Caliber's Ramin Beheshti on Gen Z news

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Welcome to The Rebooting Show.

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I am Brian Morrissey.

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I find as I keep getting older, fellow older people keep trying to figure

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out what young people want from news.

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this landed home yet again with results from a new, report, from the news literacy project that

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detailed how teens appraise the news profession.

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Spoiler alert.

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It's not good.

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Almost half of teens said journalists do more harm to democracy than, what they do to protect it.

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That's bad.

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Only a little over half teens, 56% believe that journalists and news organizations

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take journalism standards such as accuracy and fairness seriously in their work.

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Also not good.

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80% of teens said that journalists fail to produce information that is more impartial.

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Then other content creators online that is, really disturbing.

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And then 69% of teens thought news organizations intentionally had bias to

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coverage to advance a specific perspective.

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this one is kind of expected a. Overall in a word, yikes.

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And this isn't a Gen Z problem, of course, as trusted news has greatly

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diminished, over the last couple of decades.

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Ramin Beheshti is the former CTO at Dow Jones, and he believes that the way to get young people

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invested in news is to rebuild the product.

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Around how young people actually consume information.

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Now, that is not by lecturing at them, not by expecting them to come back to homepages,

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but by meeting them on the platforms where they already live and building formats

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that fit how they consume information.

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I mean, this is, a one of those simple but hard problems to solve in Ramin's view.

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This industry's mistake has been assuming that audiences will adapt.

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To news providers when it's obvious that the reverse needs, to take place, news providers

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have to adopt to how their audiences want the information, and that is the simple

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premise behind Caliber where Raman is, the CEO Caliber holds the news movement.

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The recount capsule and now say So.

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they are all attempts to capture the next generation with news that fits into their lives.

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We get into how he thinks about product platforms, the erosion of institutional trust, and of course,

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my favorite topic, why Microtransactions might.

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Be a better bet than, yet another recurring subscription.

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I hope you enjoy this conversation.

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I know I did with Ramin.

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let me know what kind of conversations that you wanna hear more of.

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love to hear from listeners.

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My email is brian@therebooting.com and I should add if you can, and you enjoy this

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podcast, leave it a rating and review.

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Everything I read, or at least when I go back and forth with Chachi Bt about this,

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says that actually ratings and reviews do play some role in the mysterious algorithms

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that surface podcasts to other people.

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It is some kind of social proof, so it's important.

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And also, by the way, I like reading the reviews, particularly nice ones.

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So if you had a chance, please leave one.

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Now.

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Here's my conversation with Ramin.

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Ramin, welcome to the podcast.

Ramin: 00:04:51

Hey Brian, how.

Brian: 00:04:53

Good.

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let's get into, first of all, for, for people who don't know, I'm

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gonna have explained it up, up top.

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but Caliber encompasses like a few brands, and I think they're, they're really all getting at.

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what is, what's the news product of the future, and particularly for the next

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generation of news consumers, right?

Ramin: 00:05:14

You said it perfectly, Brian.

Ramin: 00:05:15

Yeah, we actually rebranded to Caliber, a couple of, well, in September.

Ramin: 00:05:21

it was to reflect the fact that we've got a stable of, of brands now that are coming at it

Ramin: 00:05:26

from various different angles and on various different platforms, which I'm sure we'll

Ramin: 00:05:30

get into, uh, in order to be able to reach an audience that when I was at the journal,

Ramin: 00:05:36

we just didn't see consuming news content.

Ramin: 00:05:39

and so how can we engage that audience in what are you and I know to be news.

Brian: 00:05:46

well let's go, let's go through them and then we can circle back to, to the

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journal, So there's the news movement, right?

Brian: 00:05:51

Which I feel like in the US is, is less well known as in the uk.

Ramin: 00:05:57

Yeah, I think given our it definitely, the newsroom was led out of

Ramin: 00:06:02

the UK for the first couple of years.

Ramin: 00:06:05

actually interestingly, the audience now is kind of 70% in the us.

Brian: 00:06:10

Yeah.

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Right?

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yeah, like, maybe like a mile.

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so, for those who don't know, like explain, explain the origins of the news movement and,

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and what it, it was and is trying to accomplish.

Ramin: 00:06:31

Yeah, so we started the news movement back in, well, we were kind of a bit covert in 21.

Ramin: 00:06:39

we built a very small newsroom in London.

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I had a couple of co-founders, people who'd been in the industry a long

Ramin: 00:06:46

time, people I'd known a long time.

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and we started it.

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People who were not gonna consume traditional media.

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and that happened to be the younger generation.

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and so we, we created this thing, we started putting out content on TikTok.

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and I remember actually at the time, a lot of people you tell, but like

Ramin: 00:07:09

you can't do hard news on TikTok.

Ramin: 00:07:11

No one's gonna watch.

Brian: 00:07:13

Yeah.

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Well, this was also, I mean, TikTok was more known, I feel like even just then maybe it, it

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was, but it was, it was known as lip syncing and like skits and like, you know, performing

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not, I mean, now it's like I think much more.

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You know, well-known,

Ramin: 00:07:42

Yeah.

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for everything but.

Ramin: 00:07:44

Yeah.

Ramin: 00:07:44

So that, that was, its of origin.

Ramin: 00:07:46

and we, we started to realize that, you know, the way that that algorithm works, that even

Ramin: 00:07:52

though we didn't really have a real brand or any kind of following, that we were able

Ramin: 00:07:58

to connect this content with audiences.

Ramin: 00:08:01

So out that we, we built the, the news movement and, and the idea was to meet people where

Ramin: 00:08:07

they were, where are they spending their time?

Ramin: 00:08:09

What knowledge do they have about these subjects?

Ramin: 00:08:13

And then how do we deliver content to 'em in a way that helps 'em understand what's

Ramin: 00:08:19

going on in, in the world, on their terms.

Ramin: 00:08:21

I think that's the genesis of, of TM and the news movement and like the, while a

Ramin: 00:08:28

lot of that is on social platforms, it's because the audiences that we're going after

Ramin: 00:08:32

spend a lot of time on social platforms.

Ramin: 00:08:34

and so what we tried to do is create content that felt native to those platforms.

Brian: 00:08:41

Okay.

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and, and then you acquired the recount.

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Every account sort of, I guess, had a, had a somewhat similar, I mean, they

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were very active in packaging news for, for Twitter and for for other platforms.

Ramin: 00:08:56

Yeah, I, I met John Batel, I was introduced to John Batel, John Hyman, and

Ramin: 00:09:03

the courting process was quite a quick one.

Ramin: 00:09:04

I think.

Ramin: 00:09:05

You know, they got the end of their journey with the recount and were kind of thinking

Ramin: 00:09:10

about what, where it was gonna go and, and they were on kind of a timescale.

Ramin: 00:09:14

And for us it was a great opportunity, as you said.

Ramin: 00:09:17

TNM was seen slightly more on the UK side, at that point.

Ramin: 00:09:21

And it was great to be able to bring in a brand that was kind of firmly US focused.

Ramin: 00:09:29

And that's what the recount does.

Ramin: 00:09:31

it's, it's moved slightly away from repackaging news, to being able to kind

Ramin: 00:09:36

of tell stories directly to its audience.

Ramin: 00:09:39

but it's firmly focused in, in US politics.

Brian: 00:09:43

Right.

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And, and so the other parts of the business, explain, explain those.

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'cause I mean, you have like a creator network and you've got a, a trends and, and lifestyle,

Ramin: 00:09:52

Yeah, so,

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arm too.

Ramin: 00:09:54

I'm, I'm sure we'll talk about the kind of idea generation that happens at at

Ramin: 00:09:58

Caliber, but you know, one of our young, hires was like, I'd really like to do

Ramin: 00:10:02

this, fashion, lifestyle, internet trends.

Ramin: 00:10:07

she created it, it's called Capsule.

Ramin: 00:10:10

it's got, it's a newsletter on, on, Beehiiv.

Ramin: 00:10:14

she's been doing it like a project, but now has kind of.

Ramin: 00:10:20

Following a huge open rate and starting to bring in kind of, commercial, revenue.

Ramin: 00:10:26

We just did a partnership, with the new, the shoe provider and, in the uk.

Ramin: 00:10:33

So that's, another one of our brands We're.

Ramin: 00:10:47

We think, try and meet the bar of journalism, and create a, we created a product for

Ramin: 00:10:53

them to be able to monetize their content and for audiences to be able to get the

Ramin: 00:10:57

information they need on their terms.

Ramin: 00:11:00

So that's another thing that we're just about to launch.

Ramin: 00:11:03

and then the commercial arm.

Ramin: 00:11:06

want of a better word, social media agency that that does, that takes all of the learning, all of

Ramin: 00:11:12

the data, all of the techniques that we do on the news side, on social, and then helps brands create

Ramin: 00:11:20

content for their audiences on, on social media.

Ramin: 00:11:23

And that's called the Caliber Collective.

Ramin: 00:11:26

So we're now a range of different products and there's more to come in 2026.

Ramin: 00:11:31

in terms of different brands.

Brian: 00:11:35

so talk to me about that strategy.

Brian: 00:11:37

Right?

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I mean, building one brand is, is.

Brian: 00:11:40

Really hard, right?

Brian: 00:11:41

Like, so talk to me about what, why, obviously there was acquisitions there,

Brian: 00:11:47

but what, why, why have a stable of brands rather than a singular one?

Ramin: 00:11:52

I think maybe it's severe with my background, right?

Ramin: 00:11:55

I grew up in NewsCorp and, NewsCorp is nothing, if not relentless of finding different ways

Ramin: 00:12:01

of reaching audiences with different content.

Ramin: 00:12:04

Um, so maybe it was the environment that I kind of, that we grew up in, but actually.

Ramin: 00:12:10

You look at modern media today allows you to create different content, which people

Ramin: 00:12:16

are interested, which different groups of people are interested in, rather than trying

Ramin: 00:12:21

to be this kind of all encompassing, all serving, uh, for different ages, different

Ramin: 00:12:28

genders, different types of content.

Ramin: 00:12:31

so that's, that's really the thinking behind.

Ramin: 00:12:34

caliber actually is, is the ability to create different, for different audiences, depending

Ramin: 00:12:39

on where they're time, what level understanding.

Brian: 00:12:46

Yeah.

Brian: 00:12:47

So what, explain to me your sort of theory of the case when it comes to news and Gen

Brian: 00:12:51

Z. I mean, before we got started, I like prepared you by saying like, I remember

Brian: 00:12:55

talking to all the people who were telling me news were, was broken for millennials.

Brian: 00:13:00

and most of that like ended up not.

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Really coming to fruition.

Brian: 00:13:06

the people who said they were gonna remake news for millennial tastes, you know, it

Brian: 00:13:11

ended up being that the ones who did survive, you know, were just regular news providers.

Brian: 00:13:16

Like the New York Times was, was the one.

Brian: 00:13:19

so tell me about like, how.

Brian: 00:13:21

There's obviously a ton of changes going on right now in the media, ecosystem.

Brian: 00:13:27

Like I call it like the information space because the, the media industry and the

Brian: 00:13:32

news industry is just a small part, right?

Brian: 00:13:34

And they're in many cases, if not most cases, losing, right?

Brian: 00:13:39

Like.

Brian: 00:13:40

Personalities are beating sort of institutional brands out there,

Brian: 00:13:46

video is beating text, et cetera.

Brian: 00:13:48

Give me your sort of theory of the case about how news as a product needs to change

Brian: 00:13:54

in order to continue to be relevant with, the next generation of news consumers.

Brian: 00:13:59

Because I'm not even sure if it's still as relevant with the sort of current generations.

Brian: 00:14:05

You know, like if you look at the statistics.

Ramin: 00:14:07

Yeah.

Ramin: 00:14:08

And, and I think you're seeing, look, I just to go back to the, the start of

Ramin: 00:14:11

that, we had all of this thrown out.

Ramin: 00:14:13

You are trying to be the next vice.

Ramin: 00:14:15

You're trying to be this, you're trying to be that.

Ramin: 00:14:17

I think there were lessons to be learned from some of those brands that they, what they did

Ramin: 00:14:22

do was they created content that connected with those audiences that's undeniable.

Ramin: 00:14:27

Whether they were able to sustain it.

Ramin: 00:14:28

It is a different story, but they, they were disruptors.

Ramin: 00:14:33

They just didn't, it didn't kind of have that long tail or that, that legacy.

Ramin: 00:14:38

you know, part of that is some of the lessons that, that we're trying to incorporate.

Ramin: 00:14:43

Do you grow old with your audience?

Ramin: 00:14:44

Right.

Ramin: 00:14:44

We started this business four years ago when Gen Z were.

Ramin: 00:14:49

At college finishing high school, they're now in the world of work.

Ramin: 00:14:54

We had a decision to make and, and Gen Z is the focus of of TNM, which is one of our brands.

Ramin: 00:14:59

Does TNM grow old or does it try and kind of stay young?

Ramin: 00:15:03

And I know that's been, you know, in the, in the gravestones of media companies

Ramin: 00:15:07

that have tried to do this in the past, that's been part of the, the challenge.

Ramin: 00:15:11

Can you, can, can you continue to stay cool and hip or do you kind of age up, with your audience?

Ramin: 00:15:17

So again, it's, it's something that we're gonna be talking about more publicly.

Ramin: 00:15:21

We're just doing a bit of a rebrand with, with, with tm and.

Ramin: 00:15:27

What Z doing four years ago is very different to what Gen Z are thinking

Ramin: 00:15:32

about and, growing with, with now.

Ramin: 00:15:34

And so how we deliver that content.

Ramin: 00:15:38

I that's lesson that we've from, from some of predecessors.

Ramin: 00:15:43

You know, I, I have grown.

Ramin: 00:15:47

It.

Ramin: 00:15:56

More so now than at any point, in the past.

Ramin: 00:16:01

There is a fragmentation and you touched upon it, right?

Ramin: 00:16:04

You seeing more and more personalities go to the platform and create content directly

Ramin: 00:16:11

reaching audiences that previously would've subscribed to the New York Times, the

Ramin: 00:16:14

Washington Post, the the Wall Street Journal.

Ramin: 00:16:18

That, that there is an erosion of, of trust for the institution, which you know, personally.

Ramin: 00:16:26

Misguided.

Ramin: 00:16:27

That's the way going individual.

Ramin: 00:16:31

And so there is a huge

Ramin: 00:16:36

help facilitate that, that and that transition.

Brian: 00:16:40

Right, but like, talk to me about the product itself.

Brian: 00:16:44

Right.

Brian: 00:16:44

So I mean, I think there's, I think there's a product challenge, right?

Brian: 00:16:48

Like, I mean, a lot of what, and I think this is, is beyond just Gen Z, you know,

Brian: 00:16:54

a lot of the news industry is shipping.

Brian: 00:16:58

Irrelevant product.

Brian: 00:17:00

You know, like, I mean, it, the idea of the webpage as the atomic unit is gonna

Brian: 00:17:06

seem kind of crazy, in a few years.

Brian: 00:17:08

It seems pretty clear, right?

Brian: 00:17:10

you, you have the broadcast TV networks that almost look like parodies.

Brian: 00:17:16

Now when you like, turn.

Brian: 00:17:18

TV if you do.

Brian: 00:17:19

Right?

Brian: 00:17:20

Because like the, the culture has seemingly moved on, right?

Brian: 00:17:24

And, and, and on and on.

Brian: 00:17:26

Obviously I'm not getting into like the analog.

Brian: 00:17:29

and it's pretty clear that, you know, whether it's it's TikTok or whether it's video

Brian: 00:17:34

podcasts, that there are, there's different.

Brian: 00:17:39

News formats and products that are winning in the, in the marketplace.

Brian: 00:17:44

They might not come from capital J journalists, but it doesn't really

Brian: 00:17:48

matter because you gotta compete.

Brian: 00:17:51

You know, that is one cardinal rule of the information space.

Brian: 00:17:54

You better like competing because you're gonna compete and everyone is

Brian: 00:17:58

competing for attention out there.

Brian: 00:18:00

Journalism is not a credentialed profession.

Brian: 00:18:03

for, for good or for ill, and so.

Brian: 00:18:06

You know, good luck.

Brian: 00:18:07

You've got a battle with all of TikTok.

Brian: 00:18:09

How do you got, how do you need to change the, the product that you're shipping?

Ramin: 00:18:14

Yeah, I mean It's a fascinating challenge actually, and I, if I, if I reflect

Ramin: 00:18:20

on traditional media and you said the webpage or the website, that is print moved into

Ramin: 00:18:28

digital, like there, there's not a lot of transformation that has really happened.

Ramin: 00:18:32

If you strip it all back, it's, it's still editors deciding what you read,

Ramin: 00:18:37

which order you read it predominantly.

Ramin: 00:18:41

There has been a reluctance as an industry to, to change and you said it really, really well, and

Ramin: 00:18:48

it's because this is something that you study and do that it's already happened, like audiences have

Ramin: 00:18:53

already moved away from consuming news in the way that news organizations would like them, to be.

Ramin: 00:19:07

That the news industry did, like, I don't wanna separate me from it.

Ramin: 00:19:12

I was in a traditional news organization and we implemented this feature, the amount of

Ramin: 00:19:17

time it takes to read an article, because what you are really saying is if you don't have

Ramin: 00:19:22

nine minutes or six minutes or five minutes, you can't consume this piece of information.

Ramin: 00:19:27

Um.

Ramin: 00:19:27

in a world where everything is tailor made for you as a consumer, the fact that that's what

Ramin: 00:19:33

you move to from a news perspective rather than actually, how do I fit news in with the amount

Ramin: 00:19:39

of time that somebody actually has to give me, or the level of understanding that they have.

Ramin: 00:19:44

That, that is where I think the news or news industry as a whole doesn't serve its

Ramin: 00:19:49

audience and it's allowed, or enabled, I would say kind of, non-capital j journalists

Ramin: 00:19:55

or creators to come in and fill that space.

Ramin: 00:19:59

I also think part of the challenge is.

Ramin: 00:20:03

Aren't as interested in the as journalists are.

Ramin: 00:20:06

And so the amount of content that's kind of created about a particular

Ramin: 00:20:11

subject, people aren't that interested.

Ramin: 00:20:13

They kind of wanna know the, the rough facts that, the rough set of information,

Ramin: 00:20:18

they don't need five or six articles on a particular subject on a particular day.

Ramin: 00:20:22

And it's overwhelming as well as given the environment that we operate.

Ramin: 00:20:27

In kind of, uh, across the world.

Ramin: 00:20:30

It's quite depressing.

Ramin: 00:20:31

People wanna know enough that they don't feel stupid, but they don't, they don't

Ramin: 00:20:36

need to be, they don't need to be kind of all consumed about what's going on, on in

Ramin: 00:20:41

DC or, so it's the level which, and also I.

Brian: 00:20:46

I mean, how many shutdown articles do you need to read?

Brian: 00:20:48

I mean, honestly, like, I just, I feel like you're, I don't know.

Brian: 00:20:51

I might have to like, you know, turn in my journalism card artificially like with this,

Brian: 00:20:56

but like, I mean, the reality is that people's lives should not be built around the news.

Brian: 00:21:03

Like, it shouldn't be like, I mean, I like, you know, reading like 10 stories

Brian: 00:21:08

a day about like wars that will never actually impact you, I don't think, I

Brian: 00:21:13

think that's like a mental health problem.

Brian: 00:21:15

Like I, like I, why would anyone do that to themselves?

Brian: 00:21:20

Like, I'm in too deep, but like I understand news avoidance.

Brian: 00:21:24

Because the product is really depressing and it, it is because of

Brian: 00:21:31

the algorithmic recommendation systems.

Brian: 00:21:34

It moves towards like food fights and polarization.

Brian: 00:21:39

And so I wonder about whether news needs to be a feature, not a product.

Brian: 00:21:47

Do you know what I mean?

Ramin: 00:21:48

Yeah, no, I, I couldn't agree more

Brian: 00:21:50

For most people, like, like for most people.

Ramin: 00:21:53

There, there, there is a, there is a, an oversupply, I would say now

Ramin: 00:21:58

of for what I would call news junkies.

Ramin: 00:22:02

People who can't get enough of this stuff, who wanna read 10 articles about this.

Ramin: 00:22:06

There's lots of different publications who now service that audience over here.

Ramin: 00:22:11

There's lots of people who they wanna know enough.

Ramin: 00:22:14

It isn't all consuming for them.

Ramin: 00:22:18

Dare.

Brian: 00:22:18

No, they're not going over the maps.

Brian: 00:22:20

And Don, I mean, it, I, I don't mean to trivialize what's going on, but like, I

Brian: 00:22:24

don't, I think that is a very niche behavior and it should be a very niche behavior.

Ramin: 00:22:29

And but, but I will say people care, right?

Ramin: 00:22:34

Big for us was like the, we did a piece a couple of years ago about the CO on TikTok.

Ramin: 00:22:40

I didn't think anyone would care about the co. They do, but they don't want,

Brian: 00:22:44

to me.

Brian: 00:22:44

I didn't even know

Ramin: 00:22:45

don't, they don't want six videos about it and they want 30 seconds of information.

Ramin: 00:22:51

So they're better informed when they were 30 seconds ago, but

Ramin: 00:22:55

it's not their be all and end all.

Ramin: 00:22:56

And I thinking, recognizing that.

Ramin: 00:23:03

Newsrooms, traditional newsrooms to, to, to understand.

Ramin: 00:23:07

and then I think the other thing is, and again this is, this has been a longstanding

Ramin: 00:23:12

factor, this generation, the, the kind of, I would say the younger generation, including

Ramin: 00:23:17

Gen Zs, but the, the millennials as well, they don't wanna be talked down to, they don't

Ramin: 00:23:21

wanna be told or made to feel stupid and.

Ramin: 00:23:27

We did this piece really early on, but it's been a feature of how we cover the,

Ramin: 00:23:31

the news about Ukraine and Russia and it's assumed that, you know, the history

Ramin: 00:23:38

of, you know, the Soviet Union, the, the separation, the, the annex annexing of Crimea.

Ramin: 00:23:45

Actually, most people dunno where Ukraine was on a map.

Ramin: 00:23:48

Like this is, I'm three years ago, and you have to, there.

Ramin: 00:23:52

And take people on, on a journey.

Ramin: 00:23:55

And, like, again, people don't wanna consume news sometimes because it makes them feel stupid.

Ramin: 00:24:01

They're like, well, I don't really know what the, the history of the Middle East is.

Ramin: 00:24:05

I don't understand what, what's actually happening.

Ramin: 00:24:08

How can I understand it in a way that, where someone is alongside me informing me of

Ramin: 00:24:13

this, rather than talking down to me like a, like a, a teacher student relationship.

Brian: 00:24:19

Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, it's a, it's a double-edged sword, right?

Brian: 00:24:22

Like, I mean, you can't assume prior knowledge.

Brian: 00:24:24

I mean, this is always the problem, right?

Brian: 00:24:26

Of, of news, but I think it's more acute now.

Brian: 00:24:28

But at the same time, like I go back to the skim, right?

Brian: 00:24:32

I mean, the Skim was going to make a digestible news product for millennial

Brian: 00:24:37

women, now as like a Gen X Man, I felt like, I was like, okay, this isn't for me,

Brian: 00:24:45

so maybe I can't like, pass judgements on it.

Brian: 00:24:48

But I was like, I don't, I can't imagine this is the way people want to.

Brian: 00:24:54

I don't know if anyone wants to go back and like the sort of skim like archives

Brian: 00:24:58

about how they they package the, the news.

Brian: 00:25:01

it was, to me it was, it, it went a little bit like too far and, and trying to be, You know,

Brian: 00:25:07

it had a little bit of that Steve Buscemi, meme.

Brian: 00:25:10

Like, how do you do

Brian: 00:25:11

fellow kids?

Ramin: 00:25:12

you're a the thing about the things like the skin.

Ramin: 00:25:16

It did connect with the audience.

Ramin: 00:25:17

Like that fact is actually undeniable.

Ramin: 00:25:21

The businesses that you can build around it is where I think for various reasons where timing,

Ramin: 00:25:27

be it patients of investors, be it valuations that were set based on audience numbers, and that's.

Ramin: 00:25:37

You could argue lost, lost their ways, but they created content that held the attention

Ramin: 00:25:43

of millennial women, a millennial generation in, in, in the case, in the case of vice.

Ramin: 00:25:50

And, and I think it's what you do with it next.

Ramin: 00:25:54

That is the, the learning I.

Brian: 00:25:57

So are you gonna, do you try to avoid.

Brian: 00:26:01

Ideological.

Brian: 00:26:02

I mean, the recount was pretty, was pretty left, at least in an American context.

Brian: 00:26:07

I don't know if it it had changed, um, since then, it's pretty left.

Brian: 00:26:11

Like, and I, you know, the, there's no monolith of like, you know, younger

Brian: 00:26:15

people that were the apparent about to.

Brian: 00:26:19

Elected Democratic socialist in, in New York City, and younger people have, have powered that.

Brian: 00:26:26

How do you think about that?

Brian: 00:26:28

Because I, I do feel, you know, it's a fraught area in some ways because again,

Brian: 00:26:33

no generation is like monolithic, right.

Brian: 00:26:36

But I kind of feel like the news organization studiously saying.

Brian: 00:26:43

That they are not going to, that they're completely quote unquote unbiased.

Brian: 00:26:48

Just doesn't, those kind of like niceties, I think like are, are finished with a younger generation.

Brian: 00:26:54

I could be wrong.

Ramin: 00:26:55

No, I think you're right.

Ramin: 00:26:56

I think we, we, TNM in particular started that way.

Ramin: 00:27:01

We were talking about, you know, trying to be unbiased, trying to say both sides of the story.

Ramin: 00:27:07

The kind of ideology.

Ramin: 00:27:08

but I would imagine that people could construe us that they, they wanna, depending

Ramin: 00:27:13

on which content they consume from, but that certainly the, of tm, the recount.

Ramin: 00:27:19

again, the recount is, you know, if you had to pick, definitely more, left leaning, but.

Ramin: 00:27:30

At the core of actually TM as well is trying not to tell you what to think.

Ramin: 00:27:34

So we might pick stories that you would argue is this this side leaning or that side

Ramin: 00:27:39

leaning, but we're not trying to talk down to.

Ramin: 00:27:44

So if you look at the way that we approach, Drugs in society.

Ramin: 00:27:47

We're not saying taking drugs is bad.

Ramin: 00:27:50

We're saying, here's how you take drugs safely.

Ramin: 00:27:52

I know that's not politics per se, but it's, it's not taking a view as

Ramin: 00:27:56

said, this is right, this is wrong.

Ramin: 00:27:58

That's okay.

Ramin: 00:28:00

That's not okay.

Ramin: 00:28:01

We kind of saying like, if you're gonna do it, this is what you need to be aware of.

Ramin: 00:28:05

These are some of the things

Ramin: 00:28:10

recount.

Ramin: 00:28:13

Product under the recount umbrella called Who Broke It, which is, a newsletter product that

Ramin: 00:28:20

assumes that a lot of people are not consuming politics from mainstream media anymore.

Ramin: 00:28:25

And in the, the, the old way that the recount does is it brings together kind of what

Ramin: 00:28:30

people are saying from the left and the right, but instead of news outlets as creators.

Ramin: 00:28:36

So there's a fantastic journalist who works for this great Weinstein who's doing

Ramin: 00:28:40

this anyway, and she came back and she's like, we can turn this into a product.

Ramin: 00:28:44

It's like, this is what the left is saying about what Trump did today, creators, and

Ramin: 00:28:49

this is what the right is saying, that Trump did today and slightly taking the.

Ramin: 00:28:55

What to think.

Ramin: 00:28:57

It's kind of like actually, if you wanna know what the next generation of reading saying,

Ramin: 00:29:01

thinking what the left and right are doing.

Ramin: 00:29:04

So I guess what we're trying to do is find elements of balance in

Ramin: 00:29:10

other parts of what, what we do.

Ramin: 00:29:12

It's incredibly hard.

Brian: 00:29:14

Hmm.

Ramin: 00:29:18

Inception.

Brian: 00:29:20

Yeah.

Brian: 00:29:21

So how do you think about the platform question, right?

Brian: 00:29:24

Like, I mean, they're, you're gonna wanna reach young people where they are, and

Brian: 00:29:29

they're on TikTok, they're on Instagram.

Brian: 00:29:32

Et cetera.

Brian: 00:29:33

and obviously the previous generation of, of news did not do great, with the platforms.

Brian: 00:29:41

We used to have a, a gif in my last job of, Of Charlie Brown getting the football

Brian: 00:29:47

snatched out from him and him going flying and put that on stories where it applied.

Brian: 00:29:53

pretty much every story that dealt with publishers dealing with technology platforms got

Brian: 00:29:57

that gift, had to stop using it at some point.

Brian: 00:30:00

how do you think about that?

Brian: 00:30:02

Because I mean, you have to, again, you have to like follow, you know, user behaviors and I, I.

Brian: 00:30:09

I find it really difficult to believe that, gen Z is gonna be like typing

Brian: 00:30:14

www.usatoday.com in a browser.

Brian: 00:30:18

See?

Brian: 00:30:18

Or like, sorry, our friend's a cadet, but Ramin was the one who laughed at that.

Brian: 00:30:23

I assume that's not your strategy.

Ramin: 00:30:26

No, no.

Ramin: 00:30:27

But I look, they're not gonna type anything into be it.

Ramin: 00:30:31

The, the, the journal that, that was the, I think that was the revelation, revelation

Ramin: 00:30:36

that we had four years ago was that these audiences are not coming to the web and they're

Ramin: 00:30:41

certainly not coming to the web directly.

Ramin: 00:30:43

Fast forward four years and you've got the whole disruption, which is probably

Ramin: 00:30:47

another, well you've done it already.

Ramin: 00:30:48

Podcast is around AI and how people are even getting information.

Ramin: 00:30:56

To website.

Ramin: 00:30:56

So no disrespect to cnet, but it's happening to all, all publishers.

Ramin: 00:31:00

Um, but, but the, the, the thing around the social platforms, and again, you know, past experience

Ramin: 00:31:06

and probably most of the gray in my bid is, you know, when we wrote the journal is, we recognized

Ramin: 00:31:13

a lot that these are never gonna be your friends.

Ramin: 00:31:16

they have their own business objectives, their own outcomes.

Ramin: 00:31:20

They're a great distribution platform and channel to reach the audiences that, that we want.

Ramin: 00:31:26

But it goes back to what else are you building for some parts of that audience, to

Ramin: 00:31:32

engage and, and, and, and entice them to go deeper and how you building products that.

Ramin: 00:31:44

consume, which is not, is not the same thing.

Ramin: 00:31:46

And so that's, that's really the focus of, of Caliber going forward.

Ramin: 00:31:51

We have built audiences now.

Ramin: 00:31:53

We reach a hundred million, I think 20 million people a month consume

Ramin: 00:32:00

either recount or TNM content.

Ramin: 00:32:04

To 70% depending on the publication under 35.

Ramin: 00:32:08

It's brilliant.

Ramin: 00:32:08

As you said in the previous podcast, that is a rented audience.

Ramin: 00:32:12

That is not my audience, that is an audience that I'm getting via someone else's distribution.

Ramin: 00:32:16

And that is fine as long as you go into it, knowing that that is can't

Ramin: 00:32:21

be your business model, forever.

Ramin: 00:32:22

But we have.

Ramin: 00:32:25

And now for us it's kind of what do we have that certain niches.

Ramin: 00:32:34

interested in being able to kind of go deeper and being able to engage who broke It is a

Ramin: 00:32:39

great example of there will be a subset of that recount audience that will wanna subscribe to

Ramin: 00:32:44

a newsletter to understand what all of those creators are are saying because they're time poor.

Ramin: 00:32:49

And this is a great way of understanding what the left and the right thing, say.

Ramin: 00:32:53

So is a big, big bet for us, which is that how do we remove the noise from social media?

Ramin: 00:33:03

On terms an audience member with people that you trust, so not brands people, can

Ramin: 00:33:09

we create a product that delivers that?

Ramin: 00:33:12

So that's, that's really where Caliber's going is, is building these products

Ramin: 00:33:17

that we've got the scale of audience.

Ramin: 00:33:19

What can we now engage them with that that is on their terms.

Brian: 00:33:24

Okay.

Brian: 00:33:25

so talk to me about the business model.

Brian: 00:33:28

I mean, how do you make this this work?

Brian: 00:33:31

I mean, I think about now this, and I think now this in many ways got a lot of things

Brian: 00:33:36

right, you know, as, as far as like the product and, and what, and how they approached.

Brian: 00:33:42

Taking news and reaching a younger demographic.

Brian: 00:33:47

I mean, they went all in on platforms and they amassed massive numbers.

Brian: 00:33:51

you know, Ben Laer would, would come on my podcast and talk.

Brian: 00:33:55

you know, the millions became billions of video views and, and it didn't work.

Brian: 00:34:00

how do you build a business?

Ramin: 00:34:01

again, you don't rely.

Ramin: 00:34:04

And again, we are very, we are lucky in the sense that we can see what happened with

Ramin: 00:34:07

some of these businesses and learn from it.

Ramin: 00:34:09

You don't rely on platform revenues because the moment the algorithms shift, the moment

Ramin: 00:34:14

that they change the splits between how much you get from the ad revenue and, and they, they

Ramin: 00:34:20

shut down this product and launch a different product, your business models are, are Jeopardy.

Ramin: 00:34:25

So what, what we've done, uh, what was the news Movement is now caliber is.

Ramin: 00:34:31

First of all, we found that we can build a business.

Ramin: 00:34:35

again, news in news companies do this today, but they do it for the digital, they do so.

Ramin: 00:34:42

We built a business which is helping brands create content on social.

Ramin: 00:34:47

More and more brands are trying to cut through, talk directly to their consumers, engage

Ramin: 00:34:52

with consumers and create original content.

Ramin: 00:34:55

Um, and so actually we've said, well, if we're doing this every single day for ourselves,

Ramin: 00:35:02

what's the learnings, what's the, um, data that we've got that we can help brands?

Ramin: 00:35:08

Audience, again, it's not just Gen Z, we're, we're working with several brands

Ramin: 00:35:13

that are reaching kind of older audiences.

Ramin: 00:35:15

We need a piece with a, large big four consultancy that, we created social content for

Ramin: 00:35:21

their AI report and it's the first time they've created social content talking about a heavy

Ramin: 00:35:26

subject like AI and the effect it's gonna have.

Ramin: 00:35:29

And this is reaching kind of working professionals that are 35 and up.

Ramin: 00:35:32

But the principles are still the, so a social media agency.

Ramin: 00:35:43

Money.

Ramin: 00:35:44

I like it to make more.

Ramin: 00:35:45

But we've grown.

Ramin: 00:35:47

Sounds like I'm showing off

Ramin: 00:35:52

year.

Ramin: 00:35:52

We did, we Seven figures.

Ramin: 00:35:55

Reason I'm showing off, this is a question that always gets asked, well, how are making money?

Ramin: 00:36:00

and it's like we

Brian: 00:36:01

Well, it's a relevant question.

Ramin: 00:36:10

High seven figures.

Ramin: 00:36:11

And you know, that is a huge growth for a company that's only been doing

Ramin: 00:36:14

business in this space for two years.

Ramin: 00:36:17

And we've got huge brands.

Ramin: 00:36:19

We just launched a YouTube channel for Movember, Movember being the

Ramin: 00:36:22

guys, the charity for Men's Health.

Ramin: 00:36:25

The, the most famous thing is growing the most mustache during November

Ramin: 00:36:28

to raise money for prostate cancer.

Ramin: 00:36:30

We just done a YouTube series around men's mental health and white labeled as.

Brian: 00:36:37

Okay, so agency agency services are a big part of the business right now?

Ramin: 00:36:41

big part of the business.

Ramin: 00:36:42

And that's, that's been our, I guess, our lifeblood.

Ramin: 00:36:46

But where we're now going is, what products can we build that are direct to consumer,

Ramin: 00:36:52

that aren't gonna take 22 million?

Ramin: 00:36:55

We're never gonna move 20 million a month from social.

Ramin: 00:36:59

Into one of our, but we can take a million.

Ramin: 00:37:07

Product, be it the subscription product, that's who broke it, be it

Ramin: 00:37:11

cap, capsule, which is a, which is the newsletter that I talked about earlier.

Ramin: 00:37:14

Be it say so where actually we're rounding up all of these creators, and creating

Ramin: 00:37:20

a news product for this generation.

Ramin: 00:37:23

but again, not everybody's gonna want a new product on their phones from this

Ramin: 00:37:28

generation, but there will be a subset.

Ramin: 00:37:31

Those will become monetizable relationships that, that, that we have, combine that with

Ramin: 00:37:38

the agency and you've got what I think will be, what I know will be a robust business model.

Ramin: 00:37:44

again, the other challenge with traditional news is not having to scale or fix fixed costs, right?

Ramin: 00:37:53

If I look at any news organization that I've worked for.

Ramin: 00:37:56

They never had trouble bringing in money.

Ramin: 00:37:58

What they had was the cost to service.

Ramin: 00:38:00

That money was incredibly high, the fixed cost part of it.

Ramin: 00:38:04

And you, you know it, right?

Ramin: 00:38:05

Like

Brian: 00:38:05

Yeah.

Ramin: 00:38:06

you can very quickly keep adding journalists, keep adding people to the

Ramin: 00:38:09

newsroom, and then all of a sudden you now need to make twice as much money just

Ramin: 00:38:14

to, to, to, to, to kind of stand still.

Ramin: 00:38:17

And I think we've being really thoughtful around how we work with creators.

Brian: 00:38:29

Yeah, but I think the challenge is, look, I, I think about it

Brian: 00:38:35

like, as like added value, right?

Brian: 00:38:37

Like actually digging, digging the sort of nuggets out of the ground is very.

Brian: 00:38:43

It time consuming.

Brian: 00:38:45

It's very expensive and there's a lot of people, I'm one of them honestly, who make

Brian: 00:38:52

a sensible decision and are like, yeah, I'm gonna skip the raw materials part and I'm

Brian: 00:38:57

going to actually do the value add on top.

Brian: 00:39:01

Of, of the raw materials.

Brian: 00:39:03

And that's the packaging, that's the sort of the commentary.

Brian: 00:39:06

I mean, that's why podcasting is such a good business if you get to the other side of that

Brian: 00:39:12

p if you're on the right side of the power law because the, there's minimal costs, right?

Brian: 00:39:18

Like, I mean, Scott Galloway's very open with, you know, his, what, what he makes.

Brian: 00:39:23

It's like a really good business, right?

Brian: 00:39:26

and, You actually unearthing, digging the things out of the earth that's, that's expensive.

Brian: 00:39:32

Time consuming, makes people hate you, advertisers run away from you and all, and so on and so forth.

Brian: 00:39:38

So I mean, is this like a bet that like you just skip the reporting part?

Ramin: 00:39:43

No, actually we just, we just hired, uh, a senior correspondent who is being brought

Ramin: 00:39:50

in to do the Capital J journalism stuff and help us get stories that make people set up.

Ramin: 00:39:56

Pay attention.

Ramin: 00:39:57

Like our, our tagline is journalism that moves at the speed of culture.

Ramin: 00:40:02

Capital J journalism is a part of what we do.

Ramin: 00:40:05

My challenge, like how much of the, of a news is actually going unearthing those

Brian: 00:40:14

Oh, fair.

Brian: 00:40:15

Completely fair.

Ramin: 00:40:16

Yes, yes.

Ramin: 00:40:17

Those things take quite, they take quite a lot of time to see.

Brian: 00:40:22

Yeah, hundred percent.

Ramin: 00:40:25

The.

Brian: 00:40:27

It's the, it's the infrastructure.

Brian: 00:40:29

It's the infrastructure around, I don't mean infrastructure, just technology infrastructure.

Brian: 00:40:33

It's, it's, it's the human infrastructure that is, you know, the, the publishing function.

Brian: 00:40:38

and I look, I think a lot of the creators have just sort of done away with that.

Brian: 00:40:44

Infrastructure and come up with models where they don't need to support that.

Brian: 00:40:48

And, and you know, that I think, look, I God bless Barry Weiss and whoever they want to bring into

Brian: 00:40:55

Paramount, but like that is a compression story.

Brian: 00:40:57

They're going to have to compress, you know, CBS news is going to be smaller.

Brian: 00:41:03

and the numbers just simply don't work in these organizations,

Ramin: 00:41:07

And I think that's, that's what I'm, you know, we talked a lot today about like,

Ramin: 00:41:12

the people who come with us from come before us in the past and what I can take away.

Ramin: 00:41:22

The newsroom and we, you know, we, you know, it's been reported.

Ramin: 00:41:26

We've just had a, an investment and we'll make strategic highs.

Ramin: 00:41:30

But the idea isn't to, to, to scale to crazy numbers because you can't

Ramin: 00:41:35

sustain it, in a, in a meaningful way.

Ramin: 00:41:37

And so a lot of the work that we've done, I'll give you an example.

Ramin: 00:41:41

One of our entertainment.

Ramin: 00:41:43

Correspondence, A fantastic woman, decided to leave.

Ramin: 00:41:46

She's moved to Australia.

Ramin: 00:41:48

and instead of replacing her, the editor was like, actually, we found a creator who does this.

Ramin: 00:41:53

and so we can partner with them and jointly create content that's on their

Ramin: 00:41:56

channel and that's on our channel.

Ramin: 00:41:58

And I was like, exactly.

Ramin: 00:41:59

So we don't have to go and hire somebody, and pay them all of the fixed costs that are

Ramin: 00:42:05

involved with hiring people, but we can work with a creator who's got their audience.

Ramin: 00:42:08

They can leverage our audience.

Ramin: 00:42:10

We give them some of the quote unquote infrastructure that they need

Ramin: 00:42:14

to be able to do their job better.

Ramin: 00:42:16

And it's just, it's a different way of being able to scale out.

Brian: 00:42:22

Yeah.

Brian: 00:42:23

So tell me about, I mean, you, you mentioned the funding, I saw it at $10 million.

Brian: 00:42:28

Can either confirm or not there with that, but you, you took funding and, you know, I mean

Brian: 00:42:34

this is another one where I go back to, I've, unfortunately, I've gone through a lot of these

Brian: 00:42:38

cycles and like, so when I hear like news and I hear venture funding, I, I think, uh oh.

Ramin: 00:42:45

I would say it's a good amount of money.

Ramin: 00:42:48

they're not new in investors.

Ramin: 00:42:52

They've been with us on the journey for the first few years.

Ramin: 00:42:55

they're not venture in the way that I think, again, some of our predecessors.

Ramin: 00:43:01

Raise money and their demands were very different.

Ramin: 00:43:04

They're very patient, very hands off, which is really important when you

Ramin: 00:43:09

think about how you run a newsroom and how we run several different newsrooms.

Ramin: 00:43:14

I won't, I won't be so arrogant to say they're the perfect investor, but

Ramin: 00:43:17

it's, it's not somebody who's come in.

Ramin: 00:43:20

Last month gone.

Ramin: 00:43:22

There's new shiny.

Ramin: 00:43:24

They've been us pretty much the beginning.

Ramin: 00:43:32

The things that I think are important for them to stay outta.

Ramin: 00:43:35

so, and, and, and we need that patience, right?

Ramin: 00:43:38

Like this is, this is, this is a reality.

Ramin: 00:43:41

It's very difficult to do what we were doing and not have some patient investors.

Ramin: 00:43:46

We wouldn't be sitting here if we didn't have, um

Brian: 00:43:49

Okay, so they understand.

Brian: 00:43:50

I mean, this is, this is, this is a UK based fund, Forta, I, I believe it's

Brian: 00:43:54

called, I don't know them, but there's some Qatari investors involved, et cetera.

Brian: 00:43:58

and.

Brian: 00:44:00

I, I, I was just having a conversation with Josh Marshall, from Talking Points Memo,

Brian: 00:44:05

and they're, they're now 25 years old.

Brian: 00:44:08

They're like a survivor from the blog era, you know, the news blog era.

Brian: 00:44:11

And, you know, they had all of these articles for the 25th anniversary and

Brian: 00:44:15

for Josh's, he chose to claim that the, the, the original sin was treating.

Brian: 00:44:22

Media, like technology so this is the, this fund understands that, you know, the news business and

Brian: 00:44:31

media in general do not scale like, technology.

Ramin: 00:44:36

Yeah, I mean, you'd have to ask them their, their,

Brian: 00:44:42

Well, you, you pitched them.

Brian: 00:44:43

I hosted.

Ramin: 00:44:44

That's true, but I, I would say that they, they know what we, they know who

Ramin: 00:44:48

we're, and they know what we're doing because they've been with us for four years, right?

Ramin: 00:44:51

So they're not expecting us to make a hard pivot and, become a tech

Ramin: 00:44:56

and deliver tech company multiples.

Ramin: 00:44:59

but they see the value in being able to reach a younger

Brian: 00:45:02

it.

Ramin: 00:45:03

content.

Ramin: 00:45:07

A bit difficult in answering that is I'm a technologist at heart, right?

Ramin: 00:45:10

Like I was the CTO in a previous life.

Ramin: 00:45:14

The guy, my co-founder, who Dion, who's with us is a cto, we're actually building interest in

Ramin: 00:45:19

tech, but I would never profess to claim that we're gonna become a tech company or become a

Brian: 00:45:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian: 00:45:25

But it's not like a SaaS business, right?

Brian: 00:45:27

Like, I mean, like it's not that the

Ramin: 00:45:32

Our core is journalism moves the speed culture, and if you were being,

Ramin: 00:45:37

you know, that is quite a hard thing.

Ramin: 00:45:40

That capital journalism, as we just discussed, is something that takes

Ramin: 00:45:44

Investment is something that takes time,

Brian: 00:45:47

Yeah.

Brian: 00:45:47

Well that's, that's, that's the tension, right?

Brian: 00:45:51

I mean, you mentioned that, I mean, you couple, you mentioned Vice and you mentioned

Brian: 00:45:55

the, the Skim is having created interesting products that resonated with their audiences.

Brian: 00:46:00

I would, I could very easily make the argument that in both instances, they're real errors.

Brian: 00:46:07

Were, were really on the cap table and, and just the financial, part of those businesses.

Brian: 00:46:14

They raised massive sums of money in, in the case of Vice and really for an email newsletter

Brian: 00:46:20

at the end of the day, you know, the skim raised a ton of money for an email newsletter.

Brian: 00:46:24

It's like, tell me about, say, so what, what are you trying to accomplish there?

Brian: 00:46:28

Is that, are you gonna get Gen Z to pay for news?

Brian: 00:46:31

cause there are signs by the way, that they will pay for, for news.

Brian: 00:46:35

It's not like all grim on that front.

Ramin: 00:46:38

I don't think it's all grin.

Ramin: 00:46:39

I think you, you, we talked about the The Beehiivs.

Ramin: 00:46:43

The Substack, the Patreons.

Ramin: 00:46:46

They're all great examples of people pay for things that add value to their.

Ramin: 00:46:51

To their lives and, um, say so's a couple of things.

Ramin: 00:46:54

One, it's this longstanding belief I've had that Dion, my co-founder has had that news needs to fit

Ramin: 00:47:01

in with people's lives, not the other way around.

Ramin: 00:47:04

News has always been appointment viewing on news' terms, the paper was delivered.

Ramin: 00:47:09

Such a time in the morning.

Ramin: 00:47:10

The, the news is on at eight o'clock at night, right?

Ramin: 00:47:13

Obviously that has changed, but still some of those principles, are there.

Ramin: 00:47:17

And so the first thing that CSO is trying to do is say, if you've only got 30 seconds,

Ramin: 00:47:22

we'll give you 30 seconds worth of information that will help you get on with your day.

Ramin: 00:47:26

If you've got a minute, we'll give you a minute, you've got more, we'll give you uh, more, and

Ramin: 00:47:30

we will fit in and we'll learn your habits.

Ramin: 00:47:34

You fit in with our, so that's one of the core tenants of Say, so the second core tenant and

Ramin: 00:47:41

is there are a bunch of brilliant and we've got to know them, uh, over the past couple of years,

Ramin: 00:47:47

creators who are doing news as a, as a hobby.

Ramin: 00:47:51

And we can sit here and we can say, that's not journalism.

Ramin: 00:47:55

You know, they're not the credentialed journalism.

Ramin: 00:47:57

But audiences are taking it much more at face value than they're what the

Ramin: 00:48:02

capital J journalists are, are doing.

Ramin: 00:48:05

And the the problem those creators have got is they've got these huge followings,

Ramin: 00:48:10

huge audiences, they struggle to monetize it because often they're not writing right.

Ramin: 00:48:14

So Beehiiv might not be an option.

Ramin: 00:48:17

Might not be an option for.

Ramin: 00:48:25

What we thought about actually was we were gonna build a product for

Ramin: 00:48:29

ourselves, like with our content.

Ramin: 00:48:31

And we were like, God, that's what every other news organization has done.

Ramin: 00:48:34

Here's more tnm, here's more recount.

Ramin: 00:48:37

You know, this is how we see the world.

Ramin: 00:48:39

And we actually went, we got all these relationships with these fast, fantastic creators.

Ramin: 00:48:43

What about if we could actually help them make money from their content more

Ramin: 00:48:46

directly, but also service to the audience?

Ramin: 00:48:51

Different viewpoints in one place without all of the noise that you get from social media, right?

Ramin: 00:48:57

Social media is, you get one story even more so now, this AI slot,

Ramin: 00:49:03

one story, one video, that's funny.

Ramin: 00:49:06

One, and, and it's this hodgepodge.

Ramin: 00:49:09

So how can you create a space that doesn't have a lot of that noise?

Ramin: 00:49:12

That has creators that we say, or we think are trying to do things in the right

Ramin: 00:49:17

way, doesn't mean they agree with us.

Ramin: 00:49:19

We're not editing them.

Ramin: 00:49:21

but they're trying to do things in a trustworthy way from all parts of the, the

Ramin: 00:49:26

spectrum and put them in one place and then add a layer of technology that makes it

Ramin: 00:49:29

easy for you to consumer to, to consider.

Ramin: 00:49:32

the thing that I wanna be painless to make clear is.

Ramin: 00:49:36

I've worked in sub, I've built subscription businesses at the Journal at the Times of London,

Ramin: 00:49:42

charging people for a monthly fee that you struggle sometimes to figure out how you're gonna

Ramin: 00:49:49

cancel, that you don't get necessarily think you're getting value from, isn't the business

Ramin: 00:49:54

that we're going to be trying to replicate.

Ramin: 00:49:57

We're much more about kind of micro transaction micropay and also.

Ramin: 00:50:02

Less about pay of content, because if you think about pay of content,

Ramin: 00:50:07

what you're doing, ising curiosity.

Ramin: 00:50:09

So the moment I get curious about something, it's like, here's a pay anding curiosity.

Ramin: 00:50:15

And so I, what we, what we're trying to do is provide a utility and then charge

Ramin: 00:50:20

people based on how often they use that.

Ramin: 00:50:25

Right.

Ramin: 00:50:26

Never ending.

Ramin: 00:50:28

But the idea is you and

Ramin: 00:50:35

and terms trust.

Brian: 00:50:40

So explain this to me.

Brian: 00:50:41

I, this is, this is really interesting because, You know, I, I always go back to micro

Brian: 00:50:46

micropayments as like one of those ideas that's like failed a thousand times, but has to work.

Brian: 00:50:52

It has to work.

Brian: 00:50:54

That's my theory and people can explain to me a million, like all the reasons it didn't work.

Brian: 00:50:59

I understand that.

Brian: 00:51:00

I understand that.

Brian: 00:51:01

However.

Brian: 00:51:02

I think if you're going to be aligned with your audience, and that is what

Brian: 00:51:07

everyone says, then you need to have these models that are not adversarial.

Brian: 00:51:13

Because we think about adversarial business models and think about the ad. Industrial

Brian: 00:51:19

complex subscriptions have just as many, if not more adversarial dark patterns to them.

Brian: 00:51:27

You know, it is a truism.

Brian: 00:51:30

You make it hard to cancel, you add a little friction and you got a call between nine and five.

Brian: 00:51:38

Like there's a reason the, oh, well News Corp. Come on.

Brian: 00:51:42

Anyone from the Wall Street Journal?

Brian: 00:51:44

I'm not canceling my subscription, but I'd have to set my alarm to do it.

Brian: 00:51:48

that's really interesting.

Brian: 00:51:49

How's that?

Brian: 00:51:50

How is this gonna, how is this gonna work?

Brian: 00:51:52

It was a little detour.

Brian: 00:51:53

how's this gonna work?

Ramin: 00:51:55

the, the way it's gonna work is there's a lot that we still need to learn, but the, the, the

Ramin: 00:52:00

principles around it are people pay for utility.

Ramin: 00:52:03

Like they, you know, I, I, this is probably not the best example and, you know, no

Ramin: 00:52:08

one's, no one is told the CEO, that it's not a great example, so I'll keep using it.

Ramin: 00:52:12

But like, people use the subway in New York to get to and from.

Ramin: 00:52:17

They pay per journey.

Ramin: 00:52:18

They're paying for that.

Ramin: 00:52:20

They're paying for that utility and they, they'll pay for it and some

Ramin: 00:52:23

point after the, and pay anymore.

Ramin: 00:52:26

So what I wanna find is I, whether it's after seven uses or eight use, like.

Ramin: 00:52:32

The more that you use it, the smarter the, the technology gets, it learns when you are

Ramin: 00:52:36

coming to it, how long you're spending with it.

Ramin: 00:52:39

So next time it's got your news ready for it.

Ramin: 00:52:42

And my bet, my bet is that it doesn't matter that if you think about news organizing the

Ramin: 00:52:48

way news models work is like, we need to keep you for longer so that you feel like you're

Ramin: 00:52:53

getting even more value from your subscription.

Ramin: 00:52:56

Wake up, wake or set your alarm at 12 o'clock to call the call center to cancel.

Ramin: 00:53:01

What we're trying to say is, if you

Brian: 00:53:03

They send me emails for every single thing, not before my subscription expires.

Ramin: 00:53:09

also say it's not just the Wall Street.

Ramin: 00:53:11

It's not just Wall Street Journal, the New York Times.

Ramin: 00:53:13

I, I had to

Brian: 00:53:14

Oh, no, no, no.

Brian: 00:53:15

no.

Brian: 00:53:15

This is, this is these, these are well known.

Brian: 00:53:18

These are well known things

Ramin: 00:53:20

but, but, but I think what we, what we're trying to figure out is.

Ramin: 00:53:24

If you get 60 seconds of value from us a day or 30 seconds of value from us.

Ramin: 00:53:29

That's something that we think is worth paying a small amount for.

Ramin: 00:53:32

And the other part of this is that a lot of that will be redistributed back to creators.

Ramin: 00:53:39

Both creators who bring their audiences to the, to the platform, to the product.

Ramin: 00:53:45

but also as they kind of consume content from, from those creating.

Ramin: 00:53:48

So that's, that's our bet.

Ramin: 00:53:50

We also are gonna experiment and try, you know, are there certain features that people would pay?

Ramin: 00:53:58

But one of the things I wanna get, that I keep pushing the team to do, and they're being

Ramin: 00:54:03

receptive to it, is the content itself doesn't necessarily have to be the thing that you,

Ramin: 00:54:11

you pay for, because actually that content is, is available in not so different places.

Ramin: 00:54:17

And I don't wanna kill the curiosity of someone who's like, actually

Ramin: 00:54:21

I wanna learn a little bit more.

Ramin: 00:54:22

Oh, I've gotta sign up now.

Ramin: 00:54:24

I've gotta pay more money.

Brian: 00:54:25

Yeah.

Brian: 00:54:26

That's fascinating.

Brian: 00:54:27

I mean, I, I hope you make it work, honestly, because like there needs to be more, when people

Brian: 00:54:32

talk about trust issues, they sort of skip over.

Brian: 00:54:36

The fact that there are still a lot of practices in the business, and I know the reasons for it,

Brian: 00:54:41

et cetera, that don't exactly engender trust.

Brian: 00:54:45

If your business model is to dangle some dollar a month.

Brian: 00:54:51

Before jacking it up 500%.

Brian: 00:54:54

And by the way, staying super quiet before that happens, then that's not exactly

Brian: 00:54:59

a way to engender trust, I don't think.

Brian: 00:55:02

I mean, I get it, like Amazon gets away with all kinds of dark patterns and that is sort

Brian: 00:55:07

of the coin of the realm in this, in, in this, you know, in this world where everyone

Brian: 00:55:12

is trying to hook you into a subscription and make it really difficult to, To cancel.

Brian: 00:55:18

I mean, I, I'm still in some like, wine of the Month Club.

Brian: 00:55:20

I stopped drinking like 10 months ago.

Brian: 00:55:22

Like, I don't still, anyone wants wine?

Brian: 00:55:25

Let me know.

Brian: 00:55:26

I've,

Ramin: 00:55:27

You've got crates and crates stacking up at home.

Brian: 00:55:30

I have to start drinking again just to get rid of

Ramin: 00:55:32

But, but also, like, since I was, since we built some of those pays,

Ramin: 00:55:36

everything has become a subscription.

Ramin: 00:55:38

I mean like subscriptions for socks, for razors, for like,

Brian: 00:55:42

Going on Amazon, you can't, you can't buy anything without to get you into a subscription.

Ramin: 00:55:47

And I think there are different, there are different ways of delivering, content,

Ramin: 00:55:52

that doesn't involve, subscriptions are lovely as well because it's nice recurring revenue.

Ramin: 00:55:57

You know, you're gonna get it every month, but, but,

Ramin: 00:55:59

it

Brian: 00:55:59

should join TRB Pro, by the way.

Brian: 00:56:01

Absolutely, because I don't like starting the year from zero with revenue.

Ramin: 00:56:06

We, we have, I think the ability to experiment and learn, and, and try

Ramin: 00:56:13

different ways of being able to monetize the, that's thing I'm really kind of.

Brian: 00:56:20

Okay, cool.

Brian: 00:56:21

When, when, when, when, when am I gonna get my hands on this?

Ramin: 00:56:25

if you're one of the lucky few in the next couple of months in the Beatta, which you

Ramin: 00:56:29

might be because you've been a gracious host, uh, the Beatta goes live in the next couple of

Ramin: 00:56:33

weeks, but we're probably, again, we wanna learn.

Ramin: 00:56:36

so we're gonna use a couple of months to, to test out what works and what doesn't,

Ramin: 00:56:39

and then make a song, a dance about it.

Ramin: 00:56:41

In the new year, in 2026,

Brian: 00:56:43

Awesome.

Brian: 00:56:44

Thank you so much, Ramin.

Brian: 00:56:45

This was real great.

Ramin: 00:56:46

I.