Laurel Touby on How to Start an Internet Media Company Laurel Touby | Big Think

Laurel Touby on How to Start an Internet Media Company

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mediabistro began as a social and professional network, then grew into an online community and business, says Laurel Touby.

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Laurel Touby:

In 1994, Laurel Touby, a Smith College graduate and then-freelance business writer and Glamour magazine contributor, decided to host a mixer for media people. About 20 editors, writers, and other content creators came to that original cocktail party at Jules Bistro in the East Village. The parties quickly grew, and soon Laurel had 4,000 of New York's top media talent on her email list. After creating a website in 1996 and adding features such as job listings, bulletin boards, classes, e-classes, media and a freelance marketplace, Touby's business began to take off. Today, mediabistro also includes news, events and "learn" emails, as well as media industry blogs. Last year, Touby sold mediabistro to Jupitermedia for $23 million.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Topic: Laurel Touby on How to Start an Internet Media Company

Laurel Touby: So I came to found mediabistro through kind of a very circuitous route. It all started with my own need for community and mediabistro is a community web site so the first customer was me. Basically, it all started offline as a cocktail party and this was in 1994. I had been in the media for about eight years and I was lonely and I was disconnected because I didn’t have all the tools of technology at the time that we have today. So for example we did not have cell phones. We barely had voice mail. We did have answering machines. There weren’t a lot-- There was-- There were not a lot of technologies to connect people so I started with a friend a little cocktail party to connect with other media professionals and to meet people because I had been so lonely working from home in my bedroom with no daily routine with other coworkers or colleagues, I was writing a column for Glamour magazine, and this cocktail party once a month became my way of actually touching and feeling and talking to real people because most of the time I dealt with my editors and I dealt with other writers on the phone. And so the cocktail party started with ten people in Jules Bistro- at Jules Bistro, a little bistro in the East Village, and people felt the same way. I realized that I had tapped in to a need. I had ready-made customers and they were all my friends. They were the other people- they were the other people in the media who similarly needed to reach out and touch someone once a month and needed to talk shop, to talk about ideas, to talk about issues that were affecting our work lives and to really- and some of us wanted to date of course. So there were lots of needs that were being met at the parties, that some people got dates and some people got some extra freelance work on the side and everyone was happy.

Question:When did you decide to developmediabistro into a business?

Laurel Touby: In the beginning, mediabistro did not start as a business. It just was an offline community but then what I realized was all of these people coming to the parties and by- within a very short amount of time I had hundreds of people on my list and then thousands of people. All of these people kept saying to me, “Laurel, the parties are great but they’re once a month. I’m getting work reference. I’m getting referrals for work. I’m meeting people that I love hanging out with. I’m hearing about opportunities. I’m hearing about other events. I’m hearing about apartments.” So it was kind of like Craig’s List in a party form if you know what I mean and so people would say, “You need a web site so we could all go there all the time, 24/7. We don’t need to go there just once a month.” And that was a very good suggestion that someone made. In fact, I know who made the suggestion.

Question: What were the first steps you took when creating the website?

Laurel Touby: So I’m one of these people who I listen to my customers. Even though they weren’t paying me money and they weren’t formally my customers, they were just my friends, I thought if this turns in to something these could be my customers so I listened when people suggest you should have a web site, you should have an e-mail newsletter, all these things. And I basically took it all in and I talked to a programmer and he was referred by one of the editors and this person put up the first web site in 1996.

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