Bryan Goldberg, the CEO of Bustle elaborates his plan for taking the company public

During an interview about the state of BDG and therefore the digital media industry at the top of 2020, founder and CEO Bryan Goldberg laid out ambitious goals for subsequent few years.

“Where do I would like to ascertain the corporate in three years? I would like to ascertain three things: I would like to be public, I would like to ascertain us driving tons of profits and that I want it to be tons bigger, because we’ve consolidated tons of other publications,” he said.

He added that those goals connect, because by going public, BDG can raise “hundreds of millions dollars,” which Goldberg wants to use to “buy tons of media companies.”

That might appear to be bluster after a year during which many digital media companies (including BDG) had to form serious cuts. But Goldberg said that the corporate would be profitable in 2020, with revenue that’s “a bit under $100 million.” And it won’t be the primary digital media company to require an identical route — Group Nine created a SPAC that went public last week.

“I want to prove that we will be highly profitable,” he said. “A lot of startups don’t have that goal. tons of VCs tell their startups: Don’t worry about profits, don’t worry about losing money. I don’t believe that.”

In addition to his plans to travel public, Goldberg also discussed how acquisitions have helped Bustle’s business, his venture to get W Magazine and digital media’s “overcapitalization” problem. you'll read our full conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

TechCrunch: The last time I trapped with someone at BDG, it had been with [the company’s president Jason Wagenheim] which was once you guys were handling the initial fallout [from the pandemic]. Now we’re tons further into whatever this new world is, so what's your sense of where BDG is now, versus where it had been within the youth of the pandemic?

Bryan Goldberg: it'd be the craziest, most eventful six months for several folks in our lives. and positively , for those folks during this industry, the difference between April and October, it’s really hard to fathom, it’s complete night and day. April was a really frightening time for everybody , personally and professionally across the country, across the planet .

From an advertising standpoint, it had been a very scary time, because we've clients across every industry, and each industry was impacted differently. we've clients who were greatly impacted — theme parks, car makers, hotel companies, airlines — then we had clients who weren't as badly affected, like tons of CPG clients, who everybody depended upon such a lot during the pandemic.

There was an enormous pause in our business in in March, April and should . For tons of clients, tossing advertising was a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the sudden shock of COVID, then we saw an enormous negative impact in our second quarter. What we began to see within the third quarter, and particularly now within the fourth quarter, is now that the shock of COVID is behind us, the macro trends that were catalyzed by COVID are now getting into the forefront.

The story of media is not any longer about the shock of COVID. The story of media is now about all of the changes to our world, and changes to our industry that were caused as a consequence of COVID.

The good news for our company, and therefore the excellent news for other digital media companies, is it's just like the future is being accelerated. it's like people are watching less television, then advertisers are moving their budgets into digital faster than they might have had it not been for COVID. Even things like live sports, [their] TV ratings are way down. And tons of advertisers are saying, “Is there efficacy anymore in cable television or broadcast television?” and therefore the magazine industry was heavily impaired, just because magazines are a physical medium, and other people didn’t want to pass around magazines or read magazines at the dentist’s office, so we probably saw some print budget enter digital also .

Industry analysts now are getting to take up their estimates of what digital revenue goes to seem like in 2021, 2022 and beyond. I also think we’ve seen a world during which tons of brand name advertisers are beginning to believe what happens once they start to spend beyond Facebook and Google. for many of the last three years, there’s been such a lot mention the duopoly, the thought that Facebook and Google are getting to eat almost all dollar of advertising. What we’ve seen within the last three months is advertisers saying that this must be the instant during which they find out how to deploy advertising spend digitally beyond Facebook or Google.

No, it doesn’t mean they’re all coitus interruptus of Facebook — Facebook and Google do just fine. But there are still tens of billions of dollars that require to be deployed outside of Facebook and Google. And you’re seeing winners like Snapchat, Pinterest. Both had incredibly strong earnings. They’re taking advantage of an equivalent thing that benefits Bustle Digital Group and tons of other digital media players who aren’t Facebook and Google, which is you’re seeing big ad spenders finally deciding that now’s the time to seek out other ways to deploy advertising spend.

I think those are the 2 big trends: Dollars moving to digital out of TV faster than we thought, and major advertisers using now as a time to seek out other channels beyond Facebook and Google.

So once you check out how that's impacting Bustle’s business, has it returned to pre-COVID levels?

For us, once we reflect upon the year 2020, we see that we had an excellent half-moon , we see that we’re having a fantastic fourth quarter, and that we have an enormous , epic crater within the second and third quarters. So once we check out the year, we basically need to tell ourselves, if it weren't for that crater within the second and third quarters, what would this year have looked like? we might have had revenue well in more than $100 million. Now, we’re gonna have revenue a touch bit under $100 million.

But once we believe how we steel oneself against 2021 and set goals for 2021, we've to line goals for 2021 as if COVID had never happened, we've to line goals for 2021 without using Q2 and Q3 as a kind of excuse for lowering expectations. Because the fourth quarter, the quarter we’re currently in, has exceeded our wildest expectations.

People kind of sat up and took notice of the corporate because you had a reasonably aggressive acquisition strategy. I imagine that strategy had to vary a touch bit in 2020. To what extent does one feel that ambition are some things that you simply can devour again?

So to be clear, not only can we feel great about our strategy, our strategy was critical in helping our company survive and ultimately thrive within the wake of the virus. You know, we made two acquisitions [in 2019] — within the science and technology category, we bought Inverse, which may be a science and technology publication, then Josh Topolsky launched a tech-and-gadget publication for us called Input Magazine that’s growing very quickly.

It’s critical that we had that strategy, because no single advertiser category has performed better for us in 2020 than tech — we quite tripled our revenue from technology clients this year, because technology has thrived through COVID. Had we not had a purchase strategy, had we not diversified into tech media publishing, we certainly wouldn't have had the result we had in 2020. That’s just the truth .

Categories like beauty, fashion, retail were very hard hit. Those have traditionally been our bread and butter, and they’re getting to be great again, in 2021. But this spring, beauty companies weren’t doing so well, because people weren’t leaving the house. therefore the strategy worked, in part, because we diversified the categories during which we created content, which allowed us to diversify the advertiser base. And we’re gonna continue full speed ahead in 2021.

Now, you know, we did six acquisitions in 2019. I don’t know if we’ll do six acquisitions in 2021. But i would like to try to to tons quite one acquisition in 2021.