Now, one of the biggest defining traits of an internet-era startup is being reexamined: Do we really need to scale up to the entire world, or can we build an entirely new business model on the local scale? Here’s what one local-focused startup cofounder had to say.
The Benefits of Staying Local: Authenticity
The benefits of scaling are clear: You get a larger audience, meaning that you make more money when you turn them into advertising dollars or subscriber numbers. What possible benefit could staying local offer? A clearly-defined, more engaged audience than a fully scaled up startup. And if startups are scaling for scale’s sake, they’re missing out, as the CEO of local news startup Whereby.Us, Chris Sopher, explained in an interview with Tech.Co:
Engaging an Audience
Giving things away for free helps you scale, since it attracts tons of people. But as cautionary tales like Groupon have proven, massive crowds are meaningless if you can’t eventually find a way to monetize them. Instead, the targeted audience of a local startup is perfect for marketing local products and services. “But if you start out thinking ‘I want something that scales,’ that’s the wrong order of operations for something you really care about, because then the focus is on making it big, not making it good.” Whereby.Us — the parent company to publications including Miami’s The New Tropic and Seattle’s The Evergrey — earns about forty percent of its revenue through newsletter ads, and the rest through market research and campaigns for clients, according to recent coverage from the Columbia Journalism Review. In order to monetize their audiences, Whereby.Us must prove that they truly value their audience’s attention, a principle which remains their core value.
Ultimately, Going Local Can Help You Scale
This might sound counterintuitive, but when it’s done right, focusing on a great local marketing experience can ultimately help a company scale: Whereby.Us will open in its next city in a few months, and more are on the way. “There’s a bunch of values beneath that that we think about — Curiosity, inclusiveness, and experimentation — that are behind how we approach a city and the things we cover, but the big value is helping people feel like they’re locals.”
In the end, focusing on the authenticity found in local marketing or local events is key to everything. Since the Whereby.Us model is designed to work in any rapidly growing, socially engaged city from the massive ones to the tiny communities, it’s safe to say their scale certainly isn’t coming at the expense of local authenticity. Read more about local ecosystems around the world at Tech.Co
