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Speaker 1: We don't ask for permission to do things here. That's

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Speaker 1: an important aspect to our culture. If you want to

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Speaker 1: do something, I don't want to hear about it, just

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Speaker 1: go do it.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, I am Jade Hoyd, executive producer to The

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Speaker 2: Athletic podcast Network, and you are listening to a special

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Speaker 2: presentation brought to you by Dall Technologies Small Business pod

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Speaker 2: Friends series. Of course, as you may have heard, many

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Speaker 2: small businesses are looking for new ways to enhance their

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Speaker 2: business strategies during these uncertain times. For the second year

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Speaker 2: in a row, Dall Technologies has assembled an amazing list

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Speaker 2: of podcasters to create a virtual conference to share advice, inspiration,

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Speaker 2: and stories on navigating companies now and into the future.

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Speaker 2: Future here at The Athletic, we decided to share the

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Speaker 2: story of how our company was created, going all the

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Speaker 2: way back to late twenty fifteen, with the founders of

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Speaker 2: the company.

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Speaker 1: Alex Mather, co founder and CEO of The Athletic.

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Speaker 3: I'm Adam Hansman, co founder and President of The Athletic.

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Speaker 2: In these three episodes, we will take you through how

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Speaker 2: The Athletic began a simple idea that was to deliver

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Speaker 2: quality journalism to diehard sports fans. How that idea came

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Speaker 2: into existence, the trials and tribulations along the way, working

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Speaker 2: together towards one goal, team building, journalistic and artistic freedom,

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Speaker 2: reading the landscape in an ever changing market space full

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Speaker 2: of big players, to form a niche for which to

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Speaker 2: grow into the beach.

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Speaker 3: Each How did you all meet?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Adam and I met probably two thousand and

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Speaker 1: fifteen or maybe at the end of twenty fourteen at

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Speaker 1: a company that we both previously worked at called Strava.

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Speaker 1: Strava is a social network and subscription business for endurance

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Speaker 1: sports nerds. I was on the product team and Adam

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Speaker 1: was on the finance team, and through a series of

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Speaker 1: meetings together developed a strong working relationship that led to

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Speaker 1: some conversations.

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Speaker 4: What were those conversations?

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Speaker 3: Were you talking just regular sports talk like you would

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Speaker 3: with a friend.

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Speaker 1: Ye know, probably you know. The rare thing at Strava

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Speaker 1: was there actually weren't that many sports fans there, non

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Speaker 1: endurance sports, like pro sports fans, and so I probably

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Speaker 1: had a Phillies hat on He's a Bengals fan, and

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Speaker 1: we probably got to chatting. But where it probably got

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Speaker 1: more interesting is when I resigned from Strava. In September

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Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen. One of the first emails that I

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Speaker 1: got after I resigned, and my ambition was to start

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Speaker 1: the athletic and I was alone, And one of the

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Speaker 1: first emails I received after resigning from Strava was from

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Speaker 1: Adam saying, grab coffee, question Mark.

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Speaker 3: Hey, where'd you go? What's happening, Adam?

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Speaker 1: What were you thinking?

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Speaker 3: Did you know that that resignation was being tendered? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: So I suspected that this was Alex's kind of a

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Speaker 3: moment to look at starting in something else himself. And

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Speaker 3: you know, we had sort of not had any kind

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Speaker 3: of serious discussions about you know, entrepreneurship, who were both

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Speaker 3: like very hard working people and just had that kind

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Speaker 3: of rapport from you know, being together at Strava that

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Speaker 3: I figured I would check in see what he's up to.

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Speaker 3: Figured Alex would have a bunch of different opportunities. Was

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Speaker 3: actually quite surprised when I heard that he was interested

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Speaker 3: in starting something in the sports media space, because, like

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Speaker 3: Alex said, when we were you know at Strava, when

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Speaker 3: we say sports, or when we say athlete, we mean runners, cyclists,

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Speaker 3: endurance athletes. Right, both Alex and I, as we would

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Speaker 3: sort of discover it means some you know, player on

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Speaker 3: a field trying to catch a ball or throw a ball,

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Speaker 3: and our lives revolved around those people throwing and catching balls.

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Speaker 3: It was sort of one of those just like a

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Speaker 3: moment that was a spark. And believe we met at

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Speaker 3: Alex in the in the Darwin Cafe behind Strava's building.

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Speaker 3: We had to be off the premises because I think

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Speaker 3: Alex might have had some non competes.

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Speaker 1: I think it was a full ten feet from the

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Speaker 1: back door of Strava's office through an alleyway to a cafe.

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Speaker 1: And Adam passionately told me that he was editor in

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Speaker 1: chief of his grade school or was it high school?

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Speaker 3: I was the editor of my high school paper, So

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Speaker 3: I felt like that was that was enough to get

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Speaker 3: into the conversation.

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Speaker 2: How is it you go from just an idea or

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Speaker 2: like kind of walking down the hall with to like

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Speaker 2: forming the company.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is the craziest moment of any startup,

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Speaker 1: whether it be the athletic or you know, a podcast.

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Speaker 1: It has to translate from ideas that roam around your

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Speaker 1: head into ideas that you communicate to others. And they

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Speaker 1: were so good in your mind, and you had it

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Speaker 1: all figured out, and then you start talking about it

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Speaker 1: and you realize, wow, I've got a long way to

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Speaker 1: go to figure this one out. This turned out to be,

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Speaker 1: as I got to talk over and over without him,

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Speaker 1: generally over coffee, that it just kept gaining steam in

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Speaker 1: how we might do it. And you know, for me,

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Speaker 1: I had previously been an engineer in my career, had

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Speaker 1: not written code for a decade, and I remember Adam saying,

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Speaker 1: we don't need another engineer, you can just write the code.

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Speaker 1: He had no idea what he was talking about. He

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Speaker 1: had no idea that I had taken a decade off.

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Speaker 1: He just assumed I could write the code.

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Speaker 3: That you did.

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Speaker 1: And I think that blind confidence in me propelled me

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Speaker 1: to write the first eight thousand lines of code for

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Speaker 1: the Athletic. You start to go and say, okay, well,

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Speaker 1: what do we need from a team perspective, what do

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Speaker 1: we need from a capital perspective to see if this

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Speaker 1: thing has Like Pretty quickly working with at him, I

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Speaker 1: realized that there's not a ton of overlap in a

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Speaker 1: good way, which is, you know, the things that I

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Speaker 1: could provide to the company in terms of like my

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Speaker 1: experiences in the tech world and media world. We're very,

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Speaker 1: very different than the things that Adam brought to the table.

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Speaker 1: And that's where, you know, it started to go from

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Speaker 1: idea to buying a domain name to how much money

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Speaker 1: of our own are we're going to spend on this thing?

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Speaker 1: And so it feels like this is not an exaggeration.

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Speaker 1: It feels like extremely fragile, almost like the creation of

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Speaker 1: life on a nature show, that anything could dislodge you

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Speaker 1: from this idea, even just you know, one stray thought

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Speaker 1: could kill the company before it starts, but day by

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Speaker 1: day it gets stronger and stronger. All that took place

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Speaker 1: a few months towards the end of twenty fifteen with Adam.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know the other other thing I would

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Speaker 3: sort of call out in the early days, you know,

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Speaker 3: Alex and I coming from Strava, which had raised a

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Speaker 3: couple of fun raising rounds, we thought, hey, we're Strava lums.

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Speaker 3: You know this raising money thing, like, how hard could

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Speaker 3: it be? In addition to even just trying to like

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Speaker 3: launch our first market, which we did early in twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 3: spent most of that first twelve months, you know, really

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Speaker 3: out trying to raise money. And there's pros and cons

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Speaker 3: to obviously trying to raise outside you know, investment sort

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Speaker 3: of when you're starting a company. But you know, Alex

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Speaker 3: and I didn't come from means, and you know, wanted

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Speaker 3: to to sort of move aggressively with our idea, and

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Speaker 3: we just fell fought on our faces. Investors were not

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Speaker 3: about the athletic. In the early days, you want.

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Speaker 2: Back to twenty fifteen, sports fans were going through a

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Speaker 2: period where you had local newspapers focused on game recaps,

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Speaker 2: doing things the way they've always been done.

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Speaker 4: Journalism has had revenue problems for years, and we're starting

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Speaker 4: to see as the conversion over to digital for many.

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Speaker 1: Of these properties manse newspapers, it just isn't the same.

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Speaker 2: But many outlets were already cutting resources, depleting sports departments.

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Speaker 2: Major players like ESPN and Bleacher Report were focused on

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Speaker 2: the major stars like Lebron James, Tom Brady, or Tim Tebow.

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Speaker 2: The space for all other sports was getting small.

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Speaker 4: Watch the ball religiously.

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Speaker 3: I know who you are.

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Speaker 4: You are one of the biggest locations this past year

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Speaker 4: goes well beyond football, so you know, people either love

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Speaker 4: you or they.

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Speaker 2: Want you know.

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Speaker 1: There felt like a gap in between both with the

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Speaker 1: local newspaper doing in ESPN, and then there's like great

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Speaker 1: sites like bleacher bleacher Report out there, but they're more

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Speaker 1: focused on the ad supported business model. And I kept

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Speaker 1: coming back to this idea that like, if you hire

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Speaker 1: some of the best, smartest sports writers and made them

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Speaker 1: like rethink what they do every day, Like you don't

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Speaker 1: need to go to every game, you don't need to

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Speaker 1: be the tenth microphone in someone's face. What if you

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Speaker 1: just tell great stories, do stuff other people, don't figure

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Speaker 1: out what fans want, iterate your way, there would be

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Speaker 1: something that you wouldn't need a ton of subscribers to

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Speaker 1: make it work financially. It really just started as simp

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Speaker 1: as that how can we prove out that we can

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Speaker 1: hire five people in Chicago that we can then get

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Speaker 1: enough subscribers to pay their bills without ads. Without you know,

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Speaker 1: there was sort of the era of auto playing videos,

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Speaker 1: the era of like pop up ads. You know, it

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Speaker 1: was tough reading sports media for many, many years, and

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Speaker 1: if you clicked on a link, you know, it might

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Speaker 1: you know, make you click thirty times through a slideshow

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Speaker 1: to see your article. And so I felt like there

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Speaker 1: was an appetite for a portion of the sports fandom

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Speaker 1: out there that would appreciate great work, that would be

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Speaker 1: willing to pay a little bit of money each month

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Speaker 1: to not have ads and not have pop up ads,

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Speaker 1: to not have auto playing videos, and support great journalism.

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Speaker 1: And that was really just the simple seed of the business.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think what what struck me as

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Speaker 3: a you know, an expat fan like Alex so I was.

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Speaker 3: I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, big Reds Bengals fan,

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Speaker 3: living in California and just seeing in the in the

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Speaker 3: industry a lot of innovation happening, and so there were

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Speaker 3: sites sort of emerging around that time, like You're five

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Speaker 3: thirty eight's Fanographs. Grant Land was was going strong circa

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Speaker 3: late twenty fifteen, and you know when grant Land, when

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Speaker 3: someone there would write about the Bengals or the Reds

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Speaker 3: like you sort of would go crazy. So just seeing

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Speaker 3: editorial models that did focus on quality but not for

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Speaker 3: local that was really our initial you know, the it's

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Speaker 3: that we were trying to scratch, both as founders, but

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Speaker 3: also like that was the pain point that we felt

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Speaker 3: as sports fans was, you know, there are some cool

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Speaker 3: things happening. There were a lot of kind of gross

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Speaker 3: things happening with all the you know, the auto play

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Speaker 3: and the and the slide shows and what have you,

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Speaker 3: but real innovation taking place in the space too, and

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Speaker 3: we thought we could apply that for local fans.

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Speaker 2: Does it sound like I'm talking into my mind?

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Speaker 1: You know, I think back to many of the fundraising experience.

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Speaker 1: So the thing we kept hearing over and over it was,

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Speaker 1: there's just so much free content available, how are you

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Speaker 1: going to get anyone to pay?

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Speaker 3: But more like an idea or content or actually eptal on.

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Speaker 1: New It's the first thing that like we when we

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Speaker 1: went out fundraising, everyone kept saying the same thing is

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Speaker 1: no one's ever going to pay for content. And so

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Speaker 1: this is the beginning of twenty sixteen. At this point,

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Speaker 1: maybe the New York Times had a million subscribers something

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Speaker 1: like that. There weren't a lot of case studies in

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Speaker 1: media companies getting folks to pay for great content. There

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Speaker 1: was a lot of skepticism from the venture community that like,

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Speaker 1: no one was going to pay for content. You know,

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Speaker 1: Netflix had just started to really take off. It's been

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Speaker 1: exponential for Spotify and Netflix and Apple Music, Disney Plus

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Speaker 1: and all these things. Now where it seems very obvious.

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Speaker 1: If you go back and try to watch a television

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Speaker 1: show or a movie with ads, you're like, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to just restart this movie on you know, on Netflix.

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Speaker 1: Can you imagine any other business that's like, oh, did

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Speaker 1: you like this ice cream? Come back next week for

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Speaker 1: another scoop and you're like, but I'm willing to buy

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Speaker 1: three scoops? You bring one it all right?

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 1: What was very clear is if you really pushed the

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Speaker 1: person telling you that, okay, well what do you read?

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Speaker 1: Tell me and then you know, they would start to

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Speaker 1: spout off the websites and say, well do you get

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Speaker 1: anything on this team?

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Speaker 3: Who do you?

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Speaker 1: Where are you from? And you would actually like interview

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Speaker 1: them and they would arrive at like, yeah, you're kind

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Speaker 1: of right. There really isn't great stuff on many of

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Speaker 1: the sports teams out there. It was a great learning

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Speaker 1: experience and the fact that we had to figure out

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Speaker 1: how to position our product, and I think that like

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Speaker 1: really translates into an important story at the Athletic, which

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Speaker 1: was we launched the business in January of twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: and we cover sports in the city of Chicago.

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Speaker 4: It was a game that will be emblazoned on the

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Speaker 4: souls of Cub fans forever, alternative events that made grown

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Speaker 4: men sub with relief that the burden worn by their

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Speaker 4: parents and grandparents had finally been lifted from their shoulders.

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Speaker 1: There were may remember twenty sixteen was the year that

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Speaker 1: the Chicago Cubs broke the curse, and there was some

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Speaker 1: really interesting things that we saw in our data during

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Speaker 1: that World Series run where we're all watching, you know,

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Speaker 1: the Cubs break a curse of epic proportions. We see

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Speaker 1: our data around the Chicago Blackhawks. Our stories for the

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Speaker 1: Blackhawks were in many cases outperforming the World Series stories.

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Speaker 1: In what it was in our minds at that exact

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Speaker 1: moment was whoa hockey fans don't get enough coverage. There's

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Speaker 1: ninety people in the press box at Wrigley, they're all

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Speaker 1: covering the same game. There's like two people in the

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Speaker 1: press box, you know, watching the Blackhawks. There's just an

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Speaker 1: unbelievable opportunity for us to cover the things that other

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Speaker 1: people aren't covering well. And that was a really big

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Speaker 1: moment for us, and that really drove i would say,

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Speaker 1: two years of strategy. So we looked at things like hockey, baseball,

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Speaker 1: college basketball, college football. At that moment in time. Those

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Speaker 1: were the things that other people were pulling away from digitally,

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Speaker 1: right because you had the NBA and NFL really taking

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Speaker 1: up a lot of the oxygen. And so we started

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Speaker 1: to cover the things other people weren't and that was

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Speaker 1: a really effective strategy through twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen.

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Speaker 3: Fast forward, like slightly, I think, you know, early days

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Speaker 3: we saw kind of like this this idea of covering

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Speaker 3: teams and leagues that others were sort of it wasn't

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Speaker 3: big enough for them from it like an ad supported model.

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Speaker 3: But for us, like I don't know how many people

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Speaker 3: average on average go to a Chicago Blackhawks game, and

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Speaker 3: maybe it's fifteen thy twenty thousand people, A small fraction

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Speaker 3: of that of just one game of people that are

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Speaker 3: like at a Blackhawks game at the United Center can

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Speaker 3: pay for a writer's salary and can pay for that

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Speaker 3: writer to go on the road and tell interesting stories.

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Speaker 3: That subscription model, where you know, you can kind of

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Speaker 3: go big by like going small. It's kind of a

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Speaker 3: very counterintuitive thing, but we really leaned into that, you know.

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Speaker 3: Then I think the next big step for us was

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Speaker 3: other outlets, kind of the ill fated infamous at this point.

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Speaker 3: Pivot to video allowed us to start to hire bigger

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Speaker 3: name talent, and you know, so we were, you know,

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Speaker 3: our way up the ladder, like climbing up the you know,

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Speaker 3: the side of l Capy Tan was, you know, first

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Speaker 3: it was hockey and then it was college football, and

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Speaker 3: then you know, you start gaining that momentum and this

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Speaker 3: idea that would have been sounded crazy to us in

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Speaker 3: twenty sixteen of hiring Ken Rosenthal or Seth Davis or

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Speaker 3: Dane O'Neill, right then it becomes real.

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Speaker 2: This episode is just one of many podcasts included in

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Speaker 2: the Small Business Podference presented by Dell Technologies, a podcast

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Speaker 2: conference to get inspiration on topics like fundraising, building teams,

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Speaker 2: are managing business in our current environment from top podcasts

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Speaker 2: like Jill Schlessinger from Jill on Money, David Brown from

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Speaker 2: Business Wars, and Gabby Dunne Bad with Money. For the

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Speaker 2: complete lineup of episodes, visit Dell Technologiespotter Friends dot com.

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Speaker 2: I'm Jade Hoyd for the Athletic Podcast Network