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That is spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com/trb, and meet with Beehiiv's team of growth and newsletter experts today. 1:16 Thank you so much to Beehiiv for their support. Welcome to the Reboot It show. I am Brian Morrissey. Very excited to... I'm gonna butcher your name, Max. Max Chien? Thanks. Chien. Yeah, Chien. Chien. The T is silent. 1:28 The T-U- It's very difficult. T is silent. Well, the E is the, the tricky part 'cause Chien or Chien. I actually went to a YouTube to... 1:35 There's, there's conflicting SEO on this, so maybe it's something that you could- [laughs] Yeah, it's Chien. 'Cause I mis- mispronounce your every single name. Chien. That's what my friends called me in college. 1:43 I am excited anytime anyone in media is launching a new media company. Max and his partners have done just that with Caper. It's all about the, the power around food. We're gonna get into the thesis of it. 1:59 Max is a veteran of The Athletic and Puck, and, and I see, I see footprints of both in, in this model, but maybe I'm wrong. Max, just start off by what is your theory of the case, like, in media? 2:12 'Cause you're launching a new company, and a lot of people, you could've gone into commercial real estate. [laughs] Well, I f- for-- I think I feel really lucky that I get to keep building in media. 2:22 I, I find it really fun, really interesting, very fast-paced. I think mayb- maybe my risk profile lends to it, and I just love telling stories, so I want... 2:31 I think first and foremost, I just feel like quite lucky I get to do this over and over again and in different ways. 2:37 You know, I mean, there's so, there is so much DNA from The Athletic and from Puck that's coming into this. 2:44 I mean, at The Athletic, you know, it was category specific, and I think that was sort of something that I thought was, you know, obviously worked really well and, and wanted to kind of go back into. 2:56 You know, I think Puck obviously covers lots of different areas. That's, that's sort of its moat as well, its ability to sort of play in between lots of different worlds. 3:05 But I, I think there's a real strength to kind of coming back to this common denominator of food, restaurants, hospitality, and, and, and how sort of, you know, these different len- these different category lenses now focus in, in that space. 3:19 Yeah. 3:19 And when I, you know, when I was thinking about what to, to build next, you know, I, uh, I built this with Dan Sinis, who I worked with at Puck, and we both had a shared interest in this space and in food and restaurants and actually really what happens beyond the food and beyond the plate. 3:34 I think that was what was most interesting to us. And so we began researching the landscape, and in a lot of ways, 3:42 food media ha- to me looked actually a lot like sports media did in, in 2016, 2017, when The Athletic was, was getting going. 3:51 And b- and by that it meant, it, it-- I mean that it sort of felt like it had, had devolved into kind of this world of lists and rankings on the consumer side, and, you know, these sites that are really focused on chasing search traffic, right? 4:06 And not necessarily telling, telling great stories. And so that was one really interesting piece of pattern recognition that hit me over the head. Okay, so that was, like, the equivalent of the scores, right? 4:17 Like, I mean, like, in that... Like, I think The Athletic, the... 4:22 At the launch, at least, The Athletic was like, "We're not gonna cover," like, the, like, what happened in the game is not, you know, what, what we're about. Yeah, no recaps. 4:30 I mean, The Athletic was about smarter sports coverage for- Yeah... for the smarter fan. And, and again, it didn't feel... 4:36 Like, in, in a world that is, that has got so many great stories and characters, it didn't feel like there was a singular brand that was consistently doing that. 4:45 And you would, you know, you'd read a great New York Times story, and New Yorker sort of Grub Street story, but there wasn't, I think, the consistent dedication to, "Hey, let's, let's cover the industry, and let's do it in a really smart way to tell these stories and, and really cover the, the business of this world." 5:01 Okay. But the... Let's, let's just return to the theory of the case though, right? Like, so at The Athletic, subscriptions, and, and Puck, right? Subscriptions plus ads. 5:10 I mean, s- s- the ads came subsequently to The Athletic, were always part of, of Puck. And I think be- being, like, narrow and focusing on an affluent audience, I feel like is, is that... 5:22 And then the prosumer part of it. Well, so yeah. And for, with Puck, that, that, that- Definitely... I don't know. Like, I'm trying to unpack the elements that went into what, what makes up Caper. Totally. 5:33 And, and so let me start on that last point. So, so first we kind of examined the consumer side of food media- Yeah... and kind of felt like we saw this consistency where, again, there wasn't... 5:43 It was list rankings, service journalism, reviews, criticism, recipes, and not really any really consistently great storytelling. 5:50 Then we started thinking about, yeah, what we, certainly what we did at Puck in the worlds of Hollywood, fashion, you know, business, politics, and how we approached the professional class there in a way that was w- very, very different than the way the trades had previously, where it was... 6:08 You know, and, and so when weI, I think it was voicier, it was certainly personality-driven, a lot more opinion, a lot more analysis. 6:14 Obviously, Bethany's done, you know, an incredible job, you know, at leading that there at Puck. And in food, the B2B landscape was incredibly utility-driven more than anything. So for... 6:28 And, and almost, almost focused on proprietors and how they can improve their, their businesses, but not necessarily tell their stories, right? And so we look at the... 6:39 And we, so then we sort of saw that and we were like, "Okay, well, there's lots of interesting stories here again, that are str- strategic business stories about how to succeed in this world," right? 6:50 And, and then there's also incredible characters that are behind all, all of these things. So let's, let's create that universe and let's bring that to light and let's cover it m- more in-depthly. 7:00 And, and, and we started to really circle the, these hospitality groups, which I think are incredible businesses with incredible leadership, but you really only, at least I only really knew about the person at the very top. 7:16 You know, you know who Danny Meyers is, right? Mm-hmm. You don't know any- like, really, a-a-that many... anyone else. And so I was like, "Well, let's start to look at this, this layer of... 7:26 this executive layer that's, that's below that, but is, got their finger on the pulse of the business, making huge decisions, leading things, going on and starting new things." 7:35 And so I was like, "Oh, maybe that is the, the wedge in," and beginning to cover that more in-depthly. 7:40 And in some ways they, they are like, they are like the producers, you know, in Hollywood in covering that class more, more in-depthly. 7:46 And we do think a lot about, you know, producers as sort of these hospitality groups and agents, you know, with, you know, maybe w-with the comms groups in this world and, and even then, and then the chefs as the actors, right, and the stars. 7:59 And I think that analogy a-a-is really interesting for us in terms of our, how we're gonna cover this. So, so we kind of then identified that space and that... And so I'm going back to then the consumer side, and that 8:12 then began to circle this prosumer world where, again, we felt it was lagging in, in both departments. And that's very, yeah, reminiscent of, of, of Puck and, and kind of how that, that coverage area came about. Okay. 8:26 So it's like, I, I think that the Hollywood comparison is, is an apt one and it's an interesting one. But it, it, you know, restaurants are everywhere. So I assume, like, it just that I've... It's only been, what? 8:40 Like a, a week or so. Like, so a, a lot of it is very New York-centric. We're actually, we're launching the site today, actually. There's a lot going on. Okay. 8:48 We've been getting- Well, I've been getting the emails, but [chuckles] We've been publishing, we've been publishing newsletter only, but now the site will be live. And yeah, to your point, like, we're, we're... 8:55 we are very New York-centric. You know, Emma, Annie, Chris, you know, the whole team is all here, Dana. But we think that we'll be... I mean, we have contributors in different parts of the country, in different- Okay... 9:08 parts of the, the world. So you're gonna cover other restaurant food scenes? Would you say it's food scenes or...? Uh, so the way that we wanna travel, so to speak, is, is to always anchor in, 9:22 in the category that then will turn its lens towards restaurants and hospitality. And by [chuckles] that I mean, like, it's, it's a real estate story, right? Or it's a business story. Or it's a media story, right? 9:36 And that's the, that's the actual anchor of the coverage. Everything in New York is a real estate story. In a lot of ways- [chuckles]... restaurants are- Yeah... a real estate business. 9:44 Like, that is a very, very, you know- Yeah... fair, fair point. 9:47 But I think, I think that's how you, we wanna be anchoring our coverage, and then you can spoke out to lots of different parts of the world, right, just based on that. And that's, that is a lot of our audience strategy. 9:59 I mean, certainly, you know, Chris, Annie give us great connectivity in the space. They both come from, you know, Chris, Chris Crowley was at Grub Street for 10, for 10 plus years. 10:10 Emma Orlow was at Eater and, and lo- and has lots of other bylines, but has been in, in food media, and they give us great connectivity in this space. 10:19 But then when you think about, you know, Annie Armstrong, who came from Artnet, right? And we're saying- Yeah... to Annie, "Hey, you know, let's have you focus on what's going on the walls in these places," right? 10:29 And, you know, the decisions about the design, about what's on the walls, about where it comes from, who it's from. 10:36 And we think that's an interesting angle to now take your category expertise and your s- you know, your network really, and turn it towards food, restaurants, and hospitality. 10:47 And I think there's an opportunity to do something similar, you know, in real estate, in business, in media. I mean, I think media on food media is a really, really interesting category. Oh my God. 10:58 And I think that's a, I think that's an int- more interesting than media on media, you know, in some ways. Hey, watch it. And bigger, and bigger than... [both laughing] Right? It's like- Right... 11:08 but it's, you know, it's like the creator- Point taken... economy, the cookm- [laughs] the cookbook economy, right? Like, all the stuff that's getting, getting created for film and television, right? 11:18 That, that again, this common denominator that we can all relate to, and it's such a lived experience of, of food and, and these, these places that we go. So that's a bit about the audience that, that we think... 11:32 And, and at the end of the day, like, we, we should be s- we're gonna serve the professional class, but I think- But yes, that's not the point. Is it, it... who are you going to be essential to? 11:40 'Cause I feel like these days when you launch, you have to be essential to a group of people. I don't care if it's ter- 30 or 300 or 3,000 or 30,000, it's not gonna be, like, 30 million anymore. 11:51 Who is it going to be essential to? Because my, my concern with any sort of prosumer model is that it gets caught in between. It's neither, it's neither B2B nor B2C. It's something in the mushy middle. Mm-hmm. 12:05 It's not... It doesn't have the, the, the... It doesn't have a wide enough aperture to capture the, the sort of consumer dollars- Yeah... 12:14 but then it's not, like, narrow and deep enough to, to get the sort of corporate expense account money either. 12:21 Mm-hmm.Well, we're-- you'll, you'll see our, our tiers, and we do have a professional tier that's gonna be, you know, higher priced. 12:27 But I, I'd say that our, our core audience is these hospitality groups and people working in and navigating a career in, in the food, restaurant, and hospitality industry. 12:38 And again, I think that, that we can tell their stories, give them, give them the space to tell their sto-stories in new ways, cover them, you know, in interesting ways, and also provide professional products for that class. 12:51 So at the end of the day, that is the core, and, and our belief is that if we're serving the pros in this industry well, there is a consumer class that will actually find that incredibly interesting and, and want that same level of access and knowledge base that they can use in their own lives to, to leverage, right? 13:14 And, and I think about the professional class, you know, like, like yourself, right? Who, who dines for sport, right? And wants greater level of intimacy with these places they go. 13:27 And reading Caper should help you become a better patron because of the knowledge you'll gain about these places you're going, right? Right. 13:35 So knowing the na- knowing the maitre d's name, like, for instance, I think that's, like, a really, really interesting, you know, component of all this. 13:42 It's gonna help you have be-- show up at these places, have better manners, know who you're-- know who's doing the work behind the scenes and, and actually experience these places much more intimately than you would have otherwise. 13:53 Okay. Yeah. I mean, if you can still, like, grease the maitre d' with, like, you know, twenty- Bring a six-pack... twenty. I don't know. [chuckles] Like if you can get a table. Bring a, bring a six-pack. 14:01 I, I don't, I don't deal with Resy or any of that. Like, New York restaurants have become almost unu... as unusable- It's, it's crazy... 14:08 as webpages because of these, this idiotic restaurants reservation system, but we can talk about that later. 14:15 I mean- So you're charging a hundred dollars a year for, for, I guess, basically on the consumer side, and then, and then three hundred dollars a year, two ninety-nine, for the, the professional. 14:26 And the professional comes with... I mean, it says professional products to navigate the hospitality industry. You get in-person event invitations and additional dispatches focused on profiles and business reporting. 14:41 So yeah, so it's to be essential to the people within the industry that do this for a living, right? Mm-hmm. And then the outer rung is people who are just into the culture of, like, restaurants. 14:57 I mean, to me, it's like if you think about, like, the business of sports has beco-- is, it ha-has prosumer heat. Like, you know, Politico made politics, you know, have that. I mean, at the time. Mm-hmm. 15:10 Now it's, like, accepted, but it was, politics was not, like, a, a consumer category like it is now. Is that, like, sort of fair? Absolutely. 15:20 I mean, I think, I think there's a class, a prof- a professional class that is, you know, that is out, that does not work in the space, but they are out in these restaurants, and this is where deals are... These are... 15:33 This is where deals are getting done. Yeah. And so they, they have... They are incredibly enthusiastic about the space. They, they might even be, you know, supporting them in, in investment rounds, right? Mm-hmm. 15:44 Writing a check to, to someone to support, you know, the restaurant for, for that purpose. 15:49 And I think that's the, the enthusiast that actually is pretty prevalent in some of these, you know, in New York and Los Angeles, Miami, all these food capitals. 16:00 And so yeah, that's, that's definitely who we're, we're after. Yeah. And I think if we cover the world for professionals, that class of people will be served as well. Yeah. 16:09 And there's certain industries that lend itself to this, and I think food could be one. I hadn't, like, thought about it as, as, as one. But even, like, real estate. 16:17 Like Real Deal in some ways, like, they're a little bit more hardcore B2B. Mm. But a lot of their stuff flexes into, because everyone's interested in real estate, at least in New York or Miami. 16:27 [chuckles] Like there's- Yeah... everyone's interested in real estate. And there's ama... And there's, there's, there's amazing stories within, you know, the, the real estate world. 16:36 There's a lot of, like, crazy characters. I mean, I don't know if anyone's seen The Cabinet. It's, it's a great comp, and I've been trading notes with Amir on this stuff. He, he's been awesome. 16:46 It's absolutely a g- a good comp. I mean, that's a li-- those are shared lived experiences that many people can relate to, just like going out to eat. And, you know- Yeah... 16:55 the accessibility is something not to be lost as well. Like, you know, it's a lot more prohibitive to go and pay a ton of money to get, to put art on the wall, right? Like that's... 17:07 Versus, you know, going out to eat, that's a lot more accessible, you know, and a way to, to express taste and, and have status and, and be sort of in, in culture. Yeah, and food is... 17:17 and food has risen up the sort of cultural hierarchy, I feel like, in the last, like, ten plus years. I don't... I'm not... I have no evidence for that, but that's, that's my vibe check. 17:28 [chuckles] The evidence is, is the, you know, ar-art imitating life or life imitating art. Like look at all the production that comes that's focused on food. It's sports and food, right? 17:38 It's like, look at all the production that happens around these shows. Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's a little bit of the, that evidence, yeah. So let's talk about the business model. 17:48 It's gonna be subs and ads, yeah? Subs and ads, yeah. Diversified revenue mix from the start, and an events program from, from day one. We'll, we'll do our first next month. 17:59 And then over time, we really want to develop our, our IP muscle. 18:04 We think we're, you know, gonna be telling, you know, really great stories, and how can we create that muscle that is developing them on a consistent base and in-into different formats. 18:14 Right.So, I mean, like, and look, it's, it, it just happened. 18:18 But like I could imagine, you know, the, the sort of rise and fall of like Noma being like a p- an IP project that had you been, had, had Caper been around through the whole drama. Mm-hmm. There's... 18:30 If any people don't know, there's this drama that's been swirling around Noma, which is like a, a famous restaurant in, in, it's in Copenhagen, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I've never been. 18:39 And that can lend it, 'cause again, these are like outsized c- characters. I mean, we're, we're used to the sort of outsized characters of, of chefs, thanks to a lot of documentaries and TV shows. 18:50 Chris Crowley got, kinda got a local take on that. I mean, we certainly, you know, New York Times had that, you know, blockbuster, for sure. Yeah. 18:57 But then Chris kinda went a little bit sort of beyond the story and, and got the local flavor of how, how the local newspapers were covering it, which I thought that was an interesting approach. Yeah. 19:07 So tell me what you've learned then with The Athletic and then Puck with subs as like a base for the business, 'cause you're launching with... So I mean, again, I got a few of the newsletters, but now I gotta pay, right? 19:20 [chuckles] Right. But you're launching with subs. Yeah. And talk to me about how you... 19:28 Like what are, what are, what are the sort of lessons you've learned from the, from, from your previous experiences that you're applying to this model? Yeah. Well, it's, it is porting audience with the right talent. 19:39 I think that's, that's really important, and that was certainly the name of the game at The Athletic. You know, I think the local sports writer wa- had incr- had, had incredible loyalty. 19:50 I think that's something that maybe, I don't know if it exists in a s- in a profile of writer in, in any other, other class. And, and I think the reason for that was that the local sports writer, 20:03 many cases, got their, got their dream job at a very early age and stayed. 20:11 You know, they became the local, you know, local sports writer at the Chicago Tribune or, or, or whatever local newspaper, and then were there for the next 20 years. Mm-hmm. And literally developed legacy readership. 20:24 You, you know, the dad, the son read it, you know, the son's son, like... And, and so 20:29 when we began at The Athletic, you know, taking those journalists out of the, out of newspapers and putting them behind The Athletic paywall, their audience did transfer very, very well, you know? 20:40 And so that's where subscriptions came from, and then you saw the scale of The Athletic and, you know, how we expanded, and we basically went city to city and, and, and had this go-to-market strategy that worked incredibly well. 20:51 You know, Puck, in some cases, similar, but not the same scale, right? 20:55 It was, it was a little bit more about, you know, finding the top journalists in, in all these different fields and, and really, again, certainly leveraging their distribution and, and speaking to their audience, trying to bring them over. 21:06 But in many cases that, those journalists just were a different, you know, they, like they represented a different profile because they, they moved around to lots of different publications over the course of their career. 21:18 So they, and they probably sh- you know, shed some audience along the way or, you know, they were able to develop their own personal brand along the way and then keep, keep more and more audience with them. 21:27 So I, I think, you know, again, and that's probably, that is in a lot of ways why at The Athletic we were able to be subscription only, right? And then at Puck, we were diversified revenue from day one. 21:41 Now, now The Athletic under The New York Times also has an advertising layer. But at, for, you know, up until acquisition, it was a pure, pure subscription play. 21:50 At Puck, it was, you know, advertising plus subscription, and that was necessary in order to, to support that, that, that team and that talent. 21:59 And I think, I think right now at, at this scale, you know, with Caper, it's, it's similar. 22:03 It's, it's, you know, small team, we think top voices in, in a couple different areas covering the space and, and making sure that we're, we're really diversified, you know, both with advertising and subscription. 22:17 Uh, I think the events component is gonna be really important here. Obviously, this category lends incredibly well to it, and so we want to lean into that. 22:25 You said this on your- Wait, does it, wait, do- so let me ask you this. Does it lend into this? 'Cause here's my like sort of counterpoint to it. Yeah. 22:33 Rifat Ali had told this to me one time, 'cause he had a food publication for a little bit, and he was like, "The problem with it is in B2B, you're, you're gonna do events and everything, but they're always in the kitchen. 22:44 They can't take like a, a night off. They can't take a day off. Like, they're constantly in the kitchen." Hmm. So, like we couldn't get... [chuckles] So he was like, "The problem is the hours." Yeah. 22:53 'Cause if you work, if you, if you're in the business, you're, you're tied up too much. That was his- Yeah. We, I don't know if we've found that yet. 23:00 I mean, you know, our events program, it, one, one of them is going to be this really unique event that showcases top chefs from around the city, basically in a cooking competition style, y- you know, in, in different rooms around the city, and these might be fairly unexpected rooms where you wouldn't expect to get an amazing meal cooked for you. 23:23 And, you know, we're fortunate to have a great partner there, and the connectivity so far is, makes us believe differently, that these, they are- Yeah... 23:33 accessible, they're highly competitive, you know, they like wanna be in these rooms. They wanna test out new things. They wanna just straight up win. 23:40 So wait- I think this, I think- So this is like, this is a type of event that you're gonna be doing, this, this, like chefs are competing. 23:46 Yeah, we- Is this like a consumer event, or is this for people who are like in, in the industry? Well, it's, it's just the s- it's just the style of the event. 23:53 The, the attendees could be directly out of our membership, or it could be a more curated hospitality leadership- Okay... dinner, for instance. But we think the spectacle of it is- Mm-hmm... 24:04 what's really interesting, unique, doesn't feel like you're at a, you know, you know, kind of business kind of networking dinner. It's, it's actually quite a spectacle. 24:13 And it did, you know, we wanted to, if you're over the summer, it's got this sort of-Underground rap battle meets Top Chef vibe, where you're showing up- Okay... 24:20 in a place, you know, that you, again, wouldn't expect to get this amazing meal, and you're quite literally in the kitchen with these, these top CDCs, and they're preparing a meal. 24:30 It's, it's coursed out, there's voting, there's a winner. And, you know, you, you learn who they are over the course of the evening. 24:38 And just seeing, I think what stuck with me was just how competitive they are and just seeing how competitive they... these, these top chefs are. Yeah, I couldn't do this with programmatic advertising, that's for sure. 24:47 [laughs] It'd be difficult to pull off. [laughs] One of the things that you are bringing over is, you know, I think a flavor of this talent, basically strategy, right? 24:59 Like, and tell me, is like, is it exact to how, you know, you talked about the difference between Athletic and Puck, but is it-- this, this seems like this is an integral part of the strategy. 25:09 How is it different than, than say how, like, you know, you guys were approaching it at Puck, for example? It's... Yeah, I mean, the, the deal structure is similar. 25:19 You know, there's, there's, there's base, there's a bonus off direct subscription driven. For Caper, we're adding, you know, a company, you know, bonus based off company goals as well that our team will participate in. 25:32 There's equity in the business. We think that's incredibly important for the team, especially them, you know, everyone taking, taking a risk at the same, at the same stage as us. 25:41 And then we also are including IP participation and making that sort of a day one component of everyone's deal so that, you know, regardless of, of what they're writing and how it goes on and gets developed, their, their level of participation, they'll, they'll have some level of participation no matter what, and that could, you know, you know, increase based on their involvement in it going forward. 26:02 So yeah, all of these, you know, we want, we want as much of this participation as possible. It's really, it's really an important component here. 26:10 And that, that model started at The Athletic, you know, and then we, we ported over to Puck and now I think taking it one step further with, with Caper. And how about the... What's the advertiser base like? 26:20 Do you expect this to be like endemics or is it, is it going to be a, a broader category? Yeah, I mean, ce-ce-certainly some endemics. 26:30 The, the point of sale, you know, platforms, Square, Toast, all those for, for restaurants, I think is a, a really interesting category for us. 26:40 It's, it's credit cards, you know, and speaking to their, their loyalty programs. It's endemic on the hospitality and travel space. I think that, that lends well. 26:50 Maybe there's sort of some of the DMO market world that, that makes sense here based on- Wait, what's the... What's DMO? That's the destination marketing organizations. Okay. 26:59 Like, you know, visit San Diego, stuff like that. Spirits certainly, you know, is, is another area that we wanna really, really hone in on. So yeah, some endemics, but then I think it broadens out. 27:11 You know, our first, our first partner is Luve. We think there's a luxury SKU here as well in, in terms of the, the class that we're speaking to and the audience that we're speaking to. 27:21 So we think there's a lane there as well. That's interesting. The first partner is Luve. How's that... Like explain the tie there, 'cause I wouldn't, I wouldn't have ex... I would've expected like a Resy or someone. 27:32 Resy, I mean, well, yeah, that's, that's a... that's one that we, we certainly wanna unlock. Yeah, I know. [laughs] Well, Luve, we, you know, we, 27:40 we had, we had some relationships and, and got to know them and they, they just, you know, I think they- Yeah... 27:46 they appreciated the vision and, you know, understand the, again, the class that we're speaking to, and I think they wanted to ultimately be, be first up for this as well, and we were able to, to create an attractive package that it put them on it. 28:02 Yeah. So how do you do-- how do you grow in 2026? I mean, do you expect starting now to be... The, the playbook is, is very different than, than what you ran at like The Athletic and at Puck. 28:17 I don't think it's gonna be, you know, the dial up your meta ads and, and search ads- Okay... as much. It's a lot-- I think it's gonna be a lot more partnership oriented, event oriented. 28:30 I mean, we think that there are different... 28:34 Th-this world is, is-- it's connected in so many interesting ways, and it's such a relationships business that I think it's really navigating that correctly f-with, with partnerships, and maybe that's through events or maybe that's in, in some other ways. 28:49 But I, I think that will be a big part of it. You know, our contributor base, I think will extend in some interesting ways to help with distribution. 28:57 Certainly, like we're bringing in voices, you know, from all over the place. I, I actually think that, that that's how we can, again, differentiate. 29:06 I think that's how we can have an audience strategy by, you know, being a bit unexpected with some of the bylines that you'll see, and that those will be people that are flanking Annie and, and Emma and, and Chris. 29:18 So yeah, I think, I think it is a little bit different. The cre-the creator side of this and creator partnerships will factor in somehow. 29:26 I think we've got a great partner, investor partner in, in Wheelhouse, and I think they're helping us think about some of that stuff, for instance. 29:33 And, and then un-understanding how to really work well with these hospitality groups too. Mm-hmm. And also, y-you raised money. I think you raised about two and a half million. Talk to me about that, about that decision. 29:46 It's alm- it's almost like the reverse now, where it's like, you know, it's cool to bootstrap. You know, it's not like the, the big rounds of the past, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, it's, it's two and a half million. 29:56 That goes, that goes pretty quickly, particularly if you're based in New York City. Exactly. [laughs] It's like a, it's like a one bedroom. [laughs] We, we... It gives us pretty good runway. 30:06 We're, we're pretty lean and mean. Yeah, it was... I mean, the fundraise itself was, was pretty efficient. I, I think this concept and this category really, really resonated with an investor class. 30:17 I mean-And, and I think there was, you know, definitely interest in the space from Human Ventures and, and Joe and Heather over there who, who led it, and then some of our other investors. 30:27 So I think that just resonated quite well. It-- And then I, you know, again, I, I sort of have been fortunate to, to work with a lot of investors in media over the years. 30:36 So, you know, called up a, a lot of people that I've had overlap with at The Athletic and, and some other places. And so that, that is really how it came together. 30:45 The deci- the decision was- But it's not like you're getting on the VC train, like that this leads to the A, to the B, to the C, like, you know, like that. Yeah. 30:56 No, I think, I think we, you know, this can get to profitability like quite quickly. And- Okay. Again, just, just stay, staying disciplined. 31:02 But, but it's not, and it doesn't require the same level of capital, particularly on the product and engineering side of things, you know, that it once, once had. We, we partnered with Beehive to do this. 31:14 You know, know, know the team over there well, and they've been incredibly supportive i- and in terms of building this and lending resources and sort of supporting how we do it. 31:23 And it's, and it's a fraction of, you know, what it would've cost to build, you know, fi- five, six years ago. So I think that's, that's a hu- Yeah. That's a huge difference as well. 31:32 Well, I mean, POC, you guys like started your own... I mean, you built, you built more-- It seems like just like looking at the, like you, you built more custom stuff like with POC than, I mean, I know- Yeah. 31:42 The Athletic did. It was. Right? It was, yes. Yes. And I mean, they were both, they were both, they were both, you know, WordPress sites in the end, but with a lot of custom, you know, on top of that. 31:51 So again, there's, there weren't the same out of the box tools that exist now. And again, it's just not as capital intensive as it once did. And, and, you know, will we... 32:01 Yeah, you know, hard to say if we, you know, if we'll need to, to, to, to raise more or not, but I, I know that 32:08 we've got what we need to give us a, a real shot here and to make sure we, we hone in on the audience and, and develop the stories we wanna tell. Mm-hmm. And I assume like you'll... 32:19 This should attract like an affluent audience 'cause I mean, look, every-- in media, like you, you pretty much, to have a shot these days, you really should be going after like an affluent audience, either a business audience or just, or just rich people. 32:33 Like i- is, [laughs] is that fair? Absolutely. I mean, you know, people that are going out to eat and have that disposable income, I think is certainly an attractive category for us. 32:44 We, you know, this executive class in hospitality, certainly. 32:49 And I think people that, that wanna, you know, support, support this, this space or just enthusiastic about this space, you know, represent that, that, that wealth class. Okay. Cool. 33:00 Well, Max, I am looking forward to charting its evolution. And as I said, like I'm excited that like, you know, people, people are still starting media companies. That's good. Thanks, Brian. It's good. Yeah. 33:10 It's a positive. I mean, you know, this is, this is a fun place to be. We're lucky we get to do it and- Yeah, all the tourists are gone now. It's only the hardcore media people left, so it's great. It's true. 33:22 [laughs] Is that it? Yeah, that's, that's it. Awesome. Thank you, Max. All right, man. Thanks. [outro music]
