25 Founders On How They Spent The Year Building Long Lasting Focused Media Businesses

2015 will go down as the year where scaled media plays became completely dependent on the platforms for their audiences. And that meant learning to deal with what essentially is drive-by traffic, hoping against hope that loyalties will formed as a result of showing up enough in the never ending stream of media.

But there is another way, the vertical media way, building direct relationships with the users by building daily utility value for them, in their personal or professional lives. That is where I have spent most of my life. Picking a topic you’re willing to spend a good number of years in, going deep into it with everything you have, and build the most influential voice in it, that is what I have built my life and companies around.

That is why we started Verticals Collective, a loose group of vertical media company founders and executives, from both the business and consumer side, about 15 months ago. Since then, we have met in person twice, and have an active email discussion group on tactical and strategic issues in building these media and information brands.

It comes down to how most of our group of companies define scale: The media we are building is a big part of those who care about the subject we focus on. That for our group of companies is scale, to be a big part of the personal and professional lives of our users. That is how we gauge the effect we have in building are long lasting businesses.

2015 was a good year for most of the companies in this group, including us at Skift.  I asked the founders to send in a line or two about how 2015 went for each of their companies, and below is a collection of 25 responses. Almost *all* of the companies below had a profitable 2015, real unicorns in their own ways.

1. AdExchanger: 2015 was about AdExchanger continuing to grow and maintain the quality of our digital ad and marketing tech coverage as, overall, our 16-person company drew 3000+ attendees to our events and our editorial team grew site traffic by 25%.
2. AtlasObscura: In 2015 Atlas Obscura took outside money for the first time which we've used to build out our product and editorial teams. And we brought on a publisher this summer to dramatically grow revenue.
3. Breaking Media: In 2015, Breaking Media acquired MedCity News, raised $1.5 million in financing, and launched an in-house native advertising studio for Fashionista, while continuing to grow organically in all of its vertical markets.
4. Briefing Media Agriculture: The highlight of 2015 was for Briefing Media Agriculture to achieve a secondary private equity transaction delivering a 3.8x un-leveraged return on money invested for our original backers within 3 years. Even the most traditional of 'legacy B2B media' has a bright future if it can remain ruthlessly user-centric.
5. Benzinga: The reach of Benzinga's content grew significantly in 2015, as we saw financial institutions leave legacy content providers for faster, more comprehensive and innovative solutions. We learned that having less meetings means more doing, experimenting, failing, getting up again and making it happen. Benzinga's headquarters also moved from a suburban office space to an exciting urban environment in the heart of downtown Detroit, which is currently experiencing a massive revival.
6. BusinessOfFashion: In 2015 we overtook the 100 year old incumbent in our vertical in terms of traffic, hired the one of top fashion critics in the world to lead our fashion week coverage, launched BoF Education which resulted in our highest traffic day in history and exceeded our sales targets for the year, tripling 2014 sales.
7. CB Insights: In 2015, CB Insights grew from a team of 22 to 66 (we'll double in 2016 so still hiring like crazy) and grew revenue by more than 100% all while maintaining great fundamental SaaS metrics demonstrating that fast growth doesn't require lighting money on fire. The company established itself as the authority on startup & emerging industry data being cited 1100+ times by media and growing its newsletter from 44k to 120k. They also raised their first round ($10M Series A) of institutional capital.
8. Chalkbeat: In 2015 Chalkbeat stories led to more than 100 instances of observable social impact, where our stories sparked changes in law, policy, and practice.
9. Digiday: Our year was about growth: We expanded revenue, headcount and profits by 40 percent, and broke into a new market in Japan.
10. Fatherly: In 2015 we raised $2M, launched our site, captured 10% of our total addressable market through evidence-based, expert-driven content and developed a scalable revenue program with a collection of Fortune 500 brands.  
11. Food52: Food52 had a huge growth year by figuring out how to bring our brand to life in different ways on different channels: website, social, and very importantly in the world real world.
12. Fathom: Fathom expanded its consulting business by advising on a $4 billion resort development project. Translating Fathom's travel intelligence into tangible guest experiences leverages what we do best: deliver unforgettable experiences to passionate travelers who rely on us for our style and expertise.
13. Greentech Media: In 2015 we sought scale, especially in subscription-based services like industry research, data services, and our newly launched premium online content subscription, GTM Squared; and it worked, with over 30% growth while staying profitable.
14. Industry Dive: Industry Dive hit its stride in 2015: while remaining profitable, we doubled our headcount and revenue, launched a new Brand Studio for custom content, and were voted a Best Place to Work in DC.
15. Lucky Peach: This year, Lucky Peach launched a website and published our first cookbook, morphing from a print magazine into a full-blown media company.
16. NewsDeeply: At News Deeply, 2015 was about mastering how we launch new topic platforms, with a scalable and repeatable princess. With that in place we're using this year to turn our readers into an active community, bringing together the top minds in each field we cover for a collaborative and content-rich conversation.  
17. One Green Planet: In 2015 we hit 6 million+ monthly unique visitors while continuing to maintain our strong user engagement rate of 15+ mins, we became the largest database of plant-based recipes on the Internet in support of our #EatForThePlanet mission (we now have over 5k recipes and publish 12+ recipes per day), and we did all of this with a VERY lean team, proving that you can scale and have massive impact by redefining an existing vertical (green/sustainability) and continue to forge ahead stronger than ever as a revenue-funded startup. In 2016, we plan to launch apps, resources and video offerings to empower our eco-conscious millennial user base in engaging new ways.
18. SmartBrief: SmartBrief grew profitably, saw continued benefit of our publisher model,  launched a new website and a new mobile app that highlight our content, completed work on our data warehouse, and set sites on optimizing the core and creating a new revenue stream in 2016.
19. Skift: In 2015 we hit profitability by focusing on doing less as we grew, launched our print magazine, and brought on a President to scale on revenues in 2016."
20. Senior Housing News: In 2015 we increased profitability and grew our staff, launched paid research/lead gen products, and laid the groundwork to increase revenue across all brands in 2016.
21. Slugball: In 2015 we learned a lot about our subscribers — they're smart, discerning and graciously willing to help make Slugball even better.
22. Street Fight: In 2015 Street Fight continued to build up our market-leading events, developed deeper relationships with top people in the industry, made a number of key hires (research director, managing editor, and CFO), and developed a long-term strategic plan that will guide our growth going forward.
23. Technically Media: The company that publishes the local tech news network Technical.ly, in 2015 doubled full-time staff to 16, passed $1 million in revenue and took over and relaunched a second brand, social impact news site Generocity.org.
24. TheMediaBriefing: 2015 was a landmark year for TheMediaBriefing.com. We achieved a 4th consecutive year of doubled revenues; took our flagship, C-level Digital Media Strategies conference to the U.S. and grew The British Media Awards to be the premier media recognition event in Britain with nearly 700 attendees.
25. Well+Good: In 2015 Well+Good cemented its role as the country's premier media company focused on wellness. Our trend-spotting capabilities were just featured on CBS This Morning, we doubled revenue in 2015, and hosted more than 50 consumer-facing events from the Hamptons to Los Angeles. We've also hired a COO to help us scale and fulfill an ambitious hiring and audience growth plan for 2016, so we can make the world safe for women who love leggings, kale, and organic face oils.

Rafat Ali is the CEO and founder of Skift, the NYC-based travel intelligence company focused on global travel industry: News, info, data and analysis on airlines, hotels, tourism, cruises, startups, tech and more. You can follow Skift here on LinkedIn, or Twitter or Facebook.

Previously, he was the founder of paidContent, which he sold to Guardian Media Group in 2008.