After realizing there was a serious lack of options for sports fans who happen to be women, or who just don't fit the typical mould addressed by the existent industry, Roslyn McLarty and her two co-founders created The GIST, a sports newsletter that has since grown into a podcast and a website, too. The GIST doesn't shy away from the human side of sports, nor does it treat sports like a secret club you need years of specialized knowledge to access.
After realizing there was a serious lack of options for sports fans who happen to be women, or who just don't fit the typical mould addressed by the existent industry, Roslyn McLarty and her two co-founders created The GIST, a sports newsletter that has since grown into a podcast and a website, too. The GIST doesn't shy away from the human side of sports, nor does it treat sports like a secret club you need years of specialized knowledge to access.
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Darrell Etherington 0:00
Hey, I'm Darrell Etherington. And you're listening to found I'm here with my All Star teammate,
Jordan Crook 0:06
Jordan crook. And when I shoot, I score.
Darrell Etherington 0:08
That's a good sports metaphor. It's a metaphor. I guess it's just a reference from sports,
Jordan Crook 0:14
just using some of that vocabulary.
Darrell Etherington 0:17
It's appropriate. I'll tell you why later. But first, remember, this is our weekly podcast where we speak to a different founder every week, they tell us all about what it's like to be a founder to create a company, Jordan entrepreneurs, what have we learned about them from
Jordan Crook 0:32
our conversations? One of the things that we've learned is that even if it's fourth down, they have conviction. They're gonna go for it or the touchdown. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Not gonna play. They're gonna go for it. Hail Mary, no problem. being around people like that is always nice, inspiring, like, what's your life like?
Darrell Etherington 0:49
And so the here's the reveal of why we're talking about all the sports metaphors. Our guest this week is Rosalyn McLarty, who is a co founder of the just so the gist is a sports publication, a media organization, they actually do newsletters, podcasts, and a blog. And their focus is on more coverage of women in sports, and also of sports just targeted for women, and for audiences not served by kind of mainstream media, which tends to be more masculine. It's a very interesting idea, in part because sports has never appealed to me. Though, part of the pitch is like, it's not just that the gist is aimed at women. It's aimed at people who don't traditionally connect with sports as presented. So, Jordan, what did you think about our chat with Rosalyn?
Jordan Crook 1:43
Yeah, I mean, when you first told me about the just the existence of this product, I was super duper, duper skeptical. I think you'll remember that. Yeah, I don't understand the problem. I think we covered like a lot of that. So I thought that was good. Like, I wouldn't say that I'm gung ho. But I'm less much less cynical because I think it's being approached from a very thoughtful place. Yeah. And as someone who's like, been into sports my entire life. It's an interesting exercise for me to get in the framework of what if you didn't know? What if you were there Things You Didn't Know? And you want it to? Yeah, exactly.
Darrell Etherington 2:16
Good. Well, you can be convinced for yourself listener, because we're about to hear it. Here's the starting whistle. Let's add a whistle. I can't whistle. Louder whistle fine.
Jordan Crook 2:26
For the tip off. It's time for the kickoff
Darrell Etherington 2:28
there. Yeah, those are those are both sports things that are real. Right, the
Jordan Crook 2:32
first hole here at Pebble Beach, got a new one.
Darrell Etherington 2:43
Welcome, Roslyn, it's great to have you here. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I spoke to you pretty recently, actually, because we covered a funding round in TechCrunch. But the business definitely struck my interest. And and also, I wanted to have kind of a longer conversation with you here with Jordan, who actually likes sports. So that helps. Roslyn So can you tell us a bit about the Justin and the company that you founded and started,
Roslyn McLarty 3:11
we create sports content, that's all by women. And for all types of sports fans, we say we're all about leveling the playing field in sports. And that means a few things to us. It's bringing long absent female voices to the forefront and really centering women's voices in sports creating equal coverage for male and female athletes. And it's really making sports more inclusive and and welcoming and accessible and fun and relatable, and, and female for you know, people that don't necessarily fit that traditional sports fan mold. Practically what that means we have a three times weekly newsletter that gives you the gist of everything that's happening in sports and a really fun, irreverent female voice. We have a now, twice weekly podcast just expanded. This week, actually,
Darrell Etherington 4:00
we do one once weekly, twice weekly. Sounds like a lot.
Roslyn McLarty 4:03
It's definitely a lot for my co founder and our head of content, Ellen. She's managed and being the newsletter and producing and host of the podcast. So if we'll offer but we're growing the team. So that helps via the podcast, it's called the gist of it. And it allows us to dive deeper into the you know, certain topics that we want to go beyond suggest and that our audience really cares about, like places where sports intersect with gender social issues, and then we're also across social media have daily contact on all of those as well. So that's kind of the gist of what we do.
Jordan Crook 4:36
I just have the just just have a desk.
Darrell Etherington 4:40
Nice, nice. I like the day I think it's really good. What do you guys have a great domain too, don't you? Oh, it's just sports to just sports, right?
Jordan Crook 4:47
Yeah. Yeah, just for a second. Can we talk about the name and why you chose it?
Roslyn McLarty 4:51
Honestly, we just kind of like came up with a name because I think the initial concept for it really was to give you the just an invite someone in that the regular way that sports have been presented can feel overwhelming or intimidating or really dry and long winded. And so we kind of wanted to appeal to that casual fan or someone that that doesn't necessarily resonate or appeal to them or like dry exclusive format. I think over the years, we definitely have expanded from just giving the jest it's no longer quite as quick and quick because our audiences ask for more from us, but but it's
Jordan Crook 5:28
an on ramp essentially right for like, if you're just like, newish to sports or whatever, like you can kind of get in the mix. That's the idea.
Roslyn McLarty 5:37
Yeah, exactly. I think where it's at today, you know, it really appeals to any kind of fan, whether you're a more casual fan, or you're an avid fan, there are things about it that are different from traditional sports. But yeah, the idea was initially just to make sports more accessible for people that had felt excluded from sports. Because really, that's the experience that we had prior to starting to just was, you know, growing up being into sports and playing sports ourselves, but moving to Toronto to start careers and in the business world and wanting to be a part of that community that sports can provide and feeling excluded from it. And like, it wasn't for us
Darrell Etherington 6:14
that I get maybe I have more perspective on this than Jordan because like, I feel the same way when I look at sports fandoms or whatever. Like they seem they just seem like inaccessible, because it's like, you have to have so much for knowledge to come into it. It seems like in order to be welcomed by the group, like like, sports fans are not like, at least in my experience. They're not known for like, oh, cool, like you're a casual sports fan who like doesn't really know that much about it like, Yeah, come on in and like, let's it's no worries like, well, we'll talk about it, right. It's
Jordan Crook 6:43
like a lot of judgment, you
Darrell Etherington 6:44
don't know who XYZ person is.
Jordan Crook 6:47
Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 6:48
I'm thinking about like sports center or something. They'll have like their rundowns, or whatever. And then it'll be like a menu they're going through and like this thing happened this day. And that's, like their bullet point delivery of the thing, but it's not like rozlyn, like where you're talking about where it's like, oh, we're gonna assume maybe no, for knowledge or like, it still comes with a lot of baggage attached to expectations. Whereas it seems like the just does not have that, right.
Roslyn McLarty 7:11
Yeah, I think was word thunder, it kind of assumes that you've been watching the last, like 10 years of sports center kind of have an understanding of what's going on already. Whereas we curate. And we try and conceptualize the stories that we talk about. So we don't cover like everything. We handpick the biggest stories that we think you need to know about that are happening in both men's and women's sports. And we don't assume you have a background. So we we give you the context and the background if it's needed for you to get something out of that story. And we tell you like why you should care to
Jordan Crook 7:44
Yeah. And I think that's what's kind of what's different. I'd love to know like, what is the threshold right for what's the story because think about like news, in the world of sports, there's more than even like behemoths can truly cover right, like ESPN and these big guys. And so there has to be a filter. And then my kind of follow up question. We're trained specifically not to ask two questions at once with this. Sorry, and keep track of both. So the first one is, what's the filter? The second one is like, what is like, specifically just story, right? Like we think about this a lot at TechCrunch, right? Where there's like a story that's happening that like, is ours, right? It's perfect for us and our audience. And the way we write it is going to be better than the way other people write it. And it just like fits like what is a just story. Like I'm thinking a little bit of like Naomi, Osaka, and what happened with her in the last week. Like that feels very, just from what I know. But yeah, that's those are my questions.
Roslyn McLarty 8:40
Yeah. Okay, well, you're spot on with the Naomi Osaka because that was the main topic of our podcast that came out today, our co host kind of gave the background on what happened and gave their opinions on on the two sides of that story. like things like that. And like I said before, like anywhere where sports kind of intersects with gender issues or social issues, something that's like more than sports, usually our audience tends to really care about and you don't always find that in other sports reporting or news necessarily. And so I think that has turned into an area where we can really differentiate ourselves and where our audience has began to trust our opinions and and giving the female perspective and maybe the different perspective on those things. Going back to the first part of the question, the filter I'm not the best person to answer it would be more so for our constant team, but there's really trying to pick the stories that like you're gonna feel confident going into your day knowing that you know, the top things that that are going on in the sports world and that people are going to be talking about and a lot of it comes kind of like source from our team. So if you like step into our team Slack, there's like different channels for all of our different channels. So like Twitter, Instagram, newsletter, podcasts, and people on our team are constantly putting in ideas of the things that they care about. It's an all female team. So that stuff is usually pretty represent to do with what our audience is interested in our audiences and tribo dming us over Instagram stories that they're interested in or sending feedback to the newsletter, so, and then it's kind of up to our, our content team to sift through and decide, you know, these are going to be the ones that are important. And it depends on location, too. So our newsletter is also split out by Canada, us and a bunch of different sports cities across North America. So people care about different things based on their location, too.
Darrell Etherington 10:26
Yeah, for sure. here in Toronto, we had I was when we're recording this, we just had the Maple Leafs around one of the playoffs, which they tend to do.
Jordan Crook 10:40
Be careful, buddy,
Darrell Etherington 10:41
well, I'm not gonna say anything else about I just, it's a everyone's in mourning across the city here. But like, I saw it happening. I'm like, there's too much noise about this. But at the same time, I'm like, Man, I wish I could participate somewhat in that. Because right now, it'd be disingenuous for me to do because people will be like, do we know we know? You don't care? You don't have to?
Jordan Crook 11:01
Everyone always gonna know about you, Darrell, can't hide it anymore. He put it on the podcast? No. So I have more questions around the content, you're probably gonna need to stop talking about your stories with founder. But like, one of the things that I'm curious about is politics and how that goes with the just right, because like, unfortunately, the media landscape is like, you can't kind of escape politics, and particularly in the US, like how divided our country is. And then you have this extra layer where like sports, kind of many sports bridge politics, right? Like there are people who are both like on the far right and the left, and all in between that love sports. And then there are some sports that actually do skew somewhat. Politically, right. And so we're into NASCAR. I actually, yeah, NASCAR fits in that. But I even like the NFL to some extent. So I'm just curious, like, how that's something that you guys think about because you already have this layer of like, okay, social issues like gender, anything that has to do with gender. And then there's also like, the kind of landscape that I just painted. And I was just curious how you guys think about that? Particularly an issue? Like, I know that this has been big in the news, like trans women playing sports, right? Like, that seems like something that's right up the just alley, and like, how do you guys go about that? Do you have a standpoint, you have a perspective? Does it try to be objective? How do you think about that?
Roslyn McLarty 12:23
Yeah, it's definitely not something that we shy away from, because it like you said it, sports have been very involved in in those discussions. And I think it's our job to kind of amplify athletes voices and stance that they're taking and putting their opinions out there, because they are, you know, influencers in our inner society and standing up for what they believe in. And so I think we definitely want to be a part of the conversation from the standpoint of of amplifying their voices. I think, the way we we go about those discussions around like politics or Yeah, trip, like trans athletes, we definitely on something like the podcast, we definitely try and give both sides of the story, or both perspectives. But there are certain things where I would just say like the Justice very, like pro human rights, and so we do have a more progressive tilt, I would say, and that's something that resonates with the audience. There are some people that don't resonate with that at all. And those people unsubscribe or we hear about it, and that's totally okay. But I think we would rather be loved or hated for taking the stand that we do and doing it well then just trying to say like, straight down the middle and say, like, sports and politics together. We don't talk about that.
Darrell Etherington 13:39
Yeah. And there's plenty of places where you can get that already, right. Like that's not an uncommon path to pursue and to try to remain completely disentangled, right? Like, you see that all the time, and people bend over backwards trying to do it. And it ends up having the opposite effect where you're like, Well, you've clearly taken a very aggressive position on this by trying to avoid any position whatsoever. So I think it makes total sense to do it the other way, especially like, even from a business perspective. It's also just like, hey, this isn't really representative in the market. So like, why don't we do this? Right? I mean, we do a similar thing, right? Like, we don't try to just report startup stuff, like we try to like inject personality. And sometimes that can be political. I mean, I don't want to get to this podcast, but let's get the Trump years where we're pretty wild over here. Because, you know, our newsroom is not conservative leaning organization, as most I wouldn't say but like, that's a risk to write is like when you take protections like that, like there are the sports teams themselves, and especially when you look at like management and stuff, like they really tried to, like, do that same gymnastics of like, Whoa, no, we're not involved in the politics or whatever. So is that something you're concerned about at all or like, like getting set up with like athletes or managers or whatever for interviews like it because that's a way that you can if you say it, Opinions like that. Like, they might be like, Oh, we don't want to get into that, because they're too political or something like that. Right? Is that been a concern? Or was it not really part of your strategy overall?
Roslyn McLarty 15:08
No, it's not. Yeah, something that we've been concerned about, I think, for us, like, we've been lucky to be like a startup and be independent and not have anyone like, telling us what we can or can or should say or be influenced one way or the other to shy away from certain things. I think the athletes that resonate with kind of our content and our opinions, like hopefully, those are the people that eventually we can have access to, like, once we, you know, build our brand and our audience and are really attractive for for athletes to work with, like the ones that make sense for us to, to work with, hopefully will resonate with kind of our content and her opinion, and it will be a good fit. That's our hope.
Darrell Etherington 15:55
You're listening to found you're probably already super interested in startups, and the overall startup ecosystem. So we've got a great deal for you, we're going to offer you 50% off either a one year or a two year subscription to extra crunch. extra crunch is techcrunch's premium product offering. And when you go there, you'll get deep dive interviews with some of the top founders in the industry, who get market maps on specific vertical goals, then some of the most exciting areas of growth and startup land. You'll also get surveys of some of the top VCs in different areas, including different geographies, so you can subscribe to extra crunch at extra crunch comm that's probably the easiest way. Or if you're already on TechCrunch, follow the links for extra crunch. And you'll get a prompt to subscribe and then just enter that code that's found the name of this podcast during checkout and you'll get 50% off on either a one year or a two year subscription. So let's go back then, like Jordan mentioned, you kind of like to start like I'm really curious like how you even got the idea to begin with you mentioned like you were working in sort of the business sector, right in the finance sector. So
Jordan Crook 17:03
like a lot more money than what in the world as to people who worked for media or speaking from just general depression. What made you want to start a media company?
Roslyn McLarty 17:21
Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think we knew, I don't think we knew fully what we're getting into at all. I don't think we were coming up with it. Yeah, we weren't thinking of it from like an analysis of like this industry would make sense to go into it was more so approaching it from the pain point and how to solve it. So I guess, yeah, going back, like we, the three of us, myself, Alan and JC my two co founders are all friends from school, we took business together. And we're working in different areas of financial services and consulting in downtown Toronto. And it was really, in that setting that we observed how sports both in a professional and personal social settings, sports can be an incredible connector, and can be so amazing for building community and bringing people together, whether that's an office or with with your loved ones, but also how for us, it could feel somewhat exclusive as a woman. And that's because you, you really want to be a part of that. And you want to use it for building relationships in the workplace, or you want to intrinsically be interested in it. But we kind of dug into why it wasn't resonating for us. And the way that it was for some of the guys in the industry has this massive lack of gender diversity, less than 4% of coverage is on female athletes, less than 14% of sports journalists are women. And so it was kind of no wonder that it wasn't resonating for a lot of women. And it was around the same time that, you know, we were seeing companies like the skim or batches that were doing a really good job of developing these authentic relationships with female millennial or with niche audiences. But we weren't seeing that done in sports. And so, you know, we asked around to, to our friends and people kind of in, in a similar demographic or audience that we thought we could go after, and it was a pretty widespread problem. So, you know, we thought we were kind of on onto something. So we decided to start it.
Darrell Etherington 19:22
The one thing you mentioned there that I think is like, maybe even more significant than people realize is the workplace stuff, right? Like because it's it's one of these things where it's ends up being the, you know, like unconscious bias thing where like, oh, someone's gonna get passed up for promotion versus somebody else, because maybe they share an affinity for the Edmonton Oilers that's talking to you. You can see it for sure. Right. And this is one of the ways you see it in a lot of ways, obviously, but this is one of the ways where it would seem to be like the barrier to Entry would seem minimal, because it's like, it's also something that individuals can take action on to change if they want to. Right. So that is one angle where like, it's about equity in a larger sense that I think a lot of people realize is like, having access to these things. Because I think that's one of the weird things about sports. And I'm totally gonna go a little bit so boxy here, but like, it's a way to exclude people that is, like, socially acceptable, right? Because it's like, oh, well, it's not like a guy or girl thing. It's like, a sport. I we like sports. They don't like sports, like so whatever. Right. But it's like, No, no, no, you've just couched it in something that is like, somewhat palatable to general audience, but it's definitely discriminatory, right? It's just like, hidden under a layer of whatever. But is that kind of what you're doing? Or like, Did that come into it at all?
Roslyn McLarty 20:51
Yeah, no, definitely. And that's a that's a good way of putting it and thinking about it. Do I think I think like, that is kind of the theme that we that we experienced, and you just articulated it in a in a really good way.
Darrell Etherington 21:03
For you like out of school like working, especially in that industry. That's another industry like Bay Street or whatever, here in Toronto, which is roughly equivalent to like Wall Street in the States, right. Like, that is a probably I'm assuming I don't know the stats, but I'm assuming it's a male dominated industry, with a lot of the same problems that would be in the sports industry. Is that true? What do you see that coming up?
Roslyn McLarty 21:26
Yeah, no, absolutely. I guess like, if you think about it, yeah. Like it's a gender inequitable industry that's using this other kind of like gendered, oppressive tool to continue oppressing other gender.
Darrell Etherington 21:41
It's also smart on the business side, though, right. Like, that's the other thing about it. And that's the other thing that we talked about a lot of times or hear from a lot of times when we're talking to entrepreneurs and investors is no, there was a great tweet thread or series of thoughts. I think posted maybe as a medium article, I'll try to find it included in the notes, but about women's health, right. And she was saying, you know, it's not a weird or niche thesis to address the needs of 50% of the population. People call it niche. But then if you really think about it is right, so how do you think about that, especially in your role? Because you're kind of like more on the business focus side? How do you think about the market opportunity? And how did you think about that, kind of like in those those early days?
Roslyn McLarty 22:21
Yeah, we we think it's huge. I mean, there obviously are many women like yourself, Jordan, that are sports fans, and that, you know, have adapted or like sports presented, but then there's like a ton of other women that have just grown up, like, whether it's just their experiences in society, or it's the media or whatever piece of it that has made them feel like traditional sports as as presented today is not for them. And so that's a massive, massively overlooked audience, right. And we didn't see anyone doing anything to address that. So it just felt like a huge white space to go after
Jordan Crook 22:58
another content question like do you do onboarding to a new sport
Roslyn McLarty 23:02
type thing on our on our website, we have give guidance to like a sport or it can be like a specific event, we have FAQs and glossaries. So if we ever use sports jargon in the newsletter, and don't define it, that will just link back to our glossary that explains it. And then we also do kind of primers for individual sports events that are coming up like a big event, beginning of the season, or the beginning of the playoffs, or a tennis tournament, or whatever it is, that's super smart. It's like really cool evergreen content.
Jordan Crook 23:33
I also think that like, the news isn't nearly as well it kind of ties in but like for me, what I love about sports is like how many layers down and goes in terms of like strategy and mechanics, like you can look at something like I got really into Formula One in the last year so that all seems very straightforward. Like if you sat down with no knowledge of Formula One, you'd watch a race and you'd be like, okay, it's the first car that does 63 laps right like that is all that's going on here. Like they're like layer upon layer upon layer of like strategy and like mechanics and driver emotion and like all of these different things that are playing a role but if you don't understand those layers and it's not really that fun to watch Same thing with like football or any sport right? Like if you don't have the the just the the actual strategy involved in how complicated they all are. It's just like flat a flat experience so those go super in depth those primers and stuff like do they for the NFL for example. Do you explain kind of like all the nitty gritty rules that are involved are so many rules involved in football and or is it just like, here's how football is played? Kind of in the most basic sense.
Roslyn McLarty 24:45
Yeah, it's a little bit more high level I would say and sometimes we take the podcast episodes to to give like a preview of something where go like a little bit more in depth for like the FAQs would be something where you know you could look up like what a really Specific, you know, play your stat is, yeah, we really try and balance what people are interested in. I think it definitely could be an opportunity for us, like in the future to continue building on on what we have, if it's something that our audiences is asking for, for sure,
Darrell Etherington 25:15
yeah. But what's there is very fun. Like, it makes it very enjoyable to learn these things. And some of it's pretty, it's definitely like in depth things, right? Like, you're selective about what you present. But the things you present, there are like, crucial things to know. I'm looking at the football one as well. But like, I like that he also used to get from Friday, like the greatest television show ever made.
Jordan Crook 25:38
I was wondering like how much other content gets wrapped in like, you know, like, I explained everything through analogies. So I assume that like, if you're trying to like boil down something that feels foreign with a lot of foreign concepts and words that you use a lot of like, Oh, it's kind of like when this happened on this TV show, or whatever, like something that people can?
Roslyn McLarty 25:58
Yeah, relate to? Yeah, definitely. We definitely try and make it relatable and tie in references to other like pop culture, analogies that would resonate with people for sure.
Darrell Etherington 26:09
And I also love how that links to people and stuff goes to their Instagrams, as opposed to Wikipedia.
Jordan Crook 26:18
Yeah, they're like ESPN lists.
Roslyn McLarty 26:21
Yeah, well, that's the thing with our audience, too. Like they really are interested in like, who the athletes are as people. And so that's something that we we definitely try and do in our content, too, is just tell their stories, and who they are as like, human beings, like who's their family? Or who were they dating or something that they did outside of sports, too.
Darrell Etherington 26:39
So when you when you're looking at monetizing this, because this is kind of the question that Jordan alluded to, but like, when you look at the business, the way you looked at it to start, like, Okay, look for huge unaddressed market. But then there's the other part of the business that we talked about a little bit, which is media businesses, they have a fundamental problem in terms of revenue models overall, right? Like, they're always a challenge. So how do you look at that, and what kind of unique opportunities are opened up for you, because you're addressing this audience in a way that nobody has done previously?
Roslyn McLarty 27:12
Yeah, I think we've had a pretty unique opportunity to work with Brand Partners, because we have, like a really valuable audience. But also, we're kind of like the gateway for certain brands to be able to reach female fans, because most sports outlets are really heavily male dominated in the in their audiences. So you know, in the past, it's been great for like, a brand's to go after a male audience through advertising. During an NFL game, for example, like fanduel is one of our brand partners. And that's something where like, free just me would have looked at fanduel. and been like, I don't know what that is, I want nothing to do with that. I have no, I have no idea how to sports, a sports fan. And so, you know, we have a special way of introducing those brands to and advertising them to our audience in a way that pulls them in on considering something like vandals that they never would have really thought of before and teaching our audience like how it is worth that and creating an environment where a female fan would be interested in confident in doing so. So I think it's like things like that, where we kind of have a unique opportunity with Brand Partners and to monetize business.
Darrell Etherington 28:29
Yeah, I could see that being huge, especially for for those brands, too. They must realize like we've largely been serving only 50% of the population until now. Right? So we have this huge. What do they call it blue ocean space, right? Like where where you can go in and like, but then is it jarring? And have you maybe this is something that you're already working on. But isn't a jarring for your audience to then go and encounter this thing that's been geared the way that traditional sports media has been geared? Like, are you working with them on that and how to get over the transition into like, Okay, this is a whole new audience, and maybe you need to serve with them in a slightly different way in the same way that we have been?
Roslyn McLarty 29:08
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And that's like, part of the value that we provide to our our brand partners do is like strategizing with them, like how do we take sports betting or fantasy or something that like feels totally uncomfortable and new to our audience and present it in a way that they be interested in it. So with vandal, for example, like we had just like a just exclusive NHL fantasy, and so it was all just like women in our community and it felt like a more comfortable environment. And we did like some social engagements where we're just creating like really like fun, funny, like social video content, introducing fanduel to our audience, so it's finding ways to like bring them into our content and the way that we talk to our audience and like build that relationship with them in a way that feels like more authentic and again, like more more accessible and and I find
Darrell Etherington 29:59
it fun Ces sports is another thing that I really have very limited understanding of. But Jordan like, it seems to me, like, the way that you do your competitive sports and then like, you go in there and you're in Battlefield or whatever it is, and people are on the mics, like just being absolutely awful people like, yeah, the communities. I would imagine that communities did a lot of like, social media enabled fantasy sports, things might be similar, but it sounds like you can like create ways where like, Okay, well, you don't need to worry about that, because we've created a space that is probably more welcoming than your traditional, but yeah,
Jordan Crook 30:39
absolutely. Do you guys look at do eSports
Roslyn McLarty 30:42
we have an Esports guide. And that is it really for now.
Jordan Crook 30:46
It's like unlocking a whole nother galaxy of sports, right? It's not like you can be like, oh, eSports. And like, there's this one thing? Yeah. It's like, there's like 100 of them. Yeah. I just think it's interesting, because I think eSports is probably one of the only sports in the entire planet that there truly is no physical differentiation between a female player and a male player. And though eSports doesn't necessarily look like that right now. Right? Like the potential for it to be like a truly coed sport is huge. So it just seemed like an interesting one for you guys to like, be early on.
Roslyn McLarty 31:23
Yeah, no, that's a good point. And that was something that's on our radar. It's a question we've gotten from a lot of potential investors excited about eSports? For sure.
Darrell Etherington 31:33
But it's also a focus question, right? Because you're pretty small team. So I would imagine it'd be hard.
Roslyn McLarty 31:40
Yeah, no, definitely we, we've been really focused kind of on, on our our core things that have worked for us and are only now kind of starting to look at ways to expand, which has worked out well. But it is it is a small team. And we have had a very lean way of operating up until now just not being like a venture backed company. So it definitely has been very, very focused.
Darrell Etherington 32:03
So let's start with the investors. Like you mentioned, potential investors have have asked about that potential investors love throwing ideas at people. That's like one of their favorite things to do. Just like us. But there's no money on the line here. What else did you find with the investment talks? And like that process? Like, how was that for you? And what kind of did you learn about it as you went out to to actually get some VC funding?
Roslyn McLarty 32:27
Yeah, it was interesting, because I feel like in our first, in our first couple of years, we went through a lot of different incubators and accelerators. And so we really felt like part of that startup community. And so a lot of advice really to like, go the venture route. And it felt like, just from what you see in the media and whatnot, being a startup, like that's what you're supposed to do. And so, yeah, a lot of I think our like earlier conversations we got, we got a lot of feedback, like, what about eSports? Or like, what's the technology you're building, or like, maybe not even understanding the problem, or the audience that we were setting out to solve a problem for, which was interesting. We ultimately decided venture capital wasn't right for us, based off of the way that we wanted to build the company, kind of at our own pace. And on our own terms, I guess, in a way where we could kind of control our own destiny and focus on building a sustainable business, first and foremost. But we were really fortunate to find like a lot of investors along the way that have been willing to willing to invest. So there's been various accelerators that have been a part of that we raised friends and family like pre seed round really early on. And most recently, our most recent round, which we consider, I guess, the seed round was a combination of angel investors and strategic investors.
Darrell Etherington 33:53
Yeah, that's a good point to make is that like, you avoided traditional capital V, capital seed venture capitalist, right? And you went with the alternative funding things that we can often and I mean, we're guilty of this as well. But like, people often blur them together, but they have very different attributes, and also very different kind of like, advantages and disadvantages, right. So it sounds like you're very conscious about like, we don't want to go to venture, we want to go to these sort of like alternative investment approaches that maybe better suit our business, right?
Roslyn McLarty 34:23
Yeah, absolutely. And like, we were totally being told that, like, we should go the venture route, and we're fortunate to have some mentors that had done it differently. And so it could be kind of like a role model of a different path that you could take, that really pushed us to think about it critically, instead of just kind of going with what the status quo is, and kind of what you see. So we're happy ultimately, that's that's what we ended up doing.
Darrell Etherington 34:47
But what's the main advantage of that? Is it is it an expectation is it in kind of like what, you know, those Investment Partners expect this the trajectory of the business to be or the ultimate sort of like result of the business to be is that kind of the main advantage?
Roslyn McLarty 35:00
Yeah, I think, you know, we were fortunate kind of in, in the different, like programs that we went through to meet a lot of different entrepreneurs and kind of hear what that can look like on on both sides of things. I think one thing that was like less appealing was kind of like the power law with VC where, you know, one or two companies in the portfolio will make it and the rest are considered to be like that, even if you're like, you know, like, relatively successful business, just not maybe not necessarily growing at the pace that they would want.
Darrell Etherington 35:34
Yeah, like a static, like, revenue positive, or, you know, not even static, but maybe, like increasing incrementally rather than exponentially. It's like, You're nothing like your chaff. Yeah.
Roslyn McLarty 35:46
Fast, but I don't know, like growth seekers application to everything else, like culture, no, just having like a little bit of flexibility and how you, you want to grow things and kind of retaining your own control and perspective in your ability to carry out the vision that you set up to do. Those are all things that are really important to us, I think in that decision, too. And then I didn't like and then the most recent round, like we were able to find it, we're able to find the capital elsewhere. So we were like, Well, why not?
Darrell Etherington 36:16
Yeah, just push that one down the road? Like maybe you have to contend with some optionality? I think it sounds like you can also like, you can better control your destiny in terms of like, like those suggestions we talked about, right? Like, and we've talked a lot Jordan on, like, extra crunch, live and stuff, where, you know, the investor will jokingly say, like, oh, like, I brought this up early on, like, you know, don't worry about that so much, and the the entrepreneur will be like, but that's the core idea of mine. Because they have it in their mind already. They're like, you know, I like you. And there's this one thing about your idea that I like, and then everything else is kind of like out the door, I don't really need that. And later, I'm going to convince you to change and it's going to go my way. Right? And is that something you saw when you when you were hearing these kinds of suggestions? And he's like, the esports thing like was there's this attitude of like, well, we can we can make something work out of this. Like, maybe you don't have it, but we can make something.
Roslyn McLarty 37:13
Yeah, I mean, eSports aside, like, especially on the technology side of things, too, like there's a lot of like, Where's the technology? And how's that coming into play? And it kind of made us feel like, it's not like absolutely integral to the solution. And like, really like our voice and our brand, and our content is our IP. And so maybe the fact that you're suggesting that there needs to be like a whole other layer of technology on top of it to make it attractive means that you're not like understanding what we're trying to do here. Right. So yeah, there was like, there was a bit of that.
Darrell Etherington 37:45
That's a great point. And another one where it's just like, I just want to, I just want to complain about this for a while. But people really undervalue that side of this pie, especially in this in the technology industry, right. But people super undervalue the cumulative effect of all those things. And it's something we see obviously daily, right? Like, because it's like, well, I mean, you get those things are seen as commodity products or commodity value, right? So Well, we can bring that we can bring voice, like we can replicate voice, we can just remove all you and then like put somebody else in. But the tech stack is that thing that's not replicable. Right. And that is defensible. But I don't know why that's assumed. Right? I don't, because it's, it seems to me that that's not even like borne out in practice, or in history or anything. And I think you can make something totally unique out of voice and direction, and like editorial perspective and things like that, right. But I'm glad you were able to find people that that you could convince that too. And I just tell us who they are so that we can
Roslyn McLarty 38:53
Yeah, no, we were we were very fortunate to find people that like really understood like what we were trying to do and believed in, in ask them kind of our vision of how to go about solving the problem. And I think it became easier as we got traction. And we were able to prove that like Yeah, what we're doing like the voice and the brand is what's resonating allowing us to grow and it's working it then became obviously a lot easier to bring people on like it's easier to prove it on you when once you've done it and are able to show that that traction both with like her subscribers and on the brand partner side of things. But it did, I guess allow us to like, I guess handpick investors a little bit more that filled certain skills gaps or were able to bring incredible acknowledge or value to the table in a lot of different areas. So that was was one nice thing I guess about having like lots of different investors and more female investors to like that was something that was really important to us was to have more women on our cap table.
Darrell Etherington 39:52
It's cool that you were able to do that to operating in the sports industry, right? Like it wasn't like you You were even able to mirror that. In your, your capitalization, which would be hard to because you would assume especially going after, like strategic investors, it would be like, you know, a lot of like, sports industry dudes or whatever, which I'm sure you have a fair share of. But it's good that you have a mix too, because that would be challenging.
Roslyn McLarty 40:17
Yeah, we've been lucky to be able to connect with some, like great women in sports. And they tend to have like, come up in the industry and really understand and can get behind it. So it's nice staff, those people that are passionate about it.
Darrell Etherington 40:30
Well, last thing I really want to talk about is just kind of like going back again, to that to that kind of, like starting moment now, especially with the perspective like, what did you think of anything that you would like, Oh, we've done this differently? Or like, wow, we really like media was crazy. I wish finance or, you know, was there anything that you would have just changed at the outset? Or did you feel like that was what was needed to do that?
Roslyn McLarty 40:52
You know, there's not anything that I would change in the way that we've done things because I feel like I'm really happy for where we're at now. And even though like certain things probably took longer than they may have. Otherwise, if we learn things faster, or maybe gone about things in a different way, you
Darrell Etherington 41:08
wouldn't have learned that stuff, right?
Roslyn McLarty 41:10
Exactly. As You Like, that's so much like what being a entrepreneur is to like, there's just so much that you don't know. And there's a lot of mistakes, and there's a lot of challenges, but that ultimately, I think, as well as you to get to get to where you are.
Darrell Etherington 41:32
Alright, so that was our conversation with Roslin all about the just, why do you think now Jordan? Are you a believer? Are you ready now to sign up for the newsletter?
Jordan Crook 41:42
So I don't think that just as for me, to be honest, for
Darrell Etherington 41:45
you are well served by the existing options?
Jordan Crook 41:47
Yeah, I feel like I am. To be honest, I don't read a lot of sports news, like I watch sports, because I already understand how they work. That kind of like, in a way, precludes me from being a customer. But I could see, and I feel like I know, many, many, many potential readers or audience members for the chest, and I'm gonna tell them about it.
Darrell Etherington 42:09
Yeah, I think what I like most about it is their approach of like, having seen this huge, like blue ocean opportunity. And just for like, we got to, we got to do it, we got to start to see if there's something there. And I think what's really telling about them, and what was most interesting to me about what Rosalyn was talking about is like, how quickly they were able to have conversations and attract Brand Partners, like sports betting sites and things like that, right? Like, it's like, handle, yeah, fanduel there's huge potential here, like we just have largely ignored, like 50% of our audience. And I think that's where their real ability to unlock like a lot of future potential is. So I'll be curious to watch as they do that, and try to convert those people and have conversations that are like lasting and engaging with these customers, and then bring them over to advertisers who never previously had access. Right? That's where the real businesses, that's what I'm excited about.
Jordan Crook 43:00
Yeah. 100%
Darrell Etherington 43:04
Hey, we've got a special news surprise for you. It's not gonna be a surprise anymore. After we tell you in
Jordan Crook 43:10
line, how's the prizes work? appreciate it. We want to open up the lines of communication a little bit, you know, like, we get to talk, and you guys do most of the listening. And that's not how relationships should work. And I really look at this as relationship. So what we're doing is we're introducing a Google Voice number where you guys can call in and maybe talk to us about you know, any questions or thoughts you have on starting companies. If you want to tell us kind of your founder story about your product,
Darrell Etherington 43:36
dig deep really just give us like your your most interesting stories as a startup founder, it would be cool to like your, your darkest day as a startup founder or your greatest achievement. Or something that happened that you never expected would have happened in a million years, but something cool.
Jordan Crook 43:53
Yeah. The weirdest product idea? I don't know. I mean, really, it's your imagination. That is the limit. You want
Darrell Etherington 44:00
to give them the number Daryl are just though I guess there's a phone number to it. That's how you call us and the number is 510-936-1618. That's 510-936-1618. I was gonna do the alphanumeric code right out remember those like klondyke I'm glad that you did alpha.
Jordan Crook 44:24
But we do want to hear from you folks. So call us. Give me a call. Call Me Maybe.
Darrell Etherington 44:35
Found is hosted by myself TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch managing editor Jordan crook. We are produced by Yasha Kulkarni and edited by grace Mendenhall. techcrunch's audio products are managed by Henry pic of it. Our guest this week was Rosalind McLarty co founder of the gist you can find us on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash pound You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com. And now you can call us at 510-936-1618. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.
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