Building The Athletic with Adam Hansmann - [Making Media, EP.54]

Building The Athletic with Adam Hansmann - [Making Media, EP.54]

Author: Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts January 25, 2024 Duration: 55:14
Our guest today is Adam Hansmann, co-founder of The Athletic. The Athletic launched in 2016 when the idea of paying for content was still considered contrarian and newspapers & local coverage of sports was dwindling. Yet Adam and his co-founder built something that they wanted, solving a problem they experienced in their own lives and riding this massive market expansion. Adam shares a lot of the lessons that he took away from his experience building The Athletic and there is a lot to learn here. Please enjoy this conversation with Adam Hansman. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ----- Making Media is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Making Media, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @ReustleMatt | @domcooke | @MakingMediaPod | @JoinColossus  Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes  (00:00:00) Welcome to Making Media (00:01:45) First question - The playbook for subscription based businesses (00:05:35) User-centric development, as opposed to advertiser-centric in media (00:07:32) Adam’s reflections on the state of media and business development (00:09:24) Managing feedback in the subscription model between readers and journalists (00:12:21) The level of transparency in company meetings and how positivity affects the team  (00:15:02) Adam’s strategy when exploring alternative channels beyond Twitter to reach a broader audience (00:17:16) Long-form journalism pieces and how it affected subscription performance (00:18:42) The importance of bundling in The Athletic’s business (00:22:09) Insights revealed when transitioning from local coverage to national content (00:23:17) Adam’s key factors for fostering long-term alignment with employees  (00:25:36) How funding constraints in the early days influenced the business operations (00:28:07) The implementation of The Athletic’s pricing model and the factors that have contributed to its consistency over time (00:30:37) Balancing the app and website as an all-in destination versus leveraging other platforms (00:32:43) Subsequent changes since being acquired by The Times (00:34:03) Add-on businesses like events and merchandise and their relevance to the overall business strategy (00:35:21) The integration of multimedia components such as podcasts and videos (00:37:15) Navigating the transition into The Times, ensuring the preservation of existing culture and fostering alignment for the next phase (00:39:51) Potential opportunities and initiatives that Adam is excited about (00:42:59) Debrief

Matt Reustle and Dom Cooke have spent years analyzing companies as investors, but found themselves drawn into a new, messy, and fascinating world: building a media company from the ground up. Their Making Media podcast, from Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts, is the raw audio journal of that transition. Instead of theory, you get the real-time experiments, stumbles, and occasional breakthroughs of two practitioners who are actively trying to construct something lasting. Each conversation pulls back the curtain with seasoned media operators who have navigated these waters, offering hard-won tactical advice rarely shared publicly. Between these interviews, Matt and Dom hold themselves accountable, documenting the progress of their own ventures and breaking down the books, articles, and interviews that shape their thinking. The underlying mission gives this business and entrepreneurship podcast its pulse: a genuine fight to create substantive, long-form content in an economy increasingly optimized for fleeting clicks. For anyone curious about the operational realities of publishing, audience building, and sustainable creation, this series feels like getting a direct feed from the workshop floor, where ideas are forged into tangible assets.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 65

Making Media
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