one mystery solved, a million more to go
Okay so I want to provide a crucial addendum to Thursday’s musings on The Skimm vs. Morning Brew success because as a lot of very helpful readers and actual media reporters (as well as well-intentioned biz bros in my DMs; hello boys) have pointed out, the business situations of both companies are on super different scales (even if their product/business models have run very parallel):
The Skimm pretty much needs a way bigger payoff: they’ve taken in almost $30 million in funding and has 21 investors and a whole board (which Shonda Rhimes is on, fun fact); meanwhile, Morning Brew founders apparently only ever raised $750K from family and friends. So while potentially getting bought for $50M-75M would be freaking great for MB, it’d definitely be peanuts for TS and their crew. Which makes sense! Apparently TS did explore a sale back in 2017, fwiw.
Still! I have so many questions, like if this means The Skimm is maybe in too deep (or if it’s too late, in terms of how millennial girl boss energy has kind of peaked) to really capitalize on this giant, valuable audience they built? Is there still a close reading to be done of the misogyny at hand when it seems vapid when women’s media does “bite-size news,” whereas when it’s done for business types, it’s just efficient bc well duh they are just so busy jet-setting you know?? Is there going to be more room for an MB-esque exit for future newsletter media startups to come, or did we really kind of tap out at like, Airmail? How many emails does a person really have room for in their lives anyway?????? Wow this spiraled anyway you know where to find me