Growing Demand Blog

In my last blog post, I explained how we balance Demand Media’s wealth of entrepreneurial talent with financial discipline – two often opposing forces that, when brought together in harmony, can create legendary success. I likened the ‘voice of reason’ role I play to the one Ving Rhames’ “Luther Stickell” performs opposite Tom Cruise’s “Ethan Hunt” in Mission Impossible and compared entrepreneurs to swashbuckling sea captains willing to navigate uncharted waters to discover treasure.

The process of vetting and proving worthy an entrepreneurial  hunch is a messy and impassioned undertaking.  Off-the-charts compass headings are never straight lines.  Discovery can lead to expansion or refinement of the vision.  Timelines can be at the mercy of creativity.  Data may be hard to find early on and resource needs can change quickly.  And rarely is the destination – regardless of the success of the voyage – exactly what was envisioned.  So what do you do when the Board is going to require some proof for further investment?  Relationships and teamwork are certainly put to the test.

We have made that channel crossing on many occasions (even in stormy weather) and here is an example.  In late 2007, our media business showed evidence that adding directed, professional content to our web properties was growing our audience and traffic, proving to us that Content = Marketing.  At the same time, our Expert Village property gave us access to a skilled content creator community that we knew could be engaged to create high quality content at our direction.  Our vision was to connect these two pieces in massive scale.  To do so, we needed millions of dollars to build a platform without any near term expected profitability.  Other business units would have to step up to help fund this and everyone would have to tighten their spending in other areas.  Much was on the line.

With a little data from our existing operations and a lot of entrepreneurial hunch - including some table pounding from our CEO - the Board of Directors embraced the vision and approved the plan.  Nine months later we launched Demand Studios, our groundbreaking content creation platform.

Today, Demand Studios is fueling growth for our award winning vertical properties, providing high-value content for major brands, opening up new income opportunities for professional and freelance writers and videographers, and put simply, profitably challenging all assumptions about how online content is created and monetized.  As a result of the studios’ success, Demand Media has skyrocketed into comScore’s Top 25 US web properties and, better yet, our financial return on investment has exceeded projections.

This is but one illustration of how we run Demand Media. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to change the world but hit a budget.  This message will self-destruct in five seconds….

Charles Hilliard is Demand Media's President and CFO. Leading the company’s financial, legal, human resources and IT operations, Charles draws from over 20 years of experience in executive management, investment banking and public accounting.