“As a product company, it's about how you do it. And if you can do it in a way that elicits trust, it won't matter. They just want good information. People pay less attention to where it comes from, which is probably not a good thing. But they just want good information.” - Alexis Grant

Watch this episode on YouTube

Alexis Grant:
Alexis's Company, Theygotacquired
Alexis on Twitter: @alexisgrant

Brian Casel:

Brian’s company, ZipMessage

Brian on Twitter: @casjam

Thanks to ZipMessage

ZipMessage (today’s sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Quotes from this episode:

Quote 01:

Brian Casel: How do you think about what you're building with a media company? What's it modeled around?

Alexis Grant: So for any media company, the value is really in the audience and the people that you're bringing together Which is why? Well, one thing that I think really is really cool about media companies is you can partner with the SaaS or layer that is on top and you have something to sell. And like, it's interesting as you watch people specialize in different types of businesses.

Often media operators, especially if it's their first time, won't have a great way to monetize the business. Whereas like if you look at a SaaS operator who's doing it the first time, they might be more technical. They don't have a way to bring the audience to the product. So it's like two sides, very important parts of a business.

Brian Casel: You know, it's so funny to hear you describe that. That's literally what interested me in inviting you on this show is exactly that, right? Like as someone who runs a SaaS, I've always really had, I felt like it's an uphill battle to just grow traffic and, and, you know, relevant audience for my product. And then I've been also interested in this idea and we're starting to become like a trend now with like SaaS companies trying to become media companies.

Brian Casel: As like a marketing play.

Quote 02:

Brian Casel: You also talked about how with they got acquired, you're building up a database of information. Like how does that sort of play into it?

Alexis Grant: Yeah. So one of the reasons I wanted to build this business is because I haven't monetized the database before and I get to do that now. So I'm excited about learning it. So yeah, long term, our primary mode of monetization is going to be through the database Initially, like we're actually we're getting close to being able to release our first reports.

So we're the first slice that we're taking is content companies. Actually, it's going to be something like 20 content companies that have sold in the last couple of years four, six, seven, or eight figures. And we share all the metrics that we have for all those acquisitions as well as the stories behind them. Like we put them into context and write a story about it.

So you could buy that slice from us so that that's like the first iteration. And the way I think of that is you know, from a founder perspective or a seller perspective, it's similar to like if you were selling your house, you'd want to be able to look around the neighborhood and see what are the other houses selling for?

You want to see those comps. And for much bigger companies, that data is out there. But for smaller companies, like we're the first ones to aggregate it and put it pull it together.

Quote 03:

Brian Casel: How do you think your audience like it? Are there different personas? Right. Like, so I would imagine you have people who are interested in potentially selling their own business sometime soon. Yeah. Do you get acquirers like people searching to buy a business?

Alexis Grant: My goal is to serve both audiences, but we're really just at the moment because I want to be niche-like as we start, and then we can broaden as we gain trust with our audience. So at the moment, we are really focusing on founders or sellers, people who have a business that they want to sell and maybe just growing a business that they want to position it to sell five years from now.

That's a big piece of our audience, too. But I'm thinking that we also have a lot of value for the support professionals in this space. So whether it's like a broker or an advisor, especially in our database, I think there's more value there for those types of people.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. What are some like the quick wins or maybe wins that you've seen so far with what they got acquired? Um, whether it's traffic growth or, you know, first revenue coming through, like, yeah, what do you look for there?

Alexis Grant: Well, right after our launch, we got featured in the New York Times, which is a pretty big get really. They dedicated the entire tech column and wrote to what we were building. Wow. From the perspective of like, you know, you hear about all these big acquisitions and you don't hear about the little guys. Who are most it's most of us like most of us actually fall into this category?

Alexis Grant: Like most of us aren't building unicorns and don't want to build a unicorn, you know? So shining a spotlight on people who want to build sustainable businesses.  
Brian Casel: How did that come about? Alexis Grant: It really came about for me sharing what I was up to, like basically what people call now building in public but ahead of our launch, I was I had a landing page up and I was trying to get set.

Like we had about 1000 subscribers when we launched, which was my goal. We just barely got there. And so I was sharing what we were up to in the months leading up to that. And someone wrote about it and then somebody else pass it along to a friend to who you know, who wrote that column. And that's how it came about. So it wasn't me pitching her or anything at that.

Brian Casel: That's awesome.