I have the good fortune of leading an incredible team at The Juice. That’s easy to say but not as often true. But for me, this entire experience has been,
“Hire incredible people and get out of the way.”
Over the course of the last four months, I’ve repeatedly told this team,
“We’re not in the business of raising money.”
…while I was out raising money.
You can raise money to survive, or you can raise money to add fuel to a fire that is already burning. Fortunately, I had the pleasure of talking to investors about a talented team and a product that is being enjoyed by thousands of users and valued by our brand partners.
“We are in the business of modernizing the content experience.”
…For B2B professionals. For B2B brands. For individuals researching purchasing decisions, industry trends, or simply working through their own professional development journey.
Here’s a slide from our pitch deck:
Everything…everything!…we do as consumers is curated for us. Whether it’s movies, news, television, music, food, fashion, or real estate, you are able to open up a platform and the right information is curated for you. Based on your profile, your engagement, and what people like you are interested in.
Except for our professional life. In this forum, the burden is placed back on you. You are expected to find the right brands, sift through the brand’s website, determine if you have in fact found the right brand, fill out a form, trust your information won’t be abused, then hope that the content has the information you’re looking for. If it doesn’t? Start from the top.
I’ve heard this movement of applying B2C principals to the B2B space referred to as the “consumerization of the enterprise.”
Sure.
That’s a few too many buzzwords for me personally.
That’s why we simplified it in our pitch:
“Spotify for B2B Content.”
Free for professionals looking for the right content. Always.
No forms. Always. (Our team has now ungated 9,000+ pieces of content in our 100,000+ resource library so you don’t have to)
For brands, we are presenting your high quality content to the right audience at the right time, in the right format.
Here’s my own personal example. When we started the fundraising process, I did what every professional does, Googled what I needed help with:
Because there is no platform that curates the right B2B resources, I turned to Google looking for help with creating a pitch deck. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t able to find helpful content. Instead, I found the brands with the largest ad budgets and/or the most sophisticated SEO programs.
Here’s the better way to search for professional resources:
High quality content from high quality brands. Specifically, I ended up referencing the MailChimp piece several times. I never would have gone to MailChimp for pitch deck resources and I’m guessing they’re not actively promoting this piece of content. For all intents and purposes, this content is dead. Or, at a minimum, in internet purgatory.
Now, I am engaging with their brand, building brand affinity, exploring other relevant content from their website, and keeping their brand top-of-mind.
Right content, right time.
This is a really long way of saying, I’m f*cking fired up about our business, our team, and where we’re going.
So, while we’re not in the business of raising money, we are going to use this money to fuel more fire. We’re fortunate to have partners like High Alpha, Elevate Ventures, and Service Provider Capital that also believe in this vision.
As I mentioned, we are in the business of modernizing the content experience. Here is how we plan to do that over the next 12+ months.
Improved content experiences
We have spent the first 12 months in our business aggregating and organizing the best B2B content we can get our hands on—thousands of resources across the sales and marketing space from brands we hand-picked. While we’ll continue to add to this library, now, we’re focused on improving how our members can engage with these resources.
You’ll start to see the ability to follow brands, receive notifications from your favorite brands that you choose, and this will all lead to more powerful curation specific to you. As with everything on our platform, we want to put you in control. In addition to the brands to follow, you’ll also be able to select the format of content. Want only podcasts? You’ve got it. More of a video learner? Check. Your content at your pace.
More powerful content journeys
For too long, professionals had to scour multiple brands’ websites just to find helpful resources for doing their jobs i.e podcasts that inspire us, reports that give us data for our pitches, and step-by-step guides for creating new campaigns. At this point, brands are the center of gravity for how business content orbits in our universe. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working to tie this same content to their creators, their communities, and their events.
We are going to start unlocking these data points which will mean better experiences for our members. You’ll be able to follow content creators, and content trails. Not only is an individual piece of content tied to a brand but now, you’ll be able to learn more about the creator and even follow the individual if you’re inspired by their work. Soon, you’ll be able to go beyond to understand what communities and events this content and topic was shared in.
More members
There’s power in numbers and we will be adding more marketing and sales pros like you to the platform. This will help our platform get smarter. We’ll better understand what members are looking for, be able to add that content to our platform, and become better curators of content for all of our members.
For brands, we’re going to continue to improve your ability to distribute content to a high quality audience in a modern way. We’re already working with many Modern Day Marketers who are reaping the benefits of The Juice. You’ll receive more data (but not at the expense of our members), more distribution, and more content at the right time to the right audience.
And for our team, more of the same. Let’s keep breaking the B2B status quo, ruffling the feathers of old school marketers, delivering value to our members, and having a ton of fun along the way.
As we work on defining our core values for the team, there’s an “it” factor that we can never truly describe. But we all smile and nod as we read it. And over the next 12 months, we hope to partner with our users and our partners as we,
“Bring The Juice.”
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