5 Questions with Woven Digital President Colin Digiaro -- My Exclusive Q&A

Woven Digital is a millennial-focused digital-first new media company, producing and distributing pop culture content (breaking news, original reporting, entertainment and video) to nearly 5 million users per day.  Before last week, Woven was still a bit “under the radar," although the company reaches 90 million users per month and attracted more unique visitors than digital media darlings Vice and Vox in October (with content like UPROXX, one of the largest millennial focused news and entertainment sites on the web -- and BroBible, the largest male focused college lifestyle destination).  That stealthy-profile changed when the LA-based company (founded in 2010) announced a few days back that it had raised $18 million in Series A financing led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP).  That’s a lot of money to expand its content development, production and distribution capabilities.

I was already impressed by Woven Digital even before this new financing round, after I spent some time at their offices a couple months back and met with President Colin Digiaro.  With news of the new financing just breaking, Colin’s Q&A below is particularly relevant.  So, onto the 5 questions and onto learning more about yet another hot LA-based content-driven digital media company.

(1) What is the reason your company exists (and what problem(s) are you looking to solve)?

The company was founded in 2010 in response to a void we saw in the market where not many traditional male focused print publications were translating well into digital. We felt the young male audience was underserved and no large media company had effectively pushed into digital for this key demographic.  We knew the audience was massive and the opportunity was even bigger.

As our business has evolved, it was a natural progression to move beyond just the male

demographic. Today, Woven’s leading online brands have become daily staples for young

consumers by focusing on their core passions and interests. Woven provides them with

shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment, and video. UPROXX is now the largest entertainment news site geared toward millennials, and BroBible is now the largest young male college lifestyle site. 

Many companies are focusing on how millennials will consume content especially around mobile and video. We want to be at the forefront of programming for millennials and delivering the things they want to watch, consume, and learn about.

(2) How are you different from your competitors?

We truly reach a massive millennial audience and are engaging with them each and every day.  We realize not only is this audience well informed and passionate about pop culture, but they are also underserved.  We are succinctly filling this programming void.

Our business is rooted in the knowledge and understanding of what our audience cares about and their consumption patterns. The quality and authentic nature of our editorial and video programming combined with our scale, differentiates Woven in the digital publishing arena. This approach is validated by our growth – we had more unique visitors that Vox and Vice in October per comScore.

(3) Why will you succeed (and what is your single most important ingredient for success)?

The importance of Woven’s expertise in developing and distributing high-quality editorial goes without saying, however the key to us being able to quickly scale has been the heavy investment we’ve made in our technology stack.  We’ve built one unified platform to operate the entire business, which means we have a 360-degree view of the business from one centralized dashboard.  This allows us to tie the performance of every piece of content and every user action into our editorial and video creation process, which not only better informs us about our audience it also enables us to make more accurate decisions.

(4) What makes you unique (and what do you enjoy most outside of building your business)?

I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life and have held a deep fascination with digital media and content starting with my childhood when I bought and sold used video games in elementary school.  Looking back, digital content was such an important part of my life even then.  My involvement with digital media grew when I went to go work for my friends online marketing firm.  I was intrigued by how we used data to drive media decisions.  After we sold that company my passion for digital media and  content solidified during my time at MySpace.  We started MySpace and scaled the company to nearly $1B in revenue while delivering content to tens of millions of people around the world. The lessons learned in growing from a start-up to a company worth billions was life-changing, which I was then able to apply to SGN which is now one of the largest gaming companies.  I’ve luckily been able to stay involved in digital media and content my whole life, which is I’d venture to say is unique.

Outside of work it’s all about my wife and kids.  I try and be home at least 3 nights a week for bedtime and make it a priority to pack lunches and do school drop offs every day.  We love spending time together as a family and especially enjoy time together up in the mountains.

(5) What digital media trend is most interesting to you (and what is the least)?

The evolution of digital content consumption behavior and how programming has changed (lagged) in response are probably most interesting to me.  The widening gap between traditional media companies and the audiences they are becoming increasingly disconnected from is something that will be fascinating to watch unfold.