← Decoder with Nilay Patel
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Can Puck’s CEO reinvent the news business for the influencer age?
01:14:57
Sarah Personette’s big bet on the place where influencers and reporters might meet
Loading summary
Transcript144 lines
- [00:01]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Support for this show comes from Doppl. Maybe that ping you just got is an urgent message from your CEO. Or maybe it's a deepfake trying to target your business. Doppel is the AI native social engineering defense platform that's fighting back against impersonation and manipulation as attackers use AI to make their tactics more sophisticated. Doppel uses it to fight back from automatically dismantling cross channel attacks to to building team resilience and more Doppel outpacing what's next in social engineering. Learn more@doppel.com that's-o p p e l.com
- [00:42]
Sarah Personnet
K pop demon hunters, Haja Boy's breakfast
- [00:44]
Nilay Patel
meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that Rumi?
- [00:51]
Sarah Personnet
It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [00:56]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
It is an honor to share Nel.
- [00:58]
Sarah Personnet
It's our honor.
- [01:00]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
It is our larger honor.
- [01:02]
Sarah Personnet
No really stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side
- [01:10]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
and participate in McDonald's while supplies last. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're a developer stuck fixing bottlenecks instead of building the next big thing, then you need MongoDB. MongoDB is the flexible, unified platform that gets out of your way. It's acid compliant, enterprise ready and built to ship AI apps fast. It's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500 for a reason. Ask any developer. It's a great freaking database. Start building@mongodb.com build
- [01:48]
Nilay Patel
hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in Chief of the Verge and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Sarah Personnet, the CEO of Puck, a fancy newish media company that's been around for about five years now. Puck has a really interesting model. The company hires big stars and gives them newsletters that are all mostly part of a subscription bundle. And these reporters and their newsletters are often must reads in their categories. Everyone in Hollywood reads Puck's Matt Bellany, for instance. Those reporters then get equity in Puck and a share of the company's revenue. The idea here is to combine the financial incentives of the personality based influencer economy with the rigor of old school journalism. You'll hear Sarah say journalists were the original influencers, which is basically Puck's catchphrase. And if you're a decoder listener, you'll know That I have a lot of questions about that and how that fits into our modern media landscape. See, in my view, the creator and influencer economy work very differently than journalism. If you really look at the business of most creators, well, they all kind of look like little ad agencies doing brand deals and negotiating rates directly in a way that has always to me, felt incompatible with journalism. But to be clear, I don't begrudge anyone this reality. That's where the money is. Especially since the big platforms that distribute content tend to pay very little for it, if anything at all. And since the biggest audiences are on those platforms, finding a way to bridge the gap is basically the challenge in media. How do you find new people who are willing to support your work without accidentally giving your work away for free on platforms that don't seem to value it very much? Now, I've had versions of this conversation with lots of media people over the years. Everyone from the CEO of the New York Times to the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, to streaming service executives, digital media folks, and of course, a bunch of creators, us. These conversations are pretty loose and pretty fun because, well, I'm also in the media and all of us share the same basic problems. I was really hoping to get a fresh view on this from Sarah, because before she became the CEO of Puck, she actually worked for the platforms, first at Facebook and then for Twitter. So I asked her a lot of questions about Puck's business and how it operates within the platform environment. I have to admit, though, I'm not sure I got the answers I was looking for. Have a listen and let us know what you think. We really do read all the emails. Okay, Puck CEO Sarah Personnet. Here we go. Sarah Personnet, you're the CEO of Puck. Welcome to Decoder.
- [04:13]
Sarah Personnet
Thank you, Nilay. What a pleasure to be here.
- [04:15]
Nilay Patel
I'm really excited to talk to you. I have a million thoughts about the creator economy and journalism and the information ecosystem. You're a fascinating person to talk to about all that because you worked at the big platforms. You worked in Twitter and Facebook, and now you're at Puck, which is a media company that has an interesting perspective on being integrated with the creator and influencer world. I just want to start at the start. You've been the CEO at Puck for a little over two years now, correct?
- [04:41]
Sarah Personnet
About two and a half.
- [04:42]
Nilay Patel
Before that, again, you were at Facebook and Twitter during some periods of pretty rapid change there. You spent a minute at Refinery 29. Quickly describe your experiences at the platform companies.
- [04:52]
Sarah Personnet
Very different, actually. I think when I First started at Facebook, that was back in around 2009, 2010. And so the company was around 1,000 people. And even though that sounds like a large company, it actually was more of a startup and operated with a startup mentality. Used to hear Zuck say a lot, move fast and break things. And then fast forward three or four years post ipo and it was move fast and build good infrastructure. So just even in that small amount of time, sort of seeing the maturation of the company, the growth of the company, it moved from being a singular big blue app to also being a family of apps and services. Where we had acquired Instagram, we had to integrate that appropriately. We spun out messenger actually into a singular application. We acquired WhatsApp, we acquired Atlas, and used that as sort of our measurement tool and foundation. And then with that, you also had this massive technological shift, which is actually really applicable, I think, to the rise of the creator economy and sort of the impact on publishers and media companies that I know we'll get into. But during the time that I was at Facebook, which was over about an eight year period, we also had the shift from desktop to mobile. And that was a really profound technological change that had an impact, I think, certainly on employees and the way that the company was run, and also had a significant impact on the way that businesses operated, the way that they became mobile first, the way that they interacted and communicated with consumers in a totally new and direct to consumer way. So that was sort of my, my Facebook experience. And then you take the Twitter experience, where I was the chief customer officer for about five years, through to the sale of the company to the current ownership. And that was really interesting because the pattern recognition of having gone through so many different stages of growth. And to zoom out for a second, when you think about organizational change and organizational change theory, there is a belief that systems structures and processes break in threes and tens. So when a company grows from 3 people to 10 people, 10 people to 30 people, 30 people to 100 people, et cetera, that those systems, tools and structures essentially need to be rewritten to and within the Twitter sphere or the Twitter ecosystem. I came in where we actually had the opportunity to sort of rewrite a lot of those systems and structures and really rebuild the ads ad tech stack. We had the opportunity to really think holistically about how we were serving the public conversation in each and every engagement. We also were able to really think through how do we serve and deliver value for our advertisers when they're trying to launch a brand or connect with what's happening in the world. That shift, I think, was really powerful because the, the evolution and the stages in gating that I experienced in the Facebook world were some of the things and the best practices I was able to bring to, to my Twitter experience, which was just truly one of the greatest honors of my life, was to be able to, to lead that, be a leader in that company during that time.
- [08:23]
Nilay Patel
You mentioned Twitter's current ownership. Obviously it's X now. It's owned by Elon Musk. You left when Elon bought it. What was that like?
- [08:30]
Sarah Personnet
Excellent question. I can't really speak about the current state of the company for, for several reasons. But what I can share with you is that during that acquisition, which was obviously a very public acquisition, you know, I talk about it being one of the greatest honors of my life and truly it was in so many ways. We live in a very volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. And that acronym is not by mistake. VUCA is actually a type of leadership structure that I've used in almost the entirety of my career to help lead teams. And during that time, I think my team was around 2,000 people around the world being able to communicate with them around what was happening, why it was happening, how we help customers understand, understand the value of the acquisition and the reason to stay on the platform. Being able to navigate those types of changes is something that makes every single individual just a much better leader. And as those folks have both stayed at the company and as clients have continued to stay on with the company as well as those folks that have moved on to other roles inside of the industry, I know that they, they look at that time and I think they look at the way that I try to communicate with real deep transparency and empathy and, and sort of surround things around evidence based decisioning that has stayed with them and made them stronger leaders over the course of time. So really just a powerful part of my career.
- [10:21]
Nilay Patel
Can you say what that acronym is again?
- [10:22]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah, it's called VUCA V U C A. And the origins of VUCA actually come from the National War College. Following the Cold War, there is, there was a realization that there's no longer this sort of stability in a bi bipolar world. And that when you were thinking about how to structure for a new system of enemy, if you will, that you needed to be more planful and more capable of navigating within a highly volatile, again, very complex, ambiguous world. And so I've sort of taken that philosophy and applied that at significant moments in time in my career with My teams. Because I think if you're operating in a world, in a VUCA world, and you're leading in a VUCA world, you're always really mindful of establishing a plan, communicating clearly with each other, developing trust inside of your organization so that when things like Cambridge Analytica occur or things like a public acquisition occur, that you're ready for it. And those things can be large and globally proliferated, and those things can be really small. Because in so many ways, I think work in business is the most personal thing. And how we manage ourselves is a big part of how we also collectively manage a team.
- [12:05]
Nilay Patel
I do like the idea that your approach to the Twitter acquisition by Elon Musk was to compare it to Cold War bipolar Power Dynamics.
- [12:13]
Sarah Personnet
Not at all a comparison VUCA I have been using well before. I actually was introduced to the concept from the CEO of Build A Bear, Sharon John. She is just. She's an exceptional human and an exceptional leader. And she. At some conference that she was at, she was introduced to it and I used to sit on her board and she brought that back to a meeting. And I was like, this is something that really certainly has, has stayed, has had staying power for me.
- [12:45]
Nilay Patel
Okay. Now I'm just dying to know why the Build A Bear CEO thinks that she needs Cold War era political philosophy. But we will do that episode. The producers will book that another time.
- [12:54]
Sarah Personnet
You should book her as a guest. She is phenomenal.
- [12:57]
Nilay Patel
You mentioned the idea that some customers stayed on. I actually just. I'm curious about this. Right. Your roles have been more advertising focused, I would say broadly. Right. Making people spend money on the platforms. Elon's approach to advertisers who had concern about that platform after he bought it, was to sue them and to threaten them and to tear down their brand safety initiatives. That's all stuff that, you know, in the administration that you were a part of Twitter actually built up. Right. That in Facebook at some point was a big part of. Right. The idea that we're going to have a wide open spread of content from our users. We will build the tools to make sure you're in the right places at the right time. You're not next to the bad stuff. We'll have content moderation to make sure that people don't see the bad stuff at high rates. That's all basically been torn down, particularly in X. But even maybe on Facebook, how do you see that world playing out? Because the idea of a company like Puck or any other premium media organization, the pitch advertiser, is like we're special. And that's, that's bad. Like it's very bluntly, like that's noise and it's full of garbage. And they're tearing down the things that make your brand special. And you should come over here where you have a smaller audience that cares for the kind of premium journalism we make. But you built all that up and now it's being torn down. And now you're at Puck trying to make that sale. How do you feel about all that stuff being torn down?
- [14:14]
Sarah Personnet
Well, I can't comment on the current state of the company, but what I would love to zoom out and talk about is I think some of the technological shifts that impacted and have impacted where we are today as a talent led journalism organization. And so I'll kind of start you with these four numbers or five numbers. 38, 14, 7, 4 and months. 38 is the number of years that it took radio to hit 100 million listeners. 14 is the number of years it took TV to hit 100 million viewers. 7 is 100 million for the desktop Internet. 4 is the migration of 100 million to mobile. And then months is the adoption of AI by 100 million people. So now the reason why I bring that up and why I think those numbers matter and the progression of how they get incrementally and deeply smaller is because we have lived through in our lifetime and certainly in our careers, some of the fastest technological shifts that have ever occurred. Now you might be like, that's great. And yes, you did the different platforms go through that, but why does it matter for news and media? Well, if you go back to the 1970s, which was the industrial media model, you had a really interesting, very neat landscape. You had 90% of viewership for news was concentrated in ABC, CBS and NBC. You had local newspapers thriving, like absolutely thriving from a circulation perspective. And it was actually a good business model to be in. And you had trust at an all time high. Trust was at I think like 72% when galv was doing the research at the time. And so that's particularly interesting because distribution was really scarce, it was quite controlled. But you also had a lot of these very clear shared experiences between people. And when I walked through those changes and those shifts from a technological perspective, the first thing that happened was really the rise of the Internet. And the Internet and digital disruption didn't just dismantle journalism, it actually rebuilt and reshaped journalism sort of layer by layer. And I think that's only the first shift because that's where new voices emerged. That's where local stories traveled faster. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Panama Papers, but that was a great example of the Internet and journalism at its best. You had reporters from multiple different countries coming together to report around corruption. But at the same time you sort of had some challenges. You had the system starting to break. That very capital intensive world now no longer was capital intensive. With a keyboard and with access to WI fi, you could be a journalist. And that was awesome. But you also had scarcity disappear. You had attention fragment, you had sort of the gatekeepers. The editors of the world move from being capable of editing to, to really editing being dominated by algorithms. And so the, you know, it's just like quick numbers. During a 15 year period, 2,500 local newspapers closed and 36,000 newsroom jobs disappeared. So that sort of rebuilding was just starting to get under control. And then mobile disruption occurred. And now all of a sudden information is in our pockets. And that is, there's so much power in that. But what also comes with that is that now news and media which used to be invited into our homes for the 10 o' clock or 11 o' clock news, became a little bit more disruptive and interruptive. And then rise of AI, which has experienced the steepest acceleration curve out of any technological shift and presents many powerful and very positive aspects of what it can do for workflow, what it can do for operational excellence. I mean there's, there are many positives, but at the same time there was, I think with this, another challenge in that if anything, any object, any article can be created by something that is artificial. And then who can we trust? Because trust, I think like 2023. Gallup did another poll and trust had declined from that 72% in 1970, in the 1970s to 32%. So very seemingly obvious. The answer to who we can trust is people. And that is why for Puck, being a talent led organization, and John Kelly, the founder of our company, you know, he had this thesis years ago. I don't know if he went through the technological shifts that sort of my mind goes through, but he knew that journalists were the original influencer. And he knew that in order to really, I think reclaim trust for the reader, it required putting talent at the center for so many different reasons. But in particular, I think that reclaiming of trust was really, really important. And so now when this is why Puck's talent first model, I think is so influential in why we actually see others trying to copy it is because when you hear from Matt Bellany, you know that he has deep seated relationship Hollywood and in entertainment, you know he is extremely well sourced. You also know that because we, we have a primary distribution model of newsletters. You know that you can respond to his email and he's going to respond back to you.
- [20:55]
Nilay Patel
Wait, is he, is he going to respond? He's always, he responds to every single email.
- [20:59]
Sarah Personnet
I mean I can't, I can't speak for him. I don't have access to his inbox. But he prides himself on both listening to all of his readership as well as responding to his leadership. And it's not just Matt. So, you know, with within the Puck ecosystem we have eight different franchises that serve the professional elite. We have the entertainment franchise under Matt Bellamy. We have Lauren Sherman who leads our fashion content and our fashion franchise Marian Manaker who leads our art content. We have Bill Cohan who leads all of our finance content in Kreuzberg, who we just brought on last year for the introduction of our AI and technology franchise who is exceptional. All of these individuals are people who have points of view and relationships and sourcing capabilities that put the personality and the person at the center so that our subscribers that direct reader relationship can really thrive in a high trust community. And that's, you know, I think the story of how we got to a talent led business and a talent led business model where journalists are at the center and equity incentives are aligned. Each of our journalists have ownership inside of the company, which is not anything that used to exist in legacy media before. That is a really, really powerful sentiment and a really powerful point in I think where to the top of the question. All of these technology shifts have really driven to where we are today and we're and why I wanted to be CEO of this company because you don't have a lot of CEOs and media companies that come from technology companies. But I think the pattern recognition that comes in that scale and the influence of what we tried to do inside of those companies matters so much today and what we're designing.
- [23:16]
Nilay Patel
We have to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.
- [23:20]
Sarah Personnet
Foreign.
- [23:27]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Support for this show comes from Vanta. If you're a business owner, you've likely noticed more customers asking for proof of security right from the start. It's a sign that risk and regulation are only increasing and earning that customer trust is essential to closing deals. But that can be difficult, expensive and a major drain on your time. With Vanta, you can automate compliance by unifying risk, security and trust in a single AI powered platform. It takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation. So whether you're prepping for a SoC2 or running an enterprise GRC program, Vanta keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Vanta says that companies like Ramp and RYTR spend 82% less time on audits with Vanta. That's not just faster compliance, it's more time for your business to grow. You can get started@vanta.com decoder that's v a n t a.com decoder vanta.com decoder support for decoder comes from Granola have you ever left a meeting thinking that was productive and then 10 minutes later you're pinging someone to have another meeting about what the first meeting was about? Of course you have. We all have. Granola can help alleviate some of those meetings. About the meeting Granola is an AI powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You simply take notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And you want to know the best part? Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. No setup, no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. You need to do your job better. So if meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no brainer. You could try it totally free for three months. Just head to Granola AI Decoder. That's Granola AI Decoder to get your time back, get three months free at Granola AI Decoder Support for the show comes from Samsara. Companies need to move product from point A to point B. That means hiring drivers, which in turn means vehicle insurance, dash cams, and accepting the fact that accidents happen. That's exactly where Samsara can help. It brings AI dash cams, vehicle tracking, and asset visibility together in one simple platform. Their data shows companies have reduced fuel costs and improved driver retention thanks to better visibility and coaching. According to their data, Samsara AI helps reduce crash rates by nearly 75%. It's trusted by over 20,000 customers worldwide, including major companies across transportation, construction and logistics. Don't wait for the next accident to take action. Go to samsara.comdecoder to request a free demo and see how Samsara brings visibility and safety to your operations. That's samsara.com decoder samsara operate smarter. Support for Decoder comes from Adobe. For every big idea, your Documents folder tells a story. Let's say you've just finished pulling together a brief. So you hit export on final version PDF, but then you open the file and you immediately notice a typo. Several versions later, you're exporting Final V4 actual Final Draft PDF. Adobe Acrobat can save you the digital clutter with PDF spaces. It takes your documents and turns them into a living project that you can engage with, get insights from, and collaborate with others on. You can gather all your files into one workspace and have a whole conversation with your AI assistant about it and ask questions to get deep insights about your project. You can even invite people to your PDF space and let them add files, comments, notes and more. You could doodle in the margins or even turn your project into your own personal podcast episode. Acrobat lets you generate an audio overview of your project in just one click. Learn more@adobe.com do that with Acrobat.
- [28:04]
Nilay Patel
Welcome back. I'm talking with Puck CEO Sarah Personnet about the structure of the company. You've kind of gotten to my structure question. I asked everybody and Decoder to describe the structure of the company. It seems like you've got John Kelly. He's the editor in chief of.
- [28:16]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah.
- [28:17]
Nilay Patel
And so he operates deputy editors, it sounds like, in a bunch of verticals. And they do they have reporters.
- [28:22]
Sarah Personnet
Yes. So I'll zoom out. So John Kelly is the both editor in chief as well as the founder of the company. He is truly just one of the smartest individuals that I've ever worked with. And I say that having worked with Jack Dorsey and Cheryl and so many others, he is. He's really exceptional. So he oversees the entirety of our content organization that's inclusive of Puck as a media brand and that's inclusive of Airmail as a media brand.
- [28:56]
Nilay Patel
That's your acquisition.
- [28:57]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We acquired Airmail back at the end of October. So I know you'll have questions around that, but Airmail is run by Editor in Chief Giulia Vitale, who grew up underneath Graydon. She is absolutely exceptional and she's come over to lead that team.
- [29:14]
Nilay Patel
That's great. And Carter, the pro writer of Vanity Fair, who started in my house. Okay. Correct. Just making sure our audience. One of the things that's really interesting here is we have a young audience, a big audience. I'm not sure that they know what Puck is or what that history is. And I think this is one of the bigger questions I have for you as a whole.
- [29:30]
Sarah Personnet
Right.
- [29:31]
Nilay Patel
This is a pretty storied legacy that you're trading on. Buying air mail is a big deal that I do want to talk about because it was Graydon Carter, because that was his venture after Vanity Fair. I read his memoir. It was very fun. But I know my audience doesn't know any of these things. And actually the dynamic between do I follow Matt Bellamy or do I care about Puck as an institution, I think is one of the most challenging dynamics in all of media. And I will tell you, I actually disagree with a few things you've said already. One, I think it's the platforms that have torn down the institutions. I don't think that they are a good partner for any media brand. And I think the idea that journalists and influencers are the same or should be the same, it's actually quite dangerous. And I would actually, I would pull those ideas as far apart as I can because I think journalism is a process. It's a way of working.
- [30:20]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah.
- [30:20]
Nilay Patel
Being an influencer is a way of making money. And like, those things are not aligned. And I'm very curious how you can pull all of these ideas together and try to have the cost structure of the old way, the prestige of the old way, the Grade and Carter way with the economics that are pulling everyone towards integrated brand deals and influencer world. Because it doesn't matter if the journalists are influencers, if they're not doing the direct brand integrations the influencers are actually doing to support that level of work.
- [30:50]
Sarah Personnet
While I appreciate your disagreement and it makes for a very good podcast, I would disagree with your disagreement. The thing that I would say is challenged in legacy media. And you can't really say that legacy media had it figured out, because as you look around, we've seen just constant layoffs happening inside of the industry for the last five to 10 years. And Dylan Byers, who runs our media content, has written about it. One of the challenges with that is that the majority of layoffs were not coming from the sales teams, were not coming from the operations side. The people that were being laid off were the people that made the product, the people that influence society, the people that helped to create a world that ideally would define what trust looked like in journalism, and that was the journalist. So for me, on the technology side, when I think of heroes inside of the organization, it's usually the product and engineering folks. But for whatever reason, the way that media grew up, it wasn't the people that were making the product. It wasn't the journalists. It was actually like, like those were the people that were ultimately being let go. And so where I think.
- [32:11]
Nilay Patel
Right, but the reason they were being let go is because they cost money and there was no money associated with their product because their distribution was torn down by platforms. Right. Like that. My biggest problem in my cost structure and my reporters know I say this to them all the time, is that I pay them money and then they tweet for free. Right. This is like the dynamic in every newsroom in the world is that we give our work to other people's distribution for free all the time. And I know that you have a subscription model and that's different, but that is specifically the dynamic that has led to the hollowing out of newsrooms is that we don't control our distribution.
- [32:50]
Sarah Personnet
Can we put the platform piece to the side for one second and just.
- [32:53]
Nilay Patel
We can try. I'm really not sure how.
- [32:56]
Sarah Personnet
No, no, I will, I will address that. But I, I don't. Because I don't think those two things are connected. And the reason for that is we do have a subscriber based model where our subscription revenue grew over 50% last year. And that is really critical. We do control distribution and our journalists are not a cost center. The way that we look at each franchise is thinking through the economics of each of those franchises. And we do a business biannual business review with each of those reporters who anchor each of our franchises. So the operating leverage that we bring into this system still allows for the job to be done. The job to be done is not, and I wouldn't define influencers and creators only as those that do like integrated
- [33:53]
Nilay Patel
brand partnerships, but that's how they all make their money.
- [33:56]
Sarah Personnet
That might be how they make their money, but Matt Bellamy is very influential in the Hollywood, in the world of Hollywood because he is reporting on it and that influence matters, but also the relationship that he has. This is why I started out by saying he goes so deep into his sourcing. And this is not Matt's an illustration of all of our journalists. But when you are in that industry, you know, you have to read him because he is reporting on the inside story. He's giving you access to information that you would not normally have access to. And, and he does that with a high margin business. So yes, our, our revenue model is, is twofold. You know, we have a, a subscriber revenue model and we have a commercial revenue model, an advertising model, those things like that you're describing. That you can't have a profitable business that is talent led and journalist led. I would disagree with, I think that is absolutely possible. And that is the reason why each of our journalists have equity and ownership in the company is because we want them to be incentivized to make hard decisions around cost. Like we're, we, we are very diligent in those things. We also have the luxury of being four and a half years old and not having been built, you know, for the last 20 years. And so that's also I, I, I, I consistently say I. It is again a real honor to be able to lead this company and to lead it through significant advancements in growth from a revenue perspective, from a content perspective, from a talent perspective, and then also from a subscriber growth perspective. We just hit over 100,000 paying subscribers. We have upwards of a million folks overall that are reading the publication and that's significant. To get to your platform piece.
- [36:09]
Nilay Patel
Actually, can I just ask you. The last public number from 2025 was 45,000. So the, the 65,000 is from the airmail acquisition. The, I'm sorry, 55,000 is from the airmail Acquisition to get to over 100.
- [36:25]
Sarah Personnet
It is the last public number we announced with Brian Morrissey and the rebooting. I announced that we had hit 100,000. We don't break out actually the difference between. Because that, that 45,000 I think was a 2024 number. But with the acquisition of Airmail, we will exceed 100,000.
- [36:45]
Nilay Patel
Okay, so you can just kind of back into it. You had one public number, you made an acquisition, you had a much, you had a big jump to another public number. Is, does Airmail have the same structure? Do they have equity? Do they have a revenue share?
- [36:56]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah. So right now with the acquisition, we're working through all of the employee based comp for equity and ownership. It's all one collective company and all, all one same compensation structure.
- [37:11]
Nilay Patel
Airmail was a brand. Right. Graydon Carter is a brand person. Vanity Fair was a brand. You were not really supposed to know who Graydon Carter was unless you were the sort of person who needed to know who Graydon Carter was. And then he was very important. Airmail was kind of built in that model. Right. How many people worked at Airmail?
- [37:25]
Sarah Personnet
I think we have 45. 45 to 50 people from airmail and 45 to 50 people from PUC were about 50, 50 in terms of talent overall. Although with the integration as just for your listener base as you do an acquisition, one thing that you think about is the post merger integration and how you bring two companies together, how you Think about centers of excellence where you might have four finance people on one side and you have four finance people on the other side. So we did a lot of that synergy work.
- [38:06]
Nilay Patel
Usually when people say synergy work, they mean layoffs. Did you lay people off?
- [38:09]
Sarah Personnet
We laid off a few people from the airmail side and a few people from the puck side. Yes, absolutely we did. We were really thoughtful and really careful. We communicated that within the first 24 hours of the acquisition and reviewed where we felt like we had too many people within one team and then where we would port folks over from either side of the business.
- [38:37]
Nilay Patel
And then so the total split between the talent who's supposed to go out and be the face of the company and make all the money and the management is what now?
- [38:44]
Sarah Personnet
Management. We have nine people on our leadership team. And then we have across our journalists and editorial teams, probably 40. And then maybe. Yeah, 40. 40 to 50. And then the rest are in sales, marketing. Our technology team, we have a very small strategy and ops team.
- [39:10]
Nilay Patel
One of the reasons I'm asking this is, you know, I have friends who've left big media jobs to go to Substack or Ghost or whatever, and then I have friends who have left Substack to go to another email provider because they think substacks 10% is too much. They're not getting the value out of Substack. You're taking more than 10%. Like just describing that overhead for an individual journalist. That's a lot to pay into to support a sales team or whatever else you might have compared to the revenue might get back. How do you justify the split you're
- [39:38]
Sarah Personnet
taking from the individual reporters from a compensation perspective? And we do on an annual basis. We look at our. Our comps on compensation relative to the industry and our journalists and editors.
- [39:52]
Nilay Patel
Wait, the industry is the media industry or the substack industry or the Instagram influencer industry.
- [39:57]
Sarah Personnet
The media industry. And our comps are well higher than at or very much above the current comps and then also our journalists. But all of our employees have equity and ownership in the company. So I feel very confident that the way we pay our people is very much aligned and incentivized with the holistic company, I think on the sub stack side. So can I just ask about that equity?
- [40:30]
Nilay Patel
Are you paying dividends on that equity or is that just paper money?
- [40:34]
Sarah Personnet
No, we are not, because we're not a public.
- [40:36]
Nilay Patel
Sure. I'm asking what the equity is worth. I'm the person who owns a bunch of paper equity in a media company. It's great. Sometimes I think about it, it doesn't pay the bills. Right. Like, does it pay the bills for your people?
- [40:47]
Sarah Personnet
Well, I appreciate that. Not at the current moment, but the value, and especially with the recent acquisition, but what everything was built on prior to that has made the value of the equity significantly higher. And as someone who was also at another company pre ipo, I. I believe in ownership as a component part of a compensation structure for your listeners. I would also encourage them to really consider that as well. There is a ton of value to think about your ttc, your total compensation package. So, Neely, while I appreciate your point, I just want to make sure you're guiding your young listeners. Sure.
- [41:31]
Nilay Patel
I mean, if you're going to get equity and it's going to pay off a huge number, you need an exit event. What's your exit event look like?
- [41:37]
Sarah Personnet
That's a really good question. And right now we are completely focused on continuing to grow the successful company that we've built thus far and feel really good about that. So no exit strategy of the Right.
- [41:51]
Nilay Patel
So I just want to. I just want to stay focused on this for one second. Yeah. We're saying we're doing better than the media industry, which is dying and pays at low rates. We're not maybe doing as well as the influencer industry, the substack industry, which, if you're a winner at the level that you might need people to be a winner at, pays at extraordinarily high rates and that you're making up the gap with equity, that is not liquid and there's no stated plan to be liquid. So should your employees expect an exit to pay that off?
- [42:18]
Sarah Personnet
Let me just clarify because that is not what I said.
- [42:21]
Nilay Patel
Sure.
- [42:22]
Sarah Personnet
I said that the base compensation is at or above the industry level. And I feel the media industry. The media industry people leave the media
- [42:33]
Nilay Patel
industry because they can get more money on substack. That's what I'm. That's what I'm asking.
- [42:36]
Sarah Personnet
Well, so I think that's very interesting because we've actually done two of our Acqua hires prior to came from substack, and that's because they don't feel like they're capable of monetizing the platform as well. It's also because the world of substack and I actually think substacks are a very interesting platform. I don't have a ton of internal knowledge about the company. I think what they're trying to do in terms of democratization is really interesting. But what we've found is that Substack tends to be a platform of solo operators, and many journalists are actually looking to be able to be independent and really be free to express the stories that they want to express, but also have infrastructure around them where they do have a sales team, they do have a growth marketing team, and that's the part that we've built out. So a lot of the calculations that you just went through are incorrect. And another example of that is each of our authors get bonused based on the subscribers that they acquire and that they retain. So they are incentivized to continue to grow. We're incentivized as a company to help them grow, and that comes back to them. So your total compensation package, I think you oriented a little bit too much around equity. But again, the purpose of ownership is that everyone should feel like they have a voice in the company, and that's a big part of what we're trying to create. But I think that the challenges that you're painting relative to the broader industry are very real. And. And I can appreciate that.
- [44:36]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, I'm just trying to. Trying to understand what the value of being a part of the organization is. And I'm. You know, Matt Bellany, we've talked about him several times here. Hi, Matt. We're big fans over here. He was profiled in New York Times in November, and this is a quote. He said, it's safe to say I could make a lot more money if I were independent, at least in the short term. But I don't know, do I want to be on Substack? That's some ambiguity. Right. But like the. The thing that you could do on that platform, and there's. I have a lot of problems with that platform, as listeners of the show know very well. But the thing you can do on that platform is collect a lot more revenue without the overhead. All of my friends who go there say, I don't need all this stuff. I have fans on social media and I can convert them to get paid over here, and I will make all the money for myself. So I'm. I'm trying to really just nail down what to. What's the value of being part of the. The greater organization and paying a higher cut even than you would pay to substack for their marketing? Is it your sales team? Is it the growth marketing team? Is it product? How does that work?
- [45:34]
Sarah Personnet
I think it's the collective whole. And again, I don't agree with your calculations, but that's. That's okay.
- [45:41]
Nilay Patel
I'm sorry, what calculations have. I made that you disagree with?
- [45:43]
Sarah Personnet
I. I don't think that we take a greater cut of.
- [45:49]
Nilay Patel
You don't think the overhead of working for Puck is greater than substacks? 10%.
- [45:53]
Sarah Personnet
I. I think that what we provide relative to scale from an advertising perspective and a subscriber perspective, as well as paying benefits, as well as providing bonuses, is higher. So that's where I'm coming at it from. I appreciate you continuing to pick at it, but I just disagree with that statement.
- [46:19]
Nilay Patel
I mean, if you just said, we provide health insurance, I think that's meaningful for a lot of people. I get it.
- [46:23]
Sarah Personnet
We provide health insurance.
- [46:25]
Nilay Patel
I have two kids, and that's always on my mind. You know, whenever someone asks me about going independent, I'm like, no, I have two kids. Like, and I love running my newsroom. But the. The dynamic for a lot of people I know thinking about this isn't, I should go work for another company. It's the rewards for me are very high if I go out on my own. And I think you're trying to sit in the middle of that. And I'm just trying to find the edges of how that model works, because if you end up in, you know, traditional cost structure, it won't work. And if you end up all the way over here, you're competing with a cost structure where the platforms get all the content for free, or in substack's case, people pay them for the content, which is maybe the best business model of them all. And I. Somewhere in the middle is Puck, and I'm just trying to figure out how that model actually works.
- [47:09]
Sarah Personnet
So you are correct. We do sit in the middle. Right? And that's why we are able to get the incredible, generationally talented, talented individuals that we have because we allow and support journalists. Not just Matt, but Bill Cohan, I mentioned Ian Kreisberg on the AI front, Lauren Sherman. We just brought on Kim Masters a year ago. Marian Manneker, Dylan Byers. These are incredible journalists that have the. Some of the foremost voices inside of the industries that they write about and that they lead. They're a part of an organization, but they're also able to be independent. They do get health care. Right? And that does matter. And they do have bonuses and they do have feedback that they get, but they're also not told what stories to chase. And the benefit of moving from a large media organization through to a substack of it all. The motivation for some might be money, but the motivation for many is independence. And we try to capture the balance between Being able to be independent, but also having a support infrastructure in place that allows you to take some of those risks. It's quite special. And that's, again, I think, the reason why we have a subscriber base that's also incredibly loyal and growing, because they can feel that in the authors.
- [48:52]
Nilay Patel
When I talk to people at Substack or the people who have moved to substack about that 10%, the justification is generally that Substack drives more subscriber growth than any other platform. And the people who've left Substack have seen a pretty rapid decline in how fast their subscribers grow. Substack has turned its app basically into a walled garden. They say they do email, but now you open it and it looks like a Twitter and there's podcasts inside of it. And they've made a little social network, even though they claim they haven't made a social network. And that's fine. And it's working because it's driving a lot of subscriber growth for a lot of their people. When you subscribe to one substack, they like sign you up for seven. More like they have dark patterns in that app. That is their 10%. They will look you in the eye and say, we know people think this is a high number. And we say, if you leave, your rate of new subscribers will go down and that's worth the 10%. And the second we stop delivering that, we know people are going to turn off. Is that the same for Puck? Is it. Is it health insurance plus subscriber growth? What's the mechanism for subscriber growth for you?
- [49:50]
Sarah Personnet
I'm not an expert in Substack. What I can say is that many of the subscribers on Substack, at least from the aqua hires that we have made, are not paying subscribers. So the subscription revenue that I mentioned before is from paying subscribers and the growth is from paying subscribers. And so the additional benefit from having great base comp and then also having equity and having healthcare and health insurance and vacation policy and all of that good stuff and folks to support you when you do want to go on vacation. Aside from all of those things, it goes back to the incentive around the subscriber bonus. So as I mentioned before for the our, our growth is driven by marketing. Our growth is driven by the content that our journalists create and the stories that they are are selling. And then it's also created now because we're. We are building sort of multimodal franchises around these individuals, whether it's through event businesses. Also, all of our Talent gets bonused on the events that they are a part of. So you have the subscriber acquisition bonus, you have a retention bonus, you have an events bonus. And that is our talent getting incentivized and paid for the work and the time and the energy that they're putting in. And that's really a crux of the value proposition. But again, I would go back to if you have any aspiring journalists on your pod, what's the motivation that they have around wanting to be a journalist and if it is to be capable of reporting and telling independent stories and also being able to be financially compensated. I think that we are a rare breed of trying to create a company that fosters that. And that to me, again, when I think about the career choice to come here versus going to another big technology company, it was a strong motivator for me was that mission.
- [52:22]
Nilay Patel
We have to take another quick break. We'll be back in just a minute.
- [52:34]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. You got into it to, to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that. It's flexible developer, first asset compliant enterprise ready and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500 and that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building@mongodb.com Build support for today's show comes from CNN. Do you want to live forever? Influential journalist Kara Swisher is taking a hard look at the longevity industry to separate the influencer hype from evidence backed science. In her new CNN original series, Kara's talking to Silicon Valley power players and trying out the latest in anti aging technology to see what works and what's a waste. Kara Swisher wants to live forever. New episodes streaming Sundays with a CNN subscription. Go to CNN.com subscribe to start watching.
- [54:04]
Nilay Patel
Whoa.
- [54:05]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Okay, this one says you get a free phone if you switch. Hey, this one also says you get a free phone if you switch.
- [54:11]
Nilay Patel
Tough.
- [54:12]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah, they all do. Hun.
- [54:13]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Wait, wait, wait, wait. The T Mobile one says family saved over $3,700 versus the other big guys in the past five years and their experience plans have Netflix included plus a year of Dash Pass by DoorDash.
- [54:27]
Sarah Personnet
Hang on, let me see that. And a five year price guarantee. Oh yeah, we're switching.
- [54:31]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
That's what I'm talking about. Do we clap now or I'm thinking high five. @t mobile get savings that keep stacking up. That's value you can feel every day. Switch now AT T Mobile savings based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3 2021 to Q4 2025among accounts with three plus voice lines compared to AT&T and Verizon excluding discounts, credits and optional charges. See harrisx.comT Mobile Price Guarantee on talk, text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com right now at the Home Depot. Shop Spring Black Friday savings and get up to 40% off plus up to $500 off select appliances from top brands like Samsung. Get a fridge with zero clearance hinges so the doors open fully even in tighter spaces in your kitchen and laundry. That saves you time like an all in one washer dryer that can run a full load in just 68 minutes. Shop Spring Black Friday Savings plus get free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more at the Home Depot offer valid April 9 through April 29 US only C store online for details.
- [55:39]
Nilay Patel
Welcome back. I'm talking with Puck CEO Sarah Personnet about where new audiences for Puck come from. Where does your growth come from? Right. If. If your folks are getting paid more, if they're getting bonuses on subscriber growth, where does the net new customer come
- [55:53]
Sarah Personnet
from from Net new subscribers come from content that is. That is like interesting and breakthrough. I think a lot of the work that has been done so scoops.
- [56:05]
Nilay Patel
Right. Right. I understand but you have to distribute the scoop somewhere. Where. Where does it come from?
- [56:10]
Sarah Personnet
I think. Are you getting back to the platform piece that yeah.
- [56:13]
Nilay Patel
Where's your top of the bottom? Is it. Do you. When you make it when whoever when Julia Alexander, who's one of my very favorites when she has a great story. Is it search traffic that converts? Is it her tweeting about it? Is it Facebook reels like where does the net new subscriber come from?
- [56:28]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah there's. And you're. I would imagine you would understand this as well. It does not come from one singular place. We have the both organic side of leveraging social platforms. We absolutely encourage our authors to tweet about the stories that they have. We also have a social team of one that develops all the organic content and leverages the various platforms for that. We also have an incredible comms team that also helps to distribute the stories that are coming out of all of our political content all the way through to all the other franchises. And then also on the experiential side, whenever we are doing any type of event that obviously is talent centric, we're talking about the work that they do and that those interviews are coming to life. So I think in this environment, and I walked through at the top of the hour, the transitions that have occurred. There is no longer a world where distribution is centralized into one, two or three places. There is nothere's not a singular television network that you can advertise on and drive product and growth. There is not a singular platform that you can advertise on and drive growth. That fragmentation and disruption has been happening for over 20 years. So if there's anyone that is saying it comes from a singular source, that's amazing. But we leverage each of the various platforms and we leverage paid and we leverage organic in order to get the work out in front of net new subscribers.
- [58:19]
Nilay Patel
What's your biggest channel like? If I go and ask a YouTuber what's your biggest channel? They will say the YouTube algorithm. If you ask a substacker what's your biggest channel? They will say substack. Right? They're, they're integrated with their distribution in very particular ways. They don't always love it. My joke is that every YouTuber gets their wings when they make a video about how mad they are at YouTube. Right. This is a tense relationship between creators and their platforms. But if you ask them where the followers come from, it is the platforms themselves. What's your biggest channel?
- [58:47]
Sarah Personnet
I would say our, our biggest channel paid channel would be the. Would be social platforms as well as SEO now within the industry and sort of the migration to zero click. We, we are transforming a lot of the way that even our site is developed and the way that we optimize for geo. I mean that's, that's a big shift in the industry.
- [59:11]
Nilay Patel
I just want to define some terms. I'm the person who came up with the phrase Google zero, so I think you did. That's me. They love it. They truly sure did on the show. As a matter of fact, there's a whole episode about it. I think Our listeners understand Google 0 is when Google stops sending search traffic to publishers. You've heard me talk about it a lot. GEO is generative search optimization, which is, I would say as yet unproven and mostly snake oil.
- [59:36]
Sarah Personnet
I don't know if it's snake oil, but I do remember when I was at Facebook and all at least many people across marketing and businesses said that social was snake oil. And then I remember that same shift happening with mobile and that no one great example, no one would ever watch video on their mobile phones. And now it's one of the number one consumption formats. So I can tell you this as a business leader I can't ignore the changes that AI is driving more broadly in the, not just in the industry but in consumption. But I think you're very correct in saying that it's not proven out yet. And so it's not the singular channel and or the singular investment but we are continuing to work on what does it mean to be organically discovered in a world that's Google Zero. So again, I think that's really neat that you actually that you came up with that language because it's, it's widespread across the industry.
- [60:47]
Nilay Patel
You can watch the nerpitary react to me saying the words Google 0 on this very show. It was a fun moment for everyone. I guess my question there is you don't have a singular top of funnel like a platform does. You don't have the bad model the old media companies do. I'm not in any way saying that was a good model. Like they're dying, we're watching them die. You can read Matt describe how Hollywood is dying. Like very specifically the cost structure there is bad. Somewhere in the middle is your cost structure. And I'm just trying to figure out where you find the big growth from or if the plan is to remain small. Right. Because that it feels like the. There's two choices to be made.
- [61:24]
Sarah Personnet
Right now our primary distribution model is newsletters. We're not a technology platform. I so the comparisons to YouTube or Facebook or substack. We're not a technology company. We are absolutely a media company, a news and information company, a journalist centric company. And again the primary distribution is that our talent anchors a private email or private newsletter that gets distributed to an audience that is is consistently growing related to paying subscribers. And then we also have a long leads list and we use channels like CRM in order to continue to market to hot leads, new leads that come in through discovery, whether it is again through through our social platform leverage, whether it is through a referral that's coming from another reader that is excited and intrigued about a story and wants somebody else in the industry to understand what's going on. All of those things fill the top of the funnel. That ultimately drive to ideally conversion of becoming a paying subscriber. So that top of funnel. I think the way that I think about it is really there are paying and unpaid and the conversion of unpaid to pay so leads to subscribers is also a component part of that that
- [63:03]
Nilay Patel
you talked about social channels. One of the dynamics I think is really interesting in the world you're describing is whether or not the institution is important or the talent's important. It very much feels like your emphasis is on the talent. Do you run paid social on your talents, social media feeds because that's where the followers are, or do you have the Puck channel and you want people to follow that?
- [63:23]
Sarah Personnet
Right now we do not run paid social on the individual talents. As I'm processing it, I'm like, that's a. That's a really interesting conversation to come back around on with talent internally. The way that we've managed in the past and through conversations with them is that a lot of talent wants to own and run their own channel and that. And when they have questions or when they need support, they have a person that they can call on for that. But our primary growth has been through our owned and operated channels. But I like the provocation, so something I certainly will take back if folks are open and interested in that.
- [64:07]
Nilay Patel
Well, this is the dynamic that I think it just is for everyone. The reason that a reporter leaves is they say, I have however many tens of thousands of Twitter followers. I can monetize 2,000 of them and I'll make more money than you ever paid me. I've had this conversation. I'm sure you've had this conversation. There's a lot of this in the world. The platforms incentivize the people to participate. Right? There's an infinite supply of teenagers who will make content for Instagram for free. And so they don't want the institutions to be powerful because you can't. There's not an infinite supply of news organizations. And so once you have a little bit of power there, you can't. You might have to pay some rates. Right? The. The original sin of digital media is Jonah Peretti believing he goes so viral that Facebook would pay him money. And we all. That's what you're talking about, the pivot to video. That was that moment right there. And it was not going to happen. And I think a lot of people knew it wasn't going to happen and we all lived through it anyway. How do you operate in a world where you want the brand to be central to do the audience acquisition and the subscriber acquisition you're describing with the methods you're describing when all of the platforms want all the action to be by the people.
- [65:14]
Sarah Personnet
I can't speak to the motivation of platforms today.
- [65:17]
Nilay Patel
Okay.
- [65:19]
Sarah Personnet
I think you're correct. When I was at both of those platforms, what I saw is actually a real deep desire to actually support publishers. But again, I don't work at those companies. I can't speak to the motivations of them today.
- [65:36]
Nilay Patel
I think we can all see their motivations pretty plainly today.
- [65:39]
Sarah Personnet
What I can say is, for, for us, from a Puck perspective, I'm not trying to compete with YouTube. I know I've already said this, that we're not a technology platform. We're not a technology platform. We are focused on covering the stories inside of the industries that have the opinion elite and people that deeply care about what's happening. That is what we are doing. And we distribute those stories. Yes. Through newsletters and then also through a variety of other marketing channels. I know I'm not completely and totally answering your question, but I think it might.
- [66:31]
Nilay Patel
Well, I'm not really. I think you're might be talking about the audience. I'm talking to the people who make the work and the economic incentives of the people who make the work. I mean, you're describing Puck as just sort of like the fanciest collection of trade publications that has ever existed in the world. I don't know if that's how the people. I don't know if that's like, what people want to do. Right. I, I think people want big audiences. Like, I think every reporter wants to be the most famous reporter in the world. And that's great. Like, I, I think that is a perfectly aligned incentive with go get scoops, go get attention, write the best analysis, be. Go be famous. Right? And that's going to make everybody a lot of money. A collection of small trade verticals for the opinion elite is very different than that impact. And it's. I think media organizations are losing people to platforms because that impact is so alluring. And then the opportunity to do things that are not journalism, to do integrated brand marketing, to do sponsorships, to go on the job. All the stuff I won't let my people do that I won't do. I won't even read the podcast ads. But it's all right there, right? You can get the big audience and you can get the big payday. And again, I'm just trying to find the boundary for Puck, right? You're. You're kind of making it smaller And I'm just wondering if that, if that size is as lucrative, as impactful and as incentivizing across all the metrics is maybe the big platform exit.
- [67:48]
Sarah Personnet
I'm not quite sure if for the journalists in your world it sounds like you're trying to encourage them to go to the platforms.
- [67:56]
Nilay Patel
I'm just seeing what's happening all around me. I, but I, I've run this newsroom for like 15 years. You know, it's like we, we, we sell what we sell here. Like my joke is that we sell our ethics policy and that's what people subscribe to us for. Like again we, we just like won't do the sponsor reads. It drives my company crazy that I won't do the sponsor reads. Everyone can see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow labeled Neil Eyed as a sponsor. But I won't do it because I think what the audience pays us money for is the fact that you, you can't tell the newsroom what to do. I would like to believe my newsroom has bought into this and it's, and the economics make sense inside of that. But you're describing this talent led journalist as influencers model without the corresponding payoff that the influencers get. And that's the tension I'm just sitting on.
- [68:40]
Sarah Personnet
I appreciate that tension. An appropriate stat to consider because I think you're describing a world and again if your listenership is relatively young, it would drive everybody into the only career that they should have is to be an influencer. And I fundamentally disagree with that. What I do know of Substack is that it's about their top 10% of authors make 90% of the revenue. But I want everyone to hear that the model that you are describing, that everyone is getting massive paydays from these other platforms. The top 10% are making 90% of the revenue. What we provide is a platform in quotes, not a technology platform, but a company that does support journalists. And yes, I would say that journalists are the original influencers, but influencers oftentimes just pop up a phone and make content about anything. Journalism is a fundamentally different profession. You make the point from an ethics perspective, from a fact checking perspective, from a legal perspective, knowing that if you write a story and somebody else comes after you and that you have legal support, those things matter in journalism. And that in addition to to being able to have audience growth that is a core focus of the company, being able to have commercial growth, being able to get paid for the events that you are a part of, for the Subscribers that you are bringing in, I don't think is small. I actually think it is quite exciting and can be quite large. When you say, if you look at the various categories within Puck, Airmail is a little bit different, that's sort of the. I think that the brand that drives cultural advantage and I think Puck is the brand that drives professional advantage because it does go through each of these categories or industries that are anchored by our lead talent. And they're telling stories and they're reporting on what's happening, the top of the companies that drive these industries and the people that are making the decisions within it. But I don't think any of these industries in and of themselves are small. And I certainly think that the Puck portfolio is one that is not just about the individual industries, but actually about the interplay and the intersection of power and decisions that occur across each of those franchises. And that's also the unique value proposition that Puck as a brand brings, and that is very much supported by our talent. And I continue to be incredibly proud of the fact. I appreciate the tension between brand and talent, but I. I don't feel that tension internally. I feel like we are a brand and a company that supports talent so that they can do their job, which is to report.
- [72:17]
Nilay Patel
You mentioned airmail is a little different. How is airmail a little different?
- [72:19]
Sarah Personnet
It is not focused on the professionals inside of an industry. It is because Puck will report on, you know, again, the business of fashion, the business of our economics, things like that for the professionals that ultimately are in those spaces and, or those that are very curious across those industries. Airmail, from a cultural advantage perspective is reporting on style, fashion, wellness. It has a global perspective on what is happening in the world. And that audience base is certainly opinion elite, intellectually curious, but it's less of a B2P a business to professional offering, and more of a B2C a business to consumer offering. And that was one of the reasons why from an investment thesis perspective, it made so much sense. We had less than like 6% audience overlap, even though both. Both very affluent and elite audiences, but, but very limited in terms of overlap overall. And so it's a. It's an awesome add to the portfolio.
- [73:36]
Nilay Patel
So Puck is, I mean, you're describing it this way. Puck is a collection of trade publications that people will pay high rates for. There's a lot of value in that. I love a good trade publication. I can, I won't rattle off all my favorites, but there are some very small, very focused trade publications that I think are maybe the best in the entire industry. Airmail is not that. Airmail is like a big fancy culture magazine for, you know, it's called Airmail because I think it was meant to be read on airplanes. Like there is like a moment for that kind of magazine to exist in first class and Airplane. Are you trying to move audience between them? The thing you don't have here is a bundle, right? You have a collection of individual newsletters and you can't actually bundle them all up and say here's the whole stack of value we provide. How do you move audience between individual trade publications where there might not be overlap and then from that world to Airmail, which is a glossy culture magazine.
- [74:26]
Sarah Personnet
On the Puck side, we actually do like a Puck subscription gets you access to each of the individual franchises categories that organically came up through Puck or that we've acquired and launched. On the airmail side, you're right that currently it's a separate subscription and we're working through the product roadmap to figure out what the essentially what the either bundle offering is, the sample offering. Those are all underway, so probably within the next few months. So you'll see more from us on that side.
- [75:04]
Nilay Patel
Last few questions. We're running out of time. Thank you for being so generous. Are you profitable right now?
- [75:10]
Sarah Personnet
We are very close to profitable.
- [75:12]
Nilay Patel
Like a dollar away or like a million dollars?
- [75:14]
Sarah Personnet
I'm not going to answer that question, but we're very close to profitable. I feel very good about our operating leverage as well.
- [75:20]
Nilay Patel
What's the Runway being profitable?
- [75:22]
Sarah Personnet
I'm not going to answer that question, but I feel really good about our where, where we are at and what we will deliver this year.
- [75:30]
Nilay Patel
The reason I ask about profitability is profitability is usually what allows you to drive growth. Or you can choose to be really unprofitable and drive a lot more growth.
- [75:36]
Sarah Personnet
Growth.
- [75:37]
Nilay Patel
Are you looking at more acquisitions? Are you looking to be acquired? How does this, how is this going
- [75:42]
Sarah Personnet
to work for you on the acquisition side so well, one, on the growth side, I think it's just good to state so for growth, you know, total revenue we grew at 40% last year. Ads we grew at over 35%. Sub revenue we grew at over 50%. And when we look at our like fixed cost to recurring revenue, we're in a really solid place. And we also look at revenue per head just to think about structurally whether or not the organization is lean and driving operational excellence. So I think we're able to drive top line growth with real cost discipline in order to create a system that is scalable over the course of time. And that's why I feel good about being very close to profitable and the goal of that this year. Related to acquisitions, we're actually always thinking about various brands that could be additive to the overall portfolio. As I mentioned before, we've done a few aqua hires prior to in order and the investment thesis behind those acqui hires was really to. To either break into a new category. So we did that with Marianne Manaker coming over from Substack in order to break into the business of art through to the acquisition of Retail Diaries in order to drive more coverage for the readers and the subscribers that we had with Lauren Sherman's line sheet. So those are more like tuck ins and smaller acquisitions. And then there are transformational acquisitions like Airmail where that is additive to the collective portfolio and to the piece that you were getting at before. Where we see that there's opportunity certainly for bundling and for access of readership across the various media brands.
- [77:44]
Nilay Patel
One of the reasons I ask about acquisitions is we live in a time of media mergers, like massive earth shattering media mergers. But in acquiring Airmail, I think you have Jeff Zucker on your cap table now because he was an investor in Airmail. There are rumors that he wants to build the big thing. He wants to buy Versant and have a newsletter division and run a big news operation again like he had at cnn. Is that something you've talked about? Is that something you would entertain?
- [78:08]
Sarah Personnet
I'm not going to talk about who's on our cap table.
- [78:11]
Nilay Patel
All right. I'm just curious.
- [78:12]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah, I love.
- [78:13]
Nilay Patel
Because that's the big growth.
- [78:14]
Sarah Personnet
Yeah.
- [78:16]
Nilay Patel
What's next for Puck, which people will be looking for?
- [78:18]
Sarah Personnet
For a few different things. First, the investments that we've made in D.C. around our. Both our Washington correspondent with Leanne. The experiential business that we have there. I think you're going to continue to see just more and more emphasis in our dedication to that market. Same thing with AI and with tech. The launch of that vertical this past year at a. At a moment in time that we went AI first instead of tech first for very specific reasons. I think it's. You'll continue to see more from us there. I think a lot of folks in the industry all migrated really quickly to video. I've been in the media landscape for quite some time and I believe deeply in video, but I also believe deeply in doing it right and doing it well. And so, you know, we're spending time sort of thinking about what does that mean for our talent? What does it mean for our brand? What does it mean for our portfolio? So more to come there.
- [79:13]
Nilay Patel
I could do another full hour on how you plan to monetize video but I won't keep you any longer. Longer. You have been very generous and very game to answer the questions. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being on Decoder, Sarah.
- [79:23]
Sarah Personnet
Thank you. I appreciate it as well. Have a great day.
- [79:27]
Nilay Patel
I'd like to thank Sarah Personal for taking time to join Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. Let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all. Drop us a line. You can email us atdecoder the verge.com we really do read all the emails. Or you can hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky. We're also so on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok all at DecoderPod. They're all a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with friends and subscribe over your podcasts. If you really like the show, hit us with that five star review. Decoder is a production of the Verge and part of the Vox Community Podcast Network. The show's produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It's edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder Music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.