‘Chooks come home to roost’: What happened to Australia’s biggest B2B publisher?
Five years ago it was Australia’s leading business publisher milking a digital directories cash cow, but under private equity owners the business has been stripped out and sold-off. In this special report, Steve Jones charts the dramatic transformation at the publisher once known as Reed Business Information.
For some years now, publishing companies large and small have been grappling with one fundamental issue: how to replace dwindling advertising dollars with new revenue streams. No-one has been immune.
And in the B2B space, few have undergone such a dramatic transformation, or epitomised the quest to find digital answers to the publishing conundrum, as Reed Business Information (RBI), the once-dominant force of trade magazine publishing in Australia.
It is a little over three years since private equity firm Catalyst Investment Managers, together with a handful of senior RBI management, acquired the business from its then parent Reed Elsevier, now known as RELX.
Since then, it has gradually broken up and, with one or two flagship titles aside, is unrecognisable from the business publishing company that grew to become Australia’s largest in the 1990s and 2000s.
So what happened to RBI Australia?
The sale to Catalyst, announced at the very start of 2013, had been long planned by the Dutch-Anglo conglomerate which had first attempted to offload its entire RBI global publishing division as a job lot in 2008, a process it abandoned following the collapse of Lehman Brothers later the same year amid the onset of the Global Financial Crisis.
Reed Elsevier, as it was then, subsequently adopted a piecemeal divestment of many of its print assets.
The sale of entertainment publication Variety in late 2012 for $25m – a title which commanded offers of $200m in 2008 – completed its staggered exit from the US trade magazine market before RBI Australia changed hands a few months later for a reported $40m.
RBI France and Italy soon followed as Reed Elsevier concentrated its efforts on paid content and data services.
It was in these areas, rather than traditional magazine publishing, where Reed Elsevier saw a future, a direction partially rooted in the mid-2000s following the advertising collapse at Computer Weekly, one of its flagship UK titles.
RBI, its owners concluded, was too reliant on ad sales revenue and titles just too susceptible to market dynamics to be a reliable, consistent and key growth driver for the wider Reed Elsevier business.
“Computer Weekly was a red flag for them,” one former UK executive said. “The publication did £22m and two years later is took £5m. They started freaking out.”
It wasn’t too long before Reed’s entire trade magazine publishing arm was on the market.
Advertising downturn
RBI UK was not alone in seeing its advertising revenue begin to stumble.
Publications within the Australian arm, which had grown rapidly in the 1990s following a series of acquisitions, also suffered with Travel Weekly and media title B&T under particular pressure.
Talk of closing both titles “was not infrequent”, according to one former RBI staffer familiar with both publications.
Largely, however, RBI Australia’s collective print business had performed well, led by the powerhouse divisions of financial services and healthcare of which Australian Doctor was its flagship.
Susie Newham
Former RBI publishing director Susie Newham, who oversaw financial services, a group which included Money Management magazine, said the signs of a wider global downturn in advertising revenue became evident in 2007 as the money markets began to crumble and the GFC kicked in.
“We knew in financial services that in advertising revenue terms, across all media, the wheels were about to fall off,” Newham said. “Frankly, no one knew how bad it was going to get. And I am not pretending that I knew it was going to get as bad as it did.
“There was an understanding it was going to be rocky. But there was then a realisation it was not just rocky, it was almost catastrophic. Anyone who relied on advertising revenue was struggling. It was insane, and it was across the board.”
Yet while advertising dollars dried up RBI Australia’s total revenues remained surprisingly healthy as digital products began to emerge.
Digital innovations
The foundation of RBI’s online strategy had been laid by Dutchman Lex Rozenbroek, who led the business from 1999 to 2002.
But it was during the stewardship of his successor, Jeremy Knibbs, when RBI’s online ventures took off and, despite dire market conditions, maintained growth for RBI.
The key drivers to this growth – understood to be 20% even through the GFC – were its online directories division, Catch, which launched in 2006, and Hotfrog, an international business directory which had launched the previous year.
Catch, initially under the leadership of straight-talking Brit Andrew Dent, had been created to separate online directories from RBIs print titles, newsletters and websites.
It comprised a number of verticals including Ferret, which serviced the industrial and mining sector, Fat Cow, geared towards the agricultural industry, and Infolink, which targeted businesses in the building, architecture and design industries.
From a near standing start, Catch revenues climbed to an estimated $10m-$12m, generated by a 75-strong team.
Yet that performance was dwarfed by Hotfrog.
The brainchild of systems architect Phil Robinson, Hotfrog was essentially a start-up incubated, unusually, within the corporate walls of a traditional publishing company.
It became a river of gold for RBI Australia between 2006 and 2011 and, at its peak, was reported to have produced annualised revenues of up to $40m.
Its business model was built around piling business listings and content on the web – much of it scraped from around the world – in a bid to generate traffic. It was ground-breaking and a spectacular success.
“Google was hungry for data and loved it and, through Google Ad Sense, started placing adverts against the content,” one senior executive explained. “They loved it because no one else was doing what Hotfrog was doing. It went ballistic.
“From 2002 to 2010, digital at RBI Australia went from 1% of revenue to 60%. And that was largely down to Catch and Hotfrog.”
A significant chunk of profit generated by Hotfrog was ploughed back into the business which, as it grew, needed constant reinvestment in technology.
David Catterall
“We were spending substantial amounts on data,” said former Catch managing director David Catterall, who led the Catch and Hotfrog business between 2009 and 2011. “For the product to remain viable you had to keep spending, but the spending was well and truly justified because it was incredibly profitable.
“We saw that product go from annualised monthly revenue of $18m to around $40m over 18 months.”
Yet Andrew Dent, whose remit to build an internet business for RBI in 2000 had been put on hold following the burst of the dot com bubble, said senior management initially baulked at the idea.
“They did not want to invest and did not have the appetite for it because Hotfrog had no bearing on any business model within Reed’s portfolio,” he claimed.
After pitching the concept to potential external investors, Dent said RBI relented – but only if the business could support itself.
“Hotfrog caught on like wildfire and from a team of three we grew to 180 full-time staff within three years, with revenues that were more than doubling month-on-month,” he said.
“It went live in 38 countries and 14 languages and was one of the faster-growing internet businesses in Australia.”
But it had one major problem: About 90% of its revenue came from just one customer. Google.
The decline of the cash cow
As fast as it had grown, Hotfrog’s decline was equally as rapid.
While Google had been updating its algorithm for years, in early 2011 the search giant released Google Panda, the first in a series of sweeping changes to reward websites with high quality, unique data.
It elevated sites with such content towards the top of search results and penalised those that didn’t.
“It was a constant dance with Google,” Catterall recalled. “Google changed the algorithm and we worked out what the algorithm was targeting. We had to be pretty nimble. You’d get a fairly rapid understanding of what triggered the revenue glitch and you’d address it. So you’d go down, then back up; down, then up again.
“But overall it was a strong upward trend, albeit with sharp glitches.
“My focus was on getting masses of unique data and user-generated content and constantly refreshing and cleaning it. And that’s an expensive process; you have to keep investing otherwise you lose momentum and the algorithmic changes catch up with you.
“But as soon as you start to harvest it too aggressively by pulling back on what you are spending on the product, it gets difficult.
“It’s a game where you have to keep running to stand still. You can milk it for a period of time but the chooks are always going to come home to roost.”
And the chickens did just that, post-2011.
Google Panda – which pumped out 24 updates over a two-year period – was a huge blow for Hotfrog and Catch, as a whole.
Its data was increasingly considered of poor quality, or dirty – some scraped, as it was, from around the world – and revenue from Ad Sense plummeted. Competition had also intensified which further impacted Hotfrog’s profitability.
One senior RBI executive closely associated with the product said warning signs about the sustainability of Hotfrog became apparent as early as 2008.
“We already knew it was a fragile business model. More and more data was coming online with new competitors, and Google was becoming sensitive about poor quality or stolen data making money out of Ad Sense.
“Google was also encouraging businesses to build their own websites and to use their own data. They began to think ‘we don’t need these middlemen’ [such as Hotfrog].
“Everyone knew that at some point Hotfrog was fucked unless it changed its business model. It was just too reliant on Google Ad Sense.”
Dent, a fierce proponent of Catch and Hotfrog and one of the founding directors, had left RBI in acrimony in 2009 yet returned soon after in a consultancy role.
“It was the ultimate cash cow but I told them that if you don’t de-risk Hotfrog you are going to get screwed,” he said.
“When I left [the consultancy role] in 2010 the strategy was being executed to rapidly build the global business and with clear plans to de-risk the reliance on Google.
Andrew Dent
“But I believe the priorities changed for Reed Elsevier and they wanted to divest RBI Australia in 2012. The energy of the management team went into preparing to sell the business. It’s tough to keep investing in uncharted waters whilst trying to sell.”
Dent revealed he tried to buy Hotfrog “as I could see its potential” but said any deal was scuppered by Reed Elsevier’s desire to sell all of RBI Australia – print and online – to a single buyer.
“He could never have afforded it anyway,” one of Dent’s former colleagues observed.
Sources said the pressing need to change Hotfrog’s business model also coincided with a management restructure at RBI global head office in London, which saw David Israel – now CEO and president of media at Playboy Enterprises – leave the business with Peter de Monnink installed as the new head of RBI International.
The reshuffle precipitated a change in approach. In the aftermath of the GFC, the need became apparent to “plug holes in the RBI network”, as one UK-based manager put it.
To that end, profit started to be sucked from Hotfrog, which by this stage had been singled out for mention in Reed Elsevier’s annual reports, and reinvestment in the product decreased, which left it even more vulnerable to Google Panda updates.
“Hotfrog may well have been a victim of its own success,” one former manager said. “It initially flew under the radar, separate as it was from the core print business, but then the suits from London became interested.”
Nevertheless, after the downturn in 2011, revenue stabilised in 2012 – but then fell off a cliff just as private equity firm, Catalyst, entered the final stages of its due diligence with RBI.
“Catalyst would naturally have seen the figures and known Hotfrog was not the business it once had been. But during the second half of 2012, revenue had stabilised to some degree,” said one insider. “But from October 2012 to December, in the final stages of negotiation, revenue halved following another Google Panda update.”
Unconfirmed reports suggest Reed Elsevier, panicked by the collapse in revenue, gave Hotfrog to a spooked Catalyst to get the deal across the line.
When Catalyst offloaded Hotfrog last year, a sales prospectus showed the division employed nine full-time staff, generated revenue of $4m in 2014 and $2m in 2015 and was forecast to have an EBITDA of $1m and $740,000 respectively.
An operation which once employed 180 staff, raked in annualised revenues of $40m and was the key growth driver for RBI Australia, was finally sold for a paltry $700,000, and even that was regarded as expensive.
Internal tension
The emergence of Catch, while positive for RBI’s revenues, led to what many described as an almost confrontational atmosphere between the sales teams of the core print business and the online verticals.
Located in a separate building from the print titles in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood, Catch was considered brash, abrasive and arrogant by the print division, an image which its young, male-dominated work force, many of them British, did little to dispel.
On the flip-side, print was regarded as a relic by Catch, dinosaurs trying to hold back the tide.
Both were effectively chasing the same advertisers and there was little love lost between the divisions.
One senior member of staff said Catch was given carte blanche to aggressively compete with their print counterparts, which they did, with relish.
“The divisiveness came largely from the online side rather than print. They were told that if you end up eating the print business and you’re the only ones left, then so be it,” the source said.
“It was felt it was better another division of RBI destroyed print than someone else. That’s why Catch was put in a separate office; there is no way they could have co-existed.
“Catch and Hotfrog had a disruptive, start-up mentality that would have been impossible for a corporation to launch from within, so it was treated and handled as a completely stand-alone enterprise. They were virtually left alone.”
Newham, the Financial Services group publisher, said the cultivation of a “them and us” environment was hard to comprehend.
“I get why you would set up two businesses. I understood that. But what I couldn’t understand was the antagonistic approach,” she said. “It was utterly counter-productive and it used to aggravate me. It was beyond comprehension for the core business sales teams.
“I felt it was a strange way to run a business – to have people butting heads for no apparent reason. It was an energy waster.
“We should have been presenting a united front to the market and showcasing this amazing cross section of products. Instead it became us against them.”
Another former RBI editor, who asked not to be named, blamed the culture squarely on Dent, whose view on print was known to everyone.
“It was the right thing to look for digital revenue, no question. Print titles had expensive overheads. They made good money when they were cooking and while a couple were more than holding their own, most were declining,” the editor said.
“But a culture arrived with Andrew Dent that was a shock. Jeremy [Knibbs], like everyone, was under pressure and grappling with the online problem, and he stood up for the local operation. For example, he pushed back against the closure of (Australian) Mining, which then performed really well.
“But I didn’t have a lot of respect for him towards the end of my time as he had allowed a culture to develop within the organisation that was quite ugly. The culture became very disrespectful.”
One former member of the Catch sales team admitted: “It was an aggressive, money-making machine. The team was conditioned to think of print as muppets. It created a division between the core business and Catch and there was absolute conflict.
“There was no integration or holistic solutions between the two, but it had to be that way.
“Had there been that compromise and collaboration I don’t believe there would have been that desire to drive revenue.”
To illustrate the level of competition, Catch is said to have hacked into the sales database of the print division, contacted clients who had made bookings and urged them to switch their advertising to the verticals.
Dent also defended the fiercely competitive nature of the online division, arguing it was the only way to operate.
“Many in the print business talked of ‘us and them’ and that it was a wrong way to run a business. I completely disagree with this point. The only way for a disruptive business to excel is to stand by itself,” he told Mumbrella.
“The models of a traditional business and an emerging growth business are very different. The Catch products brought in thousands of new clients that the print people could never reach with their advertising/editorial ratio business model and high overheads.
“At Catch we didn’t have the costs associated with print mastheads and this allowed us to attack a broader range of clients in the marketplace with a distinct return on investment. We provided hard leads that generated sales for our clients.”
Further online projects
After Catch established itself, RBI turned its attention to another online project under a strategy known as “1000 ships”, headed by Ben Sole, one of the executives who later invested in Cirrus Media.
The plan was to use a system called Common Code Base to create a plethora of cookie cutter verticals.
After limited success early on, the plug was pulled, partly due to an instruction from London to cut costs but also due to a lack of resources.
“That failed not because of technical issues but because there just wasn’t enough people to create the required amount of content,” said a source who worked on the project. “It was mostly designed to get search traffic, but it just got too hard.”
In addition, the quality of much of the content – largely rehashed press releases, and poorly written at that – failed to rank well on Google.
“It didn’t work from a revenue point of view and it didn’t work from a traffic point of view,” said a former IT staffer. “One or two took off during the mining boom but in the end they were consolidated back in to the main print mastheads.”
Amid the ongoing focus on digital products, the performance of the print division remained mixed, with Australian Mining the “poster child” for a period, as it cashed in on the mining boom while financial and healthcare remained strong.
The sale to Catalyst and disagreement over strategy
In the three years since private equity took control of RBI, now Cirrus Media, those print assets have been progressively sold, with the acquisition of FST Media, an events business in the financial sector, the purchase of Medical Observer in the health sector and the company’s focus on content marketing signalling the new direction of the company.
Significantly, all the disposals came after the departure of long-standing CEO Jeremy Knibbs, one of four executives who invested in the business back in 2013.
Of the other three – HR boss Gloria Madden, digital publishing specialist Ben Sole, and chief operating officer Peter Smal – only Madden remains with the company.
Other senior staff were invited to invest but few did.
Many other senior staff also departed, including publishing directors John Nuutinen and Suzanne Coutinho, the latter in acrimony after a 12-year stint with the company.
One former colleague described the axing of Coutinho as “gutless”.
As time went by, and on his own admission, Knibbs did not see eye to eye with the board, telling staff in a farewell email in mid-2014 – 18 months after the acquisition – there had been a “reasonable level of disagreement” about how to take the business forward.
Knibbs, who had a 20-year career at RBI having moved across with Thomson, which Reed acquired in the mid-1990s, also said he was “becoming uncomfortable with the reasons I was here”.
He was replaced by John King, CEO of UK-based Trader Media Group, where he oversaw the transition of a largely print-based business to one where 95% of revenues were generated digitally.
It was suggested to Mumbrella by a number of senior staffers that Knibbs, who is believed to have retained his Cirrus stake, pushed back against the wholesale disposal of mastheads – the majority of which still had valuable communities, clients and readers.
Some within the senior ranks also favoured a more sustainable, longer-term view to generating new revenue, a view that was not necessarily shared by the board.
Bain Consulting was also brought in to thrash out a strategy which, according to one attendee, was well received but not acted upon.
“They spent a shit-load of money with Bain to develop a new strategy, and that was all pretty positive,” said the source.
“But we came back to the office and very quickly it was ‘Ah, don’t worry about it guys, you don’t have to do it; you’re all too busy’.
“The opportunity to have a strategy and something aspirational to work towards got killed straight away.”
The source said the Bain study identified which were the good markets and which weren’t “with a view to focusing on and dominating those markets”.
“But nothing ever came of it because there was a view that ‘we can’t get rid of agriculture because it’s bringing in $2.50 and we need that to meet our numbers’.”
Three months after Knibbs departed by mutual consent, Travel Weekly and B&T were sold to existing management, with both titles now operated by the Misfits Media Company, which last year also launched Medical Republic – with Knibbs as publisher.
Travel Weekly and B&T were followed out of the door – a revolving one at that – by Lawyers Weekly and Hospitality, acquired by Sterling Publishing and Intermedia Group, respectively.
And late last year Cirrus sold its industrial, mining, manufacturing and agricultural titles to Prime Creative Media. On the print side, it left Cirrus with Architecture and Design, Franchise Business and the powerhouse titles in healthcare and finance, spearheaded by Money Management and Australian Doctor, the latter of which has long been the company’s golden child.
The strategy under John King
It didn’t take long for King to conclude that Cirrus was fighting on too many fronts, telling Mumbrella the company “very quickly” began to focus on “areas we could win”.
John King
The industrial division in particular was “structurally challenged”, underpinned as it was by directories and search through Hotfrog.
“The search market has changed dramatically. Essentially Google owns search and destroyed a lot of those value propositions,” he said. “We could have played around with Hotfrog and spent a heap of time optimising it….but I am not a big believer in directories. It was great at the time but that business model has really challenged.
“If you were going to do something with Hotfrog you would have done it five or six years ago. It was under-invested and strategically they didn’t adapt when they had the chance. If we had hung on to Hotfrog it would have been seriously problematic.”
He continued: “We changed our approach pretty quickly when I joined to focus on where we could create the most value and I was pretty clear on what needed to happen,” King said.
“Cirrus was a company with 14 different businesses…..but you can’t win in every vertical. You can successfully transform two or three but you can’t save them all.
“You have to back a few winners and look at where you have a market-leading position, where you have engaged audience, and invest in them.
“You just don’t have the management time or resources to put the same energy into all of them so we decided to dispose of what we saw as non-core assets that, quite frankly, we were never going to spend time and effort on. They would be better off with new owners.
“I think Catalyst always had the view that some assets were more valuable than others. That is what underpinned their investment case in the first place.”
Unsurprisingly, health and financial services were identified as the most valuable assets, while it has also held on to Franchise Business and Architecture and Design, which had been two of the other better-performing titles, according to King.
Apart from the structurally challenged nature of the industrials division, the trade publishing environments of travel and media were weak, King said.
“Apart from one [of the disposals], they were still making money but I guess if you are not going to spend money on them, or transform them, they would probably quickly start to become loss-making,” he said.
“We have been able to dispose of them so everyone has won. New owners have won as it strengthens their position in some markets, our people transitioned across on the same entitlements and we reduced our liabilities.”
Former Lawyers Weekly editor, Justin Whealing, said it was clear early on under private equity ownership that several publications within the print portfolio had no long-term future within Cirrus.
“We felt a little unloved and neglected and not part of the long-term plan and that was borne out by the fact we were sold,” he said.
“It was a place where you were looking over your shoulder and wondering what your future was, and that created its own tension.
Justin Whealing
“There was a move to do more content marketing but no one goes into journalism to write those sorts of piece – it’s not what fires people up, but it was very much the Catalyst business model and, of course, they are not alone in following that strategy.
“It was all about the bottom line rather than breaking stories and more about running awards and running advertorials for clients. I understood the commercial realities but I also put forward strategies based on driving revenue on the back of a really strong, reputable publication. Those ideas were left on the shelf to gather dust.
“It was like ‘thanks Justin, now what about content marketing’?”
In addition, staff who left, both in editorial and sales, were not replaced, making it increasingly tough to increase revenue.
“You can’t increase revenue when your head count is reduced so much,” Whealing said. “And there were other publications in a similar situation.”
Former RBI and Cirrus publishing director, John Nuutinen, added: “It was clear they thought the future of the business was in financial services and healthcare so it has panned out pretty much as I expected.
“That’s where the investment was going. Their priority was obviously going to be where they saw the best return on investment and that was health and wealth.”
Looking at the wider business performance, Nuutinen said: “Traditional business was proving to be pretty tough and we were looking to migrate our revenues into new areas and that was predominantly digital.
“But contrary to what you hear in the market, revenue never fell off a cliff face. It was a slow process over time. The businesses were still profitable. It’s just when a business like Catalyst comes in they look at where the best place is to get the return on their investment, and it’s probably not in a portfolio that’s returning small, single-digit growth.
“They will look at a portfolio that’s delivering that double-digit high return.”
Not that health and financial services were exempt from significant change, King said.
“We have backed and invested in health and grown revenue for the first time in a long time,” he said. “And in financial services we had a good position but it required a hell of a lot of work to develop new digital and content products.
“Health is now doing very well but wealth is more of a challenge. We have bought Money Management together with FST Media because they are much stronger together than they were individually.
King said the revenue mix for Cirrus is changing, with less generated from print but more flowing from digital channels, events, online education and content marketing.
Such a diversified revenue stream creates “a stronger, more sustainable business”, he said.
The latter two – education and content marketing – were growing “extremely quickly” in health, King added.
“Doctors are spending more time online and being able to provide them with educational content is really important,” he said. “I am a really big believer that content marketing is all about engagement. It’s not advertorials or sponsored slots.
“If you want to do commoditised content marketing it probably is [an advertorial] but not if you want to build a proper content program or asset that a brand owns and engages with.
“The most successful content marketing campaigns we have been delivering are very much about education and not hard-push, call-to-action stuff.
“The most effective campaigns are building brand attributes over a period of time.”
Despite the increasing emphasis on paid-for content, King insisted independently-produced journalism remains critical.
“Absolutely [we value it],” he told Mumbrella. “Our greatest strength is that of our editorial teams.”
King also suggested print continues to play an important role in some sectors, particularly healthcare.
“There is a lot of variation in terms of GPs, and print in healthcare will continue long after I’m gone,” he said. “But that may be less so in financial services; so much of that content now is online.
“We will probably try to reinvigorate the print products and maybe do less of them in the next year in financial services. That market is more vulnerable to a print-free existence.”
Prime Creative Media managing director, John Murphy, who picked up a number of Cirrus Media titles and associated online assets, also insisted the value in print remains strong, describing mastheads as a publisher’s “business card”.
“I think people have underestimated the importance of print. Readers respect the title, it’s hitting people directly and there is tremendous value in the databases,” he said.
“But of course you need to have a product that suits [the market]. So you need print, e-newsletters and websites. You need to supply the information in different formats, to be multi-channeled and multi-faceted.
“But print remains our main revenue stream. Events are also strong and digital is growing at a tremendous rate. But it’s still got a long way to catch up with print.”
Murphy’s view is shared by Megan Brownlow, editor of the Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook at PwC.
She told Mumbrella the answer for B2B publishers is not simply to “try to replace physical dollars with digital cents”.
“We know that won’t ever be an adequate substitution so the only answer is to diversify your business model, look at your core capabilities and your core assets,” she said. “Publishers should also not forget that the core asset can actually sit outside your business, it might be your community. That is what we have been advising for a number of years.”
Further divestments?
Observers are split over whether Catalyst is satisfied with its investment or whether its return will hit expectations.
One executive questioned whether the business had been positioned correctly to Catalyst, arguing the strategy did not appear to take the nuances of different markets into account.
“There seemed to be an overall strategy for the business but all the markets are different. You cannot cookie-cut markets.
“I’d be gobsmacked if they are pleased with how things have panned out.”
But another commentator suggested the sale price had been weighted in their favour, so keen was Reed Elsevier to offload the business.
Further divestment was not ruled out by King, who acknowledged that under private equity ownership “everything will be for sale at some point”.
“The two assets in what was the old industrial portfolio [franchising and architecture and design] were two of the best businesses they had. They have strong positions and were more valuable than some of the other assets we disposed of so I will not be rushing out to sell those unless we get the right price,” King said.
“We are owned by private equity so, at some point, everything will be for sale. It’s as simple as that. But I don’t have a timeframe I am working on.
“From my perspective, the day-to-day management don’t talk about returns. We are very much focused on building and engaging audiences and if you get the underlying parts of your business working then the value looks after itself.”
But he refused to be drawn on an exit timeframe for Catalyst.
“That is a question for them,” he said. “Our focus now is to build our product development in health, build our digital education and content products and keep that going. That is going to be the highest priority.
“We are also focused on building deeper content in financial services and using that to cross-promote events. So we are not where we want to be get. There is plenty more to do.”
Whatever the return Catalyst makes on its foray into B2B publishing, what is clear is that Australia’s largest trade publisher has been systematically dismantled in the pursuit of a leaner business model free of the costly overheads associated with print mastheads in sectors in which it saw little growth potential.
As one retired ex-RBI journalist said: “It is unrecognisable from the business I worked for in the 1990s. But then the entire publishing world is unrecognisable.”
Steve Jones is chief reporter for Mumbrella
Disclaimer: Steve Jones is a former employee of Reed Business Information and Cirrus Media
topics
algorithm
Andrew Dent
Australian Doctor
Australian mining
B&T
Cirrus Media
Google
hospitality
Hotfrog
Intermedia Group
Jeremy Knibbs
John King
Medical Observer
Megan Brownlow
PWC
Reed Business Information
Reed Elsevier
Sterling Publishing
Steve Jones
Travel Weekly
Variety
Decent read… I look forward to the comments… I worked alongside David Catteral and to be honest he spent more time socialising in the Chelsea to break up the hard nosed Dent culture….I believe that the dirty data was put into the frog in 2011 to beef it up for sale…
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Also it reads like a who’s who list of people who got shot …. or worse, did not understand what Digital transformation is all about….I’d like to see who is working in what these days… Muppets will be in print and I reckon a few from Catch will be excelling in the online space..
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“Google changed the algorithm and we worked out what the algorithm was targeting. We had to be pretty nimble. You’d get a fairly rapid understanding of what triggered the revenue glitch and you’d address it. So you’d go down, then back up; down, then up again”.
I was in the tech team at hotfrog and we did not work out the Google Algorithm and we never tried too. We were not nimble we were 200 tech/data staff large.
What we did was pour in dirty thin data and we got penalised by Google.
Google warned us many times to work on contextual content and we were instructed by management to “make the numbers and do what ever it takes to meet the budgets”.
It’s a sad story of Corporate greed and Suits keeping their jobs for another year…
Nothing more and nothing less…
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I think you mean “scraped” not “scrapped”
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I have ordered some popcorn for this one.
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was finally sold for a paltry $700,000, and even that was regarded as expensive.
Seems a steal to me – a 1 bed in Paddington sells for more
Why wouldn’t the existing team have done a MBO …. If B&T went that way, and the travel titles and a few other’s that have flown….
Seems odd from a laymen’s view…
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I always thought Catch was like the Matchroom Mob when snooker was big in the ’80s – with Dent in the Barry Hearn role.
Lots of flash Essex boys who thought they knew it all, led by an eccentric genius.
The rot set in when Dent left because Knibbs had no idea how the business model worked.
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From the cosy HQ’s of Reed Elsevier to Playboy…only 1 winner in that scenario
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Class lines from Anonymous….
I think all the “flash Essex boys & Girls” are indeed doing mighty fine these days.
They were a few Northern Monkeys, and a few Avalon Chav’s that are doing mighty fine as well.
and the Story skirts the issue of how the “new management” did not know how the business model worked or worse did not know how to “man up” and ask for proper help.
I think if my memorey serves me well all the key hires that ignited the online businesses were somehow mysteriously dispensed with during 2010 & 2011 ….It never recovered and eventually they got caught out.
from zillions of dollars to a fire-sale of a few hundred thousand…Still seems Catalyst picked it up cheap and made a few quid
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“My focus was on getting masses of unique data and user-generated content and constantly refreshing and cleaning it. And that’s an expensive process; you have to keep investing otherwise you lose momentum and the algorithmic changes catch up with you”
Hmmm, no David the focus should not have been more “thin” data & worrying about Googles algorithmic changes – the FOCUS should have been on moving the current SME’s on hotfrog without websites to websites and then slicing the categories with high worth/high volume traffic and creating sustainable worth for the SME’s.
Reed was given a Golden Goose which was continuing source of wealth or profit that got exhausted as it was misused
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To illustrate the level of competition, Catch is said to have hacked into the sales database of the print division, contacted clients who had made bookings and urged them to switch their advertising to the verticals.
Wozza!… So they conducted espionage ….surely they would have just picked up one of the trade magazines and called all the advertisers in from the magazine.
What was the pitch “Don’t spend $4000 on a full page give us $300 (yes 3 hundred) for a years listing on ferret or info link”…
I think the prints mindset on the many Catch’s myths was just an easy way to lay blame to poor print ad revenue.
The real issue is that you had two leaders during the growth phase Dent & Knibbs and they surely must have worked together. Seems Catch knew what they were doing and it reads like print were not told the full story.
I often saw Dent & Knibbs laughing together, they went to the snow with their kids together, so it seems they were on song.
The print side needed a gee up from their cosy old school world – most of the staff had been lifers and had no need to search for new business.
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“The search market has changed dramatically. Essentially Google owns search and destroyed a lot of those value propositions,” he said. “We could have played around with Hotfrog and spent a heap of time optimising it….but I am not a big believer in directories. It was great at the time but that business model has really challenged.
Hotfrog was not a directory it was a pure play click out model. It did not require optimising it required focus and a back to basics. Hotfrog seems to doing well today selling priority listings. Whilst not the force it once was it is surviving.
Hotfrog had the chance to do with Yodell in 2008 on a large scale. The initial pilot went very well though the suits from Catch got greedy and again killed the golden goose
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“I get why you would set up two businesses. I understood that. But what I couldn’t understand was the antagonistic approach,” she said. “It was utterly counter-productive and it used to aggravate me. It was beyond comprehension for the core business sales teams.
“I felt it was a strange way to run a business – to have people butting heads for no apparent reason. It was an energy waster.
Why would Catch focus on Print ??
Print sales were locked in for the whole year and thus allowed for a cosier time.
The real and ONLY question is what were the Directors being compensated on as this surely drives the business.
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Just like any business, politics got in the way of brave new directions.
Nobody wan’t to lose their piece of the pie, power and autonomy, or to significantly change what they were doing.
Getting print people to suddenly change tack and engage with the audience (who are all dickeads of course) was not an easy task. Getting the tech “Google gamers” to understand that the user was important was equally as tough.
Combine the politics of it all with the European corporate masters “secretly” squeezing every penny off the existing products to inflate profit numbers so it actually looked good for sale = a recipe for disaster.
I was one of those who were vocal about the fragility of the business both in Hotfrog and the rest of the divisions, all the way back in 2008. However mostly it came down to giving zero fucks about the people that actually used their services.
Nobody wanted to listen whilst the money was coming in… and that they thought they could “outsmart” Google. When they started listening, it was very much too late, especially with such a large ship to turn.
But even after Hotfrog had failed, with the once thriving office looking like a ghost town, they decided lets put the people in charge of that in charge of all the Catch products. Because they have proven themselves worthy… obviously
FACE…PALM
In the end it didn’t matter. Because we were ALL out of a job pretty quickly. It was just a matter of which domino fell first.
But I have to thank Cirrus for the awesome holiday the redundancy package funded, so much better than quitting.
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Hotfrog was never a business it was a compensation plan [Edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy]
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Interesting article, well researched Mr. Jones, nicely balanced and informative.
I must say that while I worked at Catch it was a great environment to be in. We had a lot of fun and it was a pleasure to work with so much talent, Great times Indeed.
We never missed any key metric/target whether it related to sales, customer service, data quality, staff hiring & development, page views, uptime.
I loved the fact that the team had laid down the foundations to allow Catch to scale.
So many start-ups find it hard to handle growth too soon and it was a pleasure to see so many people coming onboard, learning the ropes and helping the business grow.
Friday Avro drinks, pool and table football challenges always made for a great start to the weekend.
The Catch businesses were robust, delivering good results for our advertisers and giving our audience the information they were seeking.
With scale, comes a different dynamic and it was impressive to see how the teams adapted and embraced the opportunities that came with the growth.
It was a close-knit team with a reasonably flat management structure and everyone was clear on what they had to do and what that needed to learn.
Hotfrog was a wild ride as it achieved stellar growth and unlike Catch’s flat management structure hotfrog adopted a combination of Agile methodology with a pseudo Hierarchical Structure.
This introduced “capability based delivery teams” where product and services would rely on the scrums and sprints to keep momentum.
It was a highly technical & disciplined environment which is needed in large-scale complex software environments.
The revenue was a “Great, at times required and welcomed” by-product of the Agile/Hierarchical environment. We were building a global footprint and not chasing “quick dollars”.
I do not believe revenue is the initial driver in a fast growth business. The drivers are the ability to scale globally, develop robust components, robust environment, hire quality staff, then the quality of acquisitions be it user generated data, acquired data or crawled/cleansed data, uptime and test, test and test some more.
These principles and learning’s were instilled into me when I was the lead product manager in developing http://www.sciencedirect.com and I was lucky enough to hire Alex in Australia who also understood the Agile principles and he quickly hired an unreal team of technical talent to build hotfrog.
The challenge (and surprisingly my skill set) with hotfrog in my time was always around new product lines, how to incubate them, protect them, kill them if needed, feed and nurture the early adopters… We were heavily developing Box IT, priority listings, hopout, and Catch Data Services (CDS).
The revenue whilst important to keep “the masters” happy was not the overriding priority. I kid you not.
We knew we could add more revenue by expanding the footprint out further and acquiring more quality data. Revenue was not rocket science in the stellar growth phase.
The core focus was on bringing new product lines to the market to ensure we could build on the platform.
I can’t comment on what happened with Panda and the product lines as I left years ago. I can only imagine if the revenue dropped as dramatically as it is reported to have done – then that would be a scary ride and priorities would have had to change quickly and the organization would have had to adjust dramatically.
I imagine the Cirrus Directors are performing exactly how Catalyst envisaged the acquisition of Reed to be.
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The article is riddled with inaccuracies and “based on my perspective truths”. Steve you have let your standards drop since those heady Travel Today days:) But a good read none the less.
I’m surprised there is no mention of the 2007 Shuffle up and deal poker tournament. A mammoth annual cross business (all playing fairly nicely) 11 game poker league. Which I won.
The piece bought back many fond memories of people who either were, or thought they were, doing the right thing. I wish all those who worked there then and now the best of luck. May you be dealt a good hand.
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There does appear to be some perceived observations in this piece Mr Steve. From memory I can only recall one person in the sales team at Catch who hailed from Essex? Pre GFC, it was near enough impossible to hire a decent Aussie; they wanted too much coin; innit! The strategy to hire people with experience from the UK, was smart. The other strategy to hire grads, en mass, also proved to be a very shrewd move and I am sure many of the successful applicants have cherished memories of their time at Catch. Everyone was learning and once the business took off, earning too.
Secondly, I can only remember good spirits between Catch and ‘print’ folk deep down, especially down the boozer (The good ole Chelsea). In fact, many print / Catch staff are great friends today, so I am not buying a bitter divide. Fierce competition, yes of course. (The pool table heading over to Catch from level 3, was a bit of a p1ss take and of course the ‘Soccer Day’ being rigged time and time again was laughable. As for the performance of some Catch staff at one of the trivia nights, well that can just go down as silliness. ‘Eh, Eh, Ehhhhhhhhh!’) Still, we all had a beer at the end of the day and got on, didn’t we?
Espionage? I can recall a print sales rep taking photo’s around the Catch office, (of leads and client names from sales diaries / business card holders), one evening. (Pre LinkedIn in those days.) They didn’t get caught; they shared the photo’s as a wind up the next day with the Catch crew and again they, (print and Catch sales reps), all laughed about it down the Chelski that evening.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Dent to be fair, always said that the user was the most important element to the business; ‘make them love our offering and we will work out how to monetize it down the line’, if we hire top talent of course. ‘User first’ was Dents mantra, it was. Somewhere along the way and certainly, it would seem, post Dent, that focus seemed to get totally lost and the dollars came first and along with Google shifting it’s algo; the business crippled. Profit seemed to be the focus as the revenues declined. It must have been tough having to give up profits to the suits in London after spending so much time preserving them. Plus, having to work with the shadow of being sold constantly hanging over the business and everyone’s heads.
Still, you speak to anyone who worked at Catch back in the glory years and they will tell you that it rocked. It wasn’t too bad over on he print side either to be fair. The people in both businesses were the companies biggest asset. They were special days. There was real talent there, in both sides and of course that talent has spread it’s wings and is doing great things elsewhere, with some folks still hanging around and doing good work at Cirrus. Good luck to all who are left and once the products are sold, may you flourish with them or in whatever you choose to do.
If anyone is keen, there is going to be a bit of a Catch ‘catch up soon’, (late Feb / early March). If you are interested in joining please text; ‘I miss funny leaving cards’, to the usual number and see you there. (Fingers crossed #casinomike won’t shut this party down.)
P E A C E T O A L L T H E R E A L P I G E O N S O U T T H E R E!
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Catch was at the time really cutting edge and forward thinking. Occasionally you would have to go over to the print side of the building to visit accounts or pop in to HR, and it was like going back in time. There was a greyness to the first tower, everyone wore ties and the women were frumpy with dry hair. You could feel the culture change. It was like being in the waiting room of a doctors. Ancient magazines scattered everywhere, with ripped upholstered chairs, punctuated by the shrill ring of an 80’s analogue ring tone.
Catch had a great culture of winning and delivering that seemed missing from the other side of the business. I can see why there was some bitterness towards Catch due to the fact it got more praise, higher pay, and the attention.
However it was clear that this high performance got the attention of the European head office and they tried to steal it’s essence and tried to rationalise it. The division started to lose its way and have the soul sucked out of it. The energy died off, good people started leaving, and a cancerous negativity started developing. Jeremy never fully got Catch, he just thought it was tight jeaned English lads swearing and drinking. He didn’t make any effort to understand the culture and ultimately what we even did. There was some great innovation and incredibly talented sales people, and for a two year period it was school of excellence for outbound sales.
My last few months at Catch were pretty depressing, the then sales director used to openly talk about leaving to go surfing, while teams were still waiting for their targets. The place regressed to what felt like acommon room of a substandard college with people sitting round doing nothing and the standard of hire had hit rock bottom. The culture had gone. We used to mess around, but the targets were always hit. Standards just dropped, everyone knew the end was nigh. Management were walking around the building like ghosts, yellowed with dead eyes. Poor Ben Sole was only missing the stripped pyjamas to complete his look of emaciation and stress.
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Well put Andrew Dent (if that is you) …. I worked in Catch and had the chance to move across to hotfrog and whist there is no doubting that you were a wild one you always made sure that everyone felt welcomed, wanted and not afraid to ask “Why”.
Funny, looking back…. I had the best 3 years of my working career to-date in a dire tower block in the middle of nowhere working alongside a great bunch of motivated “online freaks”.
I always felt like we were at the cutting edge constrained at times by what you always said “frekkin print muppets telling me how to run an online business”….
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When it was good, it was really good. It was always about the team. A great bunch of people who brought all sorts of life skills and experience to the table. I can’t say too much about the print side of things but working in Catch (Hotfrog) was a real eye-opener to what could be possible. For a short period of time we kicked butt. Google got the jump on us a little sooner than some predicted, but there were plenty of people saying “I told you so”. I can imagine many of the techies from Catch are setting the world on fire now, but it’s hard not to think of what might have been if we’d been able to turn Hotfrog into a more user-centric product early on. Lots of sad days towards the end and I’m sure there are plenty of disgruntled staff, but if I had my time again I’d still go back. I miss that pool table…
Best of luck to you all and I hope we’ll meet again. Keep the comments coming folks, some absolute gems here!
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“Cirrus was a company with 14 different businesses…..but you can’t win in every vertical. You can successfully transform two or three but you can’t save them all.”
Very astute comment and goes to the core of the business. It was never really print and online it was too many businesses that could not gel.
Australian Doctor was it’s own world, Financial services another world, B&T the list goes on.
It was a hive of dysfunctionality I remember partitions in the print tower being so high so that each business felt they were separate.
Moneymangement staff would never ever have spoken to FEN staff. B&T staff refused to talk to anyone. Australia Doctor did not even know that other titles existed.
Circulation and marketing was 2 floors away from the business locked in a dungeon.
It was a truly horrible environment and had nothing to do with Print & online.
Online opened up the business, no partitions, lots of interactions with diverse groups, where the technical people were on the same floor as heaven forbid the sales people.
Reed Australia was never a single company it was group of businesses that co-existed and never got on.
Online was an easy target to pick on.
Print was set-up with a divide and conqueor mentatily 100%.
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I worked in both print & Catch under Jeremy and David.
They were very different personalities though personal friends. Jeremy bought David into the business as he could not work with Dent anymore and Catch was out of control and it required a shake-up.
To be fair Jeremy did not understand Catch or Hotfrog and was a print man.
David was just a holding figure that Jeremy liked. David had a great time at Catch as he loved a good drink.
Jeremy did a great job of avoidance locally and spent a lot of time locked in his room.
In the end all looked sad, disheartened.
I hear that good things are now happening in Chatswood which is great as the products are amazing
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But it had one major problem: About 90% of its revenue came from just one customer. Google.
Why would this be a problem, surely Google & Hotfrog had a “Special” arrangement. In my time Dent went to Google’s HQ in Silicon Valley and secured the relationship.
The senior team at hotfrog would meet regularly with Google’s directors in Sydney.
Surely Google would have given a heads up to hotfrog. I remember that the Hotfrog tech leads and Googles tech leads were always working on things together.
Maybe hotfrog could not keep up with what Google wanted and in the end “the European masters” decided to take profit over investment as they knew that Australia’s day’s were numbered as it was going on the chopping block.
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Good read…. with one a couple of notable exceptions.
The main one being no “quotes” from Jeremy who was the boss for over a decade.
He was a good man who had “one hell of a job” keeping it all together.
No Physical fights occured between print & online that I heard about.
Although I do remember Susie Newham giving Dent the death stare at a few functions.
Dent was too stupid to notice
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“We already knew it was a fragile business model. More and more data was coming online with new competitors, and Google was becoming sensitive about poor quality or stolen data making money out of Ad Sense.
Fragile business model ? are you kidding me, what about twitter, what about any start-up, it’s not about the initial business model, it’s what the product evolved in to.
Hotfrog was super lucky in that it created money from the get go….. Name me one other global internet footprint that created money from the get go.
The issue was one of focus ….. It had millions of active records…That was Gold….
Businesses were flocking to put their content on hotfrog….The adsense got in the way, admitteldy it supported a lot of the development.
The issue is that it was incubated in the wrong environment.
Can you imagine a cheque coming in from Google of say 200,000 with hardly any costs.
Hotfrog was a team of 3 originally, Trev, Phil, & Dent…With only Trev really working on it full time….took his less than 6 weeks to make it…
Heaven had arrived on earth….. A print title would be lucky to make 100k profit in a year….and all of a sudden monthly cheques of 200k were coming in and coming in and coming in….Then cheques of 500k, then Yikes….surely that never happened
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Its data was increasingly considered of poor quality, or dirty – some scraped, as it was, from around the world – and revenue from Ad Sense plummeted. Competition had also intensified which further impacted Hotfrog’s profitability.
ok Simple equation….
Take the immediate “wake up” loss on the chin, instantly dump all poor quality/dirty data, involve Google and concentrate on the great data from user generated content.
Adjust revenues and focus on doing it correctly.
If you could not make the dirty data good immediatley then kill it…. Saves the core asset of hotfrog which is the user generated content
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One senior member of staff said Catch was given carte blanche to aggressively compete with their print counterparts, which they did, with relish.
Print sales model….Hmm, do you want an ad in my monthly publication which we hope your buyers will read and then call you up for your product. We cannot track them but can you ask them to see if they saw your ad …Cost $5000 for 1 insertion
Catch sales model…. Would you like direct email enquires coming into business from ferret.com.au would you like phone enquires coming into your business from our 1300 number….Cost say $500 (5 hundred) for a year.
I think you got that quote from a print sales guy who was not meeting his budgets…
10 advertisers in a print publication – say value 40,000 x 11 copies 440,000
10 advertisers move from print to online – say value 5000 for the year.
So the company has just lost 435,000 in advertising revenue and gain 10 online clients…I don’t think so ..
The doors would have shut and the keys thrown away years ago.
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In my time at Catch I did not see anyone do anything other than play
“Table Football”
I kid you not…from the moment the guys worked in until beers were cracked at 3pm (most days)
The table football was the only hive of activity….
I do not believe that Catch made any money…
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Imagine if ugc reviews were enabled on Hotfrog from the get go. Google might have loved Hotfrog. Panda might have actually ranked Hotfrog’s content as A OKAY. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
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Google and Hotfrog worked closely for a long time.
Hotfrog always presented its product development roadmap to Google to keep onside.
A source close to action said that the relationship between the hotfrog & Google became frosty in late 2010
in 2011 hotfrog continued pouring sub par data into the beast, saturating the SERPS making so much money …and dropped the ball
By the end of 2011 the bosses knew that Australia was up for sale, they figured that they could pump the beast with data, and sell it for cream.
By May 2012 only a handful of potential buyers were half interested…..
Then only 1 – Catalyst…the revenue reportedly halved during due diligence…
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“We felt a little unloved and neglected and not part of the long-term plan and that was borne out by the fact we were sold,” he said.
Hmmm, private equity acquired the business to get value out of their investment. This usually means that the buyer could see value by buying the business and then selling it off to make more money normally within a 3 year period.
They saw value … these are business people – its a business …not a pet a business
You invest in the parts that can grow, you divest the parts as required
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“There seemed to be an overall strategy for the business but all the markets are different. You cannot cookie-cut markets.
You can… You either have a product or service to sell. You have readers and advertisers.
This quote sounds like someone too in love with their print masthead…..
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But another commentator suggested the sale price had been weighted in their favour, so keen was Reed Elsevier to offload the business.
Seems they would have made the paying price in the first year of hotfrog ….
Hotfrog reportedly was given a sweet heart deal (have it ) to acquire all of Reed Elsevier.
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“I’d be gobsmacked if they are pleased with how things have panned out.”
This was said by an executive ??, Wow!, seems even now the “executives” were kept in the dark.
Catalyst made a shrewd move and I do not see panic in Chatswood anymore. Just professional businessmen doing what the board expects.
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To be fair Ben Sole looked the way he did as he spent so many hours in a dimly lit room perfecting his Poker Skills.
Ben was a professional and I’m not talking about his poker
He stood up for what he believed in. In the end he became just another director that went through the ever revolving door of directors
How many directors went through those doors….
As Johnny Rotten said “we all know – but nobody dare speak out”
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What happened to Commercial Property Gazette (CPG)
Now that was more exciting than anything Hotfrog got up too
Losing a shed load from Day 1 and everyone was happy….
Losing maybe millions in its lifetime and everyone was happy…
CPG was the wild one, parties on big yachts, personalities from overseas coming over to meet and greet, the best restaurants, amazing salaries for the staff…
Not a penny was made, shedload spent, everyone felt great
Print was the special place
This online stuff, making money, and all those ‘orrible brits, and silly terms like SERPS, SEO, HTML… that’s not what made Reed great…
Massive launches on the scale of CPG did… they were the days when you could sign off hundreds of thousands of dollars and expect no return for years…
Now that was the Party…..
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I was lucky to be involved in CPG and Catch (called DSD in the old days) ….
The issue is that I got caught out on CPG and went back to Catch….
Much easier as I was great at table football….
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DSD the beginning – Direct Sales Division (pre-Catch)…
Now that was the another party…
Full of Brits banging on the phones… We all went to the World Cup Final where Johny Johnny W delivered.
Catch did not kick start the online bonanza DSD did.
Catch hired bloody Grads (all local Australians) and the Brits had to train them.
If I remember correctly Catch sales initially had a 40 to 60% ratio of Girls to Boys.
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Reed was involved in CPG
Reed was involved in DSD
Reed was involved in Catch
Reed was involved in Print
The one and only Reed aka Hayden
I blame Hayden for all the fun
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“Hotfrog may well have been a victim of its own success,” one former manager said. “It initially flew under the radar, separate as it was from the core print business, but then the suits from London became interested.”
Reed was so tightly controlled even the toilet rolls were counted.
The suits from London came every year to “Sydney” for a jolly…every year, every year
Hotfrog & Catch were always the key talking points even when the revenue was only 100k
London came, London wined and dinned in Sydney and Susie Newham et al charmed them.
The suits got seriously interested around our summer time, Olympics, and the Rugby World Cup final
London got annoyed when the $’s were starting to out perform TotalJobs and Kellysearch
How could the convicts with a population of 3 be outperforming London
Lets send our finest from London and tell the Australians that whatever they were doing was flawed or worse…. We gave them the ideas
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“It was felt it was better another division of RBI destroyed print than someone else. That’s why Catch was put in a separate office; there is no way they could have co-existed.
Surely the directors positioned catch as a separate entity in the “lets try to sell in 2008”
I’m pretty sure (as I heard it in the Chelsea) that when Reed was on the chopping block in 2008 that Shah approached Reed for Oz Doc & knibbs suggested he would be interested in Catch
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“The team was conditioned to think of print as muppets.”
At Manly Fishos circa (help me out here guys; 2005/6?). Catch staff and ‘print Muppet’s’ all merrily attended a snooker tournament. Many had even purchased brand new queues (well the Catch lot had; fricken Essex yuppies). From memory Dent balked in the final and a certain editor of a travel publication (aka print Muppet) ran away with the spoils. Afterwards, Catch (online) and Print (Muppet’s) went to the Boat Shed together and hustled the pool table until the sun came up. Those days.
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I haven’t seen anyone address the male dominated culture and the “boys club” which developed when a number of senior sales staff were promoted, particularly in Catch.
The “boys club” made it almost impossible to be taken seriously when complaining regarding “dick pictures” being drawn on whiteboards and passed around (you know who you are), wrestling throughout the office, and aggressive behavhiour. This culture also resulted in a number of women being passed over for promotions when they were rightfully deserved.
If you had to leave your desk and didn’t lock your computer- watch out! something outrageous has been sent from your email account.
There was never as many English people was made out. We could have done with a few more as all the English people I worked with her fantastic, very inclusive and supportive. As was David.
Without our English colleagues the Catch office would have descended into a Sunday afternoon at the Newport Arms.
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Close the thread down.
We all have ideas on the story
The Green Eyed Monster is amongst us … He has thankfully without power.
I reckon the real winners in this are
a) Cirrus today management
b) Number 1 Catalyst
c) surprisingly all those that had the opportunities and took them circa 2002 to 2010
Reed Australia was never a dominate force in Australia….Some of Print mast heads were ok in their respective fields, most struggled.
Reed Australia was maybe perceived as a powerhouse B2B publishing company because it had the support of London.
as for hotfrog and catch… shocking, totally rude…making money and businesses at that rate… so not British …
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“It’s a game where you have to keep running to stand still. You can milk it for a period of time but the chooks are always going to come home to roost.”
Seriously, bad click bait, terrbile headline…
Go Google you are now coming home to lay eggs…
I do not buy that…We can all farm chickens and produce eggs.
It takes a special farmer to think differently ….
Maybe its not a farmer….just think differently
Be smart or hire well or just be status quo in a dramatic enviorement and bring in friends.
The pie is amazing, gods knows what the recipe is, but it tastes good.
Fuk, we lost the chef (that ok), fuk we lost the resturante (not so good)..
let’s blame it on everyone
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But it was during the stewardship of his successor, Jeremy Knibbs, when RBI’s online ventures took off and, despite dire market conditions, maintained growth for RBI
>>Stewardship is an ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources – Jeremey had no direct or hands on involvement in the Online businesses as he was in a different tower looking after pring and left it to “the other tower” to do
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The foundation of RBI’s online strategy had been laid by Dutchman Lex Rozenbroek, who led the business from 1999 to 2002.
>>> Lex hired Dent in 1999 and then Dent & Robinson came up with the idea of Reed Feeds Leads which was an extension of VerticalNet from the US and this became the essence of Catch…
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The brainchild of systems architect Phil Robinson
No, Phil came up with the idea to use Reed’s internal customer databases similar to Flickr centered on a folksonomy. Phil went on a big holiday and left the company for 9 months and the crazy ones decided that if you could get the worlds data then could dominate the SME space. Phil 100% disagreed with this approach. By the time Phil returned Hotfrog was on the path of uber growth and he jumped onboard as a spokesperson. Though had no direct involvement in the business until maybe 2010
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The emergence of Catch, while positive for RBI’s revenues, led to what many described as an almost confrontational atmosphere between the sales teams of the core print business and the online verticals.
>>> The sales teams were in different towers and never really ever met. Catch Sales Staff were mostly under 30 and trained in SPIN and hunters
Print sales staff were mostly 40+ and had been on their print titles for 10+ years….and were good account managers
Catch bought in new business that had never come into Reed before. If print had of been smart then could have looked online and found these new Catch advertisers and sold them print…
Now that would have been funny….
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“But contrary to what you hear in the market, revenue never fell off a cliff face. It was a slow process over time. The businesses were still profitable.
>>Yes it did, and the traditional businesses were propped by constantly cutting staff, having less copies published, dropping issues and cutting the Melb office to name but a few
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As one retired ex-RBI journalist said: “It is unrecognisable from the business I worked for in the 1990s. But then the entire publishing world is unrecognisable.”
1990’s… lets say 1999 …that’s 16 years ago…Yes, I could imagine a lot of businesses have changed beyond recognition in that time. In fact dare I say it “All Businesses have changed as we now have the Internet”…
What a typical print dinosaur thing to say…. Print Muppet
In the 1990s Reed had no online, no franchising assets…It had a bunch of print mast heads that were “on good years” making in the main single digit growth…
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The key drivers to this growth – understood to be 20% even through the GFC – were its online directories division, Catch, which launched in 2006, and Hotfrog, an international business directory which had launched the previous year.
The DSD (Direct Sales Division) was formed in 2003 comprising mostly of English professionals coming from Reed in the UK. This hard core group just got on the phones ,closed deals and gave new life to the business. They even hired staff with no authority with the mindset that they had to make their annualised salary within 3 months to keep onboard. It was an unbelievable success.
In 2006 DSD was renamed Catch in order to goto the market and recruit exciting new blood. DSD decided it could not recruit the top talent it required under the name Reed Business Information Australia.
In the UK RBI was a known brand and attracted talent, In Australia RBI Australia was not a brand – the print mast heads were the brand.
With no more Brits arriving from RBI UK (subtext Australia got a phone call from HQ and was asked nicely to stop recruiting their staff) DSD had to look in Australia.
ProGrad provided the new blood and DSD Changed to Catch and “overnight” a new dynamic culture emerged….
All sales staff were trained in the Catch way and from scratch…..bloody marvellous times…
A drinking culture like no other…..
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Willy Thorn,
I remember so many tournaments that involved the Print (Muppets) and Online (the Evil Tower) I usually made the final in most of them and if I did not then I’d change the dynamics and cause problems for the rest of the night.
I remember Fisho’s… We had Keeping (print), Williams (print, early online, back to print), the usual suspects of online…. I cannot remember the editor of Travel who could beat me. It can’t be Laney as he would still remind me.
I didn’t like to mix with Editors too much socially as they kept asking for pay rises …
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“He could never have afforded it anyway,” one of Dent’s former colleagues observed.
Another possible spin is that it is reported that Reed would not entertain Dent in acquiring the online assets in 2012 and then apparently Cirrus rejected any move by Dent to acquire HF in Dec 2014 and apparently again in March 2015.
I heard Dent was seen talking to Tucker at Chatswood in Jan 2015 and then with the new owners in the Chelsea in Nov 2015
I bumped into Dent 3 weeks ago (in the Orchard Tower) he just laughed saying ” I left over half a decade ago and the thought of dealing with 200 staff isn’t my bag these days – I outsource everything except customer service these days as it’s a better model “… I said there are only 10 working on it these days…..He looked perplexed and for a second I saw that poker look he had learnt from the old days….He knows more than he is letting on…
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Jeremy was amazing to have created such an enviroment …
RIP
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‘We were building a global footprint and not chasing “quick dollars”.’
No we weren’t. If you believe that Mr Dent, you were part of the problem. Hotfrog/Catch was founded on one simple principle; we worked out how to trick Google. The entire business was (and still is) on a downward spiral the moment Panda hit.
The sad thing is that management were either oblivious to the danger Panda posed, or were wilfully ignorant. The gravy train was fun while it lasted, but everything since has been an absolute shit fight.
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Oh, and this rubbish?
“The Catch businesses were robust, delivering good results for our advertisers and giving our audience the information they were seeking.”
We NEVER knew who our audience was. The only reason we happened to give visitors to the sites the ‘information they were seeking’ was because of Google.
If we really knew our advertisers and our audiences, the business wouldn’t have gone completely belly under in the months and years after Panda hit.
Let’s face it, Catch/Hotfrog got lucky, and everyone wanted to take the credit for that without admitting that the entire business model was based on a sneaky SEO trick.
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Former Employee #2
If you were “Former Employee #2 then you would know the history”
Catch was founded on a number of key “Print Publishing Principles with a twist” “Reeds Feeds Leads” and the vision of creating “B2B Hubs”. These founding principles were around providing the B2B audiences quality information and providing the advertisers with qualified leads.
The online entities were supported fully by the Print Mastheads – every Print Masthead pushed the online entities through their publications. Yep, the controlled circulation & subscription titles were our friends.
Infolink.com.au was already up and running Online in 1998 which was before my arrival to Australia and Google was just a baby in Silicon Town and “for sure” not known to us in Australia.
I spent my first year learning all about controlled circulation and about “readers and advertisers” it was an opener. We then went about implementing “teambase” that allowed all editorial to be published to the web and of course to be printed.
The online entities were an extension to the long standing print mastheads.
Infolink is about 18 years old which is amazing for an “SEO Trick”.
We kickstarted DSD (Direct Sales Division) and instantly pick up classified dollars for the print magazines and we thought we can do this for the online entities.
After a few hand bags I was given the nod by Jeremy to pull together all the manufacturing titles under the umbrella of http://www.ferret.com.au which we launched in 2003 http://web.archive.org/web/200.....et.com.au/
This (and all catch products) were based on teambases ability to web publish that was released in 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/200.....nk.com.au/
As you can see from the waybackmachine these “portals” were way before Google and concentrated on giving our audiences what they wanted.
Giving our audience “the reader (now a viewer) and the advertiser (sponsors)” was paramount and had nothing to do with a search engine. We were driving our audience via the PrintMast heads and reader databases.
What transpired was a lot of tension internally and maybe in hindsight I should have been more articulate to our print colleges. The key dilemma was that I was brought into the business to fundamentally change it and that it what “we” did and I upset a number of people….That’s what happens when your remit is to “move this business online and transform it ” I was not asked to “love thy print”.
Catch was formed on a recipe of amazing sales skills and sales management. When I parted ways with Catch in 2009 the businesses were robust and growing well. I pushed strongly around the time I was leaving for the Catch businesses to report back into print as I felt that they needed more editorial input.
by now Catch had opened up the market via Google and we were worried that we were picking up new dollars that may not be sustainable. I believed in ferret, infolink, & franchisebusiness and all were(are) robust models.
Catch was always about creating the content that the audiences was looking for. If some of the pages got kicked out of the index then so be it. The pages then had no merit in the index. I was not around for panda and if panda hit the business hard then I feel sad.
Online is about evolving the product lines. In 1998 infolink was based on “The Book” which was a beautiful annual print. ILA (infolink) was a print publication where you looked at the pictures ticked a card, sent it into infolink and then in return sent you printed literature on the product.
Nothing to do with Panda, nor Google, but I digress.
If panda had taken some of the traffic then so be it. You adjust course, change strategy and either invest or rationalise.
Personally I know many advertisers from Catch and have worked with many of them from 2011 to 2013 and Panda had no impact for us and we created great leads for them.
Google will do what Google will do and as long as you have key contextual content then Google will be happy.
Google does not like intermediaries that’s the real key issue. Google likes intermediaries for a while, then either acquires them (you tube) or smashes them.
Catch was not an SEO trick and I take offense to that. Catch was an identity to allow us to attract quality sales talent to build on the great work the technical & content teams did.
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Former Emoyee #2 (are you a friend of Former Employee #2)
No we weren’t. If you believe that Mr Dent, you were part of the problem. Hotfrog/Catch was founded on one simple principle; we worked out how to trick Google.
“We were building a global footprint and not chasing “quick dollars”.’
If you were at the beginning of Hotfog you will be aware that it was based on a folksonomy similar in nature to del.icio.us, Flickr & Technorati tags and not a trick.
SEO was also a strong component of the growth – The real business driver was in User Generated Content.
I left in August 2009 and Hotfrog was on an amazing growth path and all the key fundamentals were in place.
Panda launched in Feb 2011 and I do not have first hand knowledge as to the effect on Hotfrog. I can comment as I was not around.
During the time I was with Hotfrog I and our technical leads worked closely with Google and it was a solid working relationship. Google were our friends and we shared our product plans, our AB results, configurations, and much more.
During the time I was involved in Catch & Hotfrog it was an amazing place of growth, new learnings, lots of fun and zero “shit fights” except on the annual Bear Cottage Soccer Day and the occasional out of control Poker nights at “Soley’s” and I have apologised to Ben a couple of times for my outlandish behaviour.
Number #2 maybe you came onboard after I left – but Hotfrog was amazing and online models come and go and some come back again.
With online It’s rarely about the business model, it’s the concept and Number 1 is always the people involved, the energy, smarts and drive that they bring to the table.
We can all seat and say “it was a trick, it was panda, it was a cash cow”…. The truth is for those that were truly involved they understand and great times indeed.
Hotfrog evolves as does has catch – this is the nature of online businesses.
Google (initially called BackRub) did NOT want to have advertisers in the beginning. Goto.com was the first to use search related ad words. I think Google tried to sell themselves to excite.com for 1 mil back in the day….Now look where they are today.
Spend time looking at online start-ups, their history, the learning’s, the wins, the changes in direction.
All I can offer is that I hope that the learnings from those who were at the start, the growth phase, and even in the rocky phases of Hotfrog & Catch will be life long learnings that you take with you to the next venture.
You only really grow by being knocked down, if you stay knocked down…then, well, Hmmm…
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if I were a betting man (which of course I am), my money would be on the fact that the real Andrew Dent is the guy who posted as ‘what about me’ in post #9. so any IP checks could confirm if any of the ‘Andrew Dent’ posters from then on in match that one
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Love your work Nick and one of the most solid poker players in the big tournaments.
I heard Dent was a little bit technical and dare say he would be using one of those free proxy servers to mast any identities.
Sneaky bugger that boy and a crap poker player
Knowing Dent as I do he would use a mixture of real IP’s to anonymous IPs and then dynamic IPs and other wonderful ways to create some fun.
Where is Andrew Dykes in all of this – he was the real winner
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The only way to measure such a business is on key metrics and not revenue (that’s for the suits and bean counters to look after)
Hotfrog had a dashboard that focussed fully on key metrics
UGC v Pageviews v Data Quality v Country Internet penetration v Competition in the SERPS v staff well being and a bunch more that are proprietary and locked behind a fortress
Revenue was not a key metric it was a by product of the key metrics
If the key metrics were falling short and the actions were not working then there is a natural decline.
Adjust the decline and move with the new times
The challenge in a complex environment is that maybe “the suits & bean counters” started to get involved as the business was being ready to be sold.
The only way to measure such a business was on metrics and not revenue
However it would be a hard slog to sell the key metrics as buyers want to know the revenue and projections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRbUCc_uUB4
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Maybe the drinking culture instilled from the get go had a knock on effect.
With [Edited by MUmbrella] & others off to rehab and a new drinking man onboard the dynamics may have changed and it was never Panda
I remember fondly that [Edited by Mumbrella] came back a couples week out of rehab and slipped back into the routine as his now new boss was a drinking man.
People perform differently ….I’ll raise a glass to that
Looking forward to the catch up and hopefully it won’t turn into another drinking session
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“Google was hungry for data and loved it and, through Google Ad Sense, started placing adverts against the content,” one senior executive explained. “They loved it because no one else was doing what Hotfrog was doing. It went ballistic.
Senior Executive explained…. He might be a senior executive but worked in print by a comment like that I’m afraid.
Google releases Ad Sense for Publishers in 2003 and the business model was a split with Publishers/Content providers – roughly 65% to the Publisher and 35% to Google.
Reference http://marketingland.com/adsen.....leap-34684
Many companies were doing what hotfrog were doing….Maybe just maybe it was an early adopter in Australia – however, Hotfrog was a global operation.
It’s interesting to see all “these executive” quotes ….It’s obvious the drink got the better of them as most are “out there” and sound like “print people” or worse “new blood coming into the company and not being briefed on what the business was all about.
Metrics baby Metrics….
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So if I read this correct Catch and Hotfrog combined made over 50 million dollars from nothing…..
You report that it had 75 people in Catch & 200 people in Hotfrog
Now that’s a story worth listening too.
Then during 2011 to 2014 it some how went into free fall and hotfrog had 10 people (that’s an insane drop – insane) and I cannot see what happened to Catch.
Most of the Key people who started these two businesses were replaced in what appears to be 2010.
I’m not a brain surgeon …but maybe it might be good to hear from these characters as all I’m seeing is “executives” blaming Panda and the upcoming sale ?
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Let’s face it – Print is never going to die and the collapse of hotfrog was conducted by the print execs in order to save face.
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“We should have been presenting a united front to the market and showcasing this amazing cross section of products. Instead it became us against them.”
Hogwash… So we take an experienced “print” account manager to their $200,000 client and bring along “a tight Jean Brit” who was looking to pitch a $500 listing.
All the experienced account managers had car parking sports and the brit was leaving in a squat in Manly.
The deals for $200k were done with long term relationships and over lunch, then into the evening.
Nah honey!, 2 different worlds and 2 different tower blocks.
Never once was “a tight Jean Brit” invited to join “the elite” …..as we be too crazy
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Dent also defended the fiercely competitive nature of the online division, arguing it was the only way to operate.
Just got home and My inbox is full of alerts – what happened to fish & chips and yesterdays newspaper ?
I can’t remember arguing with anyone within the print organisation. Maybe a few jibes at a snooker or poker night but I’d never argue about print v online.
I’m an online guy who had the opportunity to learn about the trade print publishing world and was involved in that world for a few years. Albeit it alien I believe that I scored a B as DSD for sure kept many a single digit publication around for another year or two.
of course I’m going to defend a start-up, it’s like a new born child and the parentnal duty outside the obvious is to protect and help the start-up to learn to eventually stand up for itself.
Did I want to see print die ?? No way, my compensation plan was based on the whole business.
Checks and balances were always in place at Reed
In fact after many a discussion my comp plan was based on the great sales director Susie Newham… who got a kicker on each $ bought it.
Wow, I’m a millionaire twice over based on the reported figures.
Love it…
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The story is about ‘Chooks come home to roost’: What happened to Australia’s biggest B2B publisher?
I think that any publishing company that went from 32 mill in 2002 rev on print that went to a reported 85 mill was doing mighty fine.
I reckon I overheard a convo at the Chelsea in early 2009 and then the establishment (that’s where real business was conducted) that a deal was struck.
I don’t see Jeremy nor Dent begging for work … if we are talking about 50 mill in new revenue then at best they got 10% and at worse 3%….
Dent was “cashed up” from his days in the US …and I always thought he was in Oz for a jolly and to play old man football ( go the Vale) plus spend too much time with his kids.
Dent would bring in his kids all the time – had nothing to do with sales or technology he was from IMHO having a right laff
Jeremy was the one being busy but also cashed up with reportedly his property investments.
[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]
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In an effort to bring the two towers together, Jeremy used to conduct his now infamous, ‘town halls’.
A couple of hundred people crammed in to the Zenith Theatre in Chatswood watching Mr Knibbs bumble his way through 900 complex slides. All of this performed through a Madonna like wireless microphone attached to his ear.
After several minutes the structure to the presentation would crumble like a pensioner’s hip and Jeremy would begin his usual stream of consciousness ramblings. By the end it would resemble a shakesperian one-man-show, with JK running around stage while both posing and answering his own questions.
Naturally this would bring all divisions of the business together as you would catch someone’s eye as they bit down in their clenched fist in embarrassment.
There would be a section at the end where the audience can ask questions to JK. He would manage to leave you uncertain and lacking in clarity in answering a question, it was a gift.
It gave us a chance to see what the people in the print business looked like when suffering complete confusion, and after we’d all meet up over a warm beer served in a plastic cup and some stale crisps.
For some reason the print side of the business were really serious, I think they confused selling a double page spread with curing cancer.
We’d end up in the Chelsea where you’d see the usual sights of Journos moaning about pay, Ben Sole wearing a grey suit, and Dave Catterall [Edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy].
Dave and Ben were actually lovely people, thoroughly nice men. I think they genuinely cared about the business. Ben particularly, he was institutionalised in the same way a battered wife often goes back to her abuser.
Does anyone know what happened to Simon Morton?
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Sigh. Big egos. One would think it was a Mad Men episode each day at Chatswood. The big boys hassling the editors and forgetting to captain the ship. All the smart people saw the writing on the wall, did their time and got out.
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I thought the best was to communicate about online was with pictures rather than enduring another 2 to 3 hour meeting that left me dazed and confused.
They were simple pictures that combined together showed a massive mountain. I’d put different coloured dots on different parts of the mountain all moving up the moutain. It’s a secret what the dots were for…
I called these pictures the holy grail and gave them to management to look after when I departed.
They were presented to David who asked me to come in and explain the pictures.
David learnt to understand the pictures and added clarity
I love Simon Morton
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Speaking of town halls. A career highlight of mine was when we had a town hall and there was a live blog. That was amazing.
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Don’t even get me started…. I’ve watched the comments and then #71 & #74 bought it all back.
It got worse than “the Zenith snore bores”, worse than the “Live Blog”.
When Jeremy became our fearless leader in 2002 we as a company had to watch “the management team” (23 special people) conduct a Christmas Video.
It was traumatic for many – those in the video and those of who watched.
it did not stop with this humilatation it got worse….
Who remembers the madness of 2008 when Reed was up for sale…..That video was special….anyone got a copy it could go viral.
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50 milllion in annualised revenue
This means that at its height the valuation of hotfrog and catch ranged conservatively between 300 million and 500 million and possible much more.
Interent companies on a growth path are valued on EDBITA nor discounted cash-flow analysis as they are rarely profitable or making money.
The above estimates are based on a 10x multiple of the reported revenue and a 20x multiple of profit.
If we use traffic valuation which is widely regarded in Internet circles for valuation it would on a track like no other.
Why didn’t the management team look at buying it – as reportedly it was a sweet hear deal to get the new owners across the line.
and then the existing 4 managers invest in catalyst ?….
Wonderful Story and makes you think about whats next
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“It’s a game where you have to keep running to stand still. You can milk it for a period of time but the chooks are always going to come home to roost.”
Milk it…. Well done guys….
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Jeremy [Knibbs], like everyone, was under pressure and grappling with the online problem, and he stood up for the local operation. For example, he pushed back against the closure of (Australian) Mining, which then performed really well.
Oh so a Trade Mag about Australian Mining was kept alive in a Mining country – insightful
Jeremy was not under pressure as he was the CEO and knew how well he was doing with the growth assets. He silently waited and then jumped in on the wave around 2009,and replaced too many names in 2010 to mention.
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One senior RBI executive closely associated with the product said warning signs about the sustainability of Hotfrog became apparent as early as 2008.
According to the well crafted opinion piece the revenue continued to climb in 2009, 2010 & 2011.
If an executive closely associated with the product knew that the sustainability of hotfrog was in jeopardy in 2008 and it took another 3 to 4 years before it happened then this executive knew more than Google ….
All internet models are fragile – myspace – excite – netscape – lycos however, you adapt and change as you grow.
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Metrics baby metrics… I hear Jeremy is launching a doctors we. Site…hope he hasn’t got A print guy selling it
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Part of me always hoped that Jeremy was in fact a Leitenant Columbo type character. While he acted dumb and eccentric he was actually quietly a bit of a genius. But instead of knowing the true identity of the killer like Columbo, he actually had an airtight strategy to turn RBI from an ailing print business into reputable online proposition.
But sadly a strangely small Hush Puppy shoe was all he in common with the Columbo.
I think the very author of this fine article above had a tight friendship with Mr Knibbs often sharing a car pool back to Manly. I can image there were some rather juicy off the record conversations in Jeremey’s now famous Suzuki Swift when those two rattely old puffins shared war stories.
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Woah!, #82 Former Employee is that really true ?
Steve Jones is this true or “Comment Bait” ?
Any chance that this “to-date rumour” could have had an influence change on the story.
Nah!, Mr Jones is professional journalist so I assume not.
Jeremy in my personal opinion was a bit of a story teller (like we all are)….I wonder if his “ramblings” were a small part of this article.
Jeremy is a qualified journalist – surely there is a code where things can be discussed and not written.
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So we have a detailed opinion piece that has no comments from the CEO who was “in charge” from 2002 to 2014.
and now apparently the scribe and CEO were car pool buddies… I don’t know ?
The CEO during this time ruled with a heavy legal presence….and whilst not winning he tied people up for years
A few google searches on past employees will bring forward what transpired during 2008 to 2013 all of this is in the public domain
In considering whether and to what extent to apply the restraints, the judge applied the accepted rule that restraints are unenforceable unless they are reasonable. Reasonableness is judged as at the time the restraint is made, having regard to the interests of the parties and of the public.
Good Job online made up for this
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Hi Come On,
To clarify Jeremy Knibbs was approached but declined to take part in the piece.
As regards ‘car pooling’ that’s a bit of a stretch a description for the occasional lift, but Steve certainly worked under Jeremy as CEO for several years at RBI.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
What’s Dent up to these days ?
Last I heard he was selling cigarette lighters or something like that in car boot sales on the Northern Beaches.
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Thanks Alex for the clarification.
JK public profile states
Jeremy has significant first hand experience managing a company through both digital transformation and disruption. He is currently a director of the Wrong Hat Group and the producer of DAZE of Disruption. He is an investor in several vertical market B2B SaaS start-ups and works as a contractor and consultant for old and new media companies in various guises. He was the CEO of Reed Business Information for 10 years from 2002 and the CEO of Cirrus Media for 2 years from 2012 under the ownership of the PE group Catalyst. Most of his career has been spent in B2B media. While CEO of Reed Business the company grew from a local B2B magazine publisher generating all of its revenue in print, to a multi-media global group with 60% of its $85m in revenues generated by digital products such as Hotfrog ,a 38 country folksonomy-driven business directory, and a suite of B2B vertical product data networks.
If I was an employee at RBI Australia I would find it upsetting that the CEO for many years refused to comment on a great opinion piece. You spend all your career at a company and then decline to comment on an opinion piece about your time at the company ?
The opinion piece is an extension of your career resume and could drum up business for you.
Odd indeed
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Willy Loman that’s priceless…..and it could be a number of people…Print comes to mind, as does a few in catch, no one in HF would say that….
It’s too clever so I’m thinking that maybe it is a certain football player from the green and white that went orange…or maybe Ken
Willy Loman is an aging suburban Brooklyn, New York salesman whose less than spectacular career is on the decline. He has lost the youthful verve of his past and his camaraderie has faded away. His business knowledge is still at its peak, but without his youth and heartiness, he is no longer able to leverage his personality to get by. Time has caught up with him
Maybe I can get some cheeky link back juice from Mumbrealla for my cigarette lighter business http://www.liberty-flights.com.au
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Do the Northern beaches have car boot sales…
How wonderful – Whale beach as a backdrop would be unreal
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The last comment
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Former Employee, you are hilarious and scarily insightful. Basically you are spot on.
I’d blocked out the bumbling ramblings of the knibbs town hall meetings, it was like watching an Australian David Brent, except it wasn’t funny, it was scary.
It’s been genuinely sad to see what was once a great business be deliberately and systematically stripped of its leadership, be hopelessly miss managed and then dismantled and sold off.
Those that stayed and tried to profit got found out.
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Did Phil Robinson decline to talk as well….
Great read but missing Jeremy and Phil.
Looks like a few had been on the wine early with some of the quotes.
It was a drinking culture and a number of key staff were hired in drinking situations.
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“If you were going to do something with Hotfrog you would have done it five or six years ago. It was under-invested and strategically they didn’t adapt when they had the chance. If we had hung on to Hotfrog it would have been seriously problematic.”
Insightful “five or Six years ago” – Let’s get rid Dent and his direct reports and let Jeremy, Phil, Antony & Dave run the show as they are proven credentials in disruptive innovations.
Seems John King got it straight away and has never met any of the original founders. A truly sad blot on the Australian Internet landscape. Not sour grapes just as Essex Boy #90 says.
I would imagine a new piece coming up in another media outlet that may scribe a story on the fantastic transformation that occured during 2004 to 2010.
Shame on you …. Enjoy Manly this season
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cigarette lighters northern beaches
Truelocal comes up in the SERPS in 2nd position…..10 pages later still no hotfrog
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“If you were going to do something with Hotfrog you would have done it five or six years ago. It was under-invested and strategically they didn’t adapt when they had the chance. If we had hung on to Hotfrog it would have been seriously problematic.”
Insightful “five or Six years ago” would love to know who were running the show then and if they have any comments.
Hotfrog & Catch were Internet Darlings in their day….as were Financial Services and Healthcare….
Franchising was another stellar online growth business that led the way for how to work with an association and even a print title
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I enjoyed Jeremy’s town halls.
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Jeremy even took his town hall meetings to Industry Captains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBzP37kVwt8
I’m pretty sure most of the predictions were met and a beer or three at the Chelsea this arvo is anyone can articulate them to me
I’ll be sitting in the corner next to all the others who have been effected by these talks
Who remembers the one about 1000 ships or was it a 1000 shi@ts and a speed boat and a tanker
I reckon that every time his PA bought him his mineral water something was being put into it
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https://twitter.com/jjknibbs
According to Mr Knibbs public profile on twitter he has secured a position as CFO for the misfits ?
Well done on acquiring your CPA license and I’m sure the misfits will do well
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Hi What About Phil
Phil Robinson was approached but declined to comment
Cheers
Steve – chief reporter, Mumbrella
Interesting that Phil & Jeremy both declined to comment.
I would have expected the CEO of 10 plus years to have wanted to go on record and clear up many of the misunderstandings that have always been floating around.
I’d personally love to know the details on the amnesty that apparently occurred a year or so after I left. You naughty naughty developers and product people.
I must admit I was fully to blame for that part of the culture as I encouraged everyone to have a side project or two as you never knew what learnings could be had.
It’s sad that Phil who put so much time and energy talking about Hotfrog would not want to offer his views on what transpired from 2011 onwards and also his views on what might have been.
Unfortunately, I could only offer “High Level” comments to this article as over the years I have signed 3 deed of releases in relation to my time with Hotfrog which “kinda” binds me from telling my side of the story 1999 to 2010.
Whilst I cannot publically disclose the details of the deeds I believe I can say (well I just did) that all the deeds produced a satisfactory (albeit a lenghty process) outcome for me.
and as a parting comment as it’s a Monday
In one of the deed of releases Jeremy was trying to put in explicit legal language where I would not be allowed to ever contact the “Directors” of Catch & Hotfrog or even go down the Chelsea I kid you not.
Negotiating that clause did make me smile (and there was some right other funny ones) and sometimes especially after I’ve come home late from old mans footy training and for sure the worse for wear
I think “whilst it could never had been enforcable it would certainly be handy to have once in a blue moon”
“Sorry Hun, I can’t talk to you – it’s in the deed”
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“But I didn’t have a lot of respect for him towards the end of my time as he had allowed a culture to develop within the organisation that was quite ugly. The culture became very disrespectful.”
To be fair to Jeremy the culture was always fairly “us and them” and way before Jeremy’s time- this was part of the culture that came from RBI UK – where there is a big divide between management and “the doers”.
It was pretty much out of Jeremy’s control as he was institutionalised and that means “us & them”.
Catch for a period bought in a breath of fresh air and it was easy for those not in Catch to point fingers.
Catch was a bolt that shook up the UK, then hotfrog came up and the UK went ballistic.
No one wanted Catch or Hotfrog to succeed because it had not come from the UK. At one point I remember Hotfrog been accused of stealing all their IP from Kellysearch and Catch was taken from the bingo tarade magazines from RBI US.
No one had much of a chance and the tide turned in 2008 when they could not sell Reed globally and every man and his dog thought they could have a go and buy a piece of it.
It was a very bleak place to work and as our fearless leader said often “we are on the Russian front”.
I never knew what that meant until I too was shown the revolving door and all I ever did was wanted to publish to my markets.
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The key issue is that Jeremy never had a proper “Town Hall” meeting when Dent was “Sent off to the naughty corner for a week”.
If you are getting rid of the old and bringing in the new – then you need a ceremony or a “town hall”meeting reference https://mumbrella.com.au/chooks-come-home-roost-happened-australias-biggest-b2b-publisher-340184
All that happened was a quick void … and before you knew it the opportunity was lost.
We now had Dent back onboard in some high flueting consultant role a week after he was ousted
That was a defining moment – where the troops should have been rallied and Catterall and JK should have had a town hall to promote the new way.
Leadership 101….
All we got was Dent & Catterall off to Singapore on a bender apparently
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Being International Women’s Day I could not hold back anymore.
[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy] belittled me for falling pregnant and then proceeded to blame my pregnancy for everything that happened across all her depts for the next 9 months. Forget that I had published successful titles, an annual book (that won a Bell Award) and grew online audience. Nope. Skill was never acknowledged. Like Advertising Agencies and their ‘Mad Men’, print publishing had it’s own brand of culture too.
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@women should support women.
In all business matters, and to a containable and defensible point, Colleagues should support each other, management should stand behind their staff, and companies should support workers, management and ideas.
I do not believe that men should support men simply based upon gender, although it is doubtless that wars would never have existed had this been the norm.
Perhaps you think women are not equal, but somehow superior or special human beings.
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Working for a total a*hole can be torturous. Regardless of gender there are plenty of a*holes out there. ‘Up to speed’ organisations are realising that when you empower a*holes people walk. If any business has high staff turnover, in departments, which are cash cows, this is often a sure sign that an a*hole might have been empowered. Your profitable dept’s, your going places Dept’s should over have turnover, for the right reasons. Psycho maniacs play the politics and move up the ladder, frequently leaving a wake of negative turbulence behind them. People work for people, not comoanies., in most instances.
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All that went on in the manufacturing print titles division between 2008 & 2010 was publishers playing cards onscreen & chasing skirts when not drinking at the Chelsea. Dumping high selling senior print sales people mid-GFC was an unbelievably stupid move while ‘alien abductions’ (redundancies) were a regular occurrence in tower 1. Editors were given one, then two, then three titles plus their websites & awards programs, and expected to grow audiences while helping new inexperienced sales staff. Yeah it was a fun time. What a mismanaged opportunity Reed was.
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