Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast that
Speaker 1: goes deep on the media business with some of its
Speaker 1: most interesting practitioners. I'm Andrew Wallenstein, co editor in chief
Speaker 1: of Variety. For this latest installment, I went one on
Speaker 1: one with Ben Lehrer. He's the CEO of Group nine,
Speaker 1: media holding company with a minority investment from Discovery that
Speaker 1: includes digital brands like now This, the Dodo Seeker and
Speaker 1: Thrill List brand Lehrer started himself. He spoke with me
Speaker 1: in his capacity not just a CEO, but as managing
Speaker 1: partner of venture capital fund Lehrer Hippo. I think you
Speaker 1: learned a lot from our conversation about the current state
Speaker 1: of the digital media world and where it's heading next.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, here's Ben Lehrer. So I want
Speaker 1: to first start with where Group nine is, because it's
Speaker 1: been a year. Just talk about the formation of that
Speaker 1: in the rational several years ago. Started to sort of
Speaker 1: pick my head up a little bit from building thrills
Speaker 1: and just say what else is sort of happening in media?
Speaker 1: What are the companies that were investing, what are the
Speaker 1: trends that we're seeing, And came to this thesis which
Speaker 1: was that we were going to be entering a period
Speaker 1: of consolidation. And when you look back and sort of
Speaker 1: study the history of media, uh, we actually thought that
Speaker 1: what was happening in in digital media in many ways
Speaker 1: mirrored what happened thirty five years ago with cable, where
Speaker 1: you had sort of a new pipe get created and
Speaker 1: a bunch of brands emerge that were uh that went
Speaker 1: deep into specific verticals for specific audiences, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and and in in a in a decade you saw
Speaker 1: the launch of everything from ESPN, HBO two, CNN, MTV
Speaker 1: and all these great big brands got built, but uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear that they were going to be great
Speaker 1: big brands or big successful businesses in the early days
Speaker 1: where there was still lots of questions about the efficacy
Speaker 1: of cable and how big it was going to get
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and so uh, I think what we
Speaker 1: saw happening in digital media was something similar, were you
Speaker 1: had a new set of pipes, really driven by social media,
Speaker 1: where a whole new generation was consuming content. Differently, there
Speaker 1: was a bunch of startups that were creating uh, new
Speaker 1: brands that were speaking to various specific audiences just like
Speaker 1: the cable networks had done thirty five years earlier, and
Speaker 1: but they were operating independently, and there was lots of
Speaker 1: questions about how big they could get and the business
Speaker 1: model and the money that was existing at the platforms
Speaker 1: versus going directly to the the brands blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and and said, look, Thrillist is a cable network. It's
Speaker 1: one network, but we need more scale to really matter.
Speaker 1: We think consolidation is gonna be coming to every sort
Speaker 1: of layer of media. And obviously a huge number of
Speaker 1: moves have happened since we put these brands together. But
Speaker 1: through that sort of thesis, we I looked around, I said,
Speaker 1: if I was starting throw us again today, what brands?
Speaker 1: What would I want this company to look like? Who
Speaker 1: would I sort of aspire to be? And very specifically,
Speaker 1: we we saw the Dodo and now This as two
Speaker 1: brands that I thought were being built in a really modern,
Speaker 1: really creative and thoughtful way, truly built natively for the
Speaker 1: social pipes. From day one, Dreaming in Video incredibly um
Speaker 1: intelligent about how they use data to influence the way
Speaker 1: that they thought about content creation. And when you say,
Speaker 1: by the way, Dreaming and Video you mean, Well, so
Speaker 1: I use the word dreaming in video because it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean only creating content in video necessarily. I think about
Speaker 1: somebody who's bilingual, what language do they dream in? Um,
Speaker 1: what is the thing that they feel most comfortable doing?
Speaker 1: And so I believe that content there, every story should
Speaker 1: be told and whatever the best format is for the story.
Speaker 1: And uh, but but I think for us, as we
Speaker 1: sort of think about what Group nine is, we want
Speaker 1: to be a company that dreams in video, that first
Speaker 1: thinks about telling stories and sight, sound and motion, but
Speaker 1: then totally acknowledging that there are amazing and really valuable
Speaker 1: ways to tell written stories and stories through all different
Speaker 1: types of formats. So that's what I mean by dreaming
Speaker 1: and video. Got it. And in terms of this consolidated
Speaker 1: environment that you are putting together, this Group nine entity,
Speaker 1: in has it played out this past year both in
Speaker 1: the marketplace and within Group nine as you thought it would? Yeah? So,
Speaker 1: I you know, I know it's sort of everyone's always
Speaker 1: doing the everything is great, We're crushing it version of entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: and uh, the reality is, uh, everything has not played
Speaker 1: out exactly the way that I would have like sort
Speaker 1: of projected but the overarching story is, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, really best case scenario, we are operating
Speaker 1: like one company. UM, It's taken a lot to get
Speaker 1: there and to figure out how these cultures work together
Speaker 1: and to figure out, you know, building a holding companies
Speaker 1: are really uh it's a tough thing because, um, these
Speaker 1: brands are different, and they stand for different things, and
Speaker 1: they have different workforces and uh, figuring out how to
Speaker 1: build a corporate entity that provides value to them but
Speaker 1: allows them to be themselves is really difficult. And I
Speaker 1: think I underestimated how hard that was going to be,
Speaker 1: uh culturally and how hard it was going to be
Speaker 1: to build trust amongst the brands and to build a
Speaker 1: leadership team that was strong enough and and teams at
Speaker 1: the corporate layer that we're able to provide a level
Speaker 1: of service to the brands that would be greater uh
Speaker 1: then the brands would be able to provide for themselves.
Speaker 1: And so building that infrastructure was really hard. UM. An
Speaker 1: incredible learning curve for me and for our leadership team
Speaker 1: over the last year. But I'm I can genuinely say
Speaker 1: we've done it. We've been we've you know, we've outpaced
Speaker 1: the market We've grown, uh, every in every which way
Speaker 1: from audience to influence to financially um in really spectacular ways.
Speaker 1: And yesterday was our new frontum, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a it's a good moment to take a little barometer.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's a it's a moment to
Speaker 1: take a temperature of where are we And you can
Speaker 1: think back to a year ago where we were at
Speaker 1: our new front and uh, we're we're in a really
Speaker 1: great place. I mean, you know, and that that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's easy, it's super hard. Well that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean. You hear about companies like Vice and BuzzFeed
Speaker 1: and what they have gone through in terms of the
Speaker 1: challenges and monetization, and I compare that to this sort
Speaker 1: of blue sky version of hey where the new cable networks?
Speaker 1: And I don't know which end of the spectrum we're
Speaker 1: at right now. It feels like this is it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine these businesses becoming the kind of success that
Speaker 1: cable was given where they're at right now. I fully
Speaker 1: fully get that. I think that up the other side
Speaker 1: of the coin is when you go talk to people
Speaker 1: who work in the cable business US, it's not like
Speaker 1: they're sitting around feeling like they're on top of the
Speaker 1: world because they there's there's pressure coming from all sides
Speaker 1: right now. And so I don't believe that, uh, there's
Speaker 1: a straight line to just going and sort of usurping
Speaker 1: Cable and suddenly having a business that has, you know,
Speaker 1: net revenue margins like the beautiful model that Cable had
Speaker 1: for the last generation. UM. I also don't think that
Speaker 1: the last generation Cable model exists for Cable. And I
Speaker 1: think that the real currency here is attention and obsession
Speaker 1: and building brands that matter. And so I'm a big
Speaker 1: believer actually in the intersection of the last generation media
Speaker 1: model and the new generation media model and sort of
Speaker 1: where those things come together. And actually, when we created
Speaker 1: Group nine UH, we did so with a meaningful investment
Speaker 1: from Discovery, not only financial investment, but also apart partnership
Speaker 1: where the spirit of the partnership was to really help
Speaker 1: one another figure out how to UH thrive in this
Speaker 1: challenging environment. And we've made a lot of progress and
Speaker 1: I think learned a lot from one another, and as
Speaker 1: time goes on, that partnership continues to strength. And really
Speaker 1: excited that they did the script deal as I think
Speaker 1: that creates more opportunity, more free cash flow, there, more
Speaker 1: uh ability to sort of take some risks and try
Speaker 1: some new things, as well as bringing some brands into
Speaker 1: the fold there that aligned with some of our brands
Speaker 1: really beautifully. And so just really thankful for that partnership.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I would be lying to say
Speaker 1: that I know exactly what the future looks like, but
Speaker 1: it amazes me when a company like Discovery and this
Speaker 1: is there far from an anomaly, make significant investments in
Speaker 1: digital publishers given where things are right now. Is Discovery
Speaker 1: doing this but because you guys help them figure out
Speaker 1: the future? I think discoveries doing it because they're they're
Speaker 1: really smart. They can see that how the business is
Speaker 1: working today is not indicative of how the business is
Speaker 1: going to work tomorrow, and that a younger audiences have
Speaker 1: very different behaviors, very different habits, very different interests. And
Speaker 1: to build a multi generational media company today means needing
Speaker 1: to have a deep understanding of all the screens and
Speaker 1: distribution pipes that matter. And while we're still living in
Speaker 1: a world where we may be dealing with you know,
Speaker 1: digital dimes, ah, the pieces are moving and marketers are moving,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of structure around how media dollars transact. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of structure around how digital right now is wired around
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google and Amazon and dollars sort of going
Speaker 1: through the pipes. It's really interesting if you look at
Speaker 1: the cable model, the dollars don't go through the pipes.
Speaker 1: The dollars go through the publishers, and digital has sort
Speaker 1: of been wired differently. And I do believe firmly that
Speaker 1: there is a much better and bigger business model for
Speaker 1: publishers who continue to focus on and take a long
Speaker 1: term view on the value of their relationships with platforms
Speaker 1: like Facebook and Snapchat and uh and Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: and YouTube. So so here's the interesting thing about some
Speaker 1: of the relationships with these platforms, which is it is
Speaker 1: maddeningly slow. But if you were to take a pin
Speaker 1: and put it in the publisher business model with Facebook
Speaker 1: two years ago today, you would say, there's not a
Speaker 1: dollar coming from video. Facebook is not paying for any
Speaker 1: content there is. There's essentially no business model whatsoever. If
Speaker 1: you were to put a pin in a year ago,
Speaker 1: you would say, we're starting to monetize video a little bit.
Speaker 1: We are still not really in a bus there's still
Speaker 1: not really buying any content or underwriting any content creation.
Speaker 1: But the revenue is exponentially bigger than it was a
Speaker 1: year ago. And if you were to do the same
Speaker 1: thing today, you would say Facebook is now starting to
Speaker 1: become a larger buyer of content. They've announced that there
Speaker 1: will be a buyer in the news category as well.
Speaker 1: Um with the stuff that Campbell Brown's running. They are
Speaker 1: now testing pre roll. Facebook Watches is growing and there's
Speaker 1: a mid roll product that is not only available for
Speaker 1: publishers to monetize on backfield, but there's a handful of
Speaker 1: publishers who are actually able to sell their own inventory,
Speaker 1: of which we're one of. And do we feel that
Speaker 1: we were being fairly compensated for the value that we're
Speaker 1: creating on Facebook today? No? Do we feel like we're
Speaker 1: better compensated than we were a year ago. Yes. Do
Speaker 1: we feel like we're having more engaged conversations and that
Speaker 1: there is a genuine desire to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make this work for publishers. Yes, I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: of an anomaly because we are one of legitimately the
Speaker 1: one or two largest Facebook premium Facebook publishers that exists,
Speaker 1: and so the relationship that we have maybe on the
Speaker 1: absolute front end or the sort of the cutting edge
Speaker 1: of where uh Facebook is going to participate with publishers,
Speaker 1: and so we get to be partnering with them, and
Speaker 1: not only sort of we're we're the front of the spear,
Speaker 1: not the you know, the tip of the spear and
Speaker 1: not the end of the spear, which is which is
Speaker 1: a good place to be, which is maybe why I
Speaker 1: have more confidence that we're going to get to where
Speaker 1: we get where we need to get to there. But
Speaker 1: this is going to take a long time. And I
Speaker 1: actually think one of the issues that you've seen with
Speaker 1: digital media is as companies forecast growth in their business,
Speaker 1: they assume that changes are going to happen more quickly
Speaker 1: than they do, and they forecast revenue coming from these sources,
Speaker 1: by the way, really high margin revenue, because it's essentially
Speaker 1: against content that right now is being unmonetized, and that
Speaker 1: when it doesn't show up, it really hurts. It's very
Speaker 1: painful when you expect a dollar from Facebook and the
Speaker 1: dollar doesn't show up because you made the content, so
Speaker 1: it just hits your bottom line, and so I think
Speaker 1: what we're being pretty smart about is ah is continuing
Speaker 1: to see growth against our distributed revenue, but also knowing
Speaker 1: that this is a medium and long term play and
Speaker 1: that to day the business model isn't knocking us out
Speaker 1: of our seats. With that being said, we build big reach,
Speaker 1: we build big audience, is we build big influence, we
Speaker 1: build big brand. We're selling amazing, innovative, best in class
Speaker 1: branded content products. We're finding ways to create more scalability
Speaker 1: in those products. In the ways that we seamlessly are
Speaker 1: able to repackage advertisers content and redistribute it. We're able
Speaker 1: to make um really smart decisions around the content that
Speaker 1: we create and distribute for advertisers based on all the
Speaker 1: data that we have around how audiences behave in the
Speaker 1: way that they respond to content. Um I I genuinely
Speaker 1: believe that there will be there is an more and
Speaker 1: more money to be made by publishers on these platforms.
Speaker 1: Um I don't think we're going to get to the
Speaker 1: place that Rupert Murdoch would like us to get to
Speaker 1: and that a lot of people would like us to
Speaker 1: get to, where we're just going to get an affiliate
Speaker 1: fee but I do believe that there will be some
Speaker 1: version of an affiliate fee that will be paid out
Speaker 1: in a meritocracy where the brands that create the best content,
Speaker 1: create the most engagement will be able to share in
Speaker 1: the wealth that Facebook creates. And I think it's because
Speaker 1: Facebook is a Facebook does what's best for Facebook, and
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe what's best for Facebook is creating an
Speaker 1: environment for premium publishers to thrive. So dealing with platforms
Speaker 1: has its challenges, but you're encouraged by progress from year
Speaker 1: to year in the recent years. Where does your pin
Speaker 1: go next? What do you what do you want to
Speaker 1: see happen in beyond? It's a really good question. I
Speaker 1: think it's different for each platform. Um, what I'd like
Speaker 1: to see for Facebook is getting to the point where
Speaker 1: we share in newspeed revenue. Right now, they create interesting
Speaker 1: opportunities for sharing and revenue in sort of ancillary other locations.
Speaker 1: And because Facebook's audience is so enormous that money is
Speaker 1: not irrelevant, particularly to publishers with the scale that some
Speaker 1: of our brands have. That being said, I think we
Speaker 1: get to a point, or need to get to a
Speaker 1: point where Facebook shares news feed revenue. It can be
Speaker 1: based on the quality of engagement that is created, certainly, um,
Speaker 1: but that's where we want to get to. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we'll get there in twenty or twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: I honestly think it's in Facebook's best interest to do
Speaker 1: it immediately. UM. And I feel that I have a
Speaker 1: venue to actually have those conversations with folks at Facebook,
Speaker 1: which I think is important. UM. At the you know,
Speaker 1: at the same time, there are there are different things
Speaker 1: and different progress that needs to be made on each
Speaker 1: individual platform. UM. The place I would really ultimately like
Speaker 1: to get to, and where I believe we'll get in
Speaker 1: the not too distant future but probably not, is where
Speaker 1: a publisher like Group nine has the ability to sell
Speaker 1: transactional advertising across all of our social channels, and so
Speaker 1: where a brand could come to us and we could
Speaker 1: sell them pre role or mid role across our Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Snapchat channels. And right now we can sell snap
Speaker 1: we can sell as part of a beta Facebook Watch
Speaker 1: mid role, not pre role. We can sell YouTube, Um,
Speaker 1: there's no monetization to speak of it Instagram yet, um,
Speaker 1: and that will be coming. And we can't sell Twitter yet.
Speaker 1: But I believe that that will be coming. As recently
Speaker 1: as this week it was rumored that it was coming soon.
Speaker 1: And um, we think that the Twitter folks are super
Speaker 1: smart and engaged and asking all the right questions and
Speaker 1: so getting to the point where you start to have
Speaker 1: the ability to turn brand on at scale across your
Speaker 1: premium content on all of these channels starts to feel
Speaker 1: more like TV. And I think that's the future that
Speaker 1: we're coming towards. And I think the smart, big traditional
Speaker 1: media companies can see a world where that happens. And
Speaker 1: if they're not set up for it, and if they're
Speaker 1: not making investments in partnerships and acquisitions in the best
Speaker 1: digital publishers, it's going to be really, really unpleasant for
Speaker 1: them because they're going to have let the massive advantage
Speaker 1: that they have slip away. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that I one of the reasons I think Discovery
Speaker 1: is so smart that David is not waiting for Yeah,
Speaker 1: is David as Love is not waiting for the the
Speaker 1: sort of the other shoe to drop. He's seeing where
Speaker 1: the future is going. Um, and you know, he's a
Speaker 1: We're we're really lucky to be in business with him. Well,
Speaker 1: what I'm wondering about is you talk about the monetization
Speaker 1: opportunities these platforms. Is are you also going to David's
Speaker 1: as Love, the CEO of Discovery, and saying, hey, I
Speaker 1: need to sell my shows to television. That's where the
Speaker 1: real money is. June nine, we launch a show called
Speaker 1: Dodo Heroes on Animal Planet. UM so one of our brands,
Speaker 1: the Dodo um we'll be launching a full season of
Speaker 1: linear TV globally in three and sixty million homes in
Speaker 1: partnership with Animal Planet. Will also be launching it digitally
Speaker 1: across all of the Dodo's channels in different formats. But
Speaker 1: I think that is part of the future. Uh So,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not one of these people who says
Speaker 1: digital is everything. Linear is dead. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: like some of the director consumer retail startups five years ago.
Speaker 1: It's like Director consumers everything. We would never sell our
Speaker 1: product through a third party. And then you get to
Speaker 1: a point whe're like, hey, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people still go to Walmart. Like there there's some version
Speaker 1: of linear TV still exists. Those companies are not just
Speaker 1: going to roll over and die. The idea that we
Speaker 1: would uh forsake those platforms actually is a little bit,
Speaker 1: uh would be hypocritical of our real philosophy, which is
Speaker 1: to superserve audiences, go to them, go to wherever big
Speaker 1: audiences live. And even though TV audiences are in decline,
Speaker 1: who are we kidding, there's still lots of people watching
Speaker 1: linear television, and so we're I want to be everywhere.
Speaker 1: I want to be on all these platforms. I want
Speaker 1: to build big brands that you trip over that our
Speaker 1: household names. And part of building brands like that means
Speaker 1: not turning your nose up at at linear television. And
Speaker 1: so we're going to be pitching more and more programs
Speaker 1: like that. Yesterday we announced at our new front program
Speaker 1: that we're creating between Seeker and Discovery called The Swim,
Speaker 1: where we're gonna be following an amazing guy who's going
Speaker 1: to be the first person to swim across the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1: He leaves next month, and that's a that's a program
Speaker 1: that is going to live across linear and digital channels,
Speaker 1: I think in a really innovative new way. UM So
Speaker 1: I'm all for sort of testing and trying all these
Speaker 1: different formats as long as we're making great stuff. Is
Speaker 1: it easy? Given each platform has its own different creative
Speaker 1: nuances programming in a way where something makes sense on
Speaker 1: Snapchat and Twitter and TV because it does feel like
Speaker 1: more and more, particularly Snapchat where I think you've got
Speaker 1: a new venture going with the now this brand and
Speaker 1: doing a breaking news Uh to talk about how that
Speaker 1: works well, So all the platforms are different, uh, and
Speaker 1: they they sort of reward and incentivized content for driving
Speaker 1: different kinds of behaviors. And obviously you know, everything from
Speaker 1: vertical video to sixteen by nine like there are there's
Speaker 1: also technical differences in the content. Uh. I think the
Speaker 1: strength of Group nine is a really nuanced understanding of
Speaker 1: those different platforms and of the sort of the best
Speaker 1: practices and the ways to be innovative on one platform
Speaker 1: versus another. That being said, really compelling stories have a
Speaker 1: home on all of them. And so you know, let's
Speaker 1: use the swim as an example. It's an amazing story.
Speaker 1: We're doing a bunch of scientific experiments, or about the
Speaker 1: health of sharks, the health of phytoplankton, what the radioactive
Speaker 1: spill in Japan has done to the oceans around there,
Speaker 1: and how far it's had impacted the sea studying the
Speaker 1: physical and mental health of the guy swimming, looking at
Speaker 1: the great garbage patch, all of these interesting studies. There's
Speaker 1: so much content that comes out of this. Will be
Speaker 1: telling stories on staff Chat that will feel totally native
Speaker 1: to and relevant for Snapchat and will be something that
Speaker 1: our audiences there will get to uh to experience and
Speaker 1: will tell a totally different version of that story in
Speaker 1: Facebook through live updates from the boat. But we'll also
Speaker 1: create a Facebook Watch show where we'll do like more
Speaker 1: in depth episodes studying specific themes that are happening in
Speaker 1: the boat. Those episodes may also be able to live
Speaker 1: in that exact format or a slightly different format on YouTube,
Speaker 1: which may not work at all for how we want
Speaker 1: to go and create a listicle on the website about
Speaker 1: the ten scariest things that he encountered this week. So
Speaker 1: I think the point is great stories live in a
Speaker 1: bunch of different way formats and versions and will be
Speaker 1: packaged differently for different platforms. But as long as the
Speaker 1: core is a great story, there are there is life
Speaker 1: across all these places, and so I don't think that
Speaker 1: you have I think that there is. There's sort of
Speaker 1: two schools of thought and neither of them are quite right.
Speaker 1: One of them is every piece of content you make
Speaker 1: lives everywhere, and you just think of them as pipes
Speaker 1: and you make it one place and you distribute it
Speaker 1: everywhere else. That would be really nice. It's just simply
Speaker 1: not the way it works. You see that problem sort
Speaker 1: of most being most pervasive for marketers. So a brand,
Speaker 1: they still make a TV spot and then they're like, cool,
Speaker 1: let's jam that spot into YouTube, jamming into Facebook, jam
Speaker 1: and jammin and jammin and cut the TV spot to
Speaker 1: six seconds, and it's like, no, it's the TV spot
Speaker 1: wasn't made Like the TV spot not made for Snapchat.
Speaker 1: Stop doing that. That's never going to work. So you
Speaker 1: have that school of thought, and then you have another,
Speaker 1: which is every single thing has to be so incredibly
Speaker 1: bespoke to each platform that you can never tell the
Speaker 1: same story anywhere. And then the cost of content creation
Speaker 1: are two owners to really build a business on, and
Speaker 1: so figuring out the nuances of how to how to
Speaker 1: get the most bang for the buck and get the
Speaker 1: most out of each story that you want to tell
Speaker 1: is something that we're maniacally focused on. Building a lot
Speaker 1: of technology around UH being able to track and understand
Speaker 1: the value of i P. So, if we have a story,
Speaker 1: how much value are we able to extract from that
Speaker 1: story across all of these different platforms. What's our cost
Speaker 1: in to create and what's our cost out to monitor?
Speaker 1: What's our revenue out from a monetization perspective, And so
Speaker 1: that's a big focus for us, is sort of starting
Speaker 1: to track the value of i P. It's something that
Speaker 1: TV companies did really well forever. It's something that digital
Speaker 1: companies never have thought about. Uh. I would actually say
Speaker 1: probably the digital company that has done the best job
Speaker 1: of this is probably Complex. I think that they've they've
Speaker 1: done a nice job of picking some shows, really leaning
Speaker 1: into them, making the multi platform. A lot of respect
Speaker 1: for what they've done on the i P developments side,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's something that we're leaning really
Speaker 1: hard into and we're gonna get very sophisticated about quite quickly.
Speaker 1: One last question, take your Group nine hat off, put
Speaker 1: your Laryer hippo hat on. Are you finding in this
Speaker 1: climate tough as it is that you're you're you're seeing
Speaker 1: investment opportunities and media still? Yeah, absolutely, I think we've
Speaker 1: made in the last you know, year two a handful
Speaker 1: of really exciting investments. We invested in a company called Bratt,
Speaker 1: which is Rob Fishman's uh, I guess not so new now,
Speaker 1: probably about a year and a whole year and a
Speaker 1: half old company focused on UM young young young sort
Speaker 1: of teen and preteen girls, UM, doing really interesting cool
Speaker 1: stuff around scripted uh shows obviously digital first that that
Speaker 1: he's having a lot of success with. We're really excited about.
Speaker 1: Another one's crypt t V, which is a a horror
Speaker 1: company where they seed sort of create and seed characters
Speaker 1: and and and build communities around them in social and
Speaker 1: then go and take that I P and bring it
Speaker 1: to new screens. Really clever. Uh, great founder Jack Davis
Speaker 1: doing cool stuff there. Um, there are there are not
Speaker 1: it is. Our bar is very high. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we've we've done it. We've done well investing in media
Speaker 1: and have been uh we've been successful doing it, and
Speaker 1: I think we have a good sense of what's happening
Speaker 1: in the market. But there are still super innovative, interesting
Speaker 1: companies being launched. There's not a lot of money for them,
Speaker 1: so part of it is there there are never that
Speaker 1: many vcs interested in funding media, no matter what the environment.
Speaker 1: It's just not a category that typically lends itself very
Speaker 1: well to venture capital and so uh in. As a result,
Speaker 1: there's less ideas because there's less people going into categories
Speaker 1: where you can't really raise money. But there are certainly
Speaker 1: breakout companies that are emerging that we're incredibly excited about,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I'm just a believer in there's
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a time when there's not
Speaker 1: going to be new, innovative, cool stuff happening. There's just
Speaker 1: too many clever, weird people in the world that you're
Speaker 1: always gonna have no ideas well, it sounds like a
Speaker 1: good optimistic note to end on. Thanks for talking to
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me, Thanks for tuning
Speaker 1: into another episode of Strictly Business. Make sure you subscribe
Speaker 1: for all future episodes in tune in next week when
Speaker 1: we'll be back with Playground Entertainment CEO Colin Calendar.