The phrase "those who can't do, teach" has never sat particularly well with people who do both, and a media company called Workweek is now wagering a substantial sum that the business press would benefit from more of the latter.
Workweek, which operates a collection of business-to-business newsletters written by people who still hold day jobs in the fields they cover, has raised $17 million in new financing, Adam Ryan, its founder and chief executive, said in an interview. The round, led by Next Coast Ventures with participation from Aperiam Ventures, brings the company's total funding to $36.5 million over five years.
Mr. Ryan declined to share the company's valuation. Workweek generates "north of $20 million" in revenue, he said, though it is not yet profitable. (In the newsletter business, as in so many others, scale tends to arrive before the black ink does.)
The company's model rests on what it calls "practitioner creators" — industry professionals who write about their work while continuing to perform it. Its human resources franchise, for instance, is called I Hate It Here and is written by Hebba Youssef, a chief people officer. The company currently operates five such verticals, spanning finance, marketing, commerce, and health care, with a combined audience of roughly 150,000 readers, each of whom must apply and be vetted before gaining access.
This exclusivity is the point, Mr. Ryan said. By ensuring that only human resources professionals read the human resources newsletter, Workweek can promise advertisers that their impressions are reaching precisely the audience they seek. The company claims CPMs up to five times the industry average, with some newsletters generating $75 per thousand readers.
With the new capital, Workweek plans to transform itself from a publisher into a platform, enabling members of its network to start their own ad-supported newsletters. Thirty-five new titles are prepared to debut, and Mr. Ryan anticipates "thousands" more over the coming year.
Brian Morrissey, an industry analyst who writes The Rebooting, noted that the strategy carries certain risks. The $36.5 million Workweek has raised, while not extravagant by the standards of the recent past, nonetheless creates expectations for an eventual exit. And the company's deliberately walled-off nature complicates discovery.
Mr. Ryan suggested that more creators producing more content would address such concerns. "In the age of the For You algorithm," he said, "having relevant vertical social networks for professionals is a necessity."
Whether necessity proves to be the mother of profitability remains, as always, to be seen.
Original story published in Adweek: "Workweek Raises $17 Million, Debuts B2B Newsletter Platform"