Speaker 1: The website that's all about lists. What's going on. I'mrich Demiro.
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech Daily. I'm in the offices
Speaker 1: of Ranker. This is a website based in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: that's all about lists. I'm here with CEO Clark Benson,
Speaker 1: who created the website. Clark, thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today.
Speaker 2: Thanks Rich, this is cool.
Speaker 1: So we've got the We are in the shadow of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Sign here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Tell me how you describe what Ranker is all about.
Speaker 4: So, Ranker is a list about everything, right, But the
Speaker 4: hook that we have that our technology supports is that
Speaker 4: the lists are shaped by you, by anybody in the
Speaker 4: audience who lands on the list and decides to participate
Speaker 4: by voting on the lists or potentially adding items to
Speaker 4: the lists. So basically, our editors will put a list
Speaker 4: together about any topic you know that might be of interest.
Speaker 2: Right. It could be best songs of the summer, it.
Speaker 4: Could be best TV shows to binge watch, whatever it
Speaker 4: might be.
Speaker 2: We have literally one hundred thousand plus rankings, right.
Speaker 4: But the unique part of Ranker is that when you,
Speaker 4: you the consumer, land on that list, you're going to
Speaker 4: vote on it. You're or at least you've got a
Speaker 4: decent chance you're going to vote on it. And you know,
Speaker 4: you might come to rank or from a Google search
Speaker 4: looking for a recommendation about you know, new Netflix sci
Speaker 4: fi or something like that, and when you land on it,
Speaker 4: you'll be like, oh, I really like you know, blah blah,
Speaker 4: and you'll start voting on the stuff that you like
Speaker 4: and dislike. And so with a very sort of easy,
Speaker 4: friction free you don't have to log in. You know,
Speaker 4: you don't have to write a bunch of messy texts.
Speaker 4: You can just kind of start expressing your opinion right
Speaker 4: off the bat. And you know, literally we're collecting you know,
Speaker 4: tens of millions of votes a month across all these
Speaker 4: different rankings, and so the world is shaping the content.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so do I have to like log in or
Speaker 3: anything or can I just get it right to business?
Speaker 4: You just get right to business for you know, in
Speaker 4: the beginning, we tried to make you log in. We
Speaker 4: found that many many, many, many many more people will
Speaker 4: vote if we leave it, you know, just easy to
Speaker 4: just press a button.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I find the website via Google because I'm
Speaker 1: looking up top movies of all time and then you
Speaker 1: guys come up.
Speaker 3: I go there and I see.
Speaker 1: Something like The Godfather's number one and shaw Shank's number two,
Speaker 1: and I say, I think Shawshank should be number one.
Speaker 1: And all I do is just press that little up
Speaker 1: and next thing, you know, it doesn't go up immediately
Speaker 1: because it has to reach a critical mass of people
Speaker 1: agreeing with me, right, correct.
Speaker 4: You know the list that you're talking about the best
Speaker 4: movies of all the time. I think two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: people have voted on that. There's like three million votes
Speaker 4: on that, So your input is not going to necessarily
Speaker 4: cause it to magically move, right. But you know, we
Speaker 4: have a lot of people that come to the site
Speaker 4: on rankor to find the new stuff, because if you
Speaker 4: land on a new list that has only been voted
Speaker 4: on by five people, you can actually see it moving
Speaker 4: in front of you, and.
Speaker 2: People like a visceral reaction to something they're doing.
Speaker 3: So clearly people like lists. I mean, I've always loved list.
Speaker 1: I think that it kind of makes life easy. You
Speaker 1: know what number one is, you know what number two is,
Speaker 1: number three? And I also like that wisdom of the
Speaker 1: crew idea too, So tell me about that.
Speaker 3: What made you want to kind of start this website.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like I I'm an entrepreneur.
Speaker 4: I had a prior internet startup that I sold at
Speaker 4: the end of two thousand and six, and I had
Speaker 4: this kind of gnawing thing of like, I want to
Speaker 4: do another you know, internet business because I know that
Speaker 4: and I was as a list nerd myself, I was
Speaker 4: very frustrated with the fact that like it would be
Speaker 4: like this is one twenty three year old bloggers opinion
Speaker 4: of you know, the best punk bands of all time
Speaker 4: or whatever the topic was I was looking for when
Speaker 4: I would.
Speaker 2: Do a search myself.
Speaker 4: And you know, I was also a fan of the
Speaker 4: wisdom of crowd So we decided to build a technology
Speaker 4: platform that would allow you know, the world the crowd,
Speaker 4: so to speak, to shape the content.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's really worked.
Speaker 4: What it means is that, you know, in theory, if
Speaker 4: you believe in the wisdom of crowds, we have the
Speaker 4: best answer to anything that could be asked in list format.
Speaker 3: So I was going to throw out some ideas. You
Speaker 3: tell me if you have these on Ranker. Obviously, best
Speaker 3: TV shows of all time?
Speaker 1: Sure, best fast food restaurants, Oh yeah, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: best fast food fries.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, do you know what the number one is?
Speaker 2: The right debate. I'm trying to not eat french fries,
Speaker 2: so I don't even look at that.
Speaker 3: Don't look at that loss.
Speaker 1: So with something like that, I mean, how do you monetize?
Speaker 1: So I mean, do you sell me french fries to
Speaker 1: McDonald's do you know what?
Speaker 2: Do you? Yeah? Do you make money? So that's a
Speaker 2: great question.
Speaker 4: So Ranker we make money in sort of the traditional
Speaker 4: internet way of advertising, and Ranker has a really big
Speaker 4: scale at this point. We did like a billion and
Speaker 4: a half at Impressions last month, so we are very
Speaker 4: solidly profitable on mostly online advertising. We also make some
Speaker 4: money from e commerce referrals to like Amazon and another.
Speaker 3: So you started the company, clearly you've grown.
Speaker 1: You've got a bunch of people in the office doing
Speaker 1: what what are these people are doing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we're at about eighty five employees and we
Speaker 4: have about fifteen job specs out so anybody listening there.
Speaker 4: We're hiring an engineering and in editorial and in social media,
Speaker 4: all Los Angeles, All Los Angeles. Well, we do have
Speaker 4: a New York sales office, but we've got like about
Speaker 4: a third of the company is in editorial, so they're
Speaker 4: basically making the they're making what I call sort of
Speaker 4: the shell.
Speaker 2: Of the list.
Speaker 4: So they'll they'll they'll spend you know, they'll take a
Speaker 4: topic and they'll put the first fifty items on the list,
Speaker 4: and then the visitors will kind of vote on it
Speaker 4: and shape it and add more items and it sort
Speaker 4: of takes on a bigger life of its own. So
Speaker 4: we've got that editorial team. We've got actually a large
Speaker 4: social team. We've got to fifteen people that just do
Speaker 4: social media exclusively.
Speaker 2: We've got a video team.
Speaker 4: We're branching out into taking rank or lists and making
Speaker 4: video versions of them because some people like to consume
Speaker 4: that stuff.
Speaker 2: Video form, and we've got to you know.
Speaker 3: You have to change those videos a lot.
Speaker 1: Though yesterday it was number one, now today it's different.
Speaker 4: You'd be surprised about the meetings we have to have
Speaker 4: about that, right, it has to be a modular thing.
Speaker 2: So you're absolutely right. We have about fifteen engineers.
Speaker 4: We've got business development, ad operations things like that, so
Speaker 4: it's a you know, it's a pretty diversified company. We've
Speaker 4: just we but we were outgrowing the floor.
Speaker 2: We are here on Wilshure.
Speaker 4: So the company's growing nicely and I enjoy having these
Speaker 4: growing pains.
Speaker 1: So is this fun for you? I mean you're a
Speaker 1: guy that grew up loving lists. Now you're living it
Speaker 1: every day. So has that become a nightmare or does
Speaker 1: that become like this is really fun?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: This is really fun.
Speaker 4: I mean the only thing that's a bummer is I
Speaker 4: don't have enough time to make my own lists.
Speaker 3: Well, hold on, tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Because you made your own list, you visited, you have
Speaker 1: a list on there that nobody can vote on because
Speaker 1: you did it. But it's one hundred top one hundred
Speaker 1: concerts you saw in a year.
Speaker 4: I so what I did in twenty fifteen, and this
Speaker 4: is the problem. I haven't been able to do that
Speaker 4: in low last three Y're working right, I'm working right,
Speaker 4: But in twenty fifteen, I do like to I have
Speaker 4: a music nerd and I saw I saw one hundred
Speaker 4: and one bands in twenty fifteen, and I decided to
Speaker 4: rank them all. So you can, you know, google Clark
Speaker 4: Benson one hundred bands and you will see really nerdy
Speaker 4: deep dives into every concert I saw, you know, and
Speaker 4: how I liked that will go show versus the Will
Speaker 4: Go Show three years earlier and seven years earlier.
Speaker 2: Out of the twenty times I've seen Will Go. So yes,
Speaker 2: that's the way my brain works.
Speaker 1: It was the number one on that list, Neil Young,
Speaker 1: Neil Young, and what was number one hundred? Do you
Speaker 1: remember that that was a crappy show?
Speaker 2: I'm sure if it was at the bottom. So I
Speaker 2: know I'm not off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: If anyone visits you at the Ranker offices, they will
Speaker 1: notice you do not wear shoes in the office.
Speaker 3: Tell me about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And unfortunately, now my investors now know that I
Speaker 4: don't wear shoes because every time I do put shoes
Speaker 4: on when investors come over.
Speaker 2: So now the cat's out of the bag.
Speaker 4: Sorry, guys, but you know I've been I've been shorting myself,
Speaker 4: you know, and hyping you guys all along. You know,
Speaker 4: I hate wearing shoes. I just don't like wearing shoes,
Speaker 4: never have. And one of the things about starting your
Speaker 4: own businesses is you can kind of dictate the rules.
Speaker 4: I thought, you know, I won't wear shoes, and maybe
Speaker 4: some employees won't wear shoes.
Speaker 2: You know, we have eighty five employees.
Speaker 4: Now, you know, We've had quite a few that have
Speaker 4: come and gone in the nine years that Ranker has
Speaker 4: been going, and not a single one of them chose
Speaker 4: to not wear shoes.
Speaker 2: So I think that I'm pretty weird.
Speaker 3: So no one's following your no shoes lead.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me before we go, tell me why
Speaker 1: people should come to rancor dot com.
Speaker 4: So the beauty of Rancor is like you can come
Speaker 4: to Rancor to just get a recommendation, right, because it's
Speaker 4: like there's nothing like seeing a quick list to get
Speaker 4: a quick thing of Hey, I want to I need
Speaker 4: a new sci fi show I'm zoning out on. You know,
Speaker 4: I've watched everything. I watched Battlestar Galactic three times. I
Speaker 4: need something new, right, So so people do come to
Speaker 4: us a lot for best current sci fi shows kind
Speaker 4: of queries, but there's also sort of just this like
Speaker 4: trivia slash fandom slash nerdy.
Speaker 2: You know, I.
Speaker 4: Want to organize the world or I want to see
Speaker 4: how the world is organized aspect to Rancor. And you know,
Speaker 4: it's to some degree, it's like people talk about the
Speaker 4: Wikipedia wormhole, right where people you go to Wikipedia, you
Speaker 4: start looking up something that you came there for a reason,
Speaker 4: and half an hour later you're just like, you've clicked
Speaker 4: five ten links and you're just like, how did I
Speaker 4: end up on you know whatever?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Eighteenth century pottery or whatever it is, right right?
Speaker 4: And Rankers kind of like that in that we do
Speaker 4: really well, like we have a higher time on site
Speaker 4: per visit than almost any other consumer website that isn't
Speaker 4: straight streaming video because people go into the opinion wormhole,
Speaker 4: and so I don't exactly know how to describe that
Speaker 4: other than if you've been.
Speaker 1: Done an opinion wormhole, you get it, and everyone has
Speaker 1: an opinion.
Speaker 3: We all know that.
Speaker 1: Clark Benson, thanks so much for joining me today, Clark
Speaker 1: Benson of ranker dot com.
Speaker 3: Go check out the website and thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you like this podcast, go ahead and subscribe to
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Speaker 1: I'm shot them up on Best Podcasts. There you go,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. I'm Rich Stemiro. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. You can find a link to everything I
Speaker 1: talk about here on my website. Just go to richontech
Speaker 1: dot tv. I'll talk to you real soon.
Speaker 3: M