

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1:05 Jason intros Alex Mather
2:08 Why did Alex launch a paid subscription publication in a seemingly dying industry?
4:32 How & where did The Athletic start? What was their thesis?
6:32 What was early feedback like from investors?
15:57 Changing approach from ad-based to subscription-based writing
21:34 Why the NHL & MLB are great for The Athletic
22:43 How do they manage young writers?
26:52 What % of their spend goes to editorial?
33:00 Managing 500+ writers
36:20 What are some ways they manage engagement?
39:08 Twitter's impact on journalism
43:39 Scouting new talent & capitalizing on layoffs
50:10 What has the inflated valuations of BuzzFeed & Vox done to the digital media industry?
55:20 How is The Athletic handling Apple's app-store subscription explosion?
58:20 Apple's impact on the boom of incredible products in our society and how The Athletic translates that to editorial
1:01:56 Alex asks Jason: "Mayor of San Francisco or owner of the Knicks?"
1:03:47 Alex shares his thoughts on the NBA/China situation
1:12:01 How does Alex go about re-activating users who have churned?
1:12:42 What does The Athletic think about the prevalence of sports gambling in America?
1:14:55 Who is the most interesting NBA player right now?
1:16:01 Jason & Alex pick who they would start an NBA franchise with today
1:17:50 Jason plays "good tweet/bad tweet" with Alex

Transcript

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1:03.4	Hey everybody welcome to this week and startups. I'm your host
1:06.4	Jason Callicanis and this is the podcast where we talk to founders
1:09.8	about their vision for how the world should change through
1:12.4	their startups, their products, their services, and perhaps one of the toughest spaces to ever be a founder in is the media space.
1:21.5	Let's face it, and it's an unmitigated disaster out there for
1:25.3	newspapers, websites, everything except podcasting and email newsletters seems
1:30.9	to be an unmitigated disaster.
1:33.7	Everybody's losing their jobs, unions are being formed,
1:36.6	while companies are going out of business.
1:38.8	It's hard.
	...

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