The Collective Hub’s founder Lisa Messenger has hinted at an exit from print, telling listeners in a podcast she wasn’t sure if she even wanted a print publication “for another six months”.
Speaking to Pedestrian TV founder Chis Wirasinha on his new podcast Founders University, Messenger said she wasn’t sure what the future of her publication was.
Messenger has a gut feeling the next stage of Collective is a big tech play
Messenger first launched her publication – initially called Messenger Collective – in 2013. At the time it was described as “the Vanity Fair of business magazines”. Launch advertisers included CommBank, Audi, Mercedes and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
ADVERTISEMENT
Shortly afterwards, Messenger starting branching out into different revenue streams.
But now, things are different: “I started going from those 17 different revenues streams and got very clear on ‘we are a print product, we are digital and we are events’. And that bored the crap out of me because it then becomes quite linear and quite predictable and as an entrepreneur we want to keep exploring.
“So 2017 I really consolidated and went ‘well they’re the three main things that we do and let’s get those working and we can fly again’, and so for me it was about really scaling back to be able to scale up again and to buy myself the time and space to think about what is Collective next because to be honest, I don’t know if its print, I don’t know if even digital and it’s probably something in events but my gut feel is it’s probably a really freaking big tech play,” she told Wirasinha.
“We have a really nice problem, we have a huge highly engaged, hungry, loyal community and following which is something a lot of businesses don’t have. It’s just that how do we take them on a journey with us, how do we evolve, because otherwise, we are going to stagnate. I don’t know if I want a print mag for another six months even, quite frankly right now. This is the first anyone’s ever heard of this.”
The conversation comes amid industry speculation Messenger had been looking for a buyer.
When Wirasinha asked whether it was better to diversify revenue streams or focus on one or two areas, Messenger admitted she would focus, despite previously venturing into other areas.
“A print magazine cost me $350,000 to put the first issue out. I went into a market, as I said, no one knew who I was at all, I had no background. If I went with what traditional people were doing, there’s no way I would have ever done it,” she said.
“I had to think really differently from the start and the first deal I did, which is fairly well documented, was with Commonwealth Bank. I have still never borrowed a cent from anyone, not even a bank but they actually gave me $200,000 upfront, now that’s after knocking on 80 doors but what I did which went against everything was I pre-sold. I knew I needed money so I pre-sold and said ‘give me $50,000 an issue for the first four issues’.”
She added: “It very much depends on your size, your profitability and things as well. When you are running pretty close to baseline it’s difficult to diversify.”