← Mixed Signals from Semafor Media
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media where we are talking to the most important and interesting people shaping our new media age. I'm Max Tawney. I am the co host of this show and for this episode we're doing something a little bit different. We are going to be publishing our regularly scheduled episode later this week. But something unusual happened with Semaphore last week, which is we, including the co host of this show, were actually the subject of a lot of new media discourse and disclosure. That was after the Wall Street Journal reported that semaphore had raised $30 million in a new fundraising round, valuing our company semaphore at around $330 million. That's a pretty nice number for those of us who have a little bit of equity, such as myself, but it also raised a lot of questions. It got people talking. Why is semaphore valued at $330 million after all of these years of kind of disastrous digital media companies being overv, finding themselves to be quite diminished. So we wanted to have on the CEO of Semaphore, Justin Smith and our co host Ben Smith on this week's episode of the show to ask them some questions about this new round of investment, what it's going to, what it says about the current state of digital media and a lot more. Usually it's me and Ben doing the interviewing. This week I'm going to be interviewing Ben and Justin, both a little bit different, but we thought it would be worthwhile. I'm going to stop rambling and we're going to get right to the interview. We will be back with Justin Smith and Ben Smith right after this.
- [01:42]
B
Our friend Josh Spanier, Google's VP of marketing, has a new podcast out called Frontier cmo. It's from Think with Google and it gets into all the ways marketing is shifting, especially in the AI era, where the old marketing playbooks have become obsolete and the whole role of the CMO is being redefined in real time. Josh talks to the people who are actually figuring it out, top CMOs, industry leaders and creators, and gets into the real world challenges and specific strategies they're using to navigate this new era. These are notes from the marketing Frontier. You can find Frontier CMO on any podcast platform or watch it on YouTube.
- [02:17]
A
Ben, Justin, it's very exciting. It's not every day you get to interview your boss and your boss's boss or your boss's partner who's somewhat maybe the boss. I don't really know exactly what the org chart is, but this is both extremely exciting and a little bit terrifying for me because, I mean, technically, I could offend you guys. You could fire me.
- [02:37]
C
You already have offended me. You only called me his boss's boss. Come on. I'm the capped equipment.
- [02:42]
A
That's true. Exactly. I haven't paid fair enough deference. That's one strike and we're about 30 seconds in. This is really exciting. I personally am thrilled and I think other members of the company who know that this is happening, who I've asked what I should ask you guys are thrilled to kind of get to do this, because in some ways, a lot of what gets said about Semaphore is often defined by other people. I've had the privilege of having, you know, see this built from the studs, you know, getting stuck in the. The elevator at the old office above the clam shop. So I. I feel like I have some unique insights and it's exciting to get to kind of share that stuff with the broader listening public. So thank you guys for doing this. Really appreciate it.
- [03:22]
B
I wonder, I hope we've saved screenshots of the slack, which was like, to me, like, so of that moment where you are stuck in the elevator posting to slack, will someone rescue me? And everybody three floors up is just slacking to each other about what they should do until, like, finally somebody goes down and opens the door. But it was a real moment in.
- [03:39]
C
Our little Italy, New York City.
- [03:41]
A
So we're having you guys both on the show today because Semaphore has kind of reached this new stage she talked about in the Wall Street Journal. We've just raised $30 million at a $330 million valuation. Congratulations. You guys announced that Semaphore is profitable. 40 million in revenue last year. Let's just start with the basics here for people who are wondering, why did you decide to raise money? Now, Justin, I think that this is a question best suited for you.
- [04:09]
C
We set out at the beginning of semaphore three years ago to. We had sort of two North Stars. One was to build a phenomenal 21st century, global, independent, quality journalism brand for global leaders around the world. But our second goal that we set for ourselves, the second North Star, was to build a real business. We. We brought a lot of intensity, I think a lot of urgency to figuring out a path to profitability as quickly as possible. Because I think the days of raising money and round after round after round just looking for your model are obviously long gone. We were fortunate we designed a model and across three years, 36 months, we built 40 billion in revenue annually and 2 million in profit. And we feel like it's a model that's a very strong foundation for our company and that in many ways we can stamp out that model across different industries, across different categories, but most importantly, across different geographies around the world. And so the reason we raised those funds was to do just that. To take what has been a hard fought, but very successful, profitable, sustainable quality journalism model and to accelerate it and bring it to different parts of the world and to different parts of the information ecosystem.
- [05:33]
A
This is a question for both of you guys. When you guys were just starting to plan Semaphore, I remember hearing stories about you guys, especially how you found the office at Umberto's Clam Houses. I think you were eating there or next door. But when you guys were planning out some of this stuff, obviously a lot of things happened that change the trajectory of Semaphore, whether that was Sam Bankman Fried, one of our initial investors, getting indicted, the kind of shakiness of Silicon Valley bank, where we had some of our money. That stuff happened in the kind of early months. You said that you wanted to not just raise money and do round after round and eventually hope that you reached profitability. Did you have a timeline in your head when you were just starting out of when you wanted Semaphore to be a profitable company?
- [06:15]
B
Justin, take the timeline question. But I would say, like, just, you know, I mean, it was a big part of why I wanted to work with Justin. The speed of change in media right now means there are often opportunities to start something new. And I'd gotten to do that a number of times in my life, including at Politico and at buzzfeed, with people who I like, really love and admire and think are brilliant and had not had experience in the media industry building businesses. I just finished writing a book about kind of what went wrong at BuzzFeed and thought like, if I ever do this again, I finally have internalized that it's very important to have more revenue than coming in, the money going out.
- [06:47]
C
Yeah. And just to answer your question specifically, I think the best way of describing it, we, I mean, we obviously of course had business plans and business plans, but we did our first raise on and I think most of them called for break even in years. Three, three and a half, four. Those are business plans and everyone sort of discounts them to some extent. For us, it was more about how serious and intense and how much we prioritized the economics of the business, and we did not want to find growth for growth's sake. There's a lot of businesses that view revenue growth as the main metric, and they want to capture market share, they want to capture audience, they want to capture dollars, and they grow into it. We, we obviously love that and pursued that, but we really wanted to find profitable revenue streams in the media business. Harder to find, maybe, than other industries. And I spent my career starting at the Economist and then the Atlantic and Bloomberg. I always wanted to be a journalist. Failed at that. And the consolation prize was to help run journalism companies. And so I spent my. My career really doing this work. How do you make quality journalism profitable? What are the strategies? What are the tactics? What are the ideas? What are the innovations? And how do you do that in a sort of an ever changing, completely disrupted media environment? And these three years have been good, but we're. Do not rest in our laurels. This is just a moment in time. The media industry is changing as we speak and will be very different in 26 and 27. And so we've got to keep that intensity and keep that focus as we move into this next phase.
- [08:24]
A
So the $30 million investment, talk a little bit more about what it's actually going to be going to semaphore has, has grown in. In headcount somewhat significantly, particularly on the business side. Over the last few years. You guys have talked about building out the editorial side. Can you talk specifically about where you guys are going to be making investments?
- [08:43]
C
I think we started with about 50 employees, or 4,550, of which about half were journalists and half were business people or business publishing side. I think today we're well over 100, maybe 110, and I think that mix is still roughly the same. And so we have, in three years, doubled our headcount effectively, maybe a little bit less than doubled. Maybe the business side has grown faster than the editorial side. But overall, it's been. Given the revenue growth. I think this is your point. It's been pretty modest headcount acceleration, and that's been very intentional because obviously headcount is about, what, 80% of the cost structure of these companies.
- [09:25]
B
Yeah, I remember at some point there was a Tumblr that I think was called who did BuzzFeed hire today? Which is on one hand very fun, but on the other hand not very responsible. And so I have sort of come out of that experience. Remember, very early on, somebody was like, well, how many more journalists were we going to hire? And I was like, zero. We're never getting. My goal is to never hire, but which I've, you know, come off a little bit. But I do think that, you know, as the industry shifts, like we want to hire people who make a huge impact. There's like the sort of era where you try to sort of compete by hiring a cast of thousands. It's just not how journalism works, and it's certainly not how the journalism we do works where we're. We really most want people who can break news and then have the expertise to explain to you why it's important. We're going to be, you know, looking for folks like that in Washington on the global business beat that Liz Hoffman has pioneered for us and built a huge space. And then, particularly in the Gulf, we're filling a couple of roles in Africa that I'm excited about right now, too. We have ambitions in Asia, but we're, you know, we're going to. So we are going to add some people this year, but we're going to do it slowly and I'm going to be obsessively careful about these hires and we're not in a huge hurry. It's just so important not to grow too fast in these businesses. I mean, that's, that's really what I feel like I've learned. It took us a while to figure out exactly how to do what we're doing, and I think it's taken our, both our audience and the industry a little while reasonably. I think news brands just don't grow overnight and to sort of take their measure of us and understand what our intentions are and where we're going. I kind of like the speed at which we've been going. I don't think we plan to just like, pour a bunch of gasoline on the place.
- [10:56]
C
And specifically for Semaphore readers who are watching, mixed signals.
- [10:59]
B
We don't even know if they're literate, Justin, but they are listening.
- [11:02]
C
We're specifically taking our Semaphore DC news briefing and we're going to be doubling the frequency of that. That's going to go from five days a week in the morning to actually twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening. We're going to extend Liz Hoffman's semaphore business to five days a week. And we're also going to extend our Semaphore Gulf news briefing to five days a week and launch Semaphore China next month, which will be our first editorial product focused on the Asian market.
- [11:32]
A
Obviously, we're here, we're talking, I'm looking at a camera. We're doing this on video. A way in which my job in particular has changed over the last year is we're just doing a lot more video and audio content, I guess. Ben, this is more of a question for you. How are you thinking about the ways in which this stuff is changing? Is it smart for us to be investing more in kind of newsletter written word kind of content? Are you looking for people who are going to be kind of podcasting or doing kind of multi platform stuff? More talk a little bit about how the changing media landscape, the thing that we talk about on the show is influencing how you're thinking about hiring for these roles.
- [12:10]
B
I think what you see and actually, you know, Rula Kalaf, the FT editor said this and really stuck with me on this show a few months ago. I think we want to hire great journalists who can break news and who can tell you what it means. And I think I have I'm sort of bullish on newsletters still. I think that like particularly our audience mostly remembers how to read, is very interested, mostly is taking in a lot, is trying to understand the world, trying to sort of connect dots, wants that this kind of information density, the speed that we're operating at. I think we get, you know, we have, we have great feedback on the newsletters. I do think there's going to be more and more competition. There's a lot of competition in that space. We have to do really well. I don't think that's going away in the immediate future. But as you say, things are changing really fast. Video and podcast what the things we used to call podcasts, you know, are complicated, a bit of a puzzle I think commercially and, and and editorially. What Rula said was, you know, they'd basically gone around their newsroom and found all the most like attractive young FT reporters and thrown them in front of the camera on the theory that like that's how TikTok works. And then it just turned out.
- [13:13]
C
Martin Wolf, isn't that what we did with Vic Signals?
- [13:16]
A
Yes, that's right. We took the best looking member of the office and we decided to give them a shake. I want to ask about the events, the convenience, the what we used to call summits.
- [13:26]
B
We'll get to that in a second convening, don't you.
- [13:28]
A
Sorry I may have mentioned in a meeting or two. I like it as a verb but as a noun I find it to be especially in the plural form. My I have my doubts about take.
- [13:39]
B
This feedback back to our marketing department.
- [13:40]
A
Want to shift back to kind of the news of the day. I want to ask more questions about the most recent investment. There's a few people out there who, when we announced this news, kind of wondered whether it was because we really needed the money and because even though we had said that we were, were profitable, we were spending a lot. I'm curious, is the reason that Semaphore raised money because we're in trouble? Because we're spending all of our money and we needed more?
- [14:03]
C
The answer is no. And I won't give the, the specific facts just because I don't think that's appropriate publicly. But our first round that we raised in 2023 was $34 million. We actually did not spend the entirety of that, of that first investment round. We had plenty of cash in the bank. We had a lot of optionality. There's actually an option to not raise money. But given the ambitions that we have, given the long term desire to build a truly global news operation, we thought it was a good time to add to our cash reserves and be able to have that gunpowder, if you will, to, to spend on, on profitable projects that come up down the line.
- [14:51]
A
One of the other things that you hear also out there is we're a company that does a lot of these convenings, these big events. Obviously we have Semaphore World economy coming up, which has grown from this kind of bespoke event into, as you guys have talked about, the largest convening of CEOs in North America. I was part of it last year. I got to interview some really cool people. It was really fun and interesting and exciting. But some people out there believe that events are not a good business. They're not particular, particularly scalable and you know, they're, they're, they're difficult. And you guys have been much more bullish on events than some of our peers, some of our competitors. Explain what people are missing.
- [15:30]
C
Put it this way, when one listens to a podcast or an interview with a, with a CEO or executive from a competitive organization who's talking about, you know, how terrible events are as a business, I sort of smile inside and think that's, I'm really thrilled that this competitor doesn't think this is a good business. Because my entire experience across, you know, several decades, again from the economist at the Atlantic to Bloomberg, is that events actually are one of the highest margin businesses adjacent to quality journalism. And not only do they have some of the highest margins and generate profits, but they provide all sorts of Other benefits. They build the brand, they connect you more closely with readers, they bring on more readers to the brand, they allow you to get closer to your commercial clients. Event sponsors oftentimes then become advertisers. It's a very, very, very productive channel business, model wise and, and frankly one of the most profitable, which is why you're seeing pretty much every global news company right now. I'm not saying necessarily inspired by us, but maybe the moment that they're, they're all building events companies right now or accelerating their events investment. So maybe there's, it's, it depends on the part of the industry you're from. I think consumer, mass consumer brands doing the events economics in those businesses might be different. I've never really worked in those industries or areas, so I'm not sure. But it's absolutely the opposite experience from our perspective and it's the opposite experience from the results that Semaphore has generated these last three years.
- [17:07]
A
One of the consequences of success, particularly in this field and talking about that success is a lot of competitors, some of whom are more resourced than us, are going to look and say well, why can't we do something like that? I am curious both, what do you think about the space getting more crowded, more media companies getting involved in the events, the convenings space in business and what is to keep a company like the Economist or the Financial Times or Bloomberg, places you've worked, places that we've said pretty explicitly are our, our competitors. What's to keep them from swooping in and scooping up this business?
- [17:42]
C
Listen, I don't think that these are state secrets certainly maybe it's, it's new information in terms of the growth of our business, the revenue, the profitability, the high margins. But ultimately these are kind of well known facts in the industry. What it comes down to when, when markets get crowded. And by the way, the market, the entire news media market is extremely crowded. Look at the Washington D.C. news market that we entered. Everyone said semaphore is crazy. You've got Axios, Politico, Washington Post, Punchbowl. The answer is always only one thing. And this sounds like a trope, but it's actually true. It's innovation, it's fresh, new, modern, different thinking that is driven by consumer needs and consumer interests. So in Washington, the most crowded news market in the world that everyone was laughing at us about, what was our innovation, our fresh idea? Well, we actually had the idea that, you know, even though it's the most polarized political town in the world, in history, perhaps that actually maybe the leaders quietly, the leaders in this town quietly do want balanced information. Maybe they do want fact based information to make their decisions. Maybe they don't want to operate every single day in this world of, you know, opinion stained news on the left and the right. And turns out, oh my goodness, we were right. Turns out people on the right and in on Maga on the Bernie left in the center all really appreciate Semaphore because, you know, we separate news from analysis and news from opinion and we showcase alternative voices and perspectives to create ideological balance globally. We create geographic balance by bringing in international voices. So on the events side, it's the same thing. Innovate innovation. Innovation. Events need to have a constant, constant renewal sort of spirit, if you will. An event will die a slow death after one, two or three years. To do that, you need the people, you need the culture, and you need the, you know, the, the execution capabilities. And I think that that's the economist in Bloomberg. And the FT can get the people, the culture and the execution abilities, then they can go right at it.
- [19:55]
B
I do think this is something we did very deliberately, but by making we, you know, we roped you, we roped Liz and this is when we started talking about coming to work for Semaphore into building these awesome events where you do a ton of work on the front end, but then it is very much a place where, you know, where the journalists are on stage doing great interviews, breaking news. The newsroom feels, you know, some ownership of these. Doesn't feel like, as is true. And sometimes in media companies you're like somebody on the business side calls you up and it's like, hey, mind coming over to this stage and doing some stuff for a commercial reason? I mean, I think we've been very intentional about keeping the kind of excitement of journalism around the events.
- [20:34]
A
We have a lot more that we want to get to, but we have to take a short break, so we'll be right back after this.
- [20:40]
B
Modern Marketers is a podcast from Think with Google. Hosts from Google Marketing, Bethany Poole and Josh Spanier, who you know from this show, speak with visionary marketers and founders about the innovative and inspirational campaigns that made them into the leaders they are today. Hear their stories as they discuss emerging technologies, leading their teams through industry changes, and the lessons they've learned along the way. Check out Modern Marketers by Think with Google, available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:04]
A
One other element that took people by surprise was our valuation. Semaphore is now valued at $330 million. How did we get to that? Some people were saying that the multiple is, is kind of crazy and obscene. I definitely got some, some texts from some people who were, who were surprised.
- [21:20]
C
It's honestly, it's relatively mathematical and I think some of the commentary in the media sort of missed a few sort of basic venture 101 points. The biggest one that people missed is that, you know, Semaphore is 36 months old, just been operating for three years and has an annual compound growth rate of almost 100% revenue growth every single year. So it's three years of effectively doubling the revenue of the business. And we expect in 2026 that I'm not sure we're going to double, but we will certainly be growing at a very, very rapid clip. Young businesses like that that are growing so rapidly are always generally measured from a valuation perspective on future revenue growth. I'm not talking about future like in the next two, three, four years, but the next 12 months of revenue. A lot of the multiples that people were throwing back at us and could criticizing our valuation were 20, 25 last 12 months multiples. But if you look at, let's say our growth would slow down to, to 50% next year just as a hypothesis and that means we would grow to, you know, instead of growing to 80 million, we grow to 60 million next year. Then a $300 million valuation is only a five times multiple and that makes it actually cheaper than the exit multiples of the two most relevant predecessor media brands, Axios and Politico, which, which traded at, at 5 plus 5.3 next 12 months revenue. But here's the big difference. They were 14 or 15 years old and their growth rates were declining and they were probably, you know, the growth is relatively anemic. Axios was 7 or 8 years old when it sold at a 5 times next 12 months revenue. So if you put it in that context, actually the Semaphore valuation, given it's so young, growing so rapidly, has a lower multiple than these exit multiples of these very relevant comparables. Actually is a, is, is looks like a very fair, a fair assessment.
- [23:23]
A
How is revenue looking this year so far? I don't know if I'm revealing any trade secrets here, but there's a gong here that gets rung every time there's a big sale number. I've heard the gong going off a few times.
- [23:33]
C
We should, we should plan to hit the gong during mixed signals.
- [23:36]
A
Yes, that's right. Yes, exactly. So we can drop a few Easter eggs for people but how are things going so far? Where do you expect us to land by the end of the year in terms of the amount of revenue?
- [23:45]
C
I am not going to give you a full year estimate. It's just too early. But I can say that in the first two weeks of January, we're basically, I think January 14th today, our booked revenue. So revenue that we've brought in that's effectively signed and sealed is a very significant jump from last year's booked revenue at this time and very much in line with our historical growth patterns. There's a world in which maybe we look back and the valuation was, was actually, you know, quite efficient.
- [24:18]
A
What is the ad market looking like this year? I know that we entered into one of the things with, when we launched the company, there was this narrative that it was a tough ad market. We're still going through this moment of transition. What signals are you seeing in the ad market this year as people on the sales team are talking to folks and clients and new businesses coming in or not?
- [24:36]
C
Our experience is quite specifically limited to the corporate affairs and corporate reputation ad market. But I think it's, it's obviously a bellwether for, for the broader ad market. I think there's a, a sense of, of cautious optimism. I would say there's always been the kind of, are we in a bubble, an AI bubble? Is it all going to crash? I feel like some of the recent economic numbers in the fourth quarter provided a little bit more confidence to businesses. And then you've, of course you have the Trump administration and others sort of arguing that this is going to be a, a massive growth year. I was watching the all in podcast and they were all going around doing predictions and I think their, their GDP growth predictions range from 4.8 to 6.7.
- [25:17]
A
Well, they would like that, wouldn't they?
- [25:19]
B
That would be good for the ad business.
- [25:20]
C
It would be. So, but I would, so I would say it's actually, it's, it's, it feels pretty robust. And, and I, and as I said, our bookings in our first two weeks for the full year are dramatically up from what they were last year, which is a really good sign. But yeah, these things also, you know, can, can turn on the dime. Advertising is the first cost to go when, when things turn, turn rough, whether it's a geopolitical event, whether it's a, you know, some sort of black swan economically. I mean, you just have to prepare for that. And that's another reason we raise money.
- [25:49]
A
I have a personal question for you guys. You raised Quite a bit of money. Did you guys, did either of you guys take any money off the table in this raise?
- [25:55]
B
I'll take that one. I didn't. Justin is in a slightly unusual position because he's a, he was a major, major investor in Semaphore. It's a kind of unusual co founder situation. But Justin had been, Justin invested quite a bit in Semaphore at the front end, which left him in a, in a different position and, and I think sold a quite small amount of his shares to one of the new investors. But yeah, that's the answer.
- [26:19]
A
I see. Another question that I'm kind of curious about and a sticky one I think for us is, you know, we're in, we're going to be investing in the Gulf. Ben, a few months back you got into a little bit of a back and forth with Isaac Chotiner, the writer at the New Yorker, you know, about Semaphore and how we were operating in the Gulf. Talk about how we're navigating building in, in the Gulf, which is a tricky place because obviously there are a lot of press freedom restrictions. How do you report, how do you build an editorial business that's legitimate, that can stand on its own and that we can kind of be proud of in a region where, you know, there's not always the strongest amounts of, of protection. And there is a lot of sensitivity around certain events that have happened in the past. You know, primarily the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, this Washington Post journalist.
- [27:08]
B
It's a good question. And I think, because I think the, the other piece of it is it's just such a great story. Like, see the, you know, when Justin talks about the new world economy, you know, that is sort of the hinge point of it. That's the hub. That's the place where, you know, when you go to Abu Dhabi or Riyadh or Dubai, there's a ton of American and European business activity, investment, there's a ton of Asian activity, investment, a ton Indian, you know, executives and investors there. I mean, and you sort of like really feel like, oh, this is this huge shift to the south and east. This is essentially the new, the new capital of it. And so it's, it's a great story which, I don't know animates me and is why. And we were able to, you know, hire one of really like the great tellers of this story in, in Riyadh, Matthew Martin, who'd been at Bloomberg, Mohammed Sergi, our editor who's based in Dubai, you know, has also been been on this beat for the Wall Street Journal for Bloomberg. And it is a complicated place to report. The government doesn't disclose things in exactly in, in, in the way they do here. You know, it's, it's not a democratic system and so there's not in some sense a supply side of politics in the way you'd expect. But there is also a tradition of covering this stuff really carefully and fairly. We hired reporters with a lot of experience at great news organizations who had been doing this for their careers and we've broken a lot of news out of there. So I'm feeling really good about it so far. Justin has more experience than I do though. I mean, you, you launched Bloomberg in the Gulf.
- [28:36]
C
Yeah, I did launch Bloomberg in the Gulf. And I think what's interesting is actually to see, I mean I first said Bloomberg in 2013 and we built out Bloomberg's presence across the Gulf in 14, 15, 16, before this, this big boom. It's, what's interesting is actually to see the shift, you know, while it's still obviously, you know, state controlled media and a significant amount of censorship, there has been actually in the last 10 years a lot of opening up around, around the journalism that they would tolerate, especially journalism, you know, tied to the stuff that we focus on, which is business, finance and energy transition technology. AI I remember years ago, just every time Bloomberg would publish anything about any, any golf company, you know, the principal would call me up on the phone, say what the hell are you, you're releasing this information about our company. And, and you know, I think that there's a sense that in the business journalism side of it that actually, that an independent press is actually a kind of part of the formula for a modern economy. And I think there's an appreciation of that. I don't want to. It's obviously very different than countries like the US and some parts of Western Europe. But that is an important trend that I expect will continue. Max, to your just overall question about operating the Gulf. The business activities we do in the Gulf are carbon copies of the business activities we do here in the States. We don't do anything different there than we do here. It's the same advertising kind of types of products. There's the same strict, you know, church, state, editorial and commercial lines are extremely important and you know, just as enforced as we would anywhere else in the world. And the same goes for our events business. We're really, really careful about making sure our events that are run by our newsroom are editorial products that are controlled by our newsroom and our journalists. We're just very, very conscious of making sure that the standards that we have there are as high as they are here and as they will be in Asia as they are in Africa. I mean, all these markets have very different traditions when it comes to these sorts of issues. But we're bringing the editorially independent tradition of the, of North America, United States and this, this, the free, free expression that we have here.
- [31:08]
B
And I think that's honestly like our, you know, that's, that's why, that's kind of why it's working. Like, I think that's, there's not, there's a big audience there for that.
- [31:15]
A
So when Ben was recruiting me for this job, one of the things that he said, one of the kind of caveats as he was trying to sell me was that I shouldn't join Semaphore if I was just looking for something that was going to be a media company that was going to build really quickly and was going to sell and that you guys were in it for the long run. Are you guys still thinking about Semaphore as something that you want to continue to kind of build in the long run before selling, or is this something that you could see selling in, in the next few. How are you thinking about where Semaphore is at in that process?
- [31:49]
C
The answer to that is in a really, really important decision which we've actually sort of implemented as almost like a structural element of Semaphore, which is that when Ben and I first decided to work together, one of the first decisions we made is that we shook hands that we would do this for the initial chapter of 10 years. We both talked about our careers and the fact that, you know, looking back on our careers, that it really, to do something meaningful and really, really breakthrough and great, it takes a bit of time. You can't do that in three, four, five years. It's always up near six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Not only do we agree on that very, very sort of soberly and I think responsibly, but we then built a governance structure at Semaphore where all of our employees or shareholders are on a vesting schedule that reflects that 10 year period. And so that is a long term horizon sort of philosophy that Ben and I have, we maintain today. But that is now affects the whole, every employee in the company. We're 36 months in. We've done this much in three years. A lot of us are here really for the purpose of building a great independent global news organization for the entire world. And that's. We sort of see this as, you know, very, very important work for our lives for a professional reward and personal reward. And so I'll speak for myself and say there's, you know, there's not. No, no thought right now of. Of changing that course 30% of the way in.
- [33:35]
B
You know, I sort of second all of that. And if you sort of, you know, had been spying on all of Justin's and my conversations over the last, you know, four years, I mean, we've never had a serious conversation about selling it.
- [33:45]
A
I've spied on a few of them.
- [33:46]
B
You have? Spot on.
- [33:47]
A
Yeah, A few on. Just. Just a few. So I want to end here with. With a question for both of you guys. What do you think is the best decision you've made at Semaphore? And what's a. What's a mistake in something that you wish that you hadn't done, that you would redo if. If you could do it all over again? Ben, why don't I start with you some. Justin, some time to think.
- [34:03]
B
I'm tempted to say that. That hiring Max Tani is both. But the. That's true. But, but. But more seriously that, you know, let me start with a mistake, because it's something that I like think about a lot, which is we launched with a theory about how video could work and hired somebody I just admire so much, Joe Posner, who's really like one of the great video creators of. Of this era, who had created Vox's video product and has, you know, kind of proteges like Johnny Harris just tearing it up, doing great stuff, and he did stuff that we were so proud of, and we just couldn't. You know, it's. And this is a big challenge of video. We couldn't make it connect to the audience we were looking for, couldn't really make it work commercially, and made a very hard decision to stop doing it. And I don't know if it was a mistake, but it was definitely like we were. Well, we had a theory and it was wrong, and we sort of saw that quickly and were pretty decisive about it in terms of great decisions. I think that yellow color really holds up.
- [34:57]
A
Totally, totally love it.
- [34:59]
C
Look at my shirt.
- [35:00]
B
And I do think Justin and I had a bunch of conversations early on about how everything in digital media looks exactly the same, and people had given up on design, meaning anything, and that we cared a lot about design and wanted to use design to communicate in a very traditional way and did invest a lot in that. And I think that was a very good decision.
- [35:19]
A
Agreed.
- [35:20]
C
Justin, let me start with the best decision. I think the best decision we've made was to act, to make sort of the tip of the spear for everything at Semafort is talent, to make this a talent driven organization. And talent doesn't really work without culture. So I always say there are two sides of one coin. But we've been so maniacal about talent standards and in every position, you know, from the, from the superstar journalists like the Max Tannies and, and the Bens and others to, you know, the recent college graduates and, and we've been extremely, extremely disciplined about when we make a mistake. Moving on from it quickly. I think in terms of the mistakes we made, I think at times, because the culture is so important, we've got a culture of, of I think really genuine, authentic, kind of mutual respect and collaboration, incredibly driven, hard working culture. I think in the early days we, we didn't maybe protect the culture enough and we allowed, you know, a few folks to, to hang around a bit longer than we should have who didn't really fit into that cultural, that cultural definition. But really, yeah, if, if you were to say, what's the point? The, what's the one thing that has delivered the 40 million, the model, the quality, everything, it's, it's, it's really remarkable talent and operating in a very, very, I call it a psychologically healthy culture where, where people can feel really good about doing work that they love and, and going to the office is, you know, is a joy because there are people there to help you and to support you and to be in the trenches with you. And I, you know, obviously I'm sure they're not every day, they're exceptions to that here and there, but overall I think that's what we're striving for and that's what we've accomplished.
- [37:25]
A
Well, Justin, Ben, thank you guys so much for joining us and, and being open and, and, and somewhat long winded in your answers. I think that works really well for a podcast. I'll look forward to my disciplinary hearing later, but thank you guys so much. This was, this was really great. What a treat.
- [37:41]
B
Thanks, Max. This was fun.
- [37:42]
C
Thanks so much.
- [37:44]
A
Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to a special bonus episode of Mixed Signals. We'll be back later this week with our regularly scheduled episode with a very interesting and kind of different guests. Please stay tuned for that. Our show is produced by Manny Fadal and Josh Billenson with special thanks to Anna Pisino, Jules Zern, Chad Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Tori Kaur, Garrett Wiley, and Daniel Haft. Our theme music is by Steve Bone, and our public editor is Rachel Keaton. Rachel is our comms person, and I'm sure we'll be hearing from her a little bit after this episode when I leave the office studio here. If you like mixed signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Feel free to leave us a five star review. Anything below that. I mean, what are we doing? You know, maybe if you four stars, we'll settle for that, but that would bring our average down. I've looked at our ratings. We're hovering in the 4.344 zone, so lean towards giving us a 5 if you could. And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's Media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.