Lately, we’re looking at what it takes to fix a company, so we asked Erika Ayers Badan, the CEO who transformed the controversial company Barstool Sports from a minor concern to a gaming and media behemoth. Now she’s leading Food52. Can she capture lightning in a bottle twice?
When Erika Ayers Badan beat out 74 men to become the first CEO of Barstool Sports, the company was small, dominated by brash bros, and indivisible from the controversial reputation of its founder, Dave Portnoy. But she corralled Barstool and turned it into a media empire with a $500-million exit.
So where do you go after helming a culture-quaking company? Ayers Badan became CEO of the cooking and lifestyle brand Food52 – new industry, new struggles. She was hired after layoffs, terrible Glassdoor reviews, and a predecessor who had lasted less than a year.
In a live conversation at Elevate, Canada’s tech and innovation festival, Ayers Badan speaks with Lately about how to manage the unmanageable, what she learned as a woman leading a fratty company that was sold twice in one year, and about her new book, Nobody Cares About Your Career: Why Failure Is Good, The Great Ones Play Hurt, and Other Hard Truths.
Also, Vass shares her secret for successful public speaking with Katrina: sour keys. But she doesn’t literally share them.
This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver. Our host is Vass Bednar.
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Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to lately@globeandmail.com.
Vass Bednar [00:00:05] Usually it's not so difficult to find you before we do a record.
Katrina Onstad [00:00:07] I know. I don't usually go places, but here we are in this big crowd and we did find each other. This is a victory.
Vass Bednar [00:00:14] We are at the Elevate Festival. It's here in downtown Toronto, down the street from our studio at the Globe and Mail. But it's Canada's Technology and Innovation Festival.
Katrina Onstad [00:00:23] A lot of heavy hitters here from the tech world,from the business world, I think people might be looking to network, looking around this room. There's a lot of nametags.
Vass Bednar [00:00:32] I think people are trying to determine whether or not we're important.
Katrina Onstad [00:00:36] I'm definitely trying to pass as important, but you might just undermine your importance by pointing out a tiny, tiny bag of sour keys. Yes. What is that?
Vass Bednar [00:00:45] I didn't know you would notice that, but that's just me getting a little bit of a sugar hit before speaking to today's guest in person in our little tiny studio.
Katrina Onstad [00:00:55] Amazing. Our guest today is a headliner of this festival. A lot of people are here to see her speak. And you're so sweet. Yeah, You're going to be talking to Ayers Badan. She was the CEO of Barstool Sports. Barstool Sportsis kind of a controversial.
Vass Bednar [00:01:09] Kind of a controversial company. It's kind of like a prototypical controversial media company. Right? Kind of aggressive, say anything misogynistic at times? Kind of brash.
Katrina Onstad [00:01:22] Outlet. Yeah. Divisive. A controversial figure. Dave Portnoy, you might know him from his pizza reviews.
Vass Bednar [00:01:28] One bite pizza reviews.
Katrina Onstad [00:01:29] His reviews or his kind of bro-y sports media empire that he built. So, Erika Ayers Badan took that company to a $500 million exit and then within the same year brokered a deal where Dave Portnoy bought it back for a dollar. It's really kind of an extraordinary business case.
Vass Bednar [00:01:49] It was a roller coaster. But earlier this year, in the spring, just before she took on a new job at a food and lifestyle company called Food52, she dropped a memoir. And it's a blend of memoir and kind of advice for the workplace called Nobody Cares About Your Career. I try not to take not to take it personally.
Katrina Onstad [00:02:07] Really it wasn't directed at you
Vass Bednar [00:02:08] You. Not me specifically. Yeah. So we're going to dive in to a little bit about what it was like to work at both those places, reflections from the book to kind of chat about it with her.
Katrina Onstad [00:02:19] I knew her from her podcast, Token CEO, which was really interesting because it was about her immersion as a woman into a very masculine culture at Barstool, how she navigated that, as well as lots of advice for just navigating the work world. And she's a pretty interesting figure.
Vass Bednar [00:02:36] Yeah, that was an amazing wink at how she was being criticized. By the way, if you're interested in sour keys, you can click my link and get some.
Katrina Onstad [00:02:45] Are you doing some affiliates? Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. All right. We like to maximize here at Lately. Okay. We better get you in there. Let's go.
Vass Bednar [00:02:53] This is Lately. Hi, .
Erika Ayers Badan [00:03:13] Hi, Vass.
Vass Bednar [00:03:14] Your book is called Nobody Cares About Your Career. Why Failure is good.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:03:17] And great ones play hurt.
Vass Bednar [00:03:19] Great ones play hurt and other hard truths. Was there a particular moment when you knew you had to do this project?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:03:27] I don't know if I felt like I had to do it.
Vass Bednar [00:03:30] You really wanted to do it?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:03:31] I wanted to do it. I wouldn't even say I really wanted to do it. I was curious. I was curious to see if I could write a book. I'd never written a book. I wrote, you know, millions of emails. I like to write emails like an emotional email. But I was actually just curious if it was something that would be available to me. And when I started to go through the process and realized that it was then it became exciting. And, you know, it's kind of all the feels like it was exciting and then it was very daunting and then it was extremely overwhelming. And then it became really, really fun.
Vass Bednar [00:04:08] It's interesting that you say you like emotional emails, too, because I think email has evolved to a place where we are very reserved and kind of communicating but not communicating enough. I like that too. I miss emails.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:04:18] I love emails.
Vass Bednar [00:04:19] Like actual emails?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:04:21] Yes, 100%. Like a long email. Now when I send an email, I have to put it also in Slack, like the abbreviated version of it. And I'm like, that sucks because I was really like rallying to something in an email.
Vass Bednar [00:04:39] You also convey something. I mean, I read the book, of course I did my homework, which is also that you offer has a lot of big picture thinking about ambition and the value of being uncomfortable and taking risks in your career. And one of the pieces that stuck with me that I found so charming was the kind of practical, small scale tips like you are a fan of the importance of thank you notes.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:04:59] Yes.
Vass Bednar [00:05:00] And also interesting in a digital era. Right. Why a thank you note?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:05:04] I like a thank you note. I like handwritten notes in general, probably because I like emotional emails. And I just think the idea of conveying to someone else that they have made you feel something and you have some semblance of gratitude for that is becoming a little bit of a lost art. The other reason I really like thank you notes is it's a immediate way to see if somebody cares about a job or not. Right. So, you know, I'll give you an example. I was looking for a head of corp dev, and there was this Harvard MBA candidate that I was really interested in, and she seemed like she was interested in it, too. And we went through the interview process and then she kind of went radio silent and I was like, Did she actually send a thank you note? And I went and searched my inbox to see if she sent one, and she hadn't. And to me, it actually was a very good sign of like, Ooh, this girl actually doesn't care about this gig that much.
Vass Bednar [00:05:57] Reading the book now, knowing a little bit about your career trajectory of the past year in particular, there seemed to be an element where through the book, things are unspooling almost in real time, maybe in your mind, right on the page. You're speaking to this hypothetical reader or directly to me specifically about being fearless in your career, about making big changes, not getting complacent or not allowing yourself to stay that way. And it did occur to me that you seem to be following exactly that advice at the very same time in your own life when you left Barstool, a company which you grew significantly to over 500 million when you left --
Erika Ayers Badan [00:06:32] Yeah, we sold it for 550.
Vass Bednar [00:06:34] The value -- for a new gig in a different sector, Food52, taking a big swing yourself. Is that a fair interpretation? If you know you were writing to yourself?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:06:44] I think the whole book is written to me. It's really a love letter to work. Yeah, it's really my love letter to a career that has changed my life in really good ways and not great ways and ways I never would have expected and in ways that are incredible. And I never, ever, ever thought that I would be in places like this room. So I'm very this.
Vass Bednar [00:07:06] Room is not very glamorous nowadays, so maybe that's why you didn't think about it. You're just in the corner of the room, you know?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:07:13] No, I'm happy to be here. Okay. You know, I was writing the third section of the book, which is, do you stay or do you go? And I did have a moment as I'm writing that and I'm like, , like you're not taking your own advice. And, you know, I was kind of calling both on myself because I'm writing about when is it time to go? It's time to go when nothing scares you, when is it time to go? It's time to go When you've done it all before and nothing excites you. And I had loved this thing called Barstool so much and we had grown it to be so big and we had taken it so far that I really felt I didn't want to overstate my welcome and I didn't want to diminish what I had contributed. But as I was writing that, I did have the like, okay, well, now you're going to have to go do something about it. So you are right.
Vass Bednar [00:08:02] It's really cool. Very Gwen Stefani and what you're waiting for, which is, I think, an underrated song of hers. It's what I listen to when I know I have to make a decision.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:08:09] Really? Yeah. That's cool.
Vass Bednar [00:08:11] Let's talk a little bit more about Barstool, and I'm going to get to Food 52. I want to talk about how you arrived there. So you have to tell us in the book and you're you're so honest, right. About really wanting the role and you're just pounding that pavement, working your contacts. How you beat out like 70 or 75 dudes and light blue tops. And. And friends and family had sort of whispered or maybe cautioned you not to do it, that the place is volatile, untested. We know you loved it. But was there ever a moment in those early days where you thought. They were right? Yes, a little bit.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:08:44] There was a thousand. I knew in my heart and in my gut that that job was supposed to be mine, like not to be cheesy. And, you know, I'm pretty pragmatic and very regulated, but like, I did know that someone was going to take my dream if someone took that job. So I really didn't care what anybody had to say about taking it. But, you know, I can remember my first day on the job. I took the job and we had a show called The Rundown, and they were doing it from Dave's apartment and they had a guest from Boston on it, news person from Boston. And they decided for some reason to do the show live. And the news lady dropped a bunch of racial slurs and it got picked up by all the Boston affiliates and it got picked up in the news and she got fired. And I remember that was my first day. And I was like, holy shit. Like, this thing is alive. I didn't even have eyes for it. I wasn't used to Twitter in the way I can see Twitter now or X now. Yeah. And it was a very big like, this thing is going to be intense.
Vass Bednar [00:09:54] Well, I was also wondering about the intensity of that first day. I feel like in an older or more traditional workplace, you stride into a physical office. Right? And maybe someone sees you. There's like one.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:10:05] Person.
Vass Bednar [00:10:06] Yeah. Or there's like a big all hands. But what's your first move when you're maybe having to send people an email or kind of you get, Erika has been added to the Slack and people are looking at you like, how do you establish yourself?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:10:19] One, they didn't have Slack and they also didn't have an email. So we made both.
Vass Bednar [00:10:24] Yeah, we made it was like a text message.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:10:26] GChat. But I do think coming into a new job is tough no matter what the circumstances. I came into crazy circumstances. I've just taken a new job. And how you enter a new job I think is really important. I entered this job with a survey. I was like, Hey, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to just send a survey and ask everyone for their, like, unadulterated opinion about what you don't like about this place and what you do like about it, and what would you start, stop and continue. But I think that is a little bit it, which is you have to read the room. I wish people were better at reading the room at work and just listening and watching what's happening and just being a good listener, like earnestly squaring up to people and being like, Hey, I'm Erika, what's your name and what do you do? And tell me about it. And I think that's honestly the best thing you can do when you get into a new job.
Vass Bednar [00:11:20] When you joined, there were some repercussions. You write in your book, you got cut from a couple of boards of professional associations because of barstools, reputation, the company's association with a very controversial founder. What was it like to feel that fallout? How did you respond?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:11:37] It hurt like it was it was painful. I felt confused by it. I was on two boards. It was the first time I'd been on any boards. I think the first time you go into things, you you worry it's the last time, you know, Now I sit on boards that I'm incredibly proud to be on and make those boards look like, irrelevant, you know, lame boards, witch, whatever. But I felt ashamed a little bit. I felt like I had done something wrong. Like a good girl gone bad a little bit. I felt a little bit like that. And then I also felt righteous. You know, one of the boards was the Abortion Rights League, and I was like, Ladies, if we want reproductive rights to really cross the transom, be good to get guys involved. And it it woke me up to you can create change as a woman from the inside or from the outside, and the prettier, more appropriate version is from the outside. And I am a choose the worst path kind of person. The path was going to be from the inside. So it was painful. It made me mad, but it also gave me a lot to prove and it made it so that I was deeply committed to making this thing a success. Like I used it as very deep motivation.
Vass Bednar [00:12:57] How would you describe leading the company through its evolution? How did you kind of balance the lightning in a bottle, feeling that messy magic with pressures to become more, I'll use the m word of mainstream.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:13:09] It was exhilarating. It was addictive. And one of the reasons I left is I was a little bit worried for myself that I wouldn't be able to work in a place without a rush. And I was like, That's not really healthy. Like, that's very hard to sustain for ten years, let alone. Not in ten years. But the second piece of it was. You know, in the beginning it was stressful. We didn't have anything. I was trying to build an office. I was trying to figure out who worked there. I was trying to build a pencil. I was trying to hire people by the minute. Like, it was very intense and that required a lot of time. I also was it was my first time being a CEO. I was the CEO in this crazy company with a very, you know, high personality founder. And it was a lot of just like getting your bearings, like I spent a lot of times getting my bearings. And then what happened is we started to grow and we started to grow and we started to grow. And then it really became about change. It was always about change, you know, constantly assessing where are we, what's the risk, what's the opportunity? Do we have the right people? Are these people doing the right things over and over and over and over and over and over again? And that's how I spent a decade.
Vass Bednar [00:14:20] I wondered what it's like when a deal of that magnitude goes through. Not just the where you are, but like, what's happening there? What do you do that night? What's the scene like? What's the cinema?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:14:31] Like selling a company?
Vass Bednar [00:14:32] Yeah, of like getting to the finish line.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:14:35] It's so anticlimactic. It's amazing. I love a deal. Chasing a deal is exhilarating. You know, it's. It's really fun to make a deal. This was my first time selling a company, and I found it to be very emotional. You know, it's exciting. You're going to make a lot of money. You're going to make your investors happy. You've hit the end line or the end zone. And then there's just kind of like a little bit of an empty feeling of like, gosh. And in our case, the first part of the acquisition was a minority stake investment. So for us it was just a new gantlet. It wasn't, Hey, you're done. You can go ride off into the sunset and now there's going to be a three year period where you have to be on very good behavior. So I do think when you have a moment of great success, you put on a great event, you get a great deal done, you make something happen. Those are the moments for me where I'm the most uncomfortable and the most nervous because, one, I'm a harsh judge of myself and just a harsh judge in general where I'm like, I could have done this better. This could have done differently. And then the second is like, you just get this little panic of like, God, is something bad going to happen? You know? So.
Vass Bednar [00:15:48] Okay, I want to jump in for a second because this deal is actually kind of complex. Here's what happened. A gaming company called Penn Entertainment fully acquired Barstool for just over 550 million USD in 2023. And then just a few months later, Dave Portnoy bought his company back. Penn sold 100% of Outstanding Barstool shares back to Portnoy for $1. Why did they do this? Well, on Twitter, slash X, Portnoy told his Stoolies that it's tough for a company to operate in a highly regulated gambling space, especially a company with the kind of reputation that Barstool had. Penn Entertainment expects to lose $800 million on the sale. But if Portnoy sells barstool again, Penn does have the right to receive half of the proceeds. Back to it. What did it feel like to see that happening?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:16:49] That was climactic and awesome.
Vass Bednar [00:16:51] Okay.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:16:52] We sold the company twice in 2023 when we sold it to Dave for a dollar, you know? For me personally, it felt very good because it was full circle. It was truly such a neat tied up in a bow. 360 of like, I came here, he just sold it. We grew it, we sold it and we now got it back for him. And it was really for me. It was a really huge relief. It was just completion.
Vass Bednar [00:17:28] I want to talk about the company you’re with now. Yes. And I have to ask just before I get there, like is there a founder equivalent of almost always being known by that first band you were with? Right. Like no one thinks of Wings when they think of Paul McCartney. And I'm just very cognizant that it took me this long in the interview to finally get to Food52.But do you feel like that's what it'll be like for you? Like it's kind of always Barstool forever.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:17:53] It's a little awkward for me because I don't want to be like the girlfriend that like, just talks about the old boyfriend all the time, you know what I mean? So like, I am sensitive to it. I really loved Barstool. I spent, you know, almost a decade there. And we it's an extraordinary story. So I also understand why people are interested in it. I will probably always be known for that, even if Food52 is fantastically successful and I'm really hell bent and sells.
Vass Bednar [00:18:19] For 501.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:18:20] $501 Million, it will not be the same because Barstool was such a long shot. It was so impossible. What we made happen was just not supposed to happen.
Vass Bednar [00:18:33] Well, let's talk about maybe how it's not the same and maybe how it is, because on the surface, you've landed at what seems like a very different company, contrasting, maybe more masculine, separated and domestic and food for 52. Are these companies really so different? They both are relying on a mix of advertising and direct commerce for income with different audiences.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:18:54] I think the companies are very, very different now. Should they be so different? I would argue no. And will they be so different in a year or two years from now? I would say definitely not. But today they are very different. Food52 was created by two women who are very soft spoken. They're writers, they are chefs and cooks. And it's a different it's a solitary act. It's not a bombastic act. It's a art that is in service of other people and nourishing. And Barstool is about like, Hey, get as many eyeballs as you can, be as crazy as you want. So the DNA is very different. The other big difference for me in the job I'm in is when I got to barstool, there was nothing there, you know, beyond great content, and I got to build everything exactly as I felt it should be. Built at Food52, I'm dealing with scaffolding that's been built by three execs behind me. Yeah, and that's a really different it's an exercise in patience for me. Like I am being tried in this job because it is I can't just go like take it all down and start it all up again. It doesn't work that way. And I also don't have the eyes that I need to to be able to do that. So I think the two companies today are very different. I think in the future, maybe not so much.
Vass Bednar [00:20:17] Even though you're heading up a food company, you have said, you know, you don't really cook that much. Neither do I. So you're learning that's a very vulnerable place to be. We can see you on Instagram learning how to make almond Chicken. Yeah. Thank you for that tip. It feels like you're, you know, actively branding yourself, building out your personality. And you did this at Barstool as well through the the Token CEO podcast and other ways. What is it like to be platformed in that way? Did you have to protect parts of yourself? What don't you show?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:20:49] I don't. I don't think I'm great at content. I'm I do find myself, though, oddly, making a lot of it. And, you know, I took this crazy job in 2016. I was not a known entity. I was not public. I am very private. You know, you never see my family on social anywhere. You don't really see what's in my head anywhere. But I did learn a great deal at Barstool, and I also became way more comfortable with the story behind the story, which is the story of how we were building the company. And what I also saw was that showing that story is what helped make people love that company. That was Dave Portnoy's idea like that was always his vision. But I really see it at Food52, which is, you know, Amanda Hesser, the founder, is public. She writes a newsletter. She will make content, but there's not a lot of content creators in the same vein as I had in my last gig. And I want to show, I want to dogfood it. So I'm like, let me show you how I would do it and let's find more talented, more creative, better people to do it. And so, you know, food is the third biggest category on TikTok, and it's not brands or companies. It's not Condé Nast. It's individuals who are making captivating content.
Vass Bednar [00:22:11] Let's talk about dog fooding it again, because when you when you arrived in the spring, Food52 was reportedly struggling. Business of Home wrote that there had been some layoffs. There was a short lived CEO previously. People maybe were pivoting away from online shopping. You went into Barstool kind of with an ascent at the start of it. And from here it looks like you're leading Food52 to forestall a descent. Yeah. How does leading and meeting in maybe a darker moment in a company's cycle change how you lead, if at all?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:22:40] Awesome question. When I got to Food52, the company was very fragile and the morale was fairly terrible. And the team there had been through a lot. And you talk about peacetime CEOs and wartime CEOs. I'm a wartime CEO. Barstool is a different type of war. To your point, we were on the right side of every trend imaginable, but it was a war. Food52 was a war because the company got lost. It just it really got lost. And one of the first things I did was cut 50% of the SKUs. So I cut something like 6000 SKUs.
Vass Bednar [00:23:18] And a skew SKU is like a barcodes, like. Like how many?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:23:21] So we cut 6000 items and it wasn't a popular decision, right? And everyone said if you cut all the SKUs, you're going to lose all the revenue. And I'm like, But that makes no sense. Let's just sell more of fewer SKUs, which is not a retail mindset and it's certainly not a mass retail mindset. So, you know, for me personally, I think I am. Meeting a company in a descent is a very interesting experience. We'll see if there's a book that comes out. You know, at the end of this one. But it's it's a way harder challenge.
Vass Bednar [00:23:55] Well, I know you did your homework before you took the job and you would have come across a little bit of some of what I saw on line, some negative Glass Doors.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:24:02] Glassdoor is like a dumpster fire.
Vass Bednar [00:24:04] I know. People chirping on Reddit. Yeah. How does accountability and owning failure connect with this kind of noise of anonymous people trashing the firm? Like, how do you yeah, how do you start to acknowledge that stuff but also focused on what you're doing? Where is it in the mix, basically?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:24:21] Yeah. Glassdoor. I do care about the Reddit. Not so much. I love Reddit. I think Redditors are special creatures and they have a lot of opinion. And you know what? They're not wrong. It's hurtful, certainly, and nasty. Definitely. But the Reddit stuff, I don't I don't spend any time with because if I learned this at Barstool and even before in my career, which is if you spend all your time listening to what everybody has to say about how you suck, like then you're pretty soon going to just start realizing you suck. And the reality is everybody sucks. So you might as well just make the most of what you have and who you are and what you've got and try to build something. The Glassdoor I do care about because I think the Glassdoor is really from people who have worked there and I'm sensitive to the glass door. If someone listening to this knows how to turn your glass door around like I'm all ears, but I'm sensitive to the Glassdoor because I don't think people should feel like they felt at food52. And I want to not have a culture like that. And that is a signal that I do think is really important.
Vass Bednar [00:25:26] And your dedication to the book? Yes. You write to your husband, You gave me a world bigger than work, and your book is about achieving the heights of professional success. How did you get to a place where you recognized or let yourself embrace the value in that world beyond work, too?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:25:43] Yes, hard for me. And I came to it really late. I would say in you know, if I were to give people advice, which is I was chasing something for so long, I was chasing a hole and I really filled it up through work. I can remember being in high school and feeling a little socially awkward or feeling, you know, left out in the friend drama or this and that. And I would escape to work. Having a work to go to meant that I could not have to deal with other problems in my life. I found a beautiful escape in work and I found amazing fulfillment from being able to do. And I think that was a really good survival technique for me. But I also think it's really dangerous and it kind of numbs you to a lot of other things that you should be paying attention to in your life and realizing that there's this whole world beyond work and that you can be something outside of work and that you don't need work to be whole is an incredible gift that you know, is new to me. And I'm like loving, loving that. And I wish that for everybody.
Vass Bednar [00:26:57] I want to end with something else that I think you love, and that's L.L. Bean.
Erika Ayers Badan [00:27:01] I love L.L. Bean.
Vass Bednar [00:27:02] I noticed this when I was reading the book. I was like, There's something here. It's only three mentions, but the tote bag, the boot up boots were mentioned. I don't think you're wearing any now, but it was making me feel like, okay, this is some of the the visual. This is, you know, something about Erika here. You seem to be going one step further with Food52, like going beyond affiliate links and merch and kind of using the publication with social commerce that's more vertically integrated. Yeah. Do you see this as the future of media, more of a marketplace ecosystem?
Erika Ayers Badan [00:27:32] I think marketplaces are here to stay. I think when you look at like right now, I'm obsessed with Chinese commerce. I think it's wild. I think Tik-tok is going to be micro QVC done in a crazy new, fresh way, and you can transact instantly on the platform. I think that's coming. I think in terms of Food52, you know, Food52 is going to be about storytelling and community and the stories of designers and makers and merchants. So I think we will be a little bit slow cooked compared to most marketplaces or fast. We have a marketplace that's slow and homemade and handmade, but I do think a marketplace is the future in the same way the present and future of commerce for media companies as affiliate, which is really a marketplace. I do think commerce will be it will be storytelling and then a cut of whatever product you're telling the story about.
Vass Bednar [00:28:38] Thank you so much for spending time with us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Awesome. You've been listening to lately, a Globe and Mail podcast. Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn, and our sound designer is Cameron McIvor, and I'm your host, Vass Bednar. You can subscribe to the Lately newsletter. That's where we unpack just a little more of the latest in business and technology. A new episode of Lately comes out every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.