And Wade then had very little influence on what happened next…so blaming the old CT staff for those decisions is laying the blame at the wrong feet.
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Listened to the latest Geek Warning with legit giggles throughout. Felt like the gold ol’ “Shapes” days in the basement and just missing out an interruption from a 4-leg critter.
I was a former VC member before the Outside takeover. And I have been dragging my feet on buying into EC from a few issues I had with the CT podcast at times, but am more interested with the recent Placeholder stuff. Also playing the silly mental math that canceling my Strava sub in Aug will essentially free up the funds along with a relative middle-finger to Outside.
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I’ve still never had them. When I finally get my hands on a bag, I’m sure I will be massively disappointed
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Not a podcast I have listened to before. From listening to the part about “Escape Collective” I don’t think I have missed much.
And they don’t seem to understand the main issue with the ad based business model.
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Did anyone get a discord server invite after joining? It’s mentioned on today’s Geek Warning pod but if there was an invite I missed it.
For me it was in one the “You’re kind of awesome.” mail I got after signing up.
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Thanks. Oops, looks like I deleted it
More specifically, this is what I know from conversations on Discord, Slack, plus some of Wade’s posts on Twitter and his Substack.
Wade sold a majority stake to Bike Exchange to raise capital to reinvest in the business. (I don’t know how many %.) He viewed them as a good partner. Also, that money helped them grow the company quite a bit, so it was a good return on investment. It is the nature of business that you sometimes need to raise more money than you have from your current subscriptions and whatever other revenue. You can take on debt, or you can sell equity. Wade judged that equity was better.
Indeed, Bike Exchange was a good partner. Then they sold their stake to Pinkbike. I believe PB was also a good partner. Bike Exchange just wanted out, I don’t know exactly why, but maybe they just needed that locked up capital for other purposes.
Anyway, then Outside Inc. bought Pinkbike, and CT was owned by PB. I don’t think that the VC behind Outside Inc. directly killed CT. Rather, Robin Thurston’s VC partners were looking for growth and profitability from the business. I think that initially things looked promising, and he was confident that he could do it with whatever synergies among the media companies he could find, and with the NFT marketplace - OK, lots of people were very skeptical about the NFT marketplace, and indeed I give Outside crap about it on social media from time to time because it was dead on launch, but I don’t know that it directly caused CT’s downfall.
In 2021, Outside made some companywide layoffs that included one of the longtime journalists, Dane Cash. Then later on (in 2021 or 22), CT published an article titled “If Peter Sagan can’t sell NFTs, nobody in cycling can”. Outside forced them to drop the article. However, search for that string, and you can find sketchy sites reposted the article, sometimes with attribution and sometimes without clear attribution. Then later in 2022, they laid off Caley Fretz (the editor in chief) and Dave Rome from CT, plus other staff companywide. They were trying to get the organization profitable. All these cuts were kind of harsh, and very destructive, and also Outside didn’t appear to communicate their plans to the remaining staff. A lot of people inferred their plans when Outside made some job posts for tech editors at Outside Cycling Group. Then a lot of the CT staff quit.
What I say is my opinion looking in from the outside. I don’t have a business or media background. That said, I blame Robin Thurston. I have a list of people who I consider persona non grata. Thurston is on it. His VC backers were not the proximal cause of CT’s downfall. I think it’s fair to say that their need for a return on their investment was a contributing factor, of course.
So, TrainerRoad reportedly has never sold equity. They’ve been a relatively small, focused company. BTW, the Zwift deal seems to have fallen through, but if Zwift ever buys TR, I would urge you all to worry (I’m not a TR member, just here on the forums for info). But I would guess that TR is a lot less capital intensive than a media company. I don’t know if CT can make it just on membership subscriptions - and I think their intent is to be at least majority of revenues from subscriptions. CT was reportedly (said by Wade and Caley) profitable considered on its own, but I think the majority of their revenue was still ads. Anyway, $99 isn’t a lot. For those of you who value high-quality cycling journalism, I’d urge you to take the risk and get a membership. They’ve done really good work in the past. Like leagues above other cycling media. I don’t want to lose them.
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In related cycling media news, Hi-Torque publications is shutting down Road Bike Action and Electric Bike Action (raise your hand if you even knew that title existed… 
)
Mountain Bike Action will apparently continue, but Zap is out of a job as he won’t be going back there.
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That’s too bad. They really got nailed when the big boys stopped advertising in print. They went from 2 page ads for SIDI and Specialized to advertising small builders, and as much as I like small builders getting space, that had to crush revenue. I will never understand why people would rather watch a 20 minute YouTube video than read a 3 minute article, but I’m sure that’s just my age showing.
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They lost me when they said they did their research on twitter.
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Yeah, sort of a nothing burger from my listen. They go on and on about the self supporting YT’ers and even mention the ad aspect (touching on pay to play option) and seem oblivious to the fact that there is potential for a truly independent form of media (free from potential ad pressure at least).
They just don’t get it and that’s fine… but I think they missed the mark and are just plain wrong overall, IMO.
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A small note on this timeline, which is just a detail, but also a telling anecdote about Wade Wallace (and a presumptive clue about the ethical and journalistic approach of Escape Collective going forward) is that Wade resigned from CyclingTips (CyclingTips bids farewell to founder Wade Wallace - CyclingTips) shortly after the Sagan-NFT article was pulled by Outside. While nothing definitive is out there with a direct cause and effect of that corporate editorial interference with Wade’s departure, it wasn’t hard to read between the tea leaves at the time.
Anyway, just a small detail, but I think it’s more positive evidence that Escape CC would be a worthy thing to support versus the (in my view) misinformed take from Chris and Jessie on this.
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One of the things I liked about CT is that they took the necessary time to research things. That’s more than you can say about this podcast:
(Wade seemed less than thrilled)
Of course they have every right to dig deeper than what Wade would tell them. Just didn’t seem they actually had the skills, ressources or motivation to do that.
Instead they chose to blurt out their (IMHO uninformed) opinion…
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That reinforces my choice to ignore them and not add that to my regular podcast playlist 
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I think the key was ‘solid’. There’s a lot of average bike racing coverage… TBH I’d be stoked (and I’m signed up) if @wwallace and others saved what is surely a significant amount of coin and didn’t send people to the TdF but covered other races in person and in more detail.
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If so, try Chicken Crimpys next.
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I have had the same thought. Using DCR as an example, I prefer to read his long and detailed written reviews versus listening to the YT version.
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