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This week, I’m wrapping up the first mini-season of The Rebooting Show. This season was dedicated to modern B2B businesses. If you haven’t already, please check out the first four episodes of the season:
Adam White of Front Office Sports discussed the advantages of bootstrapping.
Julia Noran Johnston of Business of Home shared how she found an underserved niche in interior designers.
Angus Macaulay of Stat explained its Politico-like model for life sciences.
Industry Dive’s Sean Griffey spoke about the advantages of finding valuable but overlooked industry segments.
To cap off the season, this week’s episode is what I’m calling a Spotlight episode. This is an opportunity for the underwriter of the season to explain how they’re partnering with publishers to build sustainable media businesses. I treat these podcasts like all the others, and I only work with companies addressing real problems in the building of sustainable media businesses. This week’s Spotlight episode is a conversation with Bernard Urban, CEO of Silverblade Partners, a strategic finance partner to publishers agencies and ad tech firms. Thanks to Silverblade for being The Rebooting Show’s launch sponsor.
When I started to report on the media business, two things quickly became clear that I found odd: nobody could agree on how to measure audiences, and nobody paid each other on time. Publishers and agencies always complained bitterly about crazy payment terms. The way it usually works is those with the most leverage, ie the most money, force the smaller party to wait for long periods of time, up to 180 days.
Of course, the problem is your everyday costs as a business – salaries, rent, tech systems – are constant, creating a cashflow crunch. Stretched payment terms has created a velocity mismatch: The media business moves incredibly fast, only the financial system underpinning it slogs along like molasses. For many publishers, this means running a business with high fixed costs in terms of salaries, benefits, rent and more while the financing structure means publishers often wait a long time to get paid.
That’s why I was happy to partner with Silverblade Partners to sponsor the first season of The Rebooting Show. With access to over $1 billion in financing, Silverblade has the financial resources to solve liquidity challenges arising from outstanding accounts receivable for most media companies. Silverblade was founded by veterans of the media industry, with a deep understanding of the particular nuances of the business that your average bank simply does not have. Silverblade has built a cashflow solution that will finance accounts receivable and accounts payable on more flexible and favorable terms than an option like factoring from a bank.
Bernard and I spoke about some of the basics of trade finance, why traditional cashflow solutions like lines of credit or factoring are a mismatch for advertising media, and why finance should be a strategic function within media companies. Let me know any feedback you have on the episode: bmorrissey@g
