Workweek 🗃

news with a personality

April 19, 2022

to become more “professional” and well-versed in the latest business news, you google “best business news sources” 🧐
- taking google’s recs, you buy subscriptions to the WSJ, FT, Barron’s, and Bloomberg
  - you’re learning a lot, but these sources can get a little dry, overwhelming, and lengthy 💤
but wait…why force yourself onto these sources when you already consume business news across the web?
- i.e. Twitter, Instagram, podcasts, TikTok, YouTube, your favorite startup newsletter, bulletpitch
the way we consume news has shifted, and this week’s company is partnering with media creators to compete with institutional publications 📰

creators: teams or individuals releasing content via newsletters, TikTok, podcasts, Twitter, and more
sectors: currently covering cannabis, healthcare, climate tech, vc, startups, franchising, marketing, leadership, and memes

bulleted version:

Workweek’s creators are like artists operating under a record label; experts produce independent business content while represented by Workweek 🎙

industry: online media, publishing 📲
headquarters: Austin, Texas 🤠
year founded: 2021
company size: < 40 employees/creators 🧳
investors: LightShed Ventures, Elizabeth Yin, Lance Armstrong, Mario Gabriele, Packy McCormick
amount raised: $4.44m

leaning into a growing market: the creator economy* has grown to 50m creators and a value of over $100b 🤯
- *creator economy: allows independent creators to earn revenue from their products
🚀 boosting creativity: Workweek empowers creators to produce content and grow their brands by offering benefits, competitive wages, and resources
📊 diversifying risk: by aggregating a diverse set of creators, brands, products, and audiences, Workweek can diversify their revenue streams and spread their footprint across the web
- sounds a bit like the vc approach of betting on a variety of companies in hopes that a few big winners will bring in the dough 💰

varying brands: while cross promotion is great, operating brands with separate audiences may make it difficult to build a unified brand identity
hiring with scale: more creators have been brought on, and Workweek has hired quicker than expected 🤝
- as they continue to grow, they’ll have to pay attention to quality and quantity
👣 the giants: many institutional publications are also attempting to bring more personality to business news
- Insider Inc. acquired Morning Brew
- Bloomberg Quicktake is trying to be a “network for the new generation”

here are a few companies also working towards disrupting traditional business news publications:

why Workweek: to summarize, let’s use our favorite work week phrase- tgif