Founded in New York City in 2004, Thrillist, which has annual revenue of $100 million, started out as a fast-growing media company with a newsletter for urban guys. Today, it also sells pants. And shirts--a lot of shirts. The acquisition of online men's-clothing retailer JackThreads in 2010 was a big risk for Thrillist co-founder Ben Lerer. He spoke with Inc. senior writer Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about how he chanced the future of his company on one massive bet.
I never conceived that a media company would sell products. About four years after launching Thrillist, we were growing, but it was no longer exponentially--and no one was coming to us with a $125 million acquisition offer like they did with DailyCandy. We never hit a wall, but there was a pretty hazy future in front of us.
At the same time, the flash-sales space was blowing up. I thought, Why are these guys killing it when they have such a similar subscription model to what we have? One day when reading our newsletter, I saw an ad for a company called JackThreads. I realized they were selling clothes that we'd covered editorially on Thrillist. That's when I realized that we'd built this demand from a tremendous group of users. These guys, JackThreads, had built the supply.
You can't hope your way into a deal. You have to look at it with eyes wide open, knowing what the possible outcomes will be. It was a huge risk. There was the opportunity cost of taking the time and energy to fail. And there was the potential of becoming the media business that tried to figure out commerce--and failed. It was the biggest decision I had to make for the future of the company.