TheSkimm Cofounders on Partnership and a Media Empire | Pretty Big Deal

tomorrow and you know what someone needs to know. tomorrow and then you'll also know what's going to become a story to watch so even if it doesn't seem like it's going to be big, it could still be bubbling up so we know we've been ahead of the curve on that with a lot of international history. I mean, I feel ahead of the curve every time I read the scale, but the goal is so you can go tonight to any work or social event you can talk to. I'm looking at my whole team right now and I just told them, I said, I said, you feel so much smarter, you sit outside of dinner and you can just kind of know, you know, we all know those parties that you really don't want and all of a sudden, you simply withdraw. one of those little gems and you're like that knowledgeable person, what we saw was that no one has enough time, no matter what you do, yeah, no matter who you are, you're always short on time and the more products come out, the more platforms, there's more ways to get information, it just creates more noise, yeah, and you guys make it very easy, so what's the connection between them?Trust and information I think one of the things we focus on is information, you feel safer to start a conversation um and get into a conversation or lead one and I think in today's world it's very important to talk to people and Very often I think people start conversations or feel comfortable when they're around people who are interested in the same things as them and they have the same background and we saw that in an era of personalization, so you can choose what news you're getting or especially to choose, you know, with the platforms who you see the opinions of, we want you to people feel like they have the confidence to go out and start a conversation about any topic and learn what's coming.

You have information, so you have confidence. decisions that you make and whether it's who to vote for or in other categories of your life, then we really consider that what we're doing is building a movement around having choices and obviously there's a lot of power and trust around that and that's what I'm talking about these dinners, you just feel safer, yeah, yeah, totally fine, I really do, I really do because you could listen to podcasts all day, but that's how fast in the morning I'm lying in bed, what? should not? Be on social

media

I just opened when you relax morning shots will finish you yeah girl I hope I'm there first.

I started, people used to send us pictures of them breastfeeding, yeah, reading this game, and we were like that. an amazing community, but we don't need to see, yeah. Wow, people get very personal, we do it because we have an amazing community. Okay, guys, let's be honest. I'm not the best chef in the world. In fact, I don't even cook. I just let Justin do everything and then I'm the best flavor tester in the world, so I've been cooking, especially being a new mom hanging out. I have baby Isaac behind and all thanks to Hellofresh, they send me everything.

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important 10 and tonight I'll use zucchini to make zucchini boats I've never heard of a boat of zucchini bruschetta, but I'll let you know how it goes, let's get back to a pretty important issue, so we have to talk about money because you guys have had your fair share of ups and downs, what is money coming in and going out? everything and you just have everything from going into credit card debt on purpose to getting venture capital, yeah, so what has that process been like for you and when did you know okay, it's time to get investors?

There are some things, one was like the most difficult process. I've ever been there, it's a really horrible thing to ask people for money no matter what the situation, uh-huh, and it's really weird to be in a professional environment and basically be dressed up to ask for money and that's what you're doing and you never know. it gets easier I think people ask us a lot, like when do you know it's time to raise and we had no other option than we had when we left our jobs, we had four thousand dollars combined between the two of us we were roommates we lived as a couple with the boss Brent by New York standards and we decided we should go into credit card debt together it was an election year we knew we could get freelance jobs we were talking about side hustles we could do and we're both very close to our families but it wasn't about a safety net erection.

I don't like to broadcast it, I don't know, so we had a lot of dinners, find out and so on. From day one, I mean, I remember when we started having general meetings about the company in our first week, people were like, are you guys raising money? and we just said yes, as if we really had no idea how that process begins. We didn't even know about venture capital yet and we also didn't know how much your capital works, which is the worst thing you can do is be like I'm raising and it's taking me a long time, it's like the equivalent. of walking around being like I'm single looking for my mates are you ready to get married today?

Oh my god, it's the equivalent of doing that. Without realizing it for over a year we said yes, we were just raising money and as if we hadn't done it. I brought it up still look, it was a very stupid move in our way, wait, what was it that I should have done, what you should have done, we should have had a strategy of, for example, who to approach, how to approach them, we just didn't know how much . money how much money we wanted to raise we kept changing the number so there was a lot of misinformation all these young girls don't know what they're doing yeah we sound like we don't know what you're doing I mean That's some of the best advice we give people Now you have to think about it if you have to raise money and, like we did, there was no other option if you don't have to think about financing it yourself or think about searching.

There are different options than just venturing out because I feel like in the era of Facebook in Silicon Valley it seems like this glorified thing and this adventure has been fantastic for us, but there are so many other ways to think about the fun of your business and once you You go down that path, there's really no way out, yeah, so you can't really buy your way out. He once told us. I never forgot it. One entrepreneur told us that when you read about someone raising venture money, you should write them a note. and say sorry and we think all we want is a term sheet and what you don't hear or think about as much is like, well, raising money is amazing and desired, I mean, it's life-changing and We love our investors and we're very grateful when you receive venture capital money, you are giving up some ownership of your baby and so you are supposed to say: I'm sorry because you are making a bet that it will bring This money that brings this outside help will help them have a smaller slice of a bigger pie and it will be worth it, but they are giving up a piece of what they own and that is a really strange emotional thing.

Are you majority owners? in this, the daily skin, so we are a big part of the garden pie and we are also equal parts of the pie that has just been born for us and I think that is where we have seen many relationships fracture and that is why when we think about the fundraising, it's always been the two of us, we're equal partners, the editorial vision, those decisions stay with us and no one else, and we were co-CEOs, that's great, what would you have done differently knowing what You now know? not all but now they are so lucky that we ended up with our investors because I wouldn't I mean I'm very grateful who you work with so when I say everything the result was what should have been great you know it's The process Of course, the advice that people gave us, as if there were more women.

Here is a perfect example. It just shows how much we did it now. When we first raised money, we were working with a lawyer who didn't tell us. that he was going on paternity leave the day we signed our term sheet, now you don't find out about it that day, obviously there could have been a notice for us to get the term sheet, we've never had anything like this in our life. and it is very complicated to understand these documents and what you are agreeing to and it is a long process to get to the final clothes and that person left me where we were with an overworked associate, so they sent really hundreds of pages of documents and We really ever liked the student, it's okay, we'll figure it out, everything will be fine.

I stayed up all night and read this giant document with lines of things that didn't make sense to me and then I sent it to the lawyer and it was. like I went through this and you know, hearing all the things that are concerned, there's a lot and they responded to me that these are standard documents of the Delta char Delaware statutes like they're literally the laws of Delaware, yeah, I was highlighting because no one told me. He said they were just boilerplate documents. I was trying to edit Delaware law and it was all an uphill battle, so I say there are so many things we do differently that we just weren't educated enough about what we were doing and how to do it. and the questions to ask and why not to stress, so there were so many things like that that we were spending on.

I mean, I didn't go to sleep one night because I thought it was important to do so and it wasn't so Do you feel like your investors bring in more than just money? If they do it. This is actually the first time they've told us what they bring to the table. A little bit of homebrew companies and they led our seed round Satya Patel and Hunter Wok and they both have experience in Twitter and YouTube products and we thought we were organized and then we started working with them and it was like a whole different level of how taking an idea and bringing it to the point of execution and I think they also gave us a lot of advice. on how to hire, they interviewed us to complete our first RFPs, like yeah, I'm going to announce.

I have an RFP, it's the request for proposal, which is basically when a company, a brand, wants companies to present them the way they should. advertise with us you have to complete it we pause because we did a whole blog post calling it really painful if you think so they really tried their best and I think there was no way we would have gotten as far as we did. first years without them, yes, yes, then they helped you play the first roles. Yes, yes, what were the first roles you played? We hired someone to help us figure out how to manage our community because we were inundated with our members.

I just wanted to be a part of something that called itself ambassadors and we needed help literally organizing that, then we hired someone to grow in analytics, we said we want to reach a million users and we want to do it in a year and I did it in six months, It's all about the users, yeah, yeah, and he was. They told me to hire a growth hacker and we'd just like to spoof the number. No, we were really like no one knew Packer. What's that? In the people of San Francisco. they're like oh yeah I know what a growth hacker is and in New York everyone was like no it's not a real job well yeah no so basically he found my brand's data and analytics for us and then we hired an engineer.

Oh wow, so I talked about skin culture, what is the skin culture that you guys have established? Well, I think it's good, no, I think so too, but you know, tell us that, it's sad, it's really feedback driven, um, we don't. We have plenty of time and everyone who shows up every day has gone through a pretty intense interview process. Each of us does a final interview with anyone who receives an offer and knows other people in the company no matter the level, so if In fact, when we hire executives, we invite them to spend a day to shadow them and that means having interviews with a 22-year-old who was just hired as our VP of a product because we want to make sure this person can lead and react. people at all levels we do one-on-one interviews with everyone who has a direct report, so it's like 20 minutes, it's your meeting and that's howthat level, yeah, not just us, okay, Daniel Carly, you guys.

They're a big

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, a big deal, but what's a big deal for both of them? Voting is all about voting. That's a good answer. I don't want to say anything different. There are no excuses. Day 20. Thank you for coming. Thank you. This is consistent. I understand that it is an L watch and so does everyone at home. I want to encourage you to watch this episode of something pretty big talking to Danielle and Carly about this scam. You won't be one of us.