Found Navigating media's ups and downs with theSkimm co-founders
Jan 30, 2024
Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, co-founders of theSkimm, discuss navigating the media industry, building a team that aligns with your vision, and the power of having a unique voice. They also talk about their early days of grassroots marketing, the importance of newsletters, and prioritizing growth.
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Design For A Daily Ritual
- Carly and Danielle identified millennial women as an underserved, high-impact audience and built TheSkimm to fit into their morning routines.
- They deliberately designed email-first content to be the friendly, habitual start-of-day ritual for that demographic.
Owning The Audience Beats Platform Dependence
- Building a direct line to users via email created first- and zero-party data that insulated TheSkimm from platform algorithm changes.
- That ownership of audience relationships proved a long-term strategic advantage over reliance on SEO or social algorithms.
Bootstrapped Night Shifts and Grassroots Growth
- Carly and Danielle bootstrapped TheSkimm from their couch with a few thousand dollars and sent the daily newsletter themselves through the night.
- They slept in shifts, tracked subscriber counts obsessively, and grew via grassroots tactics before raising meaningful VC funding.