Politico & Axios: Jim VandeHei

We w started to go through the stories one by one and they were Awful. And We were literally sick to our stomach. We're like How the hell are we gonna put out a publication?

Tomorrow, much less how are we gonna do this on a regular basis. A lot of people wanted you to fail. It was a big deal. I was uh pretty cocky in public about what we were gonna deliver. But it was that bad. It was a dark, dark moment.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built. I'm Guy Roz and on the show today How Jim Vanden walked away from a dream job to help reimagine journalism with Politico.

And then ten years later Did it again. With Axios. Mm-hmm. The business of news is well, how do I say it clearly? Uh it's a bad business. It's one of the hardest businesses to make sustainable or even profitable.

Do you remember Inside.com? Back in 1999, three big time journalists managed to raise thirty five million dollars for a site that went bust. Or how about Talk Magazine? Tina Brown hosted the launch party on Liberty Island with some of the most famous people in America. And within two years, Talk Magazine was no more. Even media brands we've had on this show in the past, like Buzzfeed and Vice Media, aren't looking too healthy these days. Now I'm not pointing out these failures to pile on. All the people who worked on these things were smart and talented and committed. The problem with most news startups is that not enough people are willing to pay for the news.

Which brings us to today's story because it happens to be a story of a successful new startup. Axios. And Axios didn't reinvent news or somehow get millions of people to pay to read it. What founder Jim Vandee and his partners did was figure out how to target small but powerful communities of readers who also had money to spend. Lawyers, lobbyists, tech executives, Hollywood insiders. you get those people to pay a high subscription price for premium insider reporting. and you use the money to finance a bigger operation that covers a bunch of other stuff for the general public. That's the model Jim learned as a young reporter in Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s. Back then, he was working for a trade publication that only covered alternative fuels. But it was those small niche publications that seemed to thrive, and by the way, still do. They only had to convince a small number of subscribers that they were indispensable, and they could charge thousands of dollars a year.

At the time, Jim Vanden wasn't looking to become an entrepreneur or a media mogul. He simply wanted to reach the top of the greasy pole as a political reporter. And in fact, he did. He became a star political reporter for the Washington Post. But by two thousand six, Jim saw that the future of political reporting, and breaking news in general, was moving online. Why read yesterday's news in tomorrow's print newspaper? So a year later, in 2007, Jim and another Washington Post journalist, John Harris, and a wealthy media mogul, Robert Alberton, launched Politico. And Politico became a must-read publication for the movers and shakers in Washington. But the problem was that despite having the idea and launching it, Jim Vandenai did not own Politico. It was financed by Robert Alburton, and over time tension between Jim and his benefactor grew. So in 2016, Jim left Politico to start Axios. And if Politico was mainly about politics,

Axios was meant to focus mainly on media, tech, and business. Except the articles were written to be read and digested very quickly, a concept Jim calls smart brevity. Through a combination of premium products for big spenders, brand partnerships, events, and advertising, Axios managed to figure out how to become a profitable news business. And just five years after it was launched. Axios was acquired by the media conglomerate Cox.

for over$500 million. Chim Bandehai grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. where his mom looked after the family and his dad was an accountant. He wasn't really into politics until he got to college, and when it came to schoolwork, Jim really wasn't into that either. No, I was a terrible student. Uh Graduated in the bottom third of my class. was you know, teachers would probably describe me as a troublemaker. Um troublemaker. A troublemaker.

For sure. Not well behaved. I just didn't I didn't funny. I didn't until college I just I put so little thought into school or even like what I was gonna do with my life. Like I was a fun loving guy, I think I got along with people, you know,'cause I was interested like myself by the time high school. I was interested in events and News but I didn't like

do homework or stuff things like that. Than normal kids did. Yeah. you know, I even the first couple of years, like I was my gr I I got good enough grades to get into the University of Wisconsin, Osh gosh. And then I uh I turned in my one point four nine one grade point average and had myself on the verge of not being in college much longer. Wow. What were you doing? Okay. Two things. Two things. Uh partying, drinking.

And I worked a lot. I always had really good work ethic. I was uh probably even in high school I worked forty hours a week at uh delivering pizza. What did you do? I delivered pizzas for the most pla most part in home I did it at Little Caesars and then there was a a local uh restaurant called Red's Pizza and so I'd work, you know, forty, fifty hours a week. occasionally, you know, going to class and Getting Lousy grades.

So so clearly you had a work ethic but it was Focus on things that that You were interested in like delivering pizza making money, but not a work ethic on like Your schoolwork, your studies.

Nothing. Not until I found journalism. How did how how how did that happen? How did you get even w like interest in journalism. Well, it's funny'cause even when I wasn't interested in school, I did

start to really get interested in politics and I really became almost addicted to C span. So like at night I would come home smashed from a party and I would sit and watch agriculture committee hearings. Which seems pretty loserish, right? Uh but I was just interested in the process and it was all new to me and I and I it something about it like I intuitively got And I was also trying to figure out okay what am I gonna do with my life? I'm a good writer and at that time I also like sports a lot. And so I went to the

we had a daily newspaper. I was either cocky enough or dumb enough or lucky enough that I uh, you know, w was starting to think about journalism classes and and the guy that uh ran the department said, Oh, you should go talk to the Oshkosh Northwestern and see if they have any jobs. I went in, talked to this editor, Joe Dill. I said, Listen, I I I know a lot about sports. I think I'm a good writer. I don't know how this works, but can you give me some kind of test? And maybe if I pass it can I have a job? And it

This is the but this is the university this is a student newspaper at the university. No, this was this was the local newspaper. This is a daily, yeah. And so he gave me a writing test and I I did well enough that he hired me to basically work full time as a mostly covering high school sports, but a little bit of college sports. And Then I was hooked. I was like this I'm gonna do this.

Um, and and how did you You know, uh I mean How did you know? Later right. I don't know.

I'm gonna red? Read newspapers. And that was really lucky because the the Gene Hens, who uh who passed away several years ago was the the professor of the journalism department. he took a real shine to me and was like, Listen, just keep working. Like if you can work fifty, sixty hours a week, they I can't teach you that. Like learn to work sources, learn to write a story, learn to Be creative.

And and so I really took his advice. Um, I guess while you were in college, y there was a Another small town paper maybe nearby in in a place called Brilliant in Wisconsin. And uh you you somehow got a job like kind of running this paper, which I think meant literally you were the only employee. You were the editor and the reporter and the

Photographer. Is that right? Yeah, it's like I mean I I I had decided okay I really like Journalism. But I had this.

Kinda. suspicion that I'm gonna g sports is gonna get old. And so I called around every newspaper. And brilliant news is one of the top uh the list uh because it d you know obviously starting with a B. And

uh Zayn Xander answers the phone and I explain, Hey, I wanna come I'm looking to do anything, I'll do it for free. Uh do you have any jobs this summer? And it was one of those Moments of serendipity. You know, I don't have a ton of academic experience in this and I've I've done this one sports gig and he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, can you run my paper? I'm like, Well again, like I I don't really I've done I've done one job uh covering high school sports. I don't know that that qualifies me to run a newspaper. He's like, Yeah, whatever Uh He goes, My editor just uh just informed me that if he can't go to Finland for the next three months, uh he had some opportunity there.

uh that he was gonna leave forever. And I need someone to run my paper for for three months and if you We'll do it. Uh I'm gonna teach you in the next week. how to run a newspaper. Wow. I'm going to teach you how to lay it out. I'm gonna teach you how to edit it, how to do photography, how to Think about it.

agriculture and the farm country that you're Sitting in and I'm gonna set you loose. And he did that. What were you covering? Wha how did you generate stories? Would you go to like Was there like a town hall that you would go to? What do you remember? I do everything from you know, I it's a small town, so I got to know the people in politics there. And it wasn't again it was I don't know if it was uh cocky, naive, lucky

I just never I was never insecure about it, even though My first I'll never forget my first it's probably the only time I've ever cried at work. I my very first edition, this is back when you would lay out a newspaper, you would do it on cardboard, right? And you would use a cut'mout the columns using a razor blade. And I This is my first issue. I'm working uh eighty, a hundred hours, whatever it was was in it the shows, or Elon Musk hours um to put this paper out.

And I had uh accidentally put column three in four and four in three. So the only way you could read it and it would make sense is if you went column one, two, four, three. And I remember sitting in my car. And exhausted in reading this and realizing that I had screwed it up. And I uh'cause they they already printed the paper when you gave them the the the It was done. It was printed. I was this is the printed version. And so uh that was uh humiliating, humbling. Um but even that, I you bounce back and I just

You know, Zane was gracious and the people around him were were generous in teaching me and and having patience. And I I loved it because it's one of the cool things about journalism. Like everybody has an interesting story. I don't care what it is. And you know, you become a rock star or like you're the you are the paper. And yeah, it was just a an an amazing master's class in in running something. Was that was that experien like when you finished that experience, right?'Cause I know you graduated from from College in ninety four.

And when But when you finish that job. D did you was it clear to you that you were gonna become a reporter pref that's not I was gonna be a p after that I'm I was gonna be a political reporter in Washington. Hm. In Washington D C. Yeah. Yeah. And and you'd and you'd been there before a school trip? Never. Never been there.

Again, again, it's Cockiness or being naive, probably more of the naive. Hm. I I think during your senior year, uh, you applied to do an internship in Washington, D C with uh with Herb Cole, who was uh senator at the time, senator from Wisconsin, of course. And I think I think this may have been your first time in Washington, right? And in your first introduction to national politics.

Yeah. It was awesome. I learned everything. You could about, you know, how to deal with the press, but I also did all the grunt errant, so I learned all the tunnels and ways to get around Capitol Hill and where are the offices and where are the hideaways. And I just I loved Washington, like just loved it.

Alright, so you you get to DC I think in nineteen ninety four, is that right? Yeah. The the internship was in the the the spring and then I went into Martha's Vineyard and mowed lawns and did landscaping with friends that I met. Yeah. through there and then I moved out in it would have been February of ninety five is when I moved out for good to DC.

And I didn't have a job and I sent out hundred and some resumes. And crickets for the most part. I wasn't it was months and so I ended up being working for a bricklayer and I, you know, begged everybody from C SPAN to you name it for a job and Just nothing. Manila envelope and waiting to hear back and Yeah, it's funny, uh thinking back about that, I had sent the w the one interview I got was with C SPAN and I was really into C SPAN, like I said earlier. In my cover letter

had explained to them like changes I would make to C SPAN. And like I've never thought even even when I became an entrepreneur, I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. But I look back and I'm like, Well here I am, this young dumb kid trying to get a job is a bricklayer and I'm giving C SPAN ideas on how they might prepare They're Viewers by

creating content in advance so they're ready for the debates that they're about to watch. that unfold in in these congressional hearings and such. And so when I'm finally interviewed with whoever I interviewed at C SPAN, they're like, Yeah, I think you're a little too ambitious for us. And I'm like ambitious like I'm carrying bricks. I have no job. Like I'll take anything. Uh, but anyways, they didn't hire me, uh, but a a company called Inside Washington Publishers did.

And inside Washington Publishers is a collection of Kind of hyper niche publications. Newsletters. And It uh and new fuels report was the one that hired me and it was covering the alternative fuels. industry.

And Uh that was an awesome job. Th this is an interesting niche that uh some people may not know about, which is that in Washington DC, certainly at the time even now There are these publications and later on you would r kind of replicate this model with Political Pro, but d publications that were designed for very specific audiences like lobbyists interested in oil, or lobbyists interested in the transportation industry, or lawyers, or w people

Who who were p intercular And they could And and they're they were expensive. But uh a lot of like inexperienced reporters were brought into these places and they they were basically Churning out the content.

for them and you were one of them. I was one of them. I mean it's one of the little it's one like you said one of the little known training grounds for many of the reporters that you see around town today. And you learn because you have to learn how to do a beat. You have to learn you're you are covering a sophisticated topic for a sophisticated audience. So you can't just be you you you you just can't be young and dumb. Like you have to pretty quickly become a decent reporter and Every industry, every city, every person has a story and has there's drama, there's power, there's people, there's politics. And if you dig into it,

the people that are living it, breathing it, doing it for a living, they have real passion around it. And by the way, this I mean, this is all happening around nineteen ninety five, which Which was a historic time in Washington because both

Houses of Congress had just uh shifted to Republican control, which was a huge story was like after forty years or something. And so I guess that same publisher that that was d doing the alternative fuels journal

to cover Congress and you Like you start working on that, i is that right? Yeah. They started a publication called Inside the New Congress, which was created

to cover the Republican Congress, and it was me Charlie Mitchell and then John Brezhnevan who just uh who I worked with uh later at Roll Call, later at Politico, and now is one of the co founders of Punch Bowl. we were covering Congress. So the three of us were off and running covering this new Congress run by Republicans at a time where most reporters only had democratic sources. So While we were tiny.

And unknown in new we were on equal footing with everyone else because they didn't know anybody in the Republican Party and we got sourced up pretty quickly and We did some good stories. How did you get source that?

You know, you start calling people, you start figuring out like who has power and you know, at the time I'm in my, you know, young twenties and I'm single and Guess what? Most staffers are in their young twenties and guess what they do at night? They go out, they play cards they drink and you get to go out and I just met everyone I could and try to create relationships and try to understand power dynamics, try to get to know The members read a lot, understand the issues and

I've always had a natural once I got into journalism a fascination with just like how people get use and abuse power. Uh very interested in power. Like I just I understood politics. So all right, so you're working for this publication and um and and pretty I think not too long, maybe within a year

I think you're hired by roll call. Which is which for people who don't know that's the that was at the time like the gold standard in in Washington D C for covering Congress. That was like c came I think Monday and Thursday or I don't want Tuesday and Wednesday. I and it was every congressperson gets it, every lobbyists and lawyer like they all read it religiously.

They still might I don't know, but um That's Right. You were there with I think within a year of of of moving to D C Yeah. I get there, I cover Republican leadership. It just happens to be one of the few moments in history that.

Republican congressional leaders. are the national story. I happen to be extremely well sourced in that space, and I start breaking a lot of stories and stories that really echoed nationally and you know, especially around like I was the first person back then to report that Republicans were meeting secretly in the basement and trying of the Capitol and trying trying to move money from a slush fund to to lay the groundwork to impeach Clinton. And it was a I mean it was a monster, monster story back then. And I'll never forget, someday I'll f I'll find the tape. It was big enough that I they got called to be on the Today Show. And here I am, I don't own

like dress clothes. I had like this supper club sports coat that plaid thing that was my dad's that didn't fit. And I looked at the time, I was young, but I probably looked like I was seventeen. And I'm sitting here talking to Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. And I couldn't be more scared and in over my head, but it was it it just captured the enormity of of that story and of that moment. And it was just it was fun. It was just it was interesting, it was intoxicating, and I was getting good at it.

It you're I mean, it seems I I would imagine that your your kind of ambition. probably would eventually maybe to be like an editor in a newspaper, right?'Ca you you were obviously really successful. You were 'cause when I think about my early career, I was like I w that's what I want to be. I want to be a foreign correspondent And then I want to be the host of all things considered and then that would be it. Like I'd be done. That'd be great.

Yeah. I achieved my objective. at roll call. I never had ambition to be an editor. I never had ambition to run anything. Like I never aspired anything beyond that. My dream coming out to Washington is if I if I could cover leadership.

in Congress for roll call. Like that. That would be it. Like I would have made it. Yeah. But I mean of course you would eventually move

well beyond uh roll call'cause I think it w while you were still in your twenties, um You get a job. Covering politics for the journal, the Wall Street Journal. And then after d doing that for a few years you got hired by the Like the top of the

Yeah. It's a for for people who don't you know, aren't interested or don't know much about this world, like it is high stress, right? Like the competition was Absolutely fierce. So what did that mean? That were you just

Constantly. Just working the phones, like you know, shouting at people if if somebody else got a scoop and you didn't get it first. I what what was your Like'cause I think you are I think You are a competitive reporter.

Right? You are, no you are. Very very competitive reporter. You know, the Like competitive And then insecure about my standing. Like I would be in this I would have a great story and I would live off that high for a day and then I'd be like, Oh my God, am I uh do I have imposter syndrome? Do I like am I ever gonna get another scoop? And and a lot of this stuff I didn't realize until

later in reflecting on it. I was What I was good at, and probably what I was uniquely good at. I had learned at the journal, which is I was really good at fact pattern recognition. Like I could see three things that were happening in society or business and politics and I could put them into a portrait that would give people some clarity of w of what and why things are happening. And then I was very

Good at figuring out What moves will somebody else make next based on what I've seen them do in the past, which would then allow me to pick up the phone and call a member of Congress and say, I know you're meeting on this, even if I didn't know they're meeting on it because I know that naturally that's what they would meet on. So why don't you tell me why you're doing that? And it would it's amazing how often that trick would get them to tell me stuff they otherwise wouldn't tell me because they think I already knew it. And an ability to write.

Fast. Allowed me to be good. Yeah. I I mean here you are. You're working at the best possible place to be for a political junkie and a political reporter. And c clearly you loved it and you still love it.

He used to live there. Yeah. Um But You know

What What started to happen in two thousand six you would leave, but Oh What was going on? Why were you getting restless?

Okay. I if you had asked me in May of two thousand six. Are you ever gonna start a company? I would have looked at you like you're an LSD. W what are you talking about?

Like no. I'm working at the Washington Post. But like later that month or early ch I can't remember the exact timing, but somewhere after that point. Google bought YouTube.

And It was like this aha moment for reasons I can't fully explain of I remember going up to John Harris, who's my editor. and looking around the newsroom and thinking about what was happening with cable TV and the internet. And I said, could you imagine if Eric Schmidt came to us right now and said I want to take on the Washington Post.

How much money would that cost me? And I answered my rhetorical question to to John, saying Not that much. If you think about what's happening before us, if we hired at the time I said if we hired six of the best reporters we know and six rising stars, And we hooked ourselves up to the internet.

And we took advantage of the fact that cable T V likes to have us on. I bet you we could Compete with the post. Instantaneously. And

It was like a light bulb. I I literally went from never thought of it to Holy crap, I'm gonna start this company. We jokingly called it Project X. And started to really sketch out.

what would later become Politico. Yeah. And It led us very quickly And it probably only happened'cause it went quickly.

to a series of conversations. Like we John and I are John had been at the post for twenty years. We knew a lot of people around town. We called people who had money We said, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. Here's an idea. And because I worked at Roll Call, I understood the business. I understood that ah, if you get really influential people to read content, you can sell ads to companies who care about their image. in front of that uh audience of of of D C Elite. Basically pitched this.

And every person that we talked to said, Ah, not only do I like that, like Can I invest? Hm. And so we're like, Wow, okay, now This is real. Yeah.

And and I guess that at this point you've got this idea called Project X, and it's gonna be like I think uh I read that you were describing like like the Yankees of political journalism. We're gonna get the Yankees together, right? Yep. So it would be political journalists, but it would be A publication For A very specific but influential audience that

a certain kind of advertiser wanted to reach. So that that was the idea was to reach like it i our thing was listen, if we can get the president and Nancy Pelosi to have to read what we're writing. We're gonna have a very profitable publication. And by the way, because of cable and the internet, we're probably gonna have a pretty large audience for this. Back then the Washington Post and Washington Post dot com were separate companies in separate buildings on two different sides of the Potomac. And I remember walking over to dot com and they're looking at me like oh my God, the paper people never come here. And I'm like, What are you guys up to over here? And oh what's this? Like, oh this is the traffic to the stories that you're writing. And I'm like, Well wait a second, according to your leaderboard, my story got more readers online than it got in print. Yeah, yeah, that happens every day. I'm like, then why the hell am I spending all my time looking at the newspaper if I can get a much bigger audience online? And they're like, Yeah, it's we've been trying to tell you all, but no one cares about the internet.

And So yeah, we thought if we could do those two things, we were gonna have a really successful publication. Yeah. And and I guess that at this point we've kind of reached a A major uh turning point in the story because this is where you would begin a partnership with uh a local media mogul named Robert Alburton.

Um he he was I guess basically the son of a A very wealthy uh media mogul himself who owned a bunch of uh like local TV stations, and at the time. Uh, I guess Alberton was trying to launch his own political publication, but it wasn't coming together. Yep. Um and and from what I understand, he heard that you and John Harris were trying to do

Something. Similar. Um so so then what did like did he did Did Robert like approach you and say, Hey Why don't you do your publication your political thing with me and and and I'll fund it?

Yeah. So This is the serendipity part. And You know, I remember telling Harris like if this is meant to be someone's gonna come along and hear about it and you know, there's probably gossip around town that we're we're thinking of doing something and that's what those guys picked up on. And by this time, remember we had been pitching this to venture capitalist and pitching it to people in town. We had a very compelling case. So by the time we meet with them, we've really thought it through. We never run a business, we've never done a budget or anything like that, but we had like a back of the envelope.

a formula for how this could be a very successful Company. And The post initially I think. looked at us like we were on drugs or we were aliens. They didn't think it was gonna be I mean I remember

I remember Don Graham saying, What are you talking about, Jim? You've never managed anything. You're not very often in the newsroom. You've never raised your hand to be a leader, and now you're telling me you're gonna start a competitor to the post. I think they thought it was a a a joke or like the uh a fanciful Dream. uh was their initial reaction until they realized that we were serious and then they got serious. And but by the way, did you ever consider going to the post and saying, Hey, let's spin off a company and I'll run it.

Well they came back with that idea. They said well once things got real serious, they said fine, uh what if we created a company inside the company and called it post politics? Don't do it there, do it here. If you think the future's digital, build it out here. And they only came to you with that proposal once they realized that somebody else might actually finance this thing.

Correct. Yeah. And and what we said to them was it just it wouldn't work. Like you have this massive legacy operation with leaders who have, you know, a lot of power and big egos. There's no way that they're gonna make good music with us being an upstart internally at the same time. And by the way, by this point We wanna go do it and we wanna do it.

On our own. Right. You know, but they're They're bringing it though. At this point they're bringing it. They do both the charm and then they do the um intimidation, right? Like I remember

be you know, Don Graham and his leadership team calls us in and and and explains to us why it's a dumb idea for us to leave and and Don, who couldn't be a sweeter guy and a smart guy. I turned to us and just said, I've never said this to anybody. You are making a catastrophic. Mistake.

When we come back in just a moment. What happens after Jim decides not to heed? That very dire warning. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening. to how I built this.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Roz. So it's 2006 and Jim is thinking of leaving the Washington Post to start a new publication. And he's gonna partner with post editor John Harris and get financial backing from media mogul Robert Alburton. And still, Jim's been told that if he does this, he'll be making a catastrophic mistake. So he's feeling the pressure. For sure. I mean I'm I again I got a wife at home, I've got kids and you know, we're It's not a cheap market living in the in Washington, DC, and so the risk was very high. I always calculated that, okay, but even if I fail.

I'm a pretty good reporter. Somebody's gonna hire me. And so I never I didn't worry that much about the failure dimension. I worried a little bit about the public humiliation. But even that I didn't I don't I don't I don't spend a whole lot of time caring what other people think about me, so that part didn't weigh that heavily, but it weighed very heavily on Harris. I mean, he very much wanted to back out and there was a moment uh that we would now refer to as a the famous coffee walk where he basically had convinced himself that we can't do this, that he was gonna he was gonna pull the plug. And and we had always said, like, we're doing it together. We're not one of us not doing it alone and so he wanted to pull the plug and he

comes over, we go for a walk, and as I leave my wife looks at me and she says, Under no circumstances Harris talking you out of this. My wife was a huge uh believer in it. And I said, No way, no way will he t talk me out of it. So we go get coffee and of course he talks me out of it. Um But I get home and my wife looks at me and she can tell instantly that I buckled and she jumped on her keyboard and you know, s wrote up this note to Harris, to me, and to Harris's wife, uh Ann O'Handlin, and she was quoting Churchill and Roosevelt and about seizing the moment and like moments like this only happened once, get in the arena. And uh it she

Uh she she saved us from ourselves. Th It was arguably a bigger risk for your partner, John Harris,'cause he was older than you. You were in your ear thirty mid thirties. So that's the normal time. for a lot of people to kinda jump ship and try their own you know, their own thing and and you can recover. But I'm not going to be able to

Yeah, for him it was a big risk. Bigger risk and he had more of a emotional attachment to the post. Like I'd been there three years. He'd been there twenty. Like it was his only job. It was definitely a easier move for me than it was for him. Alright, so you connect with Robert Alberton, he is gonna be the guy. that will back this thing. And

And the reason that you do this is because it's stability. You're gonna get a He's gonna guarantee a salary. I think he's guaranteeing to put in ten million dollars in this thing. Right? At the time. And there was no it mitigated the risk.

Yeah. It was a it was all about risk. mitigation. But the most important thing is we had a building and we had money. And so when I went to recruit people from the journal, I guess hey look, like here's a computer, here's an office. Like w this is real. It's not some I'm not doing it in my garage. This isn't uh this isn't a garage band activity. You you and John basically were handed the reins to run The editorial side.

of political to kinda create it and I think your wife gave it the name, right? She named it. She gave the name. My wife's name. Um and and Alburton and Fred Ryan, his the CEO of his his sort of media company, they would handle the business side. More or less. Right. That was the arrangement originally, yes. They would uh they had business at commun, they had, you know, they had T V stations, uh they had set up sales organizations before, and so in the beginning it was very much uh It was a group effort, right? And Robert, who, you know, if it weren't for his money and his courage and and taking a chance on us Political doesn't exist. And I look back at like

Um it was a miracle. A miracle that political work. Yeah. I mean with his his money, obviously there were s resources, right at the the the paper launches in in January of two thousand seven.

Yeah. So he's he because he owns these television stations i he had a building, I think just across it says D C in uh Arlington, and that was where politica would be located. And uh I remember those early

Pers when I would when I you know, read them online and but it was a it was a newspaper and it was online. I mean it was going to be A print newspaper and an online paper. Um And

From from like one account that I read, you know the night or the cut and then the nights before that first edition was launched. Um a lot of the copy was just Crap, it was terrible. Like you you and John basically had to rewrite the paper.

We had a pact. Um going into this, we said never Will either of us ask? the following question. If you could do it over again, would you still do it? And we had stuck to it.

until the night that we're about to launch and we look at all the stories. We're so busy getting everything put together. We never had time to deal with the copy. We knew what the lead story would be and But you had an entire newspaper to fill and a website to to to load up. And we w started to go through the stories one by one and they were Awful. And

We were literally sick to our stomach. We're like Oh, where the hell are we gonna put out a publication? Tomorrow, much less how are we gonna do this on a regular basis. A lot of people wanted you to fail. It was a big deal.

I was uh pretty cocky in public about what we were gonna deliver. What were you promising by the way? I was just saying that we're gonna take on the post and like like that people from Why were why were you saying that? No. I think John and others were asking me that at the time as well. Yeah. Like I am at this point in my mind, we are going to will this into existence. And

Part of willing something into existence Is having a little P T Barnum in you. understanding that you need people Talking about you.

even if it's not always in flattering ways. You need to be part of the conversation. So the bet I was making was I'm gonna be provocative and definitely it came off I think to a lot of people as as abrasive or cocky and so we had tons of people Cheering against us. And so against that backdrop we're looking at these stories and I remember looking at Harris and saying, Uh if you could do it over again, uh, would you do it? And uh even though we've promised not to ask that and he said No way.

Um But it was that bad. It was a dark, dark Moment. But You don't failure's not an option.

Like anybody who started a company, failure's not an option. I don't have time uh for pessimism. All I have time for is activation and solutions. And we had enough Fresh ideas and enough savvy reporters like Ben Smith and and J Mar, Jonathan Martin, who were breaking stories and that other people were having to follow that we built up this momentum. And a few things became very clear to us early on. One

Talent matters. Profoundly. one good person, one awesome person is better than 10 good people. And we had a lot of'em. We had a lot of these killer talents and

I wanted to find those people and you wanted to keep those people. But that took time. And when you're going out there saying we're gonna be Beat the Washington Post. And that means th there's a lot of people really

you know, secretly hoping you're gonna fail. Um there's pressure there because you can't fail because that would be humiliating. There's no entrepreneur who's done your show who won't tell you that there's an insane amount of pressure. There's a it it takes a certain amount of lunacy to believe you can take something that doesn't exist and will it into existence. And so

You by nature have some level of very high tolerance for stress. And You don't sleep. I remember my brother coming and visiting and my brother, you know, d knows nothing about politics at the time, doesn't pay attention to media, just came to you know, to to hang out and go to bars for a couple days. And I remember him looking at me getting you know, going to bed at twelve and getting up at three o'clock and firing off a hundred emails saying, Whatever you're doing's not healthy.

Like what are you doing? Yeah. It it wasn't healthy, but it was It was exhilarating. It it's it's it's intoxicating. Like you either Collapse from it? Or you

Yeah, thrive. And because of it being new and maybe a little bit because of the bravado Everyone was covering us. So there were stories on CNN and there were stories in the journal and others. So we were getting all of this earned media. So the P T Barnum part of it was pay off. And

So there was enough public success. That It was clear We could be successful.

I I I wonder I mean one of the things I wonder about is you you you get there and and your John Harris who you worked with, he had Manage some managerial. experience'cause he was an editor. Um, you had not. I mean you were a reporter. Most reporters are you know, they're one person bands, right? They're they're Lone Wolf.

Right. Or or if they work in teams, but still they're You know, they're their own boss usually. Um And now you are uh a manager

Plus you were the kind of the star reporter, so you also had to report And oversee. A team of young reporters and Push them hard. How did you

learn to do that without Being an asshole. I don't think I was ever an asshole. I think I pushed people hard. And did I push people? To the limit, there's no doubt. There's no doubt, like our level of burnout in that first year was exceptionally high.

I never push people harder than I push myself. And I hired a lot of people who I knew were similar. Right? We ended up hiring Jake Sherman or Ben Smith. Like

If you get the right reporter who's motivated, you don't need to push them. Like they're pushing themselves and they're on fire for breaking news and getting scoops and the adrenaline that flows. Uh from it. Yeah, like I only I didn't lead. Like John had been a manager, John was certainly the adult in the room. And I was more Vince Lombardi. Like I'm gonna like pound power, I'm gonna work you, I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna try to inspire, I'm gonna try to like I'd run around the room, like what do you got for me now? Like let's get a scoop, like why'd that person beat us? Like it became a joke, uh uh to a point because I would I would do so so much of it, but Instinctively I felt that's what we we have to somehow

Do the impossible. And that's the story of of every Startup, you're trying to do something no one's ever done before with a group of people who haven't done it together. before uh and in this environment we did it with the added layer of were under intense public scrutiny. Um you know.

I'm I'm curious when you would tell reporters, like when when new reporters came in And you would say this is what a political story is. This is what makes us different. How would you describe it? Wha what was it? What was the political story? A political story we would say is listen, is this An idea.

An analysis a scoop. that the Speaker Chief of Staff would consider new revelatory. Essential. Illuminating.

Like that was the marker. Like we were writing we called it the bullseye of of the audience. If we can get something that is so interesting to the most powerful people, it's gonna be interesting to anybody who cares about politics. So h here's what I'm wondering. I'm like politico became you know, sort of a sensation in Washington, D C quickly. And Let let's let's be honest for a moment here. D Washington D C can be very provincial.

Right. people can really be navel gazy and and so You know, it's also a great place to get attention because it is a small town in that sense, so People were talking about political, but It was it was not making money. I mean

Here here you've got politico. You're writing your own stuff. It's really expensive to have all those staffers writing original pieces, and Huffington Post was at the at that time Kind of. You know

And they were just aggregating articles. They weren't even writing them. Yep. I mean was was there ever like did anybody Internally just say, What are we doing? Why do we why are we paying people to write stuff? Why don't we just do what they do? I d not really because we were starting to bring in revenue. The whole idea was if you can write things that members of Congress have to read then these companies would want to advertise to reach those. And that happened instantly. So we started to get a lot of ad buyers, defense companies and

financial service company. That was in the newspaper. Like I don't know. Ten million. I think we brought in three or four million in year one, if my memory serves me correct. So it wasn't There was money coming in and I think by year three we we broke even or uh uh might even have made money that that third or fourth year. But Back then like

I wasn't even that worried about the business. We wanted it to work. We were like about brand building, about g hiring the right journalists, about getting people to take us seriously. And on that score pretty early on, it was mission accomplished. D did you I mean You know, obviously. All Britain.

He knew going in. that he was not gonna make money for at least a year, probably two But um There must have been pressure coming down to bring in money. Yeah, I don't remember in those early years there being a whole lot of tension about

Revenue. started to have tension. probably between John and I and and kinda the suits, Robert and Fred. Uh just about how to run the company and how often do we need to meet and When did that start?

I wish I had a better memory on specifics, but I would say It started low grade. Around year three. And got progressively. More.

Worse. Uh It's not set up the way you would want to set up a company, right? Our CEO Fred is also running a massive local television MP, right?'Cause all Britain owned owned a bunch of TV channels. Bunch of T V channels. And so a lot of our leadership, a lot of our technology was coming from T V, which I didn't realise at the time, but very antiquated and a very throwback industry and

it started to become clear That that's the same. That was the source of the tension. I was like there's no way That we could be a successful Company.

at a national or international scale if we're running like a mom and pop shop, or certainly running like a mom and pop shop backed by a local T V station. Like we we need Like a full time leader. We need a full time technologist. We need to continue to to grow and find new revenue streams and like we were That would be where where we started to hit our sort of first

period of real. turbulence. But up until then it was like we're having a blast. We for the most part people are getting along and we're all trying to kind of figure out like who does what. And you know, then John and I are becoming are you know, we're start to become leaders ourselves. We start to do a lot of self appraisal. We start to figure out what are the weaknesses and like how do we create something that's more sustainable. Like we're not dumb. Like once you have turnover as high as we had and you have people writing stories about us being a sweatshop.

We're not dopes. We know that that's not sustainable. It may have gotten us to where we were, but we were gonna have to create a culture in a company That could rely on something other than the maniacal energy of a few people.

I mean it's interesting because the the culture, right? I mean you talk about the culture and and um you you mentioned this this kind of the sweatshop stories that were coming out about politico And It's almost as if You you anticipated that that churn would happen. That's the

It was just gonna be par for the course. You you to to win you had to operate that way. Or maybe not. I mean if you were to do it again Would you have baked in a different culture from the beginning? Expresses enough.

Everything that we did was based on intuition and instinct. And so I think at the crassest level, yes, like what is what is the instinct that motivates people in trauma or turmoil? It is It's um I'm not failure's not an option. I'm gonna get out of

this hole and so all you're doing is like I'm gonna fight today to win today and I'm not thinking about casualties. And it was Made messier because We were in the media and the media c loves to cover media. And so any misstep would be amplified in a way it might not be amplified if I was trying to start a shoe company. Right. People wouldn't care.

Um Yeah. H how was your before things started to get a little bit tense? Right. I think they started around two thousand ten, but

From from everything I've read, I mean you and and and Robert Alberton were quite close in the You y you guys went out to dinner with your wives and You guys were on vacation together. I mean y you became pretty close. Yeah, there's there're definitely long periods of time where uh

You know, y listen here, like a Any startup is like a a family, you're trapped in a house together and you know, you're Harris used to have this expression that we've been in the car uh too long together. Like that uh that certainly is true at times, but y Robert and I were we're we're close at different times. We were friends. But you know, we started to clash. I mean it's pretty well documented that I just we had different values, we had different business styles and you know, at that point when you start to have success

Yeah, egos emerge, right? And people want credit or people want more input. Yeah. You know, our first big clash I basically At some point it was clear to me the company needed a CEO and and to be blunt, I thought it needed me to be the CEO because I had

This sounds so arrogant, but I was like I was learning how to lead. I was really interested in the business. I had a yeah, I had started to gravitate away from the coverage and much more towards how do you turn these things into scalable businesses. I had started to think about Culture. So what what what happened? I mean, you would uh obviously eventually become the CEO, which we will I will ask you about in a moment. Um, but when you were still in that first year, right, and you guys were trying to figure out ways to to grow your revenue, um, I guess you you brought someone on to help you figure that out, right?

Yeah. So I had to went out on a limb and hired a guy, Roy Schwartz, uh who was at Gallup and had been a consultant but was just smart as hell. And I'm like, you need to come and run our revenue. You need to th there's no way that there can't be a better way than this good old boy network. I need someone who's smart and savvy who could talk to CEOs, who can help companies think smartly about how to utilize our platform. And

Once I hired him. Then you know, we really had an alliance and became quite close and he was just smarter than anybody on the business side at that company by ten X And we had decided we wanted to start a subscription business called Political Pro.

Yeah. Th this was bec I mean, this really was A significant generator of revenue. And this for for people that don't know what it is, it it's similar to what you did as an early reporter. I mean it's like

It was uh designed for Industry people, lobbyists, lawyers, pu b you know, b who who had a specific interest in a specific topic and in political pro delivers what delivered and delivers this Intensive. specialized information to them and and the subscriptions were like.

Ten thousand dollars a year. Something like that. Correct. And so you didn't need You didn't you don't need that many subscribers. Nope. You need lobbyist companies, lawmakers. They pay ten thousand dollars a slot. Some big company who has fifty lobbyists might pay a hundred thousand dollars. And it's an expensive business up front because you gotta hire a lot of reporters, you gotta hire like a real sales team because you're asking companies to pay, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for a subscription. And there was a real clash uh between you know Roy and I and and really got Robert on the other side. who just thought it was uh we were wasting money and that it John wasn't that enamored with it'cause he thought it was too wonky in terms of the of the coverage focus. But we believe that you couldn't be solely dependent on advertising and and to be a really big durable company.

Roy and I were super confident that you needed this subscription leg of the business. And eventually Roy and I prevailed and eventually Robert agreed to it. So to his credit, like while resistant in the beginning, he did fund it and For us. Like politico was us. It was an extension of us. So its success its durability was was everything. And

I d we just felt in our bones that if we didn't have another We didn't have another revenue stream and God forbid we hit economic turbulence and the the ad market locks up. That we could be in real trouble. Jim, you Finally get to

Actually Become the CEO. in twenty fourteen. And there they're different accounts are tw I guess twenty thirteen. um when when Fred Ryan stepped down, there are different accounts of

of that. Um and you know I've read different interpretations from c you know, Robert Alburn's not here. And again, this is not a critique of him at all. I think I think he's very successful and done some amazing things and made its mark, um certainly with politico and Um

You know, from f there there are some accounts that said that I've seen that suggest that he kinda really didn't really want you doing that job. That he he sort of felt pressure to give you that job and Didn't really think you I don't know. D did you get that sense at all? Yeah. There's no doubt. And

Again, like Ro I think Robert would say it here and then at the time he might have been right. I think he felt like Uh number one, like I had essentially demanded that I be CEO. I felt like I Well you started the thing. I started the thing. I felt like I understood it and I felt like I can run this thing and He felt like I couldn't. I think he thought

you know, I need someone more seasoned, I want someone with more experience in media. And so we had a mighty clash over it, but again In to his credit, he was right that I had not. Again, like I'd be the first to say I was a reporter. I hadn't run anything, like until before I started to Run. political the only thing I had run was the night shift at Little Caesars uh in high school in Oshgosh. And so

There was a big piece of it that you're learning on the fly. Um And I learned a lot in that period. Uh I actually think that uh

Being a reporter is is good training. Um for becoming a formal entrepreneur, because there are entrepreneurial things you have to do. I talked about this with with Don Katz, who started Audible. He was a rolling stone reporter, you know, for most of his career. He was a writer. Um

What a lot of people don't realize is that reporters y you really have to Yeah. Do things very quickly with limited resources. Everything I know is a CEO. I learned from being a reporter.

Everything I New as a reporter, I learned from playing poker. Huh. Right. So take it back to to playing poker in in high school and college. Like

Poker is so much about fact pattern recognition. It's about knowing when to take a risk. It's knowing about how to modulate emotion. In complex and often tense.

situations. and knowing that there's a decent probability that you're gonna lose. And like somewhere in that journey from Yeah.

I think those skill sets helped immensely. But By the time I became CEO, I was very clear that I'm not in this for the long haul. Like at some point I was always up front with Robert. Like at some point when I feel like the company can grow at twenty percent and we're not here. I'm probably gonna go. I wanna do my own thing. Like I I have

Uh by this point I'm I'm you know, Roy and Kim and Danielle Jones and and uh you know, Mikey like We're we have our kind of own view of like what a company should look like and and and what its soul should be and what its value should be, what its morality should be. And you could not make that happen because it was not your shop. No way. It wasn't my shop. It was Robert's like Robert listen again, like to his credit

He's the one who bankrolled it when no one else would. And he took the risk. Had political go down down the tubes, it's his money that would have been lost. And so he owned it. And therefore he had every right to control it. And you know it's hard after ten years. You could have the best of intentions it's very hard for that to end in a pretty way, and obviously it didn't end in a pretty way. But

That's life. So what what what happened? Clearly you're starting to think okay. Eventually I want to run my own shop. And and you know, you you're alluding to

you know, regret sort of regretfully how it ended. Well h how did it end? What happened? I mean it ended that we couldn't get on the same page about Like how you would set up the company, like for instance, is very important to us. that everybody should be able to share in the success. Not just us, but the entire company. Trevor Burrus You wanted you wanted shares distributed and other people. Right. You wanted more ownership distributed. Trevor Burrus Yeah, both because we thought it was the right thing to do, but also it was getting harder and harder to keep talent. And so you wanted to bring everybody together, have everyone have upside uh in the company. Because if people were getting equity in BuzzFeed, they were getting equity in other startups. And it was like it would have been a a competitive advantage if we if we could have done that. But it was more just uh like i it's a philosophy. Like we had a philosophy about what we wanted out of life and what we wanted out of a company that was incompatible.

at politico and it just wasn't gonna happen. We wanted a very transparent culture. We wanted to be very clear lines of authority. And so in many ways it was more the power of that of hey, you know what? I think we could do that. I think we could go off on our own. I think we could raise money And we could build a utopian company. And it was that you're you're almost again like that naive or that cocky, whatever, uh somewhere in the middle of that, that we could build a utopian company. And that lure of that was powerful and by the time Mike tells me, Yes, if we do that we're in and Roy says, Yes, come on, let's go do that.

you know that it's gonna be successful. There's no company that Mike Allen is a part of and that Roy Schwartz is a part of and that wasn't gonna be a a success. And That that more than anything else is what led us to believe, okay, we we can do this. When we come back in just a moment, how Jim and his partners design a new publication to stand out from the others, and in the process, Stumble across an unexpected stream of revenue. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

Welcome back to how I built this. So it's early 2016 and Jim is about to take another risk. And this time, he's gonna leave the business he helped build. political. to start a new online publication.

And he's partnering with two colleagues, the finance guy Roy Schwartz, and the journalist Mike Allen. And they want to cover topics other than politics and do it in digestible chunks. Ready made. for the internet. The data was

Unambiguous that most people were skimming and scanning and they weren't reading most of the words that any of us in the media were writing. And so it meant that people were just consuming content in smaller chunks. And that's the light bulb. That becomes Axios. Улайк, if we could solve for that, how can we help people? Especially busy smart people.

Get smarter, faster across more topics. Wow, if we could solve that, that would be a big company. Well the solution to us became very clear. Th the what we come to over that period is this concept of smart brevity. We've got to find people who have subject matter expertise In media, in business, in technology, in politics, and we have to figure out the most efficient way to deliver that. Ha smart brevy.

So we come up with this architecture of okay, what what is the smartest way to deliver two or four hundred words. And if we could do that. We're gonna do something different. All right. So

You have this concept you leave political in January of twenty sixteen and and Um was there any Any any

threats or any sort of like you can't do this or you can't go off and start your own thing or Any comfortable that wasn't gonna happen. Oh no, we thought for sure we'd be going to court. Um

I mean there was tension, right? And and and Robert and others it it sort of threatened if you take any information from here or if you replicate any of our ideas. I think by the time I left I had three lawyers. You know, like looking at my contract, looking at potential uh litigation. probably an overreaction'cause we never actually had any litigation. Yeah. Um But When you leave a company, especially when you leave with a with with some minute of tension, you have a cooling off period. You have six months where you can't really do anything. You can't start a new company, can't recruit, can't raise money for it. And you know, we were lucky we had enough money and and to be able to to to rest for for six months and and go figure out what we're gonna do. Not a pleasant place to be. I'm not a big

Like sit around. type of person. Like like not like some people would love it. I wish that I loved it. I didn't love it. Right. H here's here's the thing. I mean in in twenty sixteen, right, when you left, you were not financially set for life. Like you still had to work. If if it didn't work out. Correct. But you had a you had a playbook. You knew

Right you had done this. Already you had you'd started a media company s but now really was different because you weren't just the gonna be dealing with the editorial side, you were g gonna be running a Company.

The business side, everything. Yes, like th it could have flopped, you know, we went out and we raised money and I mean I in some ways was the worst person to raise money'cause I would tell every venture capitalist that I think media is the hardest space in America today. I think that most media companies are gonna go under and Yes, if you want to get a 10x return, I would get into healthcare or tech or energy stocks. I would think you have a higher degree of probability to make money there. But if anyone's gonna get you a 10x return in the media space based on their previous record, I think we're the group of people who can do that.

K here's the thing though, Jim. Even even somebody with your experience talent platform Building a new brand is really hard. Y you you're leaving uh Politico, which was a massive brand by the time you left. And even with all the experience, right? I mean look at look at Jeffrey Katzenberg and and uh what was it called? Qui Qui. Right. Uh yeah, right, I mean even super highly successful talented people have a hard time building a brand.

So what was What was the way that you were gonna put this out there? Because to be successful you had to have an audience, because without an audience you can't command high prices for advertising. Yeah, but we Listen, we have Mike Allen. So like we haven't talked enough about Mike. So Mike is one of the co founders of Politico and he's a co founder of Axios. He's maybe the most generous gracious person in the history of American journalism, and he also

has a work ethic that will has never been seen before and never will be seen again. He's written it kind of a legendary report. He wrote this playbook that was became a central reading for people in Washington, DC and beyond for New York Times magazine did a cover story called The Man the White House Wakes Up to He's written a daily newsletter Every day but ten days for fifteen years straight. It's insane. I've never seen anything like it gets up at two thirty. In the morning, bangs that thing out. And it is read by the most influential people in the world. And so we knew that we had Mike.

And we knew that when we launched all the important people in Washington would read Mike. So that was like as long as Mike is breathing and and healthy and feeling good We were gonna be Successful. And then

In that early day, N walks his kid Jonathan Swan, who no one knew about and he had been doing some good reporting on Donald Trump. And Within like half hour a meeting I'm I remember sitting in a room with Mike and looking at Swan, who had I think three other offers at the time.

And looking at him and saying, Dude, you were born to work for us. Like we are gonna pour Whatever we have into you and I think we could be helpful. You have a gift that few people have and he turned down everyone else and took a job with us and you know, took upside instead of salary. And at that point then I I'm okay, we're we're good. We're gonna be a really interesting, fun company and

That was a cool thing. Like one of the things that that dear that your entrepreneurial listeners would enjoy is like I don't know how people do it alone. Remember I had two co founders for Axios. I have Roy and Mike. And we have this beautiful professional relationship. And I can't stress like anybody who's thinking about starting a company. really try to find a partner.

uh who you believe in, who shares your values, who compliments uh whatever skill set you have because there will be dark days. And you're gonna want someone you trust in those dark days. And if you can find people who can handle themselves with class and character in the darkest of moments, You found yourself a gem. W what was the tell me about this approach you took. You call it smart brevity.

Basically. I mean to kind of distill it down to its uh s short articles. Very short articles, but it had very specific Made made an article. adhere to a s to the smart revity.

model. Mm. Basically one of the genetic flaws in journalists is that they're not great writers. And they often bury what matters. And they often hide it in a vomit of words.

And so we tried to create a r a structure. That could Make event. mediocre writers. At least

clear writers. And so we we tried to do is mimic the conversation I would have with you if I went to a bar. And if I did what I would do is I would tell you something in clear language that I'm excited about, that's new, that's interesting, that's illuminating. Then I would give you the context, the why it matters. That's our second graph, the why important. And then you would give me some kind of visual cue about whether to go deeper, which we call go deeper into the conversation. And if you go deeper into the conversation, you would like it to be hierarchical because you don't know when the conversation's gonna end. So make sure the most important information

is distilled in the proper hierarchy, and we had seen from the data that if you take multiple ideas and break it into bullets you're much likelier to get people to keep reading and to retain, and so we broke it into bullets and having those founding principles made it much easier to run the company because those founding principles really haven't changed to this day. We're much bigger, we've created new business lines. But fundamentally all of those things were set in place five years ago and haven't changed that much. Um how important was The Trump era to The success of Axios. I mean, that was a boom time for news.

We know that for CNN everybody. I have mixed feelings. I have a uh mixed analysis. Like on the one hand it was really good for us because Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen uh and others were extremely wired into the Trump. White House Trump campaign, and we were able to break a lot of news and people were captivated by Trump, so we were able to elevate our brand for free at scale quickly. That's on the plus side. The minus side was one of the things we'd set out to do is we didn't want to be defined by politics alone. We wanted to be seen as a source of truth for politics, business, media, technology, uh other topics. It made it really hard because Trump sucked up all the oxygen, sucked up all of the traffic. people started to massively consume politics to a level that's not healthy for a normal human being's diet. Uh and so th those two things were were in conflict. But it certainly helped us, it certainly uh helped put us on the map. Yeah.

How did you I mean I I you know, obviously it's a private company, so you you may not talk too specifically about about financials, but I mean As you said yourself, media companies are inherently risky. They're very hard.

to make profitable. And we're gonna see what happens over the next couple of years with You know, a lot of different media companies, but Um, you know, diversification seemed to be the the answer for a while. You know, let's do events and let's do partnerships and licensing deals and podcasts and T V and uh, you know, we'll we'll we'll uh you guys w went even beyond that, you you created a piece of software.

for businesses this uh based on the smart brevity model, like to help businesses write shorter emails and stuff. How did you but that took some time. But out of the gate. How did you Just drum up cash to

You know. T. to to bring in revenue. Yeah, I mean two things. One, we raised money, so we we launched with ten million dollars in cash. And then because we had done politica when we left, I probably had four or five companies call me and say, I don't care what you're starting, like we've allocated X amount to advertise with you guys. But whatever you're gonna start, we're we're successful, you're gonna you're gonna be successful. And that's where most of the money came from in those early years. And then a great like your entrepreneurial audience will love uh the story. Like we're a media company, we're doing well.

Or eighteen months into our creation and I start to get phone calls. the NBA, the Basketball Association, JP Morgan Chase, United Health Group. Their executives start calling us and say

almost identical things, like they were in the same room and they said Listen. Our executives all read axios. But they won't read anything that we write internally. Will you teach us to write?

Yeah. And our initial reaction was no, we're a media company, go learn how to write somewhere else. But The more we heard that from people I remember Roy and I turning to each other saying, Man, like usually a market whispers like this market is screaming. It is screaming at us.

And so we created a a a sister company inside the company called Axios HQ. And the idea was to both teach smart brevity to companies, but then little by little we built a technology, uh AI powered technology that took all the learnings from the newsroom about how to write an engaging headline, how to pick the right visual to get people to pay attention to content that matters, and we created a software that now, you know hundreds of companies and the mayor of Austin and the school system in Austin, Texas, like tons of people, big companies, small companies, medium companies, now use it. Uh HQ and smart brevity.

To communicate internally. Mm. So all right. I mean

Uh I I think Th the sometimes this comes across this can come across as an obvious question because you know, wh why wouldn't you? But here you've got this thing that you launched in twenty seventeen. And uh it's doing pretty well. You know.

It's it's uh I think ha how long did sustainability or profitability. How many years in? I mean, I think by year two or th

But year two were profitable. Not by design, by the way. Like we were trying to be in investment mode. The business was doing better than we thought. hiring is tough in media, but we were we were breaking even. Like we were doing f we're we broke even I think year two, three, four. Or made a little bit of money. Like but not I don't know. So you are uh and you know, you've got all these revenue streams going.

And then Or in twenty twenty two. You Sold. to uh to Cox Enterprise is it?

They they bought bought out Axios, I think for a little more than five hundred million dollars. Um Again. it can come across as an obvious question which is why why would you sell it?'cause it's five hundred million dollars, why not?

But um But why? I mean I mean, you know, you wanted um You wanted independent, you wanted to to to run your own shop you're just four and a half years in. Um why was it the right time?

Yeah, uh it's a great question, uh, especially given that, you know, five years earlier we wanted to control our own destiny, right? And we were very clear with people that we're a hard company to buy because yes, we're willing to sell a a a substantial percentage of the company. But we wanna run the company. We wanna run the business and we want a hundred percent editorial control. So that we told people along the way, listen, if you are fine you know, buying out the shareholders and you're you're paying a a a premium price.

and you believe in us and you believe in this culture, you gotta let us run the show for a long time. This is like there's nothing else that we wanna do. Well along comes Cox Communications. They were they led our series D, so we had done a couple of s uh rounds in between. H how much did you raise in total? thirty five to forty million all in. Um But we're sitting there. We have a nice Cash runway. We have a good company that's generating a a a lot of growth.

Cox becomes a series D investor. And they are just like it's almost too good to be true. Like they are the nicest people. They're a fourth generation company. They you know Alex who runs the the the company is just a a great guy. He used to be in journalism himself. They make very clear that the you know the terms you guys are talking about, that's something we could see ourselves doing. Like we have no desire to operate the company. We we want you guys to operate it. And so it made the transaction, which is you you could imagine to d you're you're you're selling your baby, it made what could have been very painful and torturous.

Quite easy. W what's your commitment? How long? I mean I could leave whenever I guess, but my commitment to them is, you know, a minimum of six years or probably a lot longer. I think if you talk to the leadership of Cox, they would say, We hope these th these guys are here for for twenty years running. the company and you know, I don't you know, I'm fifty one. I guess at some point I'll get tired. I don't I probably work harder today than I did I don't know if I worked as hard as I did the that first year at at Politico, but I work a lot. Like I because I love it. I get a lot of energy uh off of it. And so it's uh you know, I I again I'm a I'm a blessed guy. Like I've had a hell of a fun ride. I have a big ride uh in front of us, but like

it just uh it's s i I can't I I talk to college kids a lot now and I'm just like, Man, if you could figure out a way Like there or to do a job that you would do for free, that you love it so much. Like that's Nirvana. That's winning the lottery. Um you you know which question is coming next, because you I know you've heard the show before, but it's still a a a question that worth asking after talking with you for several hours, which is

You and you've uh alluded to this in in in various points during the interview. You've talked about luck. Um how much how much do you think Luck. got you to this point versus I mean, I think it's not a good thing.

I'm I'm tired. Exhausted just just imagining the eighteen hour days that you put in for two decades. So where do you

What do you What do you I don't know. How much how much is is it about one and and how much is it about the other? I just feel like People don't credit luck enough.

That's why I hate the great man stories, these one person visionaries who willed something into existence. That's bullshit. Like nobody wills something into existence alone. You have a lot of people who are helping you, who've helped you in the past, who are helping you in real time. To do the impossible. And I don't think people appreciate Luck. of just being in the right place at the right time, of having an idea that works now that might not work tomorrow or might not have worked yesterday, of running into the right co founder. Like if I don't ask Jen Hurley who's was working in our finance department uh about where she's going and she had not told me, Oh, I'm going skiing with this guy Roy Schwartz, who's really interesting and

uh you should talk to him about business. He's just a smart guy. Like that's pure luck. Like how did I have that conversation with her and she pointed me to Roy. If we didn't have Roy Schwartz, Axios wouldn't have existed. Or how do I end up on the Lido deck in Genoa, Italy during the trade protests when I'm working at the Wall Street Journal and I turn to s the person next to me at four AM who looks at me and says with his beer in his hand. For speed?

And it's Mike Allen wanting to see who can slam a beer faster. And starts a lifelong friendship. How do we have a spark of an idea to start politico and it just happens to be at that very moment the internet's taking off and cable has an insatiable appetite and we happen to run into the right mix of reporters that can bring it into existence. Like so much of that is luck.

And it's perishable. And I just don't feel like people appreciate That enough. That's Jim Vandenai, co-founder of Politico.

And co founder and CEO. Faxios. By the way, in twenty twenty one, Robert Alburton, Jim's co-founder and the man who financed and owned Politico, sold it to the German media giant Excel Springer. reportedly for a billion dollars. And according to the New York Times

It was one of the most expensive media mergers in recent memory. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to contact the team, Our email address is hibt at id.wondere.com. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at HowIBiltThis, and mine is at GuyRos. On Instagram, we're at howIBiltThis and I'm at guy.Roz.

And don't forget to follow this show wherever or however you're listening to it so you don't miss any new episodes. This episode was produced by Carrie Thomson with music composed by Romte Nerablui. It was edited by Niva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Massini, and Carla es to this. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening.

How I built this.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.