How theSkimm Co-Founders Built a Successful Content Brand by Building a Community Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin started their business as two good friends sitting side by side on a couch, laptops spread out in their laps. Today, their work environment is very different. The duo run theSkimm, a member company that includes a news digest with 7 million daily subscribers, a team of over 70 people and over 30,000 enthusiastic brand ambassadors. The company has just closed a Series C funding round led by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and a group of mostly female investors including Shonda Rhimes, Tyra Banks and Spanx founder Sara Blakely. Although they can work in an office rather than on the couch, one thing has remained the same throughout the six years Weisberg and Zakin have been developing the Skimm. "We're friends," Weisberg says.
We really talk to employee email database each other. We talk to each other even when we don't have to. The backbone of this business in many ways is the fact that Carly and I are very communicative with each other and very collaborative. This dynamic sets the tone for the day-to-day operations of theSkimm, which relies heavily on supporting women. “Everything we do is focused on the female millennial demographic,” Weisberg says. From their clients to their ambassadors to their own friendship, Weisberg and Zakin have built a business based on women who uplift and support each other. In doing so, they prove that we are all stronger when we work together. News for Women's Daily Life Weisberg and Zakin met while working as producers for NBC News.
They had both started out as interns and then continued their careers with the organization, trying their hand at various aspects of the business. They loved the industry, but over time they realized there was a gap in the market between what traditional outlets produced (and how they produced it) versus the lifestyles of so many of their friends. Weisberg and Zakin thought their social circle was representative of the female millennial population, and those friends didn't really interact with the news content produced on NBC. "This audience… has so little time, so many demands on their time, and we were working in an industry that didn't think about how they liked to consume content or how they actually fit content into their day" , says Weisberg. So they created theSkimm, with the express purpose of making it easier for millennial women to live smarter, more connected lives.