Problem
Everyone’s looking for an edge
Growing your business and career have never been more complex and competitive.
The right technology, technique, tool, or talented executive can be the difference between your company being the category killer or roadkill.
Finding that edge isn’t easy. Technology is moving at an ever-increasing pace; marketing techniques that worked last year are now antiquated; and the tools that drove efficiency in the last decade are now slowing companies down.
Companies are competing for elite talent on a global basis, and it's only getting more difficult to find the right people—the game changers—post-pandemic.
Solution
News, knowledge, network
We provide newsletters, how-to guides, events, and an online community to help founders and executives find their edge: solving business challenges, discovering new opportunities, and finding answers to questions they don't know to ask.
Our 14 newsletters keep readers up to date on trends, tactics, and competition. They include feature stories and how-to guides for executives to refine their skills and build their talent stack.
We’re also a nexus for entrepreneurial discussion, hosting online events with top investors, founders, CEOs, service providers, and thinkers. Our Slack community hosts more than 3,750 executives—as well as our analysts, researchers, and writers—and informs our upcoming content.
Product
Built on a powerful,
one-of-a-kind platform
We built from scratch a proprietary newsletter management system (NMS) called Barboza. This NMS is one of our most powerful assets, supporting content creation and advertising management across our entire network of newsletters. In time, it will support our community and event products as well.
The Inside.com Slack community is our most recent product. More than 3,750 users (as of September 2021) participate with our research team in a dozen active channels.
We have channels dedicated to topics like VC, AI, crypto, NoCode, and podcasting. Other channels focus on specific business challenges such as hiring, raising capital, and marketing.
Traction
Averaging 28% QoQ growth
in the last year
We have produced 16 remote events and one live event to date (as of October 2021). These events have generated over 22K signups.
Our most successful event to date, Meet Our Fund, was a reverse demo day where top investors pitch to founders. This event generated over $75K in top-line revenue and over 6,600 registrations.
Inside.com by the numbers
2020 total opens: 37,868,605
2021 total opens Q1 to Q3: 35,816,312
2020 revenue: $1.8M+
2021 Q1 to Q3 revenue: $2.8M+
Averaging 28%+ QoQ growth (Q3 2020 - Q3 2021)
Revenue by Quarter
Customers
Read by Mark Cuban, booked by Salesforce & IBM Watson
Our readers are founders, executives, and decision-makers.
- Billionaire investor Mark Cuban reads Inside AI daily. Over 8K Amazon employees subscribe to Inside newsletters.
- Thousands of our subscribers work at top tech companies like Google, Uber, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, Cisco, IBM, Intel, PWC, Oracle, Gartner, LinkedIn, Netflix.
America's top brands already trust Inside
- Inside had 410 advertising customers from January 2019 - June 2021, including many of the world's most recognizable B2B brands.
- Our customers tend to be the heads of marketing, sourced mainly through outbound sales efforts. 23% of clients rebook, accounting for 33% of revenue in 2021 (as of June 2021).
Business model
Dual revenue model
Inside.com derives revenue from ad sales and monthly reader subscriptions.
- Our quarterly advertising revenue averaged $671K from Q1 2020 to Q3 2021, with average QoQ growth of 14%.
- Our recurring subscription revenue increased 69.61% in 2020.
We launched our first paid ads in 2021. The ads drive event sign-ups, who are then given a free subscription to our newsletters & access to our online community. We're able to convert new subscribers for as low as $2.12 (as of Q3 2021).
Market
$8.14B US market for digital B2B advertising
Newsletter subscription market
Nearly half of consumers subscribe to at least one email newsletter for news and entertainment, with most subscribing to an average of 2 or 3.
B2B advertising
An industry report by Insider Intelligence found that US B2Bs spent $8.14B on digital ads in 2020, up 22.6% from the previous year.
B2B trade show market
According to Statista, the B2B trade show market in the United States was worth $15.5B in 2019.
Competition
Community drives a
virtuous cycle
Our newsletter products compete with offerings from Axios, Morning Brew, independent voices (on Substack and Revue), and the New York Times, amongst others. Meanwhile, our events business competes with live and online events produced by various trade and B2B event companies.
The Inside online community, however, is a unique asset that supports a virtuous cycle. We facilitate discussions between thought leaders, industry leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs, and these conversations and events generate organic growth and drive content. To our knowledge, none of our direct competitors are cultivating and leveraging the entrepreneurial and investment community in this way.
Vision and strategy
The power of our flywheel: newsletters, events, and community
Inside.com provides an edge to its members by keeping them up to date with the news and trends via email, newsletters, and events. We also provide an online community for these executives to refine their skills, solve their problems, and find their next partner.
Our growth plans include:
A social network similar to Reddit, Linkedin, and Quora, driven by on-topic professional insights
Newsletters and event series for emerging business topics in verticals that can add new audiences while leveraging our existing community
Weekly events in 2022, which we believe will generate as much or more revenue than our surging advertising business
This flywheel is just getting started.
Funding
Backed by Sequoia Capital and Mark Cuban
Since 1972, VC firm Sequoia Capital has backed companies who now have an aggregate public market value of over $3.3T, including household names such as Apple, Google, NVIDIA, Square, and Reddit.
Mark Cuban—currently ranked #177 on the Forbes 400 list—is both an Inside reader as well as investor. Inside.com founder and CEO Jason Calacanis is a prolific investor in his own right, and was an early investor in Uber, RobinHood, and 300 other startups.
Inside.com also raised $1.4M on equity crowdfunding platform SeedInvest in 2019 as part of a $2.7M round.
Founders
Jason Calacanis
Founder & CEO Jason Calacanis is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor in over 300 startups, including the first round of Uber, Robinhood, and Calm. He has extensive experience in online publishing and events for investors and entrepreneurs.
Other ventures include:
- LAUNCH, an accelerator, education & events firm
The Syndicate, an aligned group of accredited investors with 9K+ members;
Host of “This Week in Startups” & "All In," two of the top podcasts in the world;
- Weblogs, Inc., a network of widely read blogs that sold to AOL for $30M within two years of founding.
