Post's Publishing Tech Commercialization
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A story about how Jeff Bezos and Washington Post transformed their internal publishing technology into a profitable enterprise product called Arc Publishing.
"Jeff Bezos bought Washington Post and said 'I'm gonna let the editorial do its thing, but I want to take your guys' technology used to publish articles and make that a huge business.'
They created Arc Publishing, which does a couple things. Companies like us pay money to use it, but what's really interesting is they're going to companies like BP, the oil company with 200,000 employees, and saying 'Hey, we'll help you publish newsletters and articles to your employees. We'll help you organize it and make sure it's read.'
They're saying in the next year or two they're gonna hit $100 million in revenue. Washington Post probably does maybe $500 million in revenue in total, but $100 million in this enterprise SaaS revenue would be worth more than Washington Post is. At first it was just for publishers, then they closed this deal with BP, and I think they realized maybe that's the path forward."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.