Episode 215

Inside Outside's media-as-flywheel strategy

Robin Thurston raised $150 million to turn Outside into more than a magazine. He explains how the company married media brands with mapping apps, SaaS platforms, and a festival to reach profitability at $125 million in revenue.

Transcript
Brian:

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Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

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I am Brian Morrissey.

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Looking forward to this conversation with Robin Thurston.

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who is the CEO of Outside, outside, to me is one is a really interesting case

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study in media, because I always say that media is incredibly valuable right now,

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but the tricky part is finding out how that value, can actually be extracted.

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and usually that is through.

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Other businesses that are not just, putting ads next to words on pages

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or, you know, selling subscriptions to get access to those words.

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it has a lot of leverage in a lot of different areas.

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so.

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Right now outside Interactive, it is a, it is a portfolio of

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different endurance sports titles.

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and also a platform of 40 brands.

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It's got mapping apps, fitness trackers, got a travel booking engine

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festival, that's gonna be like the south by southwest of outdoors.

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Why not?

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And it has also raised $150 million back, back in 2021, which

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is a completely different time.

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I don't know if anyone remembers 2021, but like people would like DM me and be and

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say, can we buy ads in your newsletter?

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I'm like, this is easy.

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This is great.

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I was like, why do people make it out?

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That media is so hard.

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I'm like, this is wonderful.

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I was doing consulting at the time, Robin, and people were

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like, we just grew 30% last year.

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And I'm like, you know, everybody I talked to is telling me this.

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I'm like, congrats.

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But, so I wanna talk about all that because outside has, you know, it's like

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any of these things are an adventure.

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It's been ups and downs, right.

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And now outside is, is profitable.

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I think you did what?

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A hundred and,

Robin:

25 million in revenue.

Robin:

Yeah.

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in revenue.

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That's substantial.

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Right?

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And it, the business has flipped from an ads business primarily

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to a recurring revenue business.

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That's

Robin:

Yeah,

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So congrats on that.

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Let's get into the details of it, Robin.

Robin:

Awesome.

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this is a long time coming.

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We were supposed to do this in 2021 or 2022.

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It would've been a different podcast.

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Um,

Robin:

a different podcast.

Brian:

yeah, so, I wanna get at your theory of the case, right?

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Because your background is, is different than a lot of people who I talk to.

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I mean, you're in the, the sort of the, the media business, but

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really your, your background's.

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Is different.

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And I wanna go back to, to map MyFitness.

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'cause you, you, you, you founded Map MyFitness Utility right around

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those of us who like to get outside, even though I'm in New York City,

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I don't get get much outdoor time.

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I spiritually, I spiritually, I'd rather live in Boulder to be honest with you.

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and

Robin:

We can get you out here, Brian.

Robin:

Come on.

Robin:

We get we get you out here.

Robin:

It's, uh.

Brian:

And you know, you ended up selling that.

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'cause I remember at the time it was, it I, because it was

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a really interesting deal.

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It went to Under Armour.

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Right.

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And what was the theory of the case with that?

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With marrying a suite of utility apps with an apparel company.

Robin:

Yeah, I mean the, there was a couple there, there was a couple

Robin:

really clear things that even when I met Kevin Plank for the first time, and

Robin:

you know, we, we were in the process of raising a Series D firm at my.

Robin:

We had a big strategic partner in somebody like Casio that had out of

Robin:

Japan, that had invested capital.

Robin:

We had obviously traditional VCs, but for Under Armour it was really two things.

Robin:

It was, they didn't have a digital footprint at all.

Robin:

And if you, at that time, Nike was sort of taking off with, you know.

Robin:

Training and run and Under Armour didn't have a digital strategy for how

Robin:

you could connect with that consumer.

Robin:

There was a bit that it was global, like Map might, like, there was lots of

Robin:

places in the world that Under Armour was starting to expand to, and, and

Robin:

Map might had a very global footprint like we were, you know, you could

Robin:

use the tool everywhere in the world.

Robin:

But probably more importantly, what we, the thesis was that if we built

Robin:

the connection to e-comm as an example.

Robin:

So Brian, I know you're a runner, so like let's say you went

Robin:

out for a run on map, my run.

Robin:

And when you got back, I could send you a personalized email from under armour.com.

Robin:

That's like, here's a head to toe shoes, shorts, jersey that says, Hey

Robin:

Brian, congratulations on 5K of running.

Robin:

Here's your head to toe, and it's 40% off, 30% off, whatever it was.

Robin:

And most people didn't understand that, that that actually really

Robin:

worked, that personalized.

Robin:

Newsletter against your actual running or whatever activity you were doing and

Robin:

the ability for under armoured to sell.

Robin:

'cause I was also running e-comm at the time and it really was working.

Robin:

We were seeing that connection from consumers going from,

Robin:

they downloaded the app.

Robin:

They registered, they started doing runs, and then we started doing

Robin:

personalized e-commerce emails.

Robin:

The transaction ROAS was better.

Robin:

Like there was a whole bunch of things happening in the core business

Robin:

that was like, this is working.

Robin:

But it really was about having the first digit, like what Kevin would often

Robin:

say when he was out speaking was like.

Robin:

It could be that the first touch with the Under Armour brand is through

Robin:

these products because we had so many users around the world, and again,

Robin:

they were just getting into this space.

Robin:

And so it was really tho those were the building blocks of the thesis.

Robin:

part of the reason it's so relevant to outside was that.

Robin:

When I was like, we then bought my fit.

Robin:

I mean, we did a big roll up there too, right, Brian?

Robin:

We bought MyFitnessPal.

Robin:

We bought Endomondo in Europe.

Robin:

We bought eight other companies that like in different sort

Robin:

of verticals and categories.

Robin:

but.

Robin:

One of the reasons, you know, I would say was like Under Armour's

Robin:

business was changing in 2016, but I went to Kevin and I was like, Kevin,

Robin:

I think we should get into content.

Robin:

Like I think we could be the next Red Bull Media house.

Robin:

The brand's amazing.

Robin:

It was on Fuego.

Robin:

Then Brian, like Under Armour's brand was flying and you know.

Robin:

Kevin, obviously, you know, we had already spent a lot of money, like close

Robin:

to a billion dollars on acquisitions.

Robin:

I think he knew there were other challenges in the business that

Robin:

maybe I wasn't as aware of, but I was, he was like, no, we're not

Robin:

gonna build, like, we're gonna have to put all this money in content.

Robin:

But I really thought that was the next step for the platform was not

Robin:

only sort of unifying all the data.

Robin:

Leveraging it in eCommerce, but was to get into content.

Robin:

He said, no, I left.

Robin:

And you know, that's part of the, was part of the thesis for like

Robin:

how I thought about the world.

Robin:

Like that was the connection of like, I felt like we needed to

Robin:

have content, we needed to have utility, we needed to have commerce.

Robin:

All of those things together.

Brian:

But the content, like the and and the utility, we're going to give leverage

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to, I mean, under Arbor is, is an apparel

Robin:

it was to sell, to be, to be clear, it was to sell shirts and shoes.

Brian:

Yeah, so Nike, Nike at the time was getting, you know, they, they've,

Brian:

they've gone through a little bit of a rough time, although, you know, they just

Brian:

got a nice, like, I don't know what they, I mean, whoever did the PR was great.

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They had a great piece in the New York Times with the, the new CEOI mean,

Brian:

that was like run as pitched, you know, but whatever, good for them.

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but, you know, at the time, you know, with Nike Plus.

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Nike id, and I'm sure there was like some of that within that.

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It was this idea, we're gonna create this, this ecosystem.

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We're gonna be a technology company.

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This is what, you know, wall Street wanted to hear.

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And look at the end of the day, it, it's, it's difficult

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running, multiple businesses.

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But you're, you're saying that the thesis worked.

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'cause the, they, they sold, you know, the assets back to you.

Brian:

Right.

Robin:

Well, they sold, they sold Matt, my back to me, they sold MyFitnessPal.

Robin:

I, I think my, my, my theory, Brian, obviously I left in 2016, so I haven't

Robin:

been around for a long time, but my theory is that once the leadership, digital

Robin:

leadership left, like Mike Lee from MyFitnessPal left, I left, there was a bit

Robin:

of a, you know, like vision gap, right?

Robin:

Like how all this stuff was gonna keep.

Robin:

And then I also think Underarmour just had some.

Robin:

Like the core challenges that they had to figure out and they, to me, they

Robin:

made the right decision, which is revert back to we gotta get shirts and shoes.

Robin:

Right, right.

Robin:

So, yeah, I mean, from my perspective.

Robin:

It, there's no question.

Robin:

It was working from a, having more information on the consumer to personalize

Robin:

for them to, you know, to, to go into transaction and prove like the, I

Robin:

mean, Matt might, I mean, even today.

Robin:

Brian, like the org, we don't spend a lot on marketing and you know, the

Robin:

organic growth, the number of net registered users every single month.

Robin:

Is it, it's, it's really solid.

Robin:

Hundreds of thousands of people are still registering every single month for free.

Robin:

That's not mar, that's no marketing, right?

Robin:

So that were getting all those emails.

Robin:

Right.

Robin:

That was all part of the sort of story.

Robin:

You know, again, I'm, I haven't been there so I can't say specifically,

Robin:

but my guess is they kind of had to make decisions to get more focused.

Robin:

Right.

Brian:

So spin that forward to what has become outside.

Brian:

I think at the, at the time it was pocket, but like what, how that informed.

Brian:

This thesis?

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'cause I think it's almost, I don't wanna say it's like a reverse of it,

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but it's a different, like twist.

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We were joking before about like, you know, most people having like one

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playbook just about everybody has one playbook and they run it differently

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and based on the environment, based on what they've learned.

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And I think that's, that's the smart thing to do.

Brian:

What is, what was the sort of thesis going on here with also,

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you know, do executing any rollup.

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Is like incredibly difficult.

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you know,

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I

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always say like, rollups are one of those they're great at, they're

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great at, on, in a PowerPoint.

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but then, you know, it gets, it gets pretty messy pretty quickly.

Robin:

Yeah, I mean, and I think most of the companies had a lot

Robin:

of like what I call sort of.

Robin:

Vision alignment.

Robin:

In other words, like every single brand we own, I think has the same core

Robin:

mission, which is to get people outdoors.

Robin:

Right?

Robin:

The, the, the sort of thesis or playbook that you're talking about.

Robin:

To me, there's a couple of unique things in.

Robin:

I think our category specifically, which I would consider sort of like

Robin:

outdoor activity, let's just sort of, you know, an activity in general.

Robin:

The difference is like if you are, I'm using example, if you, you know, and I

Robin:

do think there's close analogies, like I know you just had Yahoo on and you

Robin:

know, like the, the, the, the connection from, okay, I'm gonna read a ton of about

Robin:

sports, or I'm gonna watch a ton of sports and then I'm gonna go do fantasy to me

Robin:

is, there are parallels there, right?

Robin:

But the di the distinction in our categories is that.

Robin:

When somebody's like reading or watching content, say they're watching a show

Robin:

on outside television about, you know, like Tahoe and going outdoors

Robin:

and culinary and all this stuff, they're gonna actually go do that.

Robin:

They're gonna, they're gonna go from watching or reading about a

Robin:

marathon to going out for a run.

Robin:

Like, you know, you'll, you'll read some content, you're looking at gear,

Robin:

and then you're gonna go for a run.

Robin:

To me, that's what's really unique is there's a lot of data around these

Robin:

categories where people are voluntarily putting it in, whether it's to a

Robin:

fitness tracker, mapping app, like we connect to Garmin and all these third

Robin:

party utilities as part of your login.

Robin:

And that to me, that's where in our category it's sort of unique, is that

Robin:

you go from like, as an example, from content, say like you're again reading

Robin:

about the top 10 ski destinations.

Robin:

Well how do I get you as fluidly as possible?

Robin:

Into going to do and booking that trip, because that to me is the real connection.

Robin:

It's like people want to go do these things and we just wanna make it easier

Robin:

for them from the point of discovery or inspiration as we call it, to actually

Robin:

going out and doing that activity.

Robin:

There's not, I mean, we have a big internal stated goal, Brian,

Robin:

that like, we want to get 250 million people globally a day.

Robin:

Doing the actual activity.

Robin:

I don't care if that's a dog walk, Brian.

Robin:

I just want them outdoors because I believe it's good for them health, but

Robin:

that connection to the content through to actually, the activation to me is what

Robin:

I think is unique about our category.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

But what's unique about that is when you start to think about media, right?

Brian:

Because like media, people think about media as the end goal, right?

Brian:

And my, if I have a thesis, it's that media is in service of other goals, right?

Brian:

And that's where things are going.

Brian:

And like, you know, in 2019, you mean you guys acquired, like things like

Brian:

Velo news, which I always, I was always reading Velo news during the, like the

Robin:

I was a 35 year subscriber.

Brian:

I was less as like, you know, yoga journal.

Brian:

I'm less, but like, you know, you, you, you,

Robin:

Well, yeah, right now, but maybe later.

Robin:

I don't

Robin:

know.

Brian:

We don't

Robin:

know, Well, you

Brian:

uh, we don't know where things are gonna go, but like

Brian:

then you acquired outside, right?

Brian:

You raised a lot of money in 2021, you acquired outside and it's like.

Brian:

Good news, bad news.

Brian:

It's like good news is outside amazing brand.

Brian:

Like, I was always reading outside, even though I was living in New York

Brian:

City 'cause I was like imagining a different version of my life in Boulder.

Brian:

being going into the mountains and whatever, instead of just on the subway.

Brian:

but you know, Sebastian Younger wrote, wrote for John Krakau as

Brian:

a, like, you know, so many, like, great, like writers and that that

Brian:

creates a really great brand.

Brian:

Right?

Brian:

But, you know, the, the role of these great magazine

Brian:

brands is different nowadays.

Brian:

What did you see with, with what is the, what, what did you, what was sort

Brian:

of, with all that like thesis, what did you see as the thesis as the future

Brian:

for a quote unquote magazine brand?

Brian:

Like outside

Robin:

Well, I mean, I certainly, growing up in Colorado, and even, I

Robin:

mean, I, I tell the story about when I was, it probably was the late seventies.

Robin:

My dad threw an outside magazine at me and he said, this is where we're going.

Robin:

And on the front was Arches National Park.

Robin:

And, you know, I cut out every article and picture and, you know,

Robin:

I, I was obviously very young and I, I think it's, I think it's changed.

Robin:

The part that I don't think has changed is I still believe it's inspiration.

Robin:

Like your point about you're living in New York, you're still reading outside is

Robin:

because you are thinking aspirationally, I might want to go do that thing.

Robin:

Like, I might want to go to that place, or I might want to try that piece of

Robin:

gear, or I might want to explore this.

Robin:

And I, I don't think that's changed.

Robin:

I do think.

Robin:

What the customer is asking for is, is changing.

Robin:

Like, and what I mean by that is like attention spans and what's happening.

Robin:

Like there's a huge demand of video, you know, on our platform as an example.

Robin:

And so how we decide on those things.

Robin:

But what I, what I believe about the outside brand is it's

Robin:

certainly the best brand in the category, the most well known.

Robin:

And, and, and I also thought had the most scope.

Robin:

And what I mean by that is under the outside brand, I thought we could go

Robin:

into everything from water sports to, you know, climbing, to backpacking, to, you

Robin:

know, even over landing, like, or fishing.

Robin:

I felt like the outside brand.

Robin:

Knowing that our customer does at least three activities a year

Robin:

and maybe over a lifetime, they do 12 to 15 different activities.

Robin:

I just felt like the outside brand was the most inclusive.

Robin:

It was the, and the other thing I felt about it was, if you think about the,

Robin:

you know, I'm talking about the, you know, long time ago, I think that most

Robin:

of the imagery and the storytelling was quite extreme, right, Brian?

Robin:

It was like if you, you know, the imagery was like a guy on

Robin:

Everest in a North Face jacket.

Robin:

Like that was the primary.

Robin:

And, and I go today, the fastest growing customer segment of

Robin:

where all the spend is, is in a much more casual outdoor person.

Robin:

Much more casual.

Robin:

Like they're, they're not.

Robin:

And so, but I still felt like the outside brand could do both.

Robin:

I felt like it could stretch to the extreme.

Robin:

All go all the way down to the customer who's just learning.

Robin:

They're, you know, I always, I always use, I always use this in this sort of like

Robin:

view Brian, like I am, most people come to me for like cycling recommendations

Robin:

'cause I've been cycling my whole life.

Robin:

But like, if I get into kayaking, Brian, I'm lit. I don't know how to paddle man.

Robin:

Like, I gotta start from scratch.

Robin:

I don't know what gear I need.

Robin:

I don't know where to go.

Robin:

I like so.

Robin:

We wanna try to accommodate that person who wants to get into the category.

Robin:

And I felt like the outside brand, versus all of the other brands, like I think we

Robin:

have, I mean, backpacker and Ski and you know, yoga Journal and these, I think

Robin:

they're great brands, but they couldn't necessarily encompass all of those things

Brian:

Yeah, it is tricky though, right?

Brian:

Because, like I think of Runner's world as like a runner, like, and, no offense

Brian:

to Hearst, it happened before them, but like, runner's world sort of lost its

Brian:

tie to me to like the quote unquote har like runner runners, you know, like,

Brian:

and it, it, it, and running itself.

Brian:

Became so democratized.

Brian:

you know, running a marathon is now like, you know, 10 times more people run

Brian:

marathons now than than 25 years ago.

Brian:

so it becomes less, for like the hardcore, but you wanna expand the category.

Robin:

Well the, I mean the interesting thing like about like the MapMyRun data,

Robin:

and I used to say this all the time, is like the average person in MapMyRun

Robin:

Brian ran three days a week, 3.1 miles.

Robin:

So they literally would look at the app and they're like, oh my God,

Robin:

I made it three miles, I'm done.

Robin:

And then it would be like a walk back to the car, right?

Robin:

Like, or you know, to wherever they were.

Robin:

So like.

Robin:

The vast majority of runners are extremely casual, and it's really, they don't

Robin:

even think about themselves as runners.

Robin:

They're just doing it to like have some fitness, right, to like

Robin:

stay active at some level, right?

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

So talk about re like, sort of re-architecting the business, right?

Brian:

Because like how, and also how, how different that is from 2021 thesis.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

because like, it's a very, it's, these things always change along the way and it

Brian:

seems like, you know, from the, you know, getting to profitability with, you know,

Brian:

substantial, not just substantial revenue, but a lot of it in recurring revenue.

Brian:

And, and no, it has not.

Brian:

Been been easy to get to that point, but what's changed about the thesis?

Brian:

'cause it's a very different environment from 2021.

Brian:

As I said, I don't get those dms.

Brian:

Maybe my dms are off, but like I'm out there selling,

Robin:

Yeah, I mean.

Robin:

It's funny, I have this, I have the literal, I, I can send you a picture

Robin:

of, I have this napkin where I had originally drone, you know, drawn the

Robin:

flywheel of like how to get somebody from

Brian:

oh, it's a literal napkin.

Robin:

It's literal.

Robin:

I literally, I'll send you a picture of it.

Robin:

I drew

Robin:

it in, like,

Brian:

evidence for

Robin:

I'm gonna send, I'm gonna send

Robin:

to you In 2019, I drew this flywheel of like what this was gonna look like.

Robin:

I think what, you know, when I, but you know, I don't think people.

Robin:

Largely understand how hard the operating environment has been,

Robin:

22, 23, 24, how hard it was.

Robin:

Like just everything that was going on, inflation, you know?

Robin:

And so what I would say changed, so in 21, I mean, I've told people

Robin:

before, Brian, we were burning 40 million bucks a year, right?

Robin:

Like I was, I was investing heavily, like in everything.

Robin:

And I mean, we didn't, you know, in 30 acquisitions.

Robin:

We didn't like normally in an acquisition, you know, you cut people right?

Robin:

On day one.

Robin:

You're like, there's synergies.

Robin:

Well, we didn't do that.

Robin:

We like literally was like, everybody's got a

Brian:

Because then you can, you can put it on the old,

Brian:

the the old management Start.

Brian:

Start with a fresh, yeah.

Brian:

Yeah.

Robin:

and so, you know, I think while the, you know, we obviously

Robin:

we had this goal of shifting.

Robin:

The, the old business being 75 plus percent in advertising, it

Robin:

was mostly endemic advertising.

Robin:

So it was like the Reis and the North faces and the Patag,

Robin:

like it was in our category.

Robin:

And I knew that once we aggregated it, that I'd have, I'd have a much

Robin:

bigger audience to go to auto and insurance and travel as an example.

Robin:

So we knew we had to make that switch.

Robin:

And that switch has happened, like, you know.

Robin:

Over 50% of our business is non-endemic, large strategic categories,

Robin:

auto, you know, financial travel.

Robin:

So that switch was a big one.

Robin:

But I also knew like, I mean, I mean I think it was pretty evident.

Robin:

I, I mean, I, like I said, I don't, I didn't create this Brian, like, I think

Robin:

it was pretty evident 15 years ago that advertising was just getting gobbled

Robin:

up by the large technology players.

Robin:

And I was like, we have to get into reoccurring revenue.

Robin:

Like we have to get the subscription business really going and we have to

Robin:

get, you know, other forms of revenue.

Robin:

Like could be events, which obviously we can talk about outside days, you know?

Robin:

And I, I really did believe in SaaS.

Robin:

I mean, one of the first visit when the, the, so when we bought outside

Robin:

magazine and television, we closed on four other acquisitions the

Robin:

same day, literally the same day.

Robin:

We did 'em all in one day.

Robin:

We did six acquisitions closed on the same day.

Robin:

So it was outside magazine, outside television.

Robin:

We bought a commerce company, which, you know, subsequently we did shut

Robin:

down 'cause it just wasn't working.

Robin:

Called Karen, like spelt the, the rocks, the rock stack.

Robin:

that was a box subscription company.

Robin:

I mean, we all know how that went.

Robin:

Right?

Robin:

you know.

Robin:

We bought Gaia GPS, which was very much on the utility side.

Robin:

Like again, the idea bringing people from outside in top 10 hikes.

Robin:

How do I download those hikes?

Robin:

How do I go do those hikes?

Robin:

And Gaia was the original solution and we bought an event registration business.

Robin:

We bought Athlete Reg that owned things like run reg and

Robin:

bike reg and things like that.

Robin:

And so we had that theory in 21 of like, these things are all gonna bolt together.

Robin:

But to your point.

Robin:

Yeah, I mean it was, first of all, once we had to start really thinking about how

Robin:

to change the burn rate of the business, we had to scale back things that we, like.

Robin:

I wanted to do, like we had to not do some of those investments, but it

Robin:

really was about getting to single sign on, which, by the way, none of the

Robin:

media publications, including outside.

Robin:

Collected email addresses other than for newsletters,

Robin:

which was pretty sparse, right?

Robin:

It wasn't like getting people to sign in and like really connect with the platform.

Robin:

And so we, we added single sign on.

Robin:

We built a new CMS that all of the platforms moved

Robin:

to, we launched the bundle.

Robin:

you know, so those things.

Robin:

All started when, you know, in 20 and 2021.

Robin:

'cause we had that thesis of like bringing them all interconnected together.

Robin:

Single ad platform, single financial stack.

Robin:

I mean, to your point, that was, I mean, I will say Brian, like I'm the

Robin:

f it was way harder, even though I had done a lot of m and a, I mean,

Robin:

I did m and a at, at Under Armour.

Robin:

I'd done an m and a at Reuters.

Robin:

Like I, it was way harder than I thought it was gonna be.

Robin:

Right.

Brian:

And, and the shape of the business now.

Brian:

I mean, we talked about advertising being close to like three quarters

Brian:

of the business now, and I

Brian:

Right, it was, that's what I mean.

Brian:

Like, and, and now it's down like what, around like 40%

Robin:

It's 40% now.

Robin:

Yeah.

Robin:

And again, it's, it's mostly non-endemic because of the scale that we have, the

Robin:

number of people we have on the platform.

Robin:

Right.

Robin:

So that, to me, that switch in some ways.

Robin:

Is as important as getting to more reoccurring revenue.

Robin:

And so, you know, then 35% of our revenue is in digital consumer subscriptions,

Robin:

and 25% is in SaaS platforms

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

So when you're counting SaaS platforms, you're talking about

Brian:

like athlete Reg and like opia,

Robin:

and in topia.

Robin:

Yeah.

Brian:

where, where does, does it, does that count events too?

Brian:

Like

Robin:

No, no.

Robin:

So.

Robin:

We, we have some ticketing revenue, so that that's sort of, but it's

Robin:

still within our media group.

Robin:

And then the sponsorships that we get for the, for outside days, they

Robin:

are bundled into our advertising bucket, that 40% essentially.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

So in within this like larger bundle, 'cause we, we see this with like

Brian:

the New York Times, you know, people say, oh, it's actually a gaming

Brian:

company with, with a newsroom.

Brian:

And some of this makes particularly journalists like uncomfortable, right?

Brian:

outside has definitely gone through that.

Brian:

I can remember someone in like 2022, like writing me like they were angry at you.

Brian:

so I'm just gonna be honest with you, like you should look at this.

Brian:

I, and there are people out there.

Brian:

There was like an open letter for, you know, your ruin and outside and whatnot.

Brian:

and I get it, like people come at things from totally different like perspectives.

Brian:

I think.

Brian:

You know, nostalgia is very difficult in this industry, just because it

Brian:

is compressed to such a degree.

Brian:

what is the role then of the media?

Brian:

Because as I said, in a lot of models now, the, the, the media is

Brian:

to provide leverage in different businesses, whether it's in, whether

Brian:

it's in events, whether it's in SaaS.

Brian:

For a while it was gonna be in commerce.

Brian:

You know, I think that the bloom is a little bit off the rose there with all

Brian:

the, the churning group investments in, in there that didn't go anywhere.

Brian:

so this is a different type of model, but how do you end up gauging?

Brian:

Because I mean, you cut, a lot of people got cut, right?

Brian:

And that's why there's, that's why,

Brian:

you know, that's always like, you know, a way to do the, like, you

Brian:

know, we spoke to 30 people because if, you know, you cut enough people,

Brian:

you're gonna find 30 people to,

Robin:

sure, of course.

Brian:

say some things.

Brian:

How do you think about like what the, the role of the content assets in this bundle?

Robin:

Well, I mean, first of all, it's still our largest

Robin:

department in the company.

Robin:

It's run by Heather Dietrich, our Chief Media officer.

Robin:

She was the CEO at the Daily Beast, and you know, she's been around

Robin:

the industry for a long time.

Robin:

So she runs X Gawker?

Robin:

Yeah, she runs our, you know, all of our media brands.

Robin:

She runs the TV business.

Robin:

The, you know, experiential, the physical events business.

Robin:

and it's still the largest department.

Robin:

I mean, editorial is still, again, even relative to the mapping teams, it's still

Robin:

the largest department in the company.

Robin:

and I still view the storytelling part of, and I'm saying for our customer, like

Robin:

the, the runner, the cyclist, the hiker.

Robin:

You know, I look at some of the original content that we're producing on.

Robin:

outside television, shows like the Roadless Eaton or, you know, we just

Robin:

did this show with Alex Hunt that was, sponsored and paid for by Nevada Tourism,

Robin:

you know, in the state of Nevada where he's from and, you know, basically him

Robin:

going around the state and doing these adventures that just launched this week.

Robin:

Things like park sessions that, but these are, these are great, these

Robin:

are great stories, right, Brian?

Robin:

And then so video, video and film and TV is sort of one part of it.

Robin:

I still believe there is a very critical s space to, to encourage

Robin:

people to get in these categories.

Robin:

That's about them learning where to go, what to do, how to do it, what gear you

Robin:

need, like that part of it to me is really important and I know, I mean, to be clear.

Robin:

I really respect the people that unfortunately, you know, we, we had

Robin:

changes and we had to go through and we had to really figure out how this

Robin:

business was gonna get self-sustaining.

Robin:

That was really painful.

Robin:

but at the same time, it's not like we're still not investing in storytelling.

Robin:

I mean, the, the, like, you know, the, Fall issue with Lindsay Vaughn on it.

Robin:

You know, we're still, we obviously still have one print

Robin:

publication that's outside magazine.

Robin:

you know, extremely well sold through at all.

Robin:

Barnes and Noble, like, you know, we're, we're clearly still putting energy there.

Robin:

And you know, yeah.

Robin:

Are we doing as much long form as we used to?

Robin:

No.

Robin:

We've had to make trade-offs with like, we need to do more video, because

Robin:

that's what some of our advertisers and certainly what the consumer is from

Robin:

a just consumption perspective on the pages is telling us that they want.

Robin:

But we're still trying to create that balance and still investing in this area.

Robin:

And I think it's just a really important part of like the.

Robin:

The whole flywheel.

Robin:

It's like, I don't think that, you know, hey, just having Gaia or just

Robin:

having trail forks is as good as having, you know, someone telling the

Robin:

story of, here are the top 10 hikes, here are the greatest rivers to see.

Robin:

Here are the, you know, the, the best snow conditions to see.

Robin:

I don't think it does as well without the media.

Robin:

Right.

Robin:

So while I, I certainly, we've had to make very hard decisions.

Robin:

I, I, I believe in the long run and as we, now that we're self-sustaining and as

Robin:

we start to grow some of these things, I think we will invest more there over time.

Robin:

you know, as part of that overall bundle, I do believe

Brian:

Right, but it needs to serve this, this flywheel, if

Robin:

it has to serve the flywheel.

Robin:

It has to.

Brian:

I mean like a, so it's basically like someone, someone reads like best

Brian:

ski resorts, you know, article it, they go to Gaia GPS for trail maps.

Brian:

You can connect it in topia.

Brian:

I mean this is like sort of the, the pitch deck version,

Robin:

Yeah,

Brian:

Uh, you know, and they go to like in topia to, to, to

Robin:

They booked the trip.

Robin:

They, they booked their ski tickets.

Robin:

They booked their ski rentals.

Robin:

The ski instruction,

Brian:

that, that data gets fed back into the content and, and that is

Brian:

the, and then, you know, outside days becomes the sort of the, the

Brian:

IRL expression of the ecosystem.

Brian:

and you've got a basically a B2B platform for the outdoor industry.

Brian:

So they're not coming to you just for ad pages.

Brian:

You're actually, you're a business partner, right?

Brian:

Because I think one of the big things sometimes this is lost within this

Brian:

in journalism, is like that a lot of time, you know, people don't look

Brian:

at, you know, your advertisers are looking for like business partners.

Brian:

I mean, they're just looking for, they're not just, but they're

Brian:

looking for commercial transactions.

Brian:

And if you can, if you can be a business partner rather than an ad seller,

Brian:

that's a much better position to be

Robin:

Oh, I, I mean, you know, obviously whether.

Robin:

Even at Under Armour, we were still selling advertising.

Robin:

I mean, when I was there, we were, we still had an ad platform

Robin:

for Matt, my MyFitnessPal.

Robin:

We were still selling, you know, we couldn't sell in category.

Robin:

I couldn't go sell to Nike.

Robin:

Right.

Robin:

But I was still selling to auto partners and all kinds of people

Robin:

because the platform was there.

Robin:

And, you know, if I go, if I go back to Reuters or you know, like what I think

Robin:

about other places that I've been like, I. Believe these partnerships and sort

Robin:

of the ecosystem of partnerships, and especially I feel like this in the outdoor

Robin:

category, are just really important.

Robin:

Like I look at our partners right now for outside days, like REI Cap

Robin:

one, they're the title sponsor, and.

Robin:

You know, we have a much stronger partnership with them because

Robin:

we're not just doing one thing.

Robin:

We're not just doing affiliate.

Robin:

We're not just doing advertising.

Robin:

We, we have the festival, we're looking at other parts of the

Robin:

business that they can get involved with, membership, things like that.

Robin:

And I think that that is the key to self-sustaining and building

Robin:

businesses over time are these partnerships and how you bring them in.

Brian:

E explain to me why you're, you're looking at advertising in non endemic.

Brian:

Because I could see the case being, you know, you'd be more valuable to go like

Brian:

deeper with endemic categories with like, you know, the reis with the north faces

Brian:

because, you know, rather than like.

Brian:

Nissan or Subaru or whatever, you know, ever, like, you know,

Brian:

there's, they always have, they, they have gigantic budgets, right?

Brian:

But like, they, talk to me about how you decided on, on that

Brian:

approach with the media assets.

Robin:

Well, I mean, there's, there's a couple things that I, I would say that

Robin:

the, the first is certainly, as you just mentioned, like the budgets are larger.

Robin:

The sort of like, what I'd say the, the, the number of people in those

Robin:

teams and the agencies they work with are thinking about a whole

Robin:

bunch of different ways to activate.

Robin:

and as we thought about our ecosystem, like it wasn't just about putting.

Robin:

An ad on a page or getting affiliate, it's like how do they

Robin:

get involved with outside days?

Robin:

How do they do something on the mapping side?

Robin:

How do they do something with membership?

Robin:

Larger brands, to me, have the capacity.

Robin:

To think about those different verticals and we'll try them.

Robin:

Right?

Robin:

Because they're thinking they're, they're kind of thinking about all the customer

Robin:

channels that they get to, and I'm not saying the endemics are not doing that.

Robin:

Again, I think REI is like a great example in our portfolio right

Robin:

now of someone that we have a big partnership with around, obviously

Robin:

they're, they're big Brian, right?

Robin:

Like they're I think three and a half billion of revenue or something.

Robin:

It's a big company, right?

Robin:

But when you start to get down into the niche of, I'm using example, like it

Robin:

could be a. A specific component, you know, on a bicycle right type thing.

Robin:

I think you start to get into, think about like I'm using example if you're

Robin:

a small company in the camping space or the hiking space or the cycling space.

Robin:

If they have a very limited number of resources, Brian, like at one time we

Robin:

were the only place to go to get access.

Robin:

Customer velo news was like the only place to go to get access.

Robin:

But today.

Robin:

It's much easier for their one marketing person to go and just like

Robin:

spend money in Facebook and Google.

Robin:

So to be clear, we were losing those budgets over the last 15 years,

Robin:

like I'm saying, well before we bought these businesses, right?

Robin:

We were losing the ability to get that one marketing person to think

Robin:

about, okay, they also want to go do this thing in the endemic.

Robin:

And I'm not, to be clear, Brian.

Robin:

We have an entire endemic team.

Robin:

These partners are really important to us, so I don't wanna like, give any

Robin:

impression that like we, we trying to service them the best that we can, right?

Robin:

To get those dollars in.

Robin:

But it has changed.

Robin:

It really has changed.

Brian:

So one, one thing that I wanna get onto, like outside days is.

Brian:

Operating.

Brian:

This seems like a very complicated business to operate,

Brian:

I'll be honest with you.

Brian:

Like, because like media, it itself is, is, is complicated.

Brian:

I feel like because you've got this like, you know, church and state

Brian:

divide, you know, the, the kind media people, I love media people.

Brian:

I like, I'm gonna be hanging out with a bunch later tonight.

Brian:

I got, we got a mixer next week, maybe next time you're

Brian:

in New York, you come to one

Robin:

I, I

Robin:

can't wait.

Brian:

But, and so I love hanging out with them, but they're also very difficult.

Brian:

and, you know, these businesses co press to begin with.

Brian:

You're operating like, it seems like to me, like a, a few

Brian:

different businesses in one.

Brian:

It's one thing to get everything like on like a single sign in platform,

Brian:

that alone should get an award, like, you know, with all these different, to

Brian:

be honest with you, non-trivial task, but like completely different metrics.

Brian:

And we've seen before with content and commerce, right, about how

Brian:

difficult it was for a lot of media businesses to go into other areas.

Brian:

And that was just like.

Brian:

Food 52, making pots and pans and stuff like, you know, it wasn't like operating

Brian:

technology, like a consumer technology business, a SaaS business, a media

Brian:

business, an experiential business.

Brian:

Am I missing any?

Robin:

no think you cover them all.

Robin:

TV business.

Robin:

We're in the TV business

Robin:

too,

Brian:

it's terrifying.

Brian:

I,

Robin:

we still have a li we still have linear channels, Brian,

Robin:

like we're still running linear, like 24 7, 365 linear channels.

Brian:

So how do you, how do you suck some of the complexity out of, of this?

Brian:

Or is that, is that the

Robin:

I, well, in some ways I would say it's the moat, so I think that's

Robin:

a good, you know, sort of view.

Robin:

I, I would say that we didn't get this right all along either.

Robin:

I mean, we started it in this, what I would call very complicated matrix model,

Robin:

where, you know, we were trying to like.

Robin:

I'm gonna use example, like the marketing, the, the, you know, chief

Robin:

marketing officer was like, I gotta handle all of these businesses, right?

Robin:

Or, you know, the chief technology, oh my God, I gotta handle all these

Robin:

businesses, so should I focus over here or should I focus over here?

Robin:

And I, and I would say like, that probably was one of my bigger mistakes.

Robin:

And I think it, it was painful, Brian.

Robin:

Like, I think as we went along, like there was definitely some challenges with that

Brian:

You mean like what?

Brian:

Decentralize.

Robin:

Yeah, we centralized everything.

Robin:

We were basically like, look, we're big enough.

Robin:

400 people, I'd argue we're not really big enough to centralize, and that's why we

Robin:

made the big switch, but like a year ago.

Robin:

I basically just said to the team like, this isn't working.

Robin:

Like what?

Robin:

Something about the framework that we have right now.

Robin:

So what we need to do is we need to really go into three verticals

Robin:

because that's really what we have.

Robin:

We have, and again, I put experiential with our media business

Robin:

because it's so tied together.

Robin:

But you know, we basically said, okay.

Robin:

Heather, you are gonna control your engineering team.

Robin:

You're gonna control, you know, your marketing, your all of the pieces within

Robin:

that division sa, you know Trevor, who runs our SaaS businesses, Trevor, you

Robin:

who was the CEO and founder of opia, you are gonna run the SaaS businesses.

Robin:

Lauren Bertini, who is running our consumer apps, and then we have a head of

Robin:

maps, Klaus Moberg who came from Roblox.

Robin:

You guys are gonna run the p and l for the consumer apps, which

Robin:

is largely mapping at this point.

Robin:

We have a few other things like, you know, happening there, but general,

Robin:

it's like consumer travel will sit in that consumer apps division two,

Robin:

but like we, we really bucketed down into three p and Ls that operate.

Robin:

Yes.

Robin:

In some silos, but they are, you know, they are working together.

Robin:

They have motivations to like, get somebody from content into mapping

Robin:

or content into, you know, travel.

Robin:

Like they, we, we have set up a framework where those three business leaders are,

Robin:

you know, they benefit from like getting some of these synergies to happen.

Robin:

But we're already seeing, like, I mean, I would argue that the, we

Robin:

made the change roughly last summer.

Robin:

I would say that we are already seeing the benefits.

Robin:

Like we, we, we had a blowout Q4, like it was, I mean, December,

Robin:

we were up 50% year over year.

Robin:

December year over year.

Robin:

I mean, it was just had a blowout Q4 and we're already ahead

Robin:

of plan right now for 2026.

Robin:

And I think it's because of this new structure and the,

Robin:

the, like the real ownership.

Robin:

So.

Robin:

It isn't that it isn't complicated, Brian.

Robin:

I, I agree with that.

Robin:

Like there's a lot of moving pieces, but now that we have these three sort

Robin:

of divisional, you know, leaders running their business in totality, I think

Robin:

we're starting to see the, the fact that the Matrix organization was just

Robin:

way too complicated and frankly, a lot people were waning a long time to

Robin:

make decisions in the old framework, and that was really slowing us down

Robin:

and making it quite difficult to hit and achieve what we wanted to do.

Brian:

So is the media, is the media division like a loss leader

Brian:

in this, or are they, is that

Robin:

No, they're gonna make, they're gonna make money.

Robin:

They're gonna

Brian:

Okay, so it's not like, because I think that's always the question

Brian:

about and is, is what, what role the media assets play particularly.

Brian:

Next to, to look SAS SaaS businesses are, are, are, have,

Brian:

just have different dynamics.

Brian:

consumer apps have different dynamics.

Brian:

media, you have to recreate the product like every day.

Brian:

I mean, it's not, it's not for the faint of heart.

Brian:

I sometimes, I wish I had a software business.

Brian:

Um Right.

Brian:

A he's a piece of software sell to a bunch of people.

Brian:

Although

Robin:

We gotta come up.

Robin:

We gotta come up with your utility, Brian.

Robin:

We gotta come up with

Brian:

It's mixers.

Brian:

But like, okay, so it's not like, it's not like the media assets are just, are,

Robin:

every division.

Robin:

We'll make money, this year, and the whole goal is every single division having,

Robin:

being cashflow positive, like actually generating cash for the business so that

Robin:

we can continue to build the balance sheet and be even more self-sustaining.

Robin:

And then, and then start to decide as we really get in a good spot.

Robin:

Where we're gonna make those new investments now, you know, I know

Robin:

we're gonna talk about outside days, but like outside days was a big

Robin:

investment, Brian, like if you look at

Robin:

when

Brian:

like, just, that's a good segue.

Brian:

So like explain what, explain your bet with, with outside days.

Brian:

'cause it's a big, it's like in the

Brian:

festival category.

Robin:

yeah, so the original, like if I, if I go back to year one.

Robin:

I, I had my, all my kids were born in Austin.

Robin:

I lived in Austin for seven years and I don't know how

Robin:

many South buys I've been to.

Robin:

but when I got to Colorado, I was just like, kept, like, there

Robin:

was things like outdoor retailer, which was really a B2B event.

Robin:

There were a bunch of B2B events, but I was like, I just don't understand in

Robin:

a category that is about participation, like it is literally like you as a runner,

Robin:

you'll go to a marathon, you're gonna, you want to participate, you want to

Robin:

interact, you want to connect with people.

Robin:

I was like, why isn't there a consumer event?

Brian:

The

Robin:

There's no

Brian:

were always like insane before marathons.

Brian:

I'm not an expo guy, but like yeah, I got it.

Brian:

I was like too nervous for the race to, to be shopping

Robin:

to be shopping for shoes, right.

Brian:

too

Robin:

Um, too late.

Robin:

Yeah.

Robin:

but you know, I was like, so we went to Colorado, we went to the state,

Robin:

we went to the city and we said, you know, like, what if there was a, you

Robin:

know, they obviously outdoor retailer had moved from Colorado to Park City,

Robin:

and that change had happened and I was like, what if, what if we create like.

Robin:

You know, something that looks like south by, but for the outdoors for

Robin:

consumers and has a B2B component to it.

Robin:

But when we first launched it, to be clear, like I felt like it was more

Robin:

of a marketing brand initiative.

Robin:

Like the first year I was like, I don't know how big this thing can be.

Robin:

I don't, I mean, let's see.

Robin:

We'll sell some tickets to the music.

Robin:

We'll add the music in.

Robin:

We had a film festival, we had great speakers the first year, and we had all

Robin:

these experiential things, climbing walls.

Robin:

You know, like, I mean, saunas and cold plunges out in the middle of the

Robin:

outdoors and you know, we had all this stuff there and we, there was this

Robin:

energy the first year that was like.

Robin:

Wow, we might really be onto something here.

Robin:

And then last year we just went big.

Robin:

We got much bigger bands.

Robin:

you know, we did much bigger experiences.

Robin:

We had even, you know, the speaker lineup was, was bigger.

Robin:

The film festival was bigger.

Robin:

And then I think we were like, oh, this is a real business.

Robin:

Like this is something that, you know, we can really invest in here.

Robin:

You know, in outside days, in three years is gonna be close

Robin:

to an eight figure business.

Robin:

Right?

Robin:

That and, but it obviously took a lot of capital to get there and,

Robin:

we'll, we'll make money this year on outside days, but you know, we

Robin:

had to invest the first two years.

Robin:

So it was a bit of a gamble.

Robin:

Right?

Robin:

It was a bit, especially at that scale, right?

Robin:

I mean, last year we had 35,000 people.

Robin:

We expect, this year to be bigger.

Robin:

you know, so it was a gamble for sure.

Robin:

Now I think I look at it and go, no, this is a real business and we wanna

Robin:

figure out how to keep growing it.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

And the idea around South by Southwest is like, you know, so by Southwest

Brian:

began in, in, in film, right?

Brian:

And then it added interactive, it was about film, but it

Brian:

was about more than film.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

So, and I think that's like the kind of interesting, 'cause where I think where

Brian:

you're going with outside is, is you can't just be for like the hardcore.

Brian:

Climber, you

Robin:

no, no.

Robin:

I mean, if anything, you now need to think about this.

Robin:

You know, person that doesn't actually see themselves as an outdoor

Robin:

person, but they're outdoorsy, right?

Robin:

They're, they're, they, you know, and so we have to broaden the number of people

Robin:

coming in and, and I mean, I, I could talk for hours about the health benefits

Robin:

and the clinical work that's going on and all the things that are so important

Robin:

to spend time outdoors, but I do think we're thinking about that customer, that

Robin:

customer that how do you get the next.

Robin:

Base of customers into the outdoor category.

Robin:

And that's really what's growing.

Robin:

And so that's really what outside days is about.

Robin:

Again, we have people there like, I mean, I would consider, you know,

Robin:

Alex Hunt is pretty extreme, right?

Robin:

Like, I mean he just Kline Taipei 1 0 1 and he'll be there, you know,

Robin:

speaking and you know, his foundation is involved and you know, we have

Robin:

the TV show with them, et cetera.

Robin:

So there will be some hardcore people that come out to want to

Robin:

see Alex, but he's also like.

Robin:

You know, it's very approachable and like a lot of people will, you know, get into

Robin:

climbing because of someone like Alex.

Robin:

Right.

Brian:

Yeah, like I saw it with running like, you know, running,

Brian:

when I started, you know, doing like long distance running.

Brian:

It was still like sort of, you know, a friend.

Brian:

I don't wanna say like, it was a little bit of a fringe activity, you know?

Brian:

And then, you know, the corporate five Ks and whatnot, you would like.

Brian:

You know, if you're like a quote unquote real runner, you would

Brian:

sort of look down on, on the run, walking and all that stuff.

Brian:

But, you know, the reality is, you know, these categories like expand and

Brian:

particularly outdoors, I think it, it, it seems to me it will be like a really

Brian:

great category because of the phones.

Brian:

Like everyone

Robin:

It's, It's, the, it's the antidote, Brian.

Robin:

It's the antidote, like go spend.

Robin:

You know, a day in nature away from your phone, I promise

Robin:

you, you're gonna feel better.

Robin:

I mean, you know, or even if you go for a run and it's for 45

Robin:

minutes, you're gonna feel better.

Robin:

Right?

Robin:

And so, I mean, that's our theory is that it, it, it is the antidote.

Robin:

Like people are gonna want to spend more and more time away from

Robin:

technology just to get a break.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

So final thing is, does this still make sense as a VC backed enterprise?

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

Like, I mean, normally like, you know, if you go down the VC path, you

Brian:

know, you're getting on the train.

Brian:

I mean, that's usually it.

Brian:

Like, you know, you've gotta, you've, you've mapped it out and it's, I

Brian:

don't wanna say ride or die, but it,

Robin:

no, there's only, there's only three outcomes, Brian.

Robin:

There's only three outcomes.

Robin:

When you take venture capital money, there's only three

Brian:

I know one is not good.

Robin:

No one is, you go bust.

Robin:

Right.

Robin:

One is you sell to a strategic, and three is that you go IPO.

Robin:

There is no other.

Robin:

So I'm very, I've been very realistic with the team.

Robin:

I've been like, these are the three outcomes.

Robin:

Now I think we're, I mean, again, you can never say never Brian, but

Robin:

I do think we are beyond the bust.

Robin:

I think there were definitely challenging times in the last four years where even I

Robin:

maybe was like, shit, this is really hard,

Robin:

you know?

Brian:

so your

Brian:

default alive

Robin:

We're def Yeah, we're, we're here and we're thriving right now.

Robin:

Like, I'd say we're thriving right now.

Robin:

I can't predict the future.

Robin:

I mean, we had sa SAS apocalypse, is that what they're calling it?

Robin:

Like is going on right now?

Robin:

'cause of ai?

Robin:

you know, so I mean, there are certainly many, many challenges on the horizon that

Robin:

we have to figure out how to navigate.

Robin:

But, you know, there are some really, like, and this is where I'm a big

Robin:

believer in this category, like.

Robin:

You know, there was a big, big, merger recently between e GM and PlayOn, which

Robin:

owns PlayOn, owns ClassPass and some other things that, that was like an

Robin:

$8 billion, merger that just happened.

Robin:

Strava's gonna go public this year.

Robin:

you know, you, you, you got, you know, certainly Pelotons had

Robin:

their fair share of challenges.

Robin:

You got Aura, you got whoop in the space.

Robin:

I'm a big believer in this category and I think that our model is defensible.

Robin:

I think if we can continue to grow, I think we have many opportunities.

Robin:

So, you know, at this point, what I'd say is.

Robin:

We are VC backed, we are, you know, growth venture backed, and

Robin:

you know, those are the, those to me are the eventual outcomes.

Robin:

I personally would like to grow it to the point to get IPO and have it be

Robin:

a brand like outside as a brand that, you know, people can look to, you

Robin:

know, a hundred years in the future.

Robin:

but you know, again, I mean, to me there's three outcomes and you know, I

Robin:

think hopefully we've at least gotten past the first one at this point.

Robin:

Again, many tricky things on the horizon, but you know, it could be

Robin:

that someone buys us down the road.

Robin:

Who that is?

Robin:

I, I, I couldn't speculate right now,

Brian:

If you go the IPO path, like will you have to raise more?

Robin:

I don't, I don't know yet.

Robin:

I mean, the answer is, I think we can grow organically faster

Robin:

even than we are right now.

Robin:

And we're, I think we're setting up to do that.

Robin:

I think we could get back to 30, 40% growth rates, you know, in the future.

Robin:

and you know, if you think about that expanded out five years, you could see

Robin:

an IPO path just from organic growth.

Robin:

But I also think Brian, our model was set up to continue

Robin:

thinking about the user journey.

Robin:

So I go back to what are we trying to do?

Robin:

We're trying to make and, and reduce friction.

Robin:

For the consumer to ultimately go from inspiration to the

Robin:

activation to community.

Robin:

Like how do we bring these people together, whether it's the climbing

Robin:

community, whether it's the running community, whatever it is, and,

Robin:

and so there's a lot, it's, this is still a highly, highly fragmented.

Robin:

World in our space, like there are just lots of utilities,

Robin:

there's lots of SaaS platforms.

Robin:

They don't necessarily work together that well.

Robin:

So you know, I'm not counting out that we will not raise more capital.

Robin:

It's very possible that we will, and you know, two of our, I mean, two of our.

Robin:

In my opinion, two of our big acquisitions Brian have been in the last 12 months.

Robin:

I mean we bought MapMyFitness back from Under Armour, so I got my first

Robin:

company back and we bought in Topia and those two strategically like

Robin:

map my is doing incredibly well.

Robin:

Subscriptions growing, the product is doing great.

Robin:

Lots of net new, registered users downloads organically.

Robin:

in topia is, I mean, we've just signed two seven figure deals in the

Robin:

last, two months in, in topia, like big, big strategic deals for us.

Robin:

And so like, I mean, we just did those acquisitions in the last year and so,

Robin:

you know, I'm, I'm, I still believe we have one of the only platforms that is

Robin:

thinking about the consumer in this way and ultimately is a. A, a place where we

Robin:

can bring that fragmentation together for the consumer to have a better experience.

Brian:

Got it.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

Thank you so much, Robin.

Brian:

Hope to see you at the next mixer.

Brian:

Really

Robin:

I'm gonna come.

Robin:

I mean, you tell me when it is and I promise I'll be there.

Brian:

All right, sounds good.

Brian:

Thank you.

Robin:

Thanks man.

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