Media Playbooks: Events, New Verticals, and More with Jacob Donnelly - [Making Media, EP.40]

Media Playbooks: Events, New Verticals, and More with Jacob Donnelly - [Making Media, EP.40]

Author: Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts October 12, 2023 Duration: 41:13
This is Matt Reustle and today I am joined by Jacob Donnelly. Jacob is the founder at A Media Operator and publisher from the Morning Brew. Jacob has long been involved in the media space, with a persistent interest in ideas on building a sustainable media company, leading him to launch his own. A Media Operator is a community with a high caliber of both people and conversations for those in the digital media and online publishing world. We cover events, launching new verticals, B2B media, and who Jacob is closely watching operate in the media market. Please enjoy this conversation with Jacob Donnelly Subscribe to Colossus's New Show: Art of Investing. Buy a ticket to Patrick and David Senra's live show. 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  Show Notes (00:02:30) - (First question) What events mean to the media industry (00:03:30) - The economic equation for business-to-business (B2B) events (00:06:00) - What makes an event stand out from the rest (00:07:30) - The future of virtual events in the realm of business (00:10:45) - Making your event sustainable for the future (00:13:30) - Integrating event businesses into broader sectors (00:15:45) - A playbook for launching a new vertical in the event space (00:20:30) - What the timeline for a new vertical looks like at Morning Brew (00:26:00) - Handling sponsorship and exclusivity (00:31:30) - Balancing the synergy between creators and brands (00:34:45) - The best businesses to study in terms of media

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
Podcast Episodes
7 More Nuggets of Media Wisdom - [Making Media, EP.44] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:36
In early October, Matt put together seven insights that he's learned and implemented from this show. Today, it's Dom's turn to pull out his favorite lessons that guests have shared with us and how we've put them to use i…
The Ringer’s Press Box with Bryan Curtis - [Making Media, EP.43] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:22
We are joined today by Bryan Curtis, Editor-at-Large at The Ringer. Bryan writes excellent columns on theringer.com and hosts The Press Box, which happens to be the show with our favorite podcast episode of this past yea…
The Power of a Newsletter with Lenny Rachitsky - [Making Media, EP.42] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:21
Today we welcome Lenny Rachitsky to Making Media. Lenny has built the biggest business publication on Substack, "Lenny’s Newsletter," with well over 500,000 readers. It started in 2019 as an advice column and since start…
7 Nuggets of Media Wisdom - [Making Media, EP.39] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:32
Today on Making Media Matt shares his top 7 bits of media wisdom that he has thoughtfully curated during his efforts to build a media company. Each individual guest and episode offers a new takeaway, and Matt attempts to…
Life as a Writer with David Coggins - [Making Media, EP.38] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:31
Today we have a special guest on Making Media. There are few people who write and live like David Coggins. David has a way of maintaining his creative identity while still adopting many of today's tools. He writes books,…
More with Less Media with Brian Morrissey - [Making Media, EP.36] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:50
Today we're sitting down with Brian Morrissey and getting back to the guts and glory days of the media industry. In 2021, Brian founded The Rebooting - a newsletter publication focused on the mechanics of building sustai…
Matt Levine - Wall Street’s Art Critic - [Making Media, EP.35] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:18
Today we speak with the Wall Street Wonder, Matt Levine. Matt's Bloomberg column, Money Stuff, has become a must read for most of the finance community. It's that rare place where you get laughter, learning, and complex…