Semafor's recent $30 million funding round at a $330 million valuation is a needed jolt of confidence in the media sector -- and an endorsement of its events-led media model. CEO Justin Smith joined me to discuss why putting events first allowed Semafor to get to $40 million in revenue and profitability in 3.5 years, why corporate affairs is growing in importance and value, and using a global orientation to expand the addressable market.

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Welcome to the

Rebooting Show.

I am Brian Morrissey.

I'm just back from a great way to start the year, which is

a week in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show.

I didn't see many robots, but we

did hold a couple of events there.

We did a

Innovators Unscripted event with our friends at Index Exchange.

We talked a lot about age agentic advertising, which whether you like it

or not, you're gonna hear a lot about.

In the year to come, Andrew Ali, the CEO of Index Exchange, and Aunt

McDonough, the, chief Trading Officer from Dentsu joined me to talk about

what was real and what's not yet real in ag agentic advertising.

it's a good overview if you are wondering what exactly Ag agentic

advertising is and what it could become.

I'll, I'll leave a note.

Or a link to it in the show notes.

And we also did a series of video podcasts with, Exco.

I spoke with Exco.

CEO.

Tom Pack is about the year ahead in streaming advertising.

we did other year ahead, video podcasts with, Jeff Shiller, the CO of Vox

Media about, talent partnerships.

And Mark Flo of Flow Sports joined me to discuss niche sports.

I love niche sports and al of.

Uber talked about mobility advertising with Uber Ads.

you can now see those on.

Reboot's new YouTube channel.

my belated pivot to video.

maybe this podcast will get there someday.

I'm, I'm still not totally sold on it.

so I wanna bring in Justin Smith.

Justin Smith is the CEO of Semafor.

Last week, news broke the Semafor race 30 million at a $330 million valuation.

This is its first price round.

started in October, 2020.

Two, I think it's noteworthy for many reasons, but one is that, you know,

media has been treated in some ways as an uninvestible category recently.

so that, you know, it was a good shot in the arm to, to see, to

see the faith in the model there.

Se for also said that it, it is now, it did $30 million of revenue last year

Four.

40. 40.

40 million.

Sorry, Justin.

Thank you.

See, this is why I have you

this misinformation.

you too.

30 byte.

I took, I, I took 25% off it.

Okay.

2 million in ebitda, is that correct?

that is correct.

Okay.

Well, you know, that's the most important number, I think.

but I don't know.

We'll see.

Anyway, one of the things I really like, there's a couple things

I really like about seven four.

it's, it's aimed at like a global elite.

This is the area you want to be focused on.

You wanna be focused on people that have money at a time of great inequality.

It is better to build a media business focused on, rich and powerful people

than it is on people who are not rich or neither rich nor powerful.

The other is that events.

Is a important part of its model.

it's about half its revenue.

Is that correct, Justin?

About half.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm getting most of them correct.

and it's a global model.

it operates, it is not.

Look, the US is great.

It's a massive market.

We end up just focusing on ourselves because it's such a massive market, but

it is actually a larger world out there.

seven four operates in the Gulf and also in in Africa.

And soon, I believe Asia.

Yes.

yes, yes.

We'll

talk about it.

all right.

So, and also it's got, it's got a couple flagship events.

the World Economy Summit and the 3 billion, the next 3 billion franchise.

I wanna get into all of those.

Justin, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

This is, I don't, I don't think I've been your most, common,

No, we're

but we, but we, but we, we go, we go, we, we go way back.

Yeah.

Four or five, you

Yeah.

Yeah.

so I, I'm a big fan as you know, of your work because it's really

nice talking to a journalist who actually understands the media business.

You know, that's a, I'll, I'll let you read between the lines there.

You're, you're too kind.

You're too kind.

But it is the only thing I do.

The other journalists did do, do other things.

alright, so let's start with, you know, I always go back to one time when we, we, we

were going on stage at a Digit day event.

I was saying, I was saying to you.

All these people out here wish they had a terminal 'cause.

'cause you were the CEO of Bloomberg Media.

I was like, and I wish I had a terminal and he said, you do have a terminal.

It's your events business.

And I was like, not the same.

Justin.

Not the same.

I didn't know you were serious.

Well, that was, that was said slightly in jest.

I mean, they would, A terminal business is of such a scale and stability

and depth that it, it's, it's, it's unparalleled in the, in the history

of media business models, which makes Bloomberg so strong and so powerful.

my quip, it was a quip.

It was just that.

I, I do believe, and this has been a lesson that

I've taken from, you know, several decades

running, global and domestic,

quality journalism brands, is that, convening businesses

when run the right way, when focused on the right audiences and

the right, commercial categories and executed to perfection.

Can be a very, very helpful revenue stream for paying for what is expensive,

what is ultimately expensive, which is, you know, really great journalism.

And, you know, I, at, at the Economist where I first started at

the, at, the Atlantic, we built the Atlantic's first, events business.

And, then in Bloomberg introduced, really sort of revamped the

Bloomberg events business.

and it, you know.

In all those instances, it's definitely not the terminal.

Let me just, just be serious.

But it is, it is a, a valuable and, and meaningful revenue stream and more

importantly, profit stream because, this is what is interesting about this,

this, this diversification is that.

They can be more, the events, businesses can be, can be more profitable than

many other activities in journalism.

And, if you, if you can build that flywheel of having that profit

driven off, an events business, it can, it can be a very helpful,

diversification from subscriptions, advertising, and other sources.

Right.

But for most of those companies that you mentioned, they are a revenue stream.

They're not, they're not 50% of revenue.

Now.

Events are, they're a great way to get to revenue more quickly.

I mean, building a media brand takes a long time.

It just does.

and events, you can scale the revenue.

Almost, I don't wanna say it's a cheat code, but you can, you can

see out a lot quicker on the events side and almost like ahead of the

brand, if you know what I mean.

Like, you, you, you can do that.

Like if you're just going to go, let's say on a subscription

model, it's gonna be a long slog.

I mean, like, the information has done, a, a amazing, amazing job.

That's a long time.

Mm-hmm.

a global news brand, focused on this audience that you described.

The, the, the global leadership class, delivering intelligence.

Intelligence is the form of phenomenal journalism.

sophisticated journalism, cerebral journalism that connects dots for

their readers that does pattern recognition, provides insights, but

also delivers intelligence through another platform, which is events.

and, It's in the events.

Business at Semaphore is different than others because it's so much

more deeply integrated into our journalism activities than most.

News companies that it's effectively another channel for of

distribution for our journalism.

And that has, I think, been the, the significant

differentiation of the semaphore model versus other models that exist out there.

And, and frankly, it was a lesson that I took from, from all the places I was, you

know, the, the traditional e events model for new, for global premium news brands.

Many of the places I've, I've worked and mentioned was, you know,

the redheaded stepchild, you know, the, the, the sidecar to the business.

and

especially as, as relates to the, to the content of the, events.

you know,

very rarely did the star journalists or The star editors in the

newsroom really pay attention to.

The programming of events to the moderation of

events.

and that just seemed like a, and that just was a, is a legacy media cultural

sort of, relic of the past, you know, tied to, you know, maybe some

some version of church and state, you know, history or whatever.

but it just, it, it seems nonsensical because, if you actually change

that whole outlook and put the.

The, the events business, the convening business into the heart of the newsroom,

and integrate it really closely with

your, your regular journalistic activities.

The actual events products get much better, get, become more differentiated.

They

break news, they are more interesting to

audiences.

They, you know, create, you know, create more buzz, build the brand,

and, and therefore they, and they

become different and differentiated.

I, I I, I know that you did a

podcast recently with the president of the Economist who was talking, I

think about Semafor's events business specifically as relates to this point.

Which is that, and he was saying that the economist, you know, historically the

events business is really not, not part of the, the, the journalistic enterprise.

And that he was, you know, he, he was very flattering and thank you, thank you.

If you're listening.

but he, he'd said that actually the economist was in some, some

level inspired by what they saw us do in terms of this shift.

to, to potentially, you know, integrate their events business

more closely to their newsroom.

It's a nerdy, it's a nerdy, media point, but it is, it is quite profound.

and it's, it's, and that's, I think has what has led our business.

'cause, you know, historic.

Yeah.

I think the main news organizations that events may be.

15%, 20%, 25% on, you know, for the best of them of total revenue.

the reason why Semaphores jumped from that standard of 20 to 25% to 50% is because.

Because of what I just said.

Because the, the, we've, we've, we've made that a very intentional strategy.

Also, I would say that when we started Semafor in effectively the beginning

of 23, late 2022, you know, you look at it, the sort of the landscape of

revenue opportunities and profit stream opportunities, you know, and advertising

was really, really looking, looking rough.

Subscriptions, as you say.

takes a very long time and requires a brand and a lot of

capital and patience and so on.

And, the convening business, especially if you're focused on the leadership

audience, which we are, really was a, was an attractive way to start.

And so,

that's what I wanna get at.

So is this, and, and when I say is like, I know that Semaphore is more than an

events brand for sure, but the business is more heavily events than the, the, the

companies that you compare yourself to.

It is, but that doesn't, but it's also, but it's, it's, it's, it's a

half, half the business is advertising and when one day, as we will introduce

subscriptions, which is obviously an inevitability in this, in this

world, when we do choose to do that.

Then all of a sudden we'll have a subscription revenue stream

and, and that'll further dilute.

So you, you, I think it's, it's, you know, we are a, a, a multi-platform,

multimodal, you know, global media brand that is started with, with two main

distribution channels, you know, digital news briefings, we call them newsletters,

web obviously in addition to that.

And then.

And then the convening business and, but.

You know, these are really well thought out as the, the initial

revenue streams of what over time will become a, you know, a, a even further

diversified set of revenue streams.

It's just, we just sequence them because of the economic.

Realities of each of them given the moment in time we're in, in the industry.

Right.

So

I think this is what, you know, I think a lot

of people have been asking, well, how did Semaphore get to 40

million in revenue in three years?

how did Semaphore generate a $2 million profit?

Well,

you know, we set out at the very beginning

our, our North Star as a company was number one, build a global.

World-class, independent journalism

brand for the leadership audience around the world, that can, you,

know, and we also talked a, lot about restoring, restoring trust,

through innovation, et cetera.

and but the second North

Star.

Let's, as rapidly as possible, build a profitable, sustainable business.

and That became,

you know, a, a really, really,

urgent objective.

We did not wanna build semaphore on the back of

round, after round after round of investment.

We wanted to find

quickly and

urgently and responsibly the places in the, the, the.

Business and revenue opportunities where we could generate profit to fund the

business and I think that's, and if, if, if some maybe view our valuation is

on the higher end, I think the answer to that is well, that I think people

see that in a very short period of time, unlike any of our competitors,

including our historical competitors, this group of, of entrepreneurs at Semafor.

Designed and built very rapidly a profitable, sustainable model,

which is a great foundation, you know, for, for going forward.

And, and the fundraising was designed to, you know, to to, to generate more

capital, to, to further build out this, this, this model that was so well

thought through and so well executed.

So I think that's a great point.

And I, I wonder like when you, you raised, You know, with the funding that

you raised, what is that necessarily for?

Because you did get to profitability.

Is this that you wanna pour gas onto the events or is this in order to build the

other planks where you get to a one-third?

One-third, one-third situation, like I could see, you know, one third events,

one-third advertising sponsorship, one third say subscriptions, that

that seems like a balanced meal.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, as, as the

results have shown,

we

are planning to deploy this capital,

the

way we deploy the original capital, of which there's actually some

left, which is very strategically, very responsibly

and in

very focused ways.

That can, can deliver a, you know, against our goals.

And, the two ways, the two significant areas of investment that, that this,

this latest round is gonna fund.

Number one is more journalists.

And, this is probably the, the, the singular most important source of

inve, area of investment for us.

more journalists, first of all in Washington, dc.

Semafor DC is a rapidly growing disruptor in the Beltway as

a news briefing newsletter.

taking on all the, the, the legacy players that, you know, have, have

been in this market for a long time.

we are gonna be, Doubling the frequency of Semafor dc in a few months time

hiring more journalists in Washington.

We've already got, it's already our biggest, biggest part of our newsroom.

We're gonna be hiring more business journalists, working for

Semafor business and Liz Hoffman.

and also taking that property to five days a week.

It was previously three days a week.

So DC goes to 10 times a week, business goes to five days a week, and then

our golf, seven four golf property.

Which is now three days a week, we're gonna be also investing

in more journalists there to bring that to five days a week.

so, and, and I can't, I can't overstate the importance

of this and the centrality of journalism and these journalists to

the heart, to, to everything we do.

It is literally the, the core source of

value, because it

Connects with the audience, engages the audience at really high levels.

it builds con content that

is shared and consumed around the world, which builds the brand.

And it, it, these journalists are directly responsible for

designing, architecting, and

executing the live journalism

activities that we do as well.

So, you know

that, that large

journalism investment, it's probably gonna be.

A,

a dozen journalists maybe, maybe even more, which is a, a, a big number, is,

is, is gonna, is going to pay, you know.

provide a return to semaphore in.

So, in all these different ways.

so that's nu number one area for deployment capital.

The second area we'll deploy capital

is in, r. Live journalism activities, in particular the

SE four World Economy platform.

We've dropped the summit, by the

way.

So it's it's gone from, from west to sway, SWE SE four World Economy, which is really

our, our, our largest and most important, convening, leadership convening.

It's.

Anchored in the, in, in Washington DC and in, it's, it's gonna be, it's in

April of 2026, will be its fourth year.

in, in, in, and, and is has grown from, you know, what was it, quite

a small event in year one to now the largest CEO convening in America.

we had 200 Fortune 500 CEOs last April.

This next April, we expect over 400.

Fortune 500, 7, 50 1000 CEOs, to come, which really puts it in, you

know, pole position, behind Davos in terms of global CEO convenings.

and it's remarkable that, that, you know, that our young company has been

able to seize that, that territory, in the largest, economy, in the world.

And, and so there's tons

of, of opportunity to invest there in that property.

which is a, which is a, it's, it's actually, it's, it's, it's, we

do, we did 97 events this year.

So, the seven four World Economy is our largest and the area that's

gonna get the most investment.

But we also, you know, have a lot of other events, activities.

We're, we're gonna be looking at events, across the US more events, Build outs

that we're looking at, at Silicon Valley and, and the technology space,

which we think is quite interesting.

and we're also looking at, at investing in our events around the world in the Gulf.

and also, we'll, we'll be doing our first event in 2026 in Asia.

so that's where we're gonna, that's where we're gonna spend the money, responsibly.

So are you, is, is this a growing market or are you

taking market share from others?

Like, is this, I mean, on the events side, just like to leave it there.

Like, I mean, is this like, is just more money going into this area or

Because like a lot of people are now talking to me about events,

particularly if their audiences touch upon influential, powerful people.

Well, the first thing I'd say is it's, these are

not separate budgets, right?

I, I'd say, I'd say a vast majority of our events.

I, I, I don't know, don't, don't quote me on this, but I would guess more

than 80% of our commercial partners do events and advertising together.

so you can't really say, you know, is the events market growing

versus the advertising market.

They're sort of one.

there, they're one integrated market and, and maybe there's dollars flowing

from advertising into the events segment.

that's a possibility.

I don't, you don't have the data to, to, to, to justify that, I think.

but I, I would say that, Overall, you know, Semafor's commercial business

is focused on corporate affairs, advertising, which is both corporate

brand on the one hand, but also, advocacy, especially sort of in, in, in Washington.

and that has been, as you've talked about a lot that's been just a, a,

a very, kind of robust and, and, and, and high growth segment for

the last, you know, decade or so.

What's changed, of course, is it's become incredibly crowded.

semaphore being of course a an addit, a reason for the increased crowdedness.

but our bet was that, you know, that innovation and new formats,

and particularly our focus on, on news and content that was, more

transparent and more balanced.

More ideologically balanced in the beltway.

We thought that was such a big differentiator, that, you know, despite

the crowdedness, we, you know, we, we jumped in, you know, very aggressively

and enthusiastically we're doubling down.

Now, as I mentioned, because we found that belt leaders in the beltway

turns out that, you know, even though it's this terribly polarized

debate in conversation and country, it turns out that.

That the leaders in this, in, in Washington really do want information

that is reliable, that is not ideologically, generated or tainted.

and so that's been a big differentiator with a lot of the,

the legacy media players here.

So.

I would say it's, but, but back to your question, is it growing?

I think it still is growing because the role of Washington and the US

government and business is, is growing.

It's, that's obviously been an exponential growth under the.

the second Trump administration, but it was a trend that began before that.

And, you know, what we saw with the World Economy seven four world economy

platform is that CEOs were flocking to Washington DC and, you know, and we

saw in the early days, we thought, wow, this is an interesting new phenomenon.

CEOs used to hate coming to Washington DC but all of a sudden.

They're, you know, they're testifying, they're lobbying,

they're talking to senators.

They're in the White House.

And we made, made the bet four years ago that, well, actually, this,

this is not a short term trend.

This is something that's gonna continue for a long time, and we should anchor and

base the world's biggest CEO convening, which is our ambition for seven four

World Economy in in Washington DC.

so when you focus on corporate affairs spending

versus say, brand advertising, you're not in performance, right?

Like, what are the, how do, how is that different?

Like with the, The KPIs, like, I'm like, I'm not like, so I'm used to B2B, right?

Where you're matching up a buying a sell side and, it's pretty like,

it's kind of straightforward.

Like you get, you get the people with buying power in a room.

and you sometimes you do like

matchmaking on the, you know, the very

Le lead generation.

Hey, look, you know, I,

Hey, listen,

in media, there's more money.

The more grotesque in area is, the

more money there is.

And what's, yeah, there's nothing grotesque about lead generation,

you know?

It's part part of the,

proudly do

lead generation, Justin.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, you see, the question is how does that, how

do those metrics translate into

Well, yeah, what I get, I guess what I get at is like there's

a lot of, like, I think of protected categories in some way, And protected

as in quotes, because like, there's, it's really difficult to find

leverage in media these days, right?

and nowhere is easy.

corporate affairs, budgets were, I don't wanna say discovered, but

like, you know, you, you saw they powered the rise of Politico.

They powered, you know, Axios to a

they, they powered the Atlantic when I was there, you know, like

that was my first exposure to it.

And, so what I'm, what I'm wondering is what

you need to deliver, right?

like so you know, you're able to get, like you said, the CEOs like in, in a room and

you're able to do live, live journalism.

Is that

enough?

There's a lot of people

Well, so we, so we, have this, You know, we, we

we have this term.

I mean, it's, not, it's not, you know, our kind of

own proprietary term, but which we, we describe Semaphore

as a stakeholder media company.

Mm-hmm.

we, you know, we, sometimes we also joke, there's another word that

we use internally.

We call it a sniper media company, which is that we, we

are just not in the business of,

you know, delivering, You know, large.

Numbers of eyeballs that may or may not be, relevant or, that

that represent a sort of a, a very large, ambiguous community.

We, our journalism

is, designed for leaders and for sophisticated readers and

decision makers who need to

understand.

The incredible and increasing complexity of the global economy,

of the US economy, of Washington dc of Wall Street of Silicon Valley.

You know, there's never been a time when you know this, this information

landscape has been more complex and

and more urgent to understand.

And I think, and, and this is also I think a tailwind for us, se fours.

Journalism is really, really broken through as a, a voice of, of clarity,

intelligence and, and reason in.

This quite caco and, and busy world.

and so that, that, that type of content is appealing to CEOs,

it's appealing to senators, it's appealing to a, a cabinet secretary.

It's appealing to, a, you know, a civic civic leader.

And that's, and that's, and that, that's the audience that we're

looking, looking to go after, corporate affairs advertisers.

Come to us and they say, we don't wanna reach everyone who's, you know, over

the age of, you know, between 20, 20, 21 and 55 and likes this or likes that.

They know.

They're like, no, no, we want to reach.

Specific stakeholder segments in these different communities.

It could be a stakeholder segment in Silicon Valley.

It could be a stakeholder se segment in, in, in Wall Street.

It could be a stakeholder se segment in the Gulf, in Riyadh or in, uh, BBU

Dhabi or in Africa, or over time when we.

When we get to Asia and we get to China and we get to Europe over time,

which is, I'd love to talk about our international expansion if we have time.

there are stakeholder segments of business leaders and public sector leaders, IE

government leaders, policy makers, that our content will attract and we will.

and, and, and that is that engagement with these very, very.

Influential decision makers in the public sector and the private sector

is the currency of our, you know, effectively our, our commercial

business, our, our advertising business, and our convening business.

Yeah.

at the risk of being like a, just, I, I kind of feel like there's a lot of

different bits of like places you've been in se for, like you mentioned being, you

know, in your career, over your career.

Like you mentioned the Economist, you mentioned the Atlantic.

I think there are parts of court of courts.

In in Semafor, I mean

the next 3 billion.

I mean you were doing like

a next

Seven for Africa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Semafor

that was Cords Africa.

But also breaking media because you.

you're rare, and I

believe I'll say this in, in, when I talk with a, usually consumer media

CEOs like, and I go back, like with the conversations I would have on

B2B, they'd be totally different.

But you get B2B media and you get the power of when

you're talking about segments.

That to me, just, I'm like, oh, I get that completely because like that's, I

mean, that's like what my business is.

That's what B2B businesses is.

It's like, you know, I don't need to have.

A hundred thousand, you know, it'd be great, I guess.

But like, the most important thing and what, you know, my clients work with me

is, is how they can connect to specific high value segments, whether that's

CROs or heads of product, et cetera.

and so that's very similar, but you're just doing it across a kind

of, almost like globally, right?

in, in and where business

and technology and the power centers meet.

Yeah, I mean, you know, think of the whole world, right?

And then just imagine an overlay, a bifurcation private sector

leaders, CEOs and C-suite and public sector leaders, heads of

state, leaders of, government, leaders of policy legislators, um.

Then, then, then do another overlay of the, let's say the top G 20 capitals,

economic capitals of the world.

That is Semaphores market.

and over time, as we you know, right now, we've.

Incredible penetration in Washington, in Wall Street, in

American, C-Suite in Silicon Valley.

Incredible penetration actually in African, business decision makers,

African government leaders and, and, and remarkable penetration in the Gulf.

But when you add Asia and you add China and you add, Brussels in Europe and Latin

America, which is not gonna be that far away, I mean, we're, we're, you know, we

we're, we're three years into this only.

So imagine three years from now, I think we'll have probably

blanketed the whole world.

And, but, but focused on these segments, then you can, you can envision the

business that we're building, which is a, a corporate affairs advertiser or,

or partner who's got global operations, global headaches and problems trying

to fix different things with different.

Different stakeholders that they're dealing with, governments, businesses,

partners all around the world, and they will be able to partner with

semaphore to solve their problems.

You know, their communication problems, their brand problems, their corporate

reputation problems, their thought leadership, dissemination problems.

They'll be able to work with us across the globe in this very, very targeted.

stakeholder media way.

And you know what's exciting about it, and I learned this actually first

at The Economist back in my twenties, 'cause I, this is where I started,

is that then when you've got the whole world covered with a model like

this, you you know, all of a sudden the Europeans.

Are buying

the, the beltway, the Brussels folks.

Europeans are buying, buying the, the beltway and Americans are buying Brussels.

And then the, the Americans are buying China, and then

China's buying Brussels, and

then everyone's buying the Gulf.

And, and so you have these, these, these, these cross currents

of revenue opportunities from all these different segments.

Which, which, which, in another, another, another way to say it is.

That's a much, much larger addressable market, much more larger.

What's the, what's the, the bi, the NBA term tam, to total addressable

market Than, than, than anybody, I think understands or could see.

And again, I think that's, that's, that's perhaps what some of our

investors understand alongside us.

Let's talk about the global piece of it, because like, I think you

guys have been, just from the outside, been very disciplined about like,

sequencing, to use your word, Right.

in that, you know, the product has remained it to me.

It's, it's remained very focused on newsletter slash digital and

the live, the live component.

There's, there's one podcast.

We haven't gone and built a podcast network.

I think in the beginning there was more

video.

I don't see as much video.

Maybe there's some

we're we're launching a couple, a

couple more podcasts.

Have

Okay.

You're launching more podcasts.

So I don't know, is that like a growth area?

Like what, but like let's just stick on on because you didn't sequence

Global Like, because I. think that there

we, we, we did Sequence Global because

let me just, let me just like, like, so, and by that

I mean that like, you know.

Yes, but you, you've been very ambitious with, you know, going Africa and the Gulf.

and I think there's this school of thought saying, Hey, master what

you're doing in, in one location and then go to other locations.

But this product as such sort of needs to be a global

product.

Is that

Well, listen, I, you know, I think that we've been, very disciplined on our

global sequencing, and I'll tell you why.

Because when we launched in late 2022, we launched in America and

in Sub-Saharan Africa, people were scratching their heads, why are they

launching in Sub-Saharan Africa?

The truth was, was it about.

95% of our investment was in the US market.

And you know, slightly over 5% was in Africa.

It was very

important, but It was very, very important for us to be born global.

It was important for our

brand.

it was important for our in intern, our culture at Semafor, we chose

the, the brand semaphore, 'cause it's the same word in 35 language.

We

designed Semafor.

So that it had a global, international cosmopolitan

appeal.

you know, we get teased all the time for our, our hotel clocks on the,

on the top of our homepage that say, you know, Legos, Brussels, you know,

I like that it was a little old

but

no, but it's, it's signaling of a, you know, that

we are, you know, we our our surface as a global news company from day zero.

Was the world and, but we knew we couldn't take on the whole world at

first, and so we decided to go to Africa.

Which was the least, competitive market in the world.

We were, where a lot of our traditional competitors, the Ft, the Economist,

Bloomberg, where they have the least amount of resources and yet actually

where there's a very vibrant economic story and business story to be told.

And we put in, you know, a a, a whole cadre of journalists and Legos, Nairobi.

And actually we built a profitable African news business in 12 months.

only then, only then did we then contemplate, okay, so we've, we've, we've

sort of fine tuned the model in Africa.

We've gotten it to profitability.

Okay, now we're ready to go to the Gulf.

And so it, it's very methodical.

I mean, from our, from our perspective, we're not, we're not, we're not,

and, and, and, and frankly, the opportunities around the world

are so, you know, are really vast

and exciting and, and urgent.

There are many days I think, God, we should be everywhere right away, but we,

we, we, we hold back from that because I think that, you know, the single,

one of the, one of the largest risks for, for any company, but particularly

for a high growth startup company, is the, the balance of, of opportunity

with with, with execution capability.

How much, you know,

can you, how, how, how broad of a portfolio can you

execute exquisitely at once?

And you know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting question and,

and, and, and it's one which we are constantly asking ourselves.

So, so three, you know, three regions in, in three years was methodical

and relatively and very planned out.

And now finally, you know, with, with the Gulf now doing extremely well.

And growing, and we're building an events business in the Gulf,

which is very exciting, which is we put our first events team in the Gulf.

I think we're the first international news organization to put an

events team, into, into the Gulf.

We're, we're now launching Semafor China, in.

In February next month.

And that's going to lay the groundwork for se for Asia, hopefully later this year.

we're doing our first event in Asia in, in October of 2026.

and then, we'll, you know, then we'll we'll loop back around

to, to to, to Brussels the eu, continental Europe and the uk and

then, and ultimately Latin America.

And, it's, so we're, we're, you know, we're being, I think we're being careful

and, and some days I, you know, I wish we were moving faster, but I'm, I'm glad that

we're, you know, we're focused on, on ex ex exquisite execution first and foremost.

Yeah, and it's, it is kind of telling Europe comes last, I.

guess.

I mean,

Well, you know,

I mean, it was normally, it was like, you know, you expand to Europe.

I mean, Politico was like, you know, they, they built up

a big Brussels bureau and then that, was.

It was normal, I

that's very, I mean, I, I posted something on

LinkedIn the yesterday on this exact subject.

Like, people scratch their heads and say, why, why are they launching in Africa?

You know, why are they gonna the Gulf?

And, and again, we look at the future.

This is the 21st Century global news brand.

we are looking to be.

The leading independent global news brand for, you know, for

the 21st century and beyond.

And we're looking to, to be the heirs to brands like The

Economist and the Financial Times.

Now, if you're doing that in 2023, you gotta look at where

the global economy is going.

Where, where's the energy?

Where's the, where's growth?

And 75 to 80% of future global GDP growth in the world.

Is in the next, you know, between now and 2050 is gonna be in the

global south and the global East.

It's not gonna be Europe, it's actually not gonna be the us the US will continue

to grow Europe, not so so certain, but the, the big economic engines of

the future, of the global economy are the global South and the global East.

And we wanted to be, the, as a 21st Century news brand, we wanted to be.

Leaning in that direction.

And we wanted to chronicle the growth of the global Souths and the global

east economy as sort of our core capability, because that's where

the, that's where the action is.

That's where the capital is going.

That's where the that's where the future is.

so, that means Europe does come, come last, unfortunately.

Yeah, so I mean, you guys mentioned The Economist

and, and the FT as competitors.

I mean, these are, I, I look at it as it's very aspirational in some ways and that's

why I think Semafor is really interesting in that it is, you know, a big swing.

I mean the.

The Economist has been around since 1843.

I believe the FT has been around since it's the young one at 18, 18 88.

you, you're like three years and like, a few months.

And so, you know, like, as I said, it takes a while to build these brands.

and I think what's interesting when I, when you think about the events business

at a lot of these, these business news brands, they, they're high octane events

businesses, and that can be very good.

And, and by that I mean they do

a

by high?

they do a lot of events like the ft I think does,

they did in 2024, they did 240

events.

They said, you said you're doing like 97.

I think the question with, with events always

but the FT is probably at only 20% of the revenue

or something.

20, 25%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, economists does a ton of events.

Again, it's, it's a different unit with economists impact

and it, it actually isn't, it.

didn't do great last year.

but like, what I'm wondering is like, how do you view getting

leverage out of an events business?

'cause the knock on events is always.

They don't scale.

They're incredibly handcrafted.

They're a pain.

You need to, you need to keep running them again and again and again.

You know, I think Forbes does like 300 events a year.

It's very easy to get pulled into, a, a business that is extremely services heavy.

Now, event franchises, I just got back from Las Vegas, right?

Consumer Electronics Show.

I'd like that business.

That's a really good business.

I, I noticed that publications never have media brands never

have the massive events.

Like, you know, can, is not, I always say can, is not, was

not done by Adweek.

well, you know, I, I mean, on your last point, I'd just say no

comment, because I think if anyone looks at what we're doing, they'll

see that we're, you know, we're very inspired by the, you know, by the, by

the, the large tent pole opportunities and, and sees the repeatable ones.

But let me let it.

platform is, is Davos.

I mean, it's go, it's,

well, it's, I mean, listen, it's, you know, Davos was, will always be Davos

and, you know, but there's, there's lots of opportunity to, you know, there's

the fact that there's not a singular global CEO gathering on American soil.

The, the largest economy in the world is, is pretty remarkable in 2025.

And we want to own that space.

We're, we are well on our way to owning that space.

but let me, let me just go back to your point about the FT and the Economist.

and also our ambition.

I mean, first of all, like you have to understand pretty much everyone at,

at se force starting with me are like the biggest brand fans of the, in the

world, of the FT and the economists.

I mean, we've worked there.

Many of our, we've worked there.

We've been readers.

We are readers.

We love what they do.

We're inspired, you know, we've, and, but the question and the question, and

so the question is, is, you know, is.

Is there an opportunity for a, a group of people who, you know have, you know,

who see the same editorial vision and opportunity, but actually want to recreate

a new version of that in the 21st century?

Is there an opportunity?

To modernize and to, to shift the product thinking, to shift the

digital sort of innovation thinking, to shift the business model design.

I mean, look at this whole conversation we just had about the, the new world economy

and the global South and global east.

Well, that's, that's very different than the Economist and the ft right?

I mean the, the economists and the FT are giving the, the view from London.

and, and so the, so the it, the world's a very big place.

By the way, those two businesses are doing incredibly well, and are

profitable and, you know, and, and, and actually, you know, are, are,

are seeing, seeing great growth.

And they're not, they're not, you know, dependent on, on, on events, in that way.

They're, they're, you know, they've just got great, great content in many

different channels of distribution.

But we think the world is changed so much.

The, the, the.

Sort of the centers of gravity of the planet have shifted so dramatically.

The consumer audiences, the, the leadership class is totally different

than it was in 18 8 42 and 1888.

It's no longer, you know, smoky rooms in London and New York or whatever.

It's now, you know.

People in, in, in, you know, leaders in Singapore and Nairobi and Jakarta and

Beijing and Brussels, of course in London.

And London too.

But you know, Riyadh, Dubai, the Abu Dhabi and Doha, I mean.

So it's, that is the opportunity is to not directly compete with those incredible

brands that we all love and have worked for and respect and read and subscribe to,

but to actually create a complementary, model that is more modern and that is

more designed for the global economy and the global leadership class of today.

That's the opportunity we see.

So, but like, how important are you have to develop like large franchises

for, for this business to be very big?

It seems like, I mean, there are a lot of, like Washington DC has a lot of like small

events that people put on and you can build like a good business

I, I, I, I think

that what we.

I mean, but one of the things that you miss, I mean, and this, I'm just saying

this because you are so knowledgeable about the, the kind of the micro details

of the, of the media business is that a lot of the reasons why people do a

lot of scaled events, you know, a lot like a lot of smaller events is because

it's actually tied in with an ad deal.

Right.

And so, you know, off it's, it's often you can't necessarily

judge it as just like a, You know, oh, that's a, that's a crappy small event

that took, you know, so much effort and is just, you know, so hard to

scale 'cause you're doing 50 of them.

And so on a round table dinner or a luncheon, a small panel

discussion, whatever it may be, that might be tied in with a, with

a multimillion dollar ad deal.

You know, and how do you, and so it's, it's, it's, it's,

that's, this is the thing, is it.

At least for us, our events business is, is integrated into everything.

Our journalism powers it.

and are, and the commercial partnerships are deeply integrated between the two.

That having been said, of course, it doesn't take a genius to say that,

you know, if you can, if you can own the repeatable big tent poles

for valuable communities, those are gonna be better businesses.

And, you know, you can be certain that we're, you know, we're scouring

the world for those and we're, you know, we're looking to innovate.

And build more and more.

And, but, but our first job to do is to build the semaphore

world economy platform into the largest CEO platform in the world.

And that's a very, very, very significant opportunity.

it's a journalistic opportunity, it's a business opportunity, it's a a profit

opportunity and, you know, and so we're, we're gonna be focused on that.

So anyway, those are, those are just some, some quick thoughts.

so final thing is, is subscriptions, right?

I think when you guys were launching there was talk about a really

pricey subscription offering.

I, you

Mm,

the

I don't think so.

Uh,

and the ft and you know, each has a million million

three, paying subscribers.

And, you know, they're, they're very expensive.

Yeah.

I mean,

but

subscribe to both.

They hit my

credit

but do, do the, do the math.

a

million to 1,000,003.

At like, let's say, I mean with discounting 300 to $400 or, you know,

maybe three 50 to four $50 a piece that is, you know, 300 to $450 million

of revenue, of subscription revenue.

Is that not an exciting opportunity to pursue over time?

My God, if you, especially if you're producing journalism at a, at a similar

standard with, with, you know, great journalists and great insights and,

you know, and, but actually that's more sort of oriented to this modern, new

global economy that I just described.

W certainly SEBA four has the appetite to, to, to build, you know, a multi

hundred million dollar subscription revenue stream down the line.

the thing is, is that we just decided not to do it first because we wanted

to get to profitability quickly and build a sustainable model, as I said,

and subscriptions, you know, and, and honestly, if you can, if you

could not have a paywall and build a profitable business early, build

the brand, fine tune your journalism.

Connect with the right audiences, build deeper engagement,

build up your talent culture.

It's, you know, it's, it's, it's actually, in my view, it's better not

to have a paywall because it, frankly, it allows you to, to expand more quickly

to, to the audiences you wanna reach.

And, you know, like we realized at Bloomberg, you know, this is the,

probably the single best example because when I was at Bloomberg, it,

the, the website had been free for.

Over a decade, but it was such a di differentiated and, and brilliant,

excellent global business and financial content product that the

minute that we put up the paywall, boom, it was a huge, huge business.

It wasn't this idea that, oh.

You train people for free and they've got other sources, and they're, you

know, when you put a paywall down on brilliant, amazing, differentiated

content, they're gonna go somewhere else.

Nope, that didn't happen.

And so, what, you know, I don't know the exact numbers now, but you know,

four or five years later, bloomers got eight very, very large and growing,

consumer subscription revenue stream.

And, and, and so I, I was in, I am inspired by that model for

It was decades.

in the making

though, right?

Like,

Uh, I mean, maybe not decades.

'cause there was a paywall at one point.

I don't know the exact, you know, this is, this is, we could do some historical

had like a thousand journalists.

So I mean, like, I think the question ends up becoming, and then the reason

I ask it is it's, it is also, and I, think it's a brand question, right?

Like when you get to the point where you're completely essential,

like people need semaphore to operate there and you know, that's

basically where you want to get at.

And I'm

just wondering, I understand

do I yeah,

I mean that, I think that's a, that's, that's a totally

fair question.

That's, that's a totally fair question.

Or do you build a top of the funnel?

Do you build habit?

Do you build loyalty?

And

then do

you, say, Hey, you know, we're, we're, we

you know, I, I think it's a totally fair question.

I do believe that our editorial is, is.

Indispensable for many people.

it, the original breaking news that we do is, is indispensable for many communities.

The quality of our analysis from our incredible journalists, is great.

It's just, it's a smaller newsroom as you point out.

And so, this is gonna take time.

This is gonna take time.

And, and, and that's why the plan is not to roll out subscriptions tomorrow, but

rather to continue building out this.

Successful model that we've, that we've architected these last three years.

but with a, you know, a, think of it as sort of a, a subscription

sort of, rollout plan in your back pocket at the, at the right moment.

When, when the content does feel like it's.

Going to, you know, reach that level of indispensability and when the

global reach and the global market coverage is, you know, is, is, is,

is significant, so significant.

So

that sounds like not not this

year.

Definitely not this year.

No, definitely not this year.

but, you know, flexibility is, and, and adaptability is the

name of the game, as you know.

so never say never.

I think, you know, we'll see what happens with the global economy.

We'll see what happens with the competitive landscape.

We'll see what happens and, you know, we'll, we'll adjust accordingly.

And who are your biggest last thing is like who?

Who are your biggest.

It like advertising partners, just

partners in general, corporate partners.

You know, I would say, honestly, I rather than list any of them, I'd say

we have a, probably a very significant portion of the Fortune 100 as our clients.

so, you know, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of big clients from

a range of different, sectors.

cool.

Justin,

let's leave it there.

I really appreciate you taking the

time.

Thank you, Brian.

I love the, the intelligent conversation and, let's continue

it over, uh, mojito in Miami.

let's do

it.

All right, Justin.

Thanks

Okay, thanks.

Bye.