The Athletic keeps growing .......

Curious. ... If you are who you said you are a while back, are you able to shed any more light on the actual business for us? I realize you are private and have no obligation to any of us, but anything you are willing to share would be interesting, rather than sitting back and watching people speculate (badly, I would guess).

Things I would love to know, mostly don't think you'll answer (but I'll lay it out there for you). ... even if you are only willing to speak generally about any of it. ...

1) Anececdotally, I noticed a lot of heavily discounted subscription offers around Christmas. Should we take that as a good thing or bad? Where are you with subscribers at this point and has it slowed down? What is the cost of acquiring a subscriber with all of the social media advertising? Also, you have enough history now. ... what percentage of your subscribers have been re upping and what does it mean for your viability?
2) What does your cash flow situation look like at this point? And what is the breakdown of where your revenue is coming from? What sources of revenue, if any, do you have other than from subscriptions at this point, and do you have other plans or ideas that you may roll out?
3) Did you really try to make an offer to license SI's name after they already had licensed it to someone else? What would you have done with the name?
4) Are you done with the capital raises? Do you have any debt? At what point do you think you will be able to grow on your own? And what would you ideally like for the future. ... stay private, ultimately a public offering, try to grow it big enough to sell?

 

Do you mean four or five largest DIGITAL subscription news publishers in the world? There are a dozen newspapers in Japan and India I believe you are not near. ... Where exactly are you on subscribers, did you surpass a million by year end the way I believe you had suggested earlier in the year?

I am sure people are also curious about where you are on the big financial question: Is there enough cash flow to demonstrate self sufficiency, or has the growth been on the back of the money you have raised? . ... The subscriber growth is very impressive, and I do believe content is king, so congrats on just creating something that people like. It matters whether you have something people are buying, and your subscribers speak for themselves. ... For me, though, the question is can you (and are you?) price it in a way where you can keep those subscribers. ... and be profitable and keep growing?

Whether or not most publishers have it backward, the way you said, a model with just subscription revenue in a capital intensive business has always been tough. If you are priced too low to be profitable, I am sure you can get your subscriber base up into the millions by effectively subsidizing those subscribers with VC money (or with debt, if you go that way) for as long as you can. I am not saying that is the path you are on, because I have no info obviously, but that is the thing I am most curious about. In the public market for example (where you can see an income statement and balance sheet), you have Netflix which is a subscription model too. ... and they have burned through billions of dollars of borrowed money on the way to ramping up to huge. Money has been easy and cheap for a decade (a whole other conversation), and speculative VC money flowed pretty easily for several years. I suspect there are a lot of zombie companies that have been carried along on insane amounts of misallocated capital. You already started to see some of the fallout last year of what I am suggesting with the WeWork / Softbank mess, which I suspect is a prelude of a lot more to come. That is why I have those kinds of questions about you. ... that said, just because I am asking, don't think I am assuming anything about your business or that I don't want you to succeed. I do, for a bunch of reasons.