A tweet by @therealpkj trigged a bunch of thoughts when I was trying to figure the publishing space.
Thread:
Echo’s my thoughts as to why we didn’t raise monies & exited Social Samosa early in the game when others went ahead to raise money, and now seem to be folding up. https://t.co/nRK2J0G7Oq
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
We (@ankitagaba & I) started Social Samosa back in 2011. There was YourStory & https://t.co/1jDmkyS4Po (Nextbigwhat now) targeting startup world, Afaqs & Campaign India – advertising industry, Medianama – tech/internet India & barely anybody in the social/digital space.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
The initial idea was to have a blog where one could put up case studies & nothing else. We soon realised there’s a possibility of an actual business. Six months later,@rakeshthekumar came on board & held the fort for the first couple of years. 100% remote for the first year.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
Apart from the advertising, advertorials, feature stories we did experiment a bit – holding workshops, consulting gigs, a job portal, free networking evenings, we experimented it all! And tried staying away from conferences/awards as long as we could.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
The traffic started doubling every quarter, while we continued exploring ‘possible revenue channels’. I remember talking to folks from YourStory, https://t.co/1jDmkyS4Po, Afaqs & a few others reg revenue options. Uniform answer – offline events/awards/conferences/b2b data deals.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
Heck, I also spoke to folks from TechCrunch, Mashable, Techinasia & few other folks hoping for some direction. The same answer again.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
We did have a few possible funding opportunities but we kept pushing since we were yet to figure our ‘big money opportunity’. And somewhere, we were very clear of not wanting to run an event company which I believe is what most of the publishing houses stood for.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
We were very clearly of not taking money from somebody and then run event to event to deliver profits. And to hit page views and numbers, putting out subpar quality content didn’t make any sense either.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
By then, my source to bread and butter – igenero, became the source of cheese as well. @karanskumar & I started back in 2008 when starting up wasn’t cool & it take a lot from us to get where we were.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
I also remember talking to @vijayshekhar on a breakfast run, he was kind enough of give me his time & advising me to choose either one over the other. And, of course, countless calls with @avinashraghava who has been a sounding board to me.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
Four years into it & a lot of experiments later, we were clear that there’s not much money to be made in the ‘online content/publishing space’. We decided to move on. And guess what happens next?
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
We see Scoopwhoop & a few other players raise quite a bit of money, a bunch of new ‘content portals’ came out of nowhere and went ‘viral’ overnight. Our thought? Did we sell out too early? Could we have pivoted? Could we have figured something else?
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
That feeling didn’t last very long of course. 12-16 months later the story changed, we heard a few other portals shutting shop. Everybody who thought online publishing was easy money & got on board, started moving out of this space.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
Fast forward to today, Mobile has taken the centre stage. Jio has taken over the country if not already. The App only world is a passe. But publishing is still a difficult game to play.
— Aditya Gupta (@reachaditya) June 8, 2019
illustration: icons8
