← Channels with Peter Kafka
Channels with Peter Kafka
How to Build a Profitable Media Company in 3 years, with Semafor’s Justin Smith
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- [00:00]
Expedia Narrator
Martha listens to her favorite band all the time in the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much she got her seat close enough to actually see and hear them sort of. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you more Expedia made to travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.
- [00:32]
Nespresso Advertiser
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- [00:59]
Justin Smith
of someone with ADHD, who comes to mind? Is it a woman in her 30s? Just this constant feeling of being too much, you know, too kinetic, too loud, all of the too anything and just really feeling like people got some kind of social rulebook that I never got. The Changing Face of adhd. That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes Sundays Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:33]
Peter Kafka
From the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also Chief correspondent at Business Insider. We've had quite a bit of gloom these days on this show as well, so let's have a bit of positivity this time around. There is a new media business out there and it is doing well. That that new media business is Semaphore, which is a mere three years old, targeted towards the global leadership class and it says it is now turning a profit. So today I'm talking to Justin Smith, Semaphore's co founder and CEO who built the business with Ben Smith, who you have often heard on this podcast and is not related to Justin Smith. That never gets less exhausting. I'm not surprised to learn that Semaphore built a successful events business because they are the kind of media outlet that does very well at events, almost like they were built for it. They target business and government leaders, people who want to influence them, particularly people with business to do in Washington D.C. but I am surprised at the scale and speed at which they pulled this off. So this is a conversation about how they did that. Here's me talking to Justin Smith. I'm here with Justin Smith. He is the CEO of Semaphore. You have heard of it because you listen to this podcast, it is three years old. Amazingly, it is profitable. Justin Smith is here to talk about how he has created a profitable media business in three years. Just as impressively, he says it is one that is immune from Google zero and other platform dependency. Congratulations. You solved all of the world's problems in one go. Welcome Justin.
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Justin Smith
Well, listen, thank you Peter. It's wonderful to be back on the show with you. I think the last time we spoke I was at Bloomberg and we talked
- [03:17]
Peter Kafka
about podcasts, which you said we're a terrible business.
- [03:20]
Justin Smith
I can't. Which I did say was a terrible business.
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Peter Kafka
Now you're in the podcast too.
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Justin Smith
Yeah, no, I, it's, we, we had a, we had a healthy debate. I will say though your intro, I don't quite recall saying that we'd solved all the Google 0 post, post distributed web problems. But you have suggested to talk about it.
- [03:42]
Peter Kafka
Suggested you have. So let's, let's talk about that. Let's, let's just do the numbers quickly because they're, they're interesting numbers to me. You've raised $30 million. I think that brings you to like 65ish million also.
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Justin Smith
64.
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Peter Kafka
64 to be precise. You're in your third year. You said in your third year last year you guys made $2 million in profit or at least EBITA.
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Justin Smith
2 million EBITA on 40 million in revenue. Yeah.
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Peter Kafka
Amazing. So first of all, if you're profitable or EBITDA profitable, why go raise more money? I thought, I thought one of the lessons all of us digital media people learned over the last decade was don't go raise more money. You don't need to raise money. And raising money comes with all kinds of problems.
- [04:26]
Justin Smith
Well, you know, you also, if you've been in the media business for 30 years, you know that the, the media business is pretty unpredictable. So you know, just because you've had a good couple of years and you've developed, you know, we think is a really interesting model. I think if there's a chance to raise money with good long term investors to accelerate the things that are working, it's a good idea. So that's why we did it. And we're thrilled with the outcome and we feel like it's taken three years, but we've got the foundation of what we believe is an interesting, I wouldn't say it's a massive innovation in the, in the media space, but it's in the business model space. But it's, it's, it's, it's a new, a new formula that is working and we feel like we can extend it across the world and across new markets and that's what we're going to use the new capital for.
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Peter Kafka
You mentioned long term investors. I think you guys from the get go, I think partly because you probably didn't have any choice and partly because you wanted to intentionally weren't raising money from traditional VCs. People who would say need this needs to go 10x in 5 or 7 years.
- [05:45]
Justin Smith
Good memory. Yeah. I mean so much of Semaphore's founding was based on an ideology or thinking around long term horizons. Ben and I, when we first started Semaphore, the first decision beyond deciding to work together that we made was actually that we would work for 10 years together. And so as the sort of the first chapter and actually our entire company at this point, everyone's a shareholder in the company and the entire company is structured on a ten year vesting plan. So I think that long term, by
- [06:25]
Peter Kafka
the way, if you don't follow this stuff closely, normally you vest over two to four years.
- [06:29]
Justin Smith
Traditional starts, four years is a traditional Silicon Valley model. But anyway, the reason we chose that 10 year horizon was both of us and I think especially me, I'm a little bit older than Ben. You look back at your careers, you say, well, what are the, what are the, what are the meaningful things that you've done across your career? And you realize in hindsight that, you know, it takes a while to do meaningful, significant things. It takes, you know, six, seven, eight, 10 years to transform something, to build something from scratch. And we did not start Semaphore, you know, unlike I think a lot of other entrepreneurs, just in order to sell it. We started it because we wanted to build what we hope will be one of the most meaningful and purposeful, independent, high quality global news brands.
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Peter Kafka
So let's talk about what those investors have bought into. You said global news brand, you sort of pitch it as global leadership. I think about the economists, Financial Times, the Journal, bosses essentially. Bosses, people who are going to be bosses one way or another.
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Justin Smith
There's, yeah, there's no, there's no really good language for it. You know, we sometimes use that, the jargony, the leadership class or C suite executives and public sector leaders. But yes, that's, that's the market that we're focused on.
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Peter Kafka
And that $40 million, you said, half of it is from events, half of it is from advertising. That really surprised me. I would assume the bulk of it would have come from events. Just because that's kind of maybe the easiest thing to scale up compared to advertising, especially in this climate. So is that, Am I missing something?
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Justin Smith
No, no.
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Peter Kafka
People are spending $20 million on, on newsletter ads and website ad.
- [08:15]
Justin Smith
No, no. I mean, honestly, I think a lot of people, we've gotten a lot of attention for our events innovation strategy because one of the things we did is we decided to put the events business sort of at the center of the company, at the center of our newsroom in particular, which is very different from a lot of traditional news organizations. So people have often sort of said, oh, Semaphore is, you know, is an events business with the website on top of it.
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Peter Kafka
I used to work, I used to work at one of those.
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Justin Smith
I know, but in fact, I mean, the truth is that Semaphore is really a journalism business at its heart. You know, at its core, the journalism powers everything. It powers, you know, obviously the, the news and the news briefings and newsletters. We have 11 newsletters. We publish in the United States, we publish in Sub Saharan Africa, we publish now in the Gulf. But, and the advertising business is, is, is built around premium, largely corporate affairs advertising against those audiences of leaders in those in those markets. Really the US market, like many global publishing businesses, is the dominant market. But what the journalism also powers, and this is novel and different compared to our competitors, is it really powers the convenings and, which is why we call them live journalism convenings. Our journalists, you know, even our biggest star journalists, you know, we joke that Ben is not just the editor in chief of Semaphore, he's the editor in chief of Semaphore's live journalism. And he and our top journalistic talent design the convening content. They moderate the content. They, you know, we oftentimes, you know, we, we treat them as news breaking opportunities, news breaking moments. And that is, is a different approach than a lot of our competitors. And it's allowed us to build something, to build it in events business more quickly and, and more powerfully, I think, than others have tried in the past.
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Peter Kafka
I want to come back to that in one second. But just to be sure, when you say half the business is split between advertising and the other half is events, is that 20 million in advertising, is that tethered to the events? If, if someone's buying, I assume that someone's buying a sponsorship from you, you're also selling them, you know, display advertising, newsletter advertising.
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Justin Smith
The reality is, is that this is an integrated kind of multi platform news media model and both on the product side, which is deeply integrated, as I mentioned, the journalism is deeply integrated, but also on the business side. And so not only are the event partners, commercial partners, sponsors, also advertising, but many of the advertisers are also sponsoring events. I think I'd say nearly 90% or more of our commercial partners on the events business are also advertisers in the, in the media business. So it's a fully, fully integrated approach. And it makes sense because the, you know, the, the, the news briefings, the news media products deliver a kind of an audience of decision makers and leaders in Washington and Wall Street, Silicon Valley. These are not very large, you know, large scaled audiences or very targeted audiences. And so the notion that when you have a segment of audience that's not that big, you actually can convene them quite easily. And that combination of convening and very targeted precision based advertising is the model that we've developed.
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Peter Kafka
So you mentioned the idea that Ben's not just the editor, he's also the chief show pony and has to do all the big events. And I think that's considered standard for a lot of media companies now these days that their biggest stars are multi platform. But when it comes to events, the, that's also potentially a limiter. Right, because Ben Smith can only be on stage one place at one time and he can only do so many events a year. So how do you think about scaling that business?
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Justin Smith
Well, yeah, no, but I think that, I mean, honestly I, I think that, I mean, obviously everyone's, many journalists are expected to be multi platform these days, but in truth it's, you know, in real practice, I don't think that the events businesses are deeply, deeply integrated into the heart of these newsrooms. I mean you have a few stars who may be given a podcast, they may be their own event program, but on a sort of a day to day kind of business architecture, content, product architecture basis, having these two things live together and breathe together, that's actually quite a different thing, you know. As for Ben's time, well, Ben, as you know, works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So he's a bad example because he can do everything, but he can still
- [12:54]
Peter Kafka
only be at one conference at a time. You can't have a Ben conference, you can't have a conference that he attends at every day. You can't do it probably once a week. Right?
- [13:02]
Justin Smith
Yes. Yeah. But the thing is, is that, I mean, we're also, you know, one of the things we do, we, we did do, you know, almost 100 events this year. And but a lot of the sort of the energy and the focus of our event strategy is around some of the bigger convenings that we do. And you know, I would say that as we go forward, the idea is not necessarily to go from 100 to 200 to 300 events. I mean, it may grow as we grow geographically around the world, but the strategy is much more likely to be to build a series of tent poles that themselves become larger, more significant, more valuable commercially, more influential editorially. So that's how you scale it.
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Peter Kafka
Some of the press I've seen about your raise and your business sort of has you guys trying to take on Davos, which is happening in a week or two directly to sort of build your own convening of the biggest, fanciest, most expensive people in the world and get them all in one place. Is that a real ambition? Is that a 10 year ambition or am I misguided?
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Justin Smith
No, I mean, listen, we, when we started Semaphore, actually in the original business plan deck, and we saw an opportunity that, to build a leading CEO convening in the United States. We looked at the, the US market and we thought it's interesting, this is the largest economy in the world and this is 2023, 2022, and there is not a dominant leading CEO convening platform. And in fact, Davos was and still remains to this day the sort of the preeminent gathering for global CEOs. And we thought that was a, an interesting fact and one which presented an opportunity. And so we from the very beginning envisioned building this from scratch. And we identified Washington D.C. as the best location to do this, which was also a little bit of an unusual choice. DC's historically not been a place where CEOs travel. It's not been historically a center of business. But that of course has been changing across the last five to seven years. You know, the role of geopolitics in the boardroom, the rise of regulation, all these different trends have converged. And now CEOs from both the United States and across the world find themselves in Washington, you know, 3, 4, 5, 10, you know, 10 times a year, some of them. And we were, we were fortunate because we made that bet. And in the first year we had five Fortune 500 CEOs. The second we had 25. The third year we had 200 Fortune 500 CEOs. And this coming year, in April 2026, we're expecting over 400, which really makes it the single largest CEO convening in this country. And second, probably second to Davos globally. And of course, that's not just a great moment to do a lot of journalism because much of these conversations, if not all of them, are on the record and all the conversations are led by our journalists. But it's clearly an interesting and powerful commercial opportunity to connect different brands and companies who are interested in reaching this.
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Peter Kafka
My next question is sort of like flesh out how that business actually works. When you gather all those CEOs in Washington in April, you're making most of your money selling tickets to CEOs. What's the ticket cost? And then how much are you, and how much of your revenue comes from selling access to those folks to advertisers?
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Justin Smith
We are, right now, we're not charging any delegate fees to the, to the CEOs. I mean, we, you pay to be
- [16:56]
Peter Kafka
in the audience if you're not a CEO.
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Justin Smith
Yeah. And honestly, I mean, it's, it's obvious that the CEOs are the sort of the core, the core of the audience, the core of the, of the product idea and proposition. So virtually 100% of the revenue that we have generated so far has been companies who want to reach CEOs. So these are the big global, you know, Fortune 100 B2B companies who, you know, whether they're banks or consulting firms who, you know, who want to, want to reach CEOs because CEOs control big, big corporate budgets. And anyway, so that's been, that's been the nature of the business. I think over time, as we build it and scale it, you know, we're hoping to, you know, beyond 2026, if we can go from 400 to maybe 600 or 700 next year and really get with, with, with the, the market leader, we think many other revenue opportunities will, will emerge given the value of that type of, that type of audience.
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Peter Kafka
And when you're, when you're selling a Pfizer whoever, a sponsorship for specifically an event like that. Right. I mean that when I've dipped into the conference business, the thing you always hear from, from potential sponsors is they want to be in the thought leadership space. They essentially want to be on stage, they want to be on a panel or they want to give a speech, even if you allow, seem like they get a ton of value out of that. It seems like the real value they're getting is the chance to be up close and personal with, you know, statesman X and Y and CEO Z. How do you, how do you sort of make your advertisers happy when they sponsor an event.
- [18:36]
Justin Smith
You know, I think, I mean, different, different advertisers and different sponsors have different motivations for, for being involved. You know, some are, you know, very focused on building their business. You know, they want to sell more software to CEOs and, you know, and so getting their brand in front of that audience, you know, getting their content in front of that audience is actually valuable for them. Some other companies are not necessarily looking to sell their products per se, but want to tell a story about their corporate brand to people who matter to stakeholders who may influence different aspects of their, of their business ecosystem. And so that tends to be sort of a more ethereal, you know, as you say, thought leadership messaging, corporate brand messaging, more of a content based thing. So it just really depends on the, on the, on the client.
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Peter Kafka
We'll be right back. But first, a word from a sponsor. Yo, Harvey. Zoe Group selfie. Ooh, nice. New iPhone 17. Drew ski. Let's do a triangle formation. I'm in front with a center stage front camera.
- [19:45]
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Peter Kafka
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Justin Smith
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Peter Kafka
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Peter Kafka
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Justin Smith
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Peter Kafka
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Justin Smith
I'm grabbing my phone and switching to
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Peter Kafka
T mobile right now. Get back, Harvey. We're taking a. Ah, let's go again, y'. All.
- [20:14]
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- [20:36]
Fox News Promoter
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- [21:08]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [22:07]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. You've been describing a business that's very DC based. You are based in dc. It's really striking to me that some of the most successful media startups of the last few years, you guys, Axios, Punchbowl, to some extent, Puck, are all making money or trying to make money in Washington in that same markets, corporate responsibility, whatever you want to call it, sort of matching advertisers with powerful people. How much, why had no one tapped into that previously? And how much bigger can that market get? Is it saturated now?
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Justin Smith
Well, you got to think of it, I mean, it's effectively a B2B marketplace, right? You know, so it's, and I think this is what's different and it's what's sometimes confusing to people is that many of these news properties, including Semaphore, you know, are, you know, are consumer facing. You know, they're consumer, you know, web pages and consumer focused newsletters. But the, since the audience that they're appealing to is this segment of this leadership audience, both public sector and private sector, you know, it allows for a much more targeted type of, you know, of business monetization. In this case, you know, it's the corporate affairs market, which is, you know, largely corporate reputation, which I mentioned before. There's also a bit of advocacy advertising, which is, you know, advertisers looking to, you know, advocate different positions.
- [23:38]
Peter Kafka
Facebook saying here's why we believe healthy regulations are great idea.
- [23:41]
Justin Smith
Exactly. Exactly. And the truth is this market has existed for a long time and there was a whole predecessor group of brands before Politico and Axios. You may remember, you know, may remember Roll Call or the Hill National Journal. And in fact, when I, when I was was at the Atlantic and was and ran Atlantic Media Company, we had a property called National Journal which was deeply in this space. And even back then in the, in the early knots, this Was this. Those, those were some of the most successful and profitable and commercially viable media businesses around. So I think it, it obviously these new digital disruptors came along and, and stole the market from those legacy players. But then I think what would also happen is that the market grew and it grew, it grew really, really dramatically because I think the role of, you know, the intersection of government and business has become more and more pronounced and more and more intense. And I think the stakes have gotten higher and higher and higher for companies operating, you know, operating in the US and, and their needs to communicate their corporate brand positions have just have gotten more and more urgent.
- [24:56]
Peter Kafka
I remember hearing early on from, from Ben, I think that you guys were going to create essentially your own Sunday show, which is also very much fueled that, that economy is fueled with those same dollars it's on tv, but same kind of advertisers.
- [25:09]
Justin Smith
Those were some of the most profitable TV shows on television back in the day.
- [25:13]
Peter Kafka
Unless I miss it.
- [25:14]
Justin Smith
Probably, they probably still are today.
- [25:15]
Peter Kafka
Unless I miss it. You guys have not launched your version of a Sunday show. Do you think that's something you'll, you'll try?
- [25:20]
Justin Smith
Well, you know, we actually started with a, with a video investment. We had a couple of people that we hired at the beginning because we thought, we thought like, let's, let's see if we can produce this, you know, opinion leader video, this leadership class video. It ultimately we, you know, we tried. We were unable to sort of really, really figure it out early on and we ended up sort of killing it within six months or so. Because as a startup, you know, I think that's, you know, probably one of the better decisions we made was just to focus on the stuff that's working and stop doing the stuff that's not working.
- [26:02]
Peter Kafka
So I said, you guys are a success story. I just rattled off a few other new media success stories, digital media success stories. There's lots and lots of digital media and just overall media failure. Is there. Are there lessons from your quick success that can apply to people who aren't in the Washington D.C. media complex, either of an existing media business or you wanted to start something new, but you don't want to have salons in Washington as your, your core business?
- [26:33]
Justin Smith
Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, one way of thinking about it, I mean, this is sort of a basic idea in corporate strategy, which is if you could, you could map and look at the sort of the existing revenue and profit pools, you know, of, of the existing kind of leading players in a certain marketplace, you know, in this instance you know, we've been talking a lot about Washington, D.C. but in Semaphore is very, very active there. But we're looking to build across the whole globe and building this, this opinion leader, this business decision maker model across the world. And so if you, if you map the global market for reaching business decision makers and you look at the global news market, you get brands like the, as you mentioned, the Financial Times, you get brands like the Economist, you get brands like the Wall Street Journal. These are companies that are, have really transitioned successfully through the digital, you know, the digital process. They're largely very big subscription revenue streams, very robust advertising revenue streams, strong events businesses, and they're seeing significant growth. It's actually a very healthy segment of the, of the news market. So people say, oh, news, news, news, news, news is terrible. Well, you know, that's too much of a generalization. The, the, the business news, the professional news, the premium news, whatever we want to put it is extremely healthy. And so yet they also are legacy players. They're also operating kind of with, you know, with playbooks that they've been, that have been in place for a long time. And there's, there's opportunities for young upstarts to do things better and to attack and disrupt those models. And so I guess my advice to those who don't want to build a business like this in Washington and do salons is to, is to map out an existing market where the economics are strong, where there's significant revenue streams, significant profit streams, and then build a 21st century version of it. And that could be, it's most likely going to be Honestly, in the B2B space, I think the consumer space is certainly for news and information is much more challenged. But it's, you know, it's there, there are definitely opportunities. I mean, you can see, you can see this across different, different B2B categories that, that you and I, you and I know.
- [28:59]
Peter Kafka
Well, we'll be right back, but first, a word or two from our sponsors.
- [29:05]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [29:26]
Justin Smith
The problem with the Democratic Party so often is we appear weak and we've got to be stronger and we've got to be more assertive. And so that's, you know, it's the spirit, I think, that is required of this moment.
- [29:37]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [30:02]
Justin Smith
After decapitation strikes against Iran's leadership, what can we expect next in the escalating war?
- [30:08]
Expedia Narrator
The big question is, if there is going to be a next strongman in Iran, what kind of strongman will that person likely be? I don't think that there's going to be another powerful cleric supreme leader.
- [30:21]
Justin Smith
I'm John Finer. And I'm Jake Sullivan, and we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week we sit down with Kareem Sajapour to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war against Iran. The episode's out now. Search for and follow the longing wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:41]
President Trump
This is what President Trump had to say about why the United States is at war with Iran.
- [30:45]
Peter Kafka
We sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it again. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it. They didn't know what was happening.
- [30:58]
President Trump
Not the best explanation for a war of choice, sir. I'm personally a do my own research kind of guy, but let's ask AI why we're at war with Iran.
- [31:09]
Justin Smith
Chat. The United States attacked Iran in 2026 because it claimed Iran posed an imminent threat, particularly due to Iran's advancing nuclear program and missile capabilities, and aimed to reduce Iran's ability to project power in the region.
- [31:24]
Peter Kafka
Wow.
- [31:26]
President Trump
That was a better explanation. Thanks, Chat. But fitting that AI was more clear than the president of the United States because it turns out the United States is using AI to fight the war in Iran. The future of war is AI and that future is now. Here you can find out whether or not you should be freaking out over in the Today Explained feed.
- [31:53]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. One of the other reasons people, or one of the reasons people say news is in trouble, media is in trouble, like I mentioned up top, is the vicissitudes of Being dependent on platforms, whether it's the very old days, AOL and Yahoo and then Google and then Facebook and now back to Google again. We're talking about Google zero and you marry that with AI and the idea that the big platforms are one, never going to be reliable sources of traffic and distribution and two, may entirely dry up altogether. Right. All, all the things you used to do via Google might all happen now in a, a chatgpt box. I don't think you guys were anticipating the AI boom when you guys launched this. And so in some ways I think you're maybe accidentally successful by avoiding that. But how are you thinking about platform dependency and AI? Because it still is going to affect you, right?
- [32:51]
Justin Smith
Yeah, yeah. And of course, I mean, but I listen, and naturally, I mean, we launched in 2022, the writing was on the wall about the platforms. You know, we'd already seen that whole sort of wave of, you know, the rise and the fall of just distributed platforms.
- [33:04]
Peter Kafka
But even then, I remember Ben said, oh, we, you know, poor timing for us to launch as Elon was destroying Twitter as a useful distributor of news.
- [33:13]
Justin Smith
Yes, no, it's true. I mean, and I have to say it did sort of concentrate the mind a little bit that your sort of ones, you know, post, post the crash of those broader, broader distributed models that the. It was really, really important to develop a direct relationship with audiences, you know, everyone. That was sort of the, the big idea. And I think from in 2022, 2023, as we, you know, as we saw these changes, obviously AI was not happening quite yet, but it did concentrate the mind and I think it did, you know, we did, you know, I think can focus our editorial model, focus our audience, model our distribution model, you know, quite intentionally towards more specific audiences that we could have a direct relationship with that, you know, that wouldn't necessarily be competitive with social media. And I think that if you think
- [34:12]
Peter Kafka
about this, what does that mean sort of when you're making product, when you're doing journalism?
- [34:17]
Justin Smith
Well, it means, you know, I mean, if you're a CEO or a leader of a, you know, division of a company and you're trying to understand the impact of, you know, geopolitics, global geopolitics, on your supply chain or on, you know, interest rates, directions, I mean, you're not going to go to Facebook, you're not going to go to Google, you're not going to go to Twitter even. I mean, you're going to be looking for expert insight and you're going to be looking for trusted Voices or trusted brands that present that information. And you're going to be looking for a, for a direct relationship to get that content. And so, and that's the nature of professional content. And I think it's, it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's totally immune from, you know, from all these changes. Obviously the AI kind of revolution is adding a set of different challenges to that. But certainly vis a vis the distributed social revolution, this type of professional consumer looking for insight, looking for intelligence, looking for, you know, really, really high quality trusted content is, is not going to go through the social platform.
- [35:33]
Peter Kafka
So all that makes sense. But presumably all of your CEOs are swearing up and down how much they love AI and they're desperate to use it and they're installing it across all their companies. So presumably they are going to get some kind of AI generated news product that's going to go out and get them all the best information about a supply chain or whatever. How do you make sure, I mean
- [35:52]
Justin Smith
we talk to a lot of CEOs, it's one of our core audiences, you know, we hear, you hear from CEOs is I'm so sick of not being able to trust the news that is produced for me by what are supposed to be professional, you know, trusted news organizations. The loss of trust in some of the journalism based professional news brands is staggering, is staggering. And in fact semaphore, when we started the company we, you know, trying to restore trust, trying to innovate in our product, in our editorial to restore trust was actually really something that Ben and I really tried to prioritize. We came up this, with this idea of the semaphorm which is a new article format which separates news from analysis and opinion, presents countervailing opinions and I can't tell you the number of CEOs or C suite executives who now this is three years in, we've had time to build it and refine it, who say thank you so much for your content because you are right right up the middle and your, you know, your commitment and your, your purpose around trying to create more balanced, less ideological, more fact based news is, is, is very, very welcome. And it's, it's interesting that this trust question, particularly with the decision maker sort of audience is you know, especially acute because they're obviously taking this information to do things with it in a very, you know, in, in profound ways.
- [37:24]
Peter Kafka
But, but to be specific, I was asking you how you deal with the notion that your stuff may be pulled into a chat GPT Produced news summary for those busy executives or if not chatgpt, someone is going to do some sort of and there and then expect that as brilliant as Semaphore is, that will be one thing that they get as part of a bigger package. And so how do you get them to make sure. I mean we'll never paying you or
- [37:49]
Justin Smith
number one, we, you know, we don't, we don't let the LLMs, you know, take Semaphore's content. We don't have any deals the LLMs at this point. So we try to protect from that. Number two, you know, I think it's actually the opposite. I think what I think that the further up the ladder you go and whether it's in a company or an organization or just someone's level of education or discernment, I think that there is a sort of a counter reaction happening where AI summaries are sort of, you know, seem to be invading the inbox and invading people's sort of, you know, mind share like, like a weed and you're spotting it everywhere and it's actually has this dumbing down effect where you feel like wait a minute, this is
- [38:35]
Peter Kafka
so you're getting the, you're getting the real uncut stuff from Semaphore and it's kind of a status marker in the same way like Brooklyn kids are supposedly ditching folks.
- [38:42]
Justin Smith
You know, I mean maybe there'll be a point at which the AI is so powerful that it's actually able to sort of mimic truly authentic human artisanal journalism. And that would be an interesting day. I think, I do think that the AI and the prevalence and the broadening of the AI revolution and everything being turned, you know, being turned into some form of aggregated content is going to create opportunities for more human centric, more artisanal, much, much more custom and directed types of content. So we'll see. I think the other thing was interesting about our model is since half our business right now is in the live convening space, we think that's also going to be pretty relatively safe from the AI disruption because and may actually in fact it may be, it may be a tailwind because as you know, as technology takes over our lives and becomes so much more prevalent, I think there will be a natural human reaction to want to spend more time in person together.
- [39:55]
Peter Kafka
We've been praising your success. Let's for balance sake tell me something you got wrong in the launch and the thinking about it in the execution. What's something you do over?
- [40:07]
Justin Smith
Well, I think you know, I mean we, we definitely did not made the absolutely wrong decision on video. That was probably our, our biggest mistake. We spent too much on it too early. We, you know, we, we thought that we could, we thought that we could sort of invent a sort of a new market which was sort of digital video, kind of corporate affairs advertising market. And honestly, the media buying structures that existed for that just didn't exist and didn't work. And so that was probably the singular thing. I think I'm proud of what the team's accomplished. I think we've built a really, really strong talent culture. I think that the folks at Semaphore, you know, represent really some of the, you know, the most talented people in the industry. We've built a very, very collaborative and I think, you know, really team based environment. I know I'm going back onto our successes now, but no, there's been lots of, lots of smaller mistakes along the way and, and obviously, you know, ups and downs, but overall it's been a good three years.
- [41:21]
Peter Kafka
All right, well, you know what, no need, no need to parade you about, about failures if you've just been killing it year after year. Said with, said with a bit of archness in my voice, but I think you have done well. So congratulations.
- [41:31]
Justin Smith
Thank you. Thank you, Peter.
- [41:32]
Peter Kafka
Thanks for taking time. Appreciate it.
- [41:34]
Justin Smith
Okay. All the best.
- [41:35]
Peter Kafka
Thanks again to Justin Smith. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver. Thanks again to our advertisers. Thanks again to you guys. We have some more fun shows coming up. See you.
- [41:55]
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- [42:22]
Justin Smith
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