Andrew Murfett, editor at large at LinkedIn, interviewed Status founder Oliver Darcy about how he built his company and what he thinks about media industry coverage.
Here is an excerpt:
It’s almost two years to the day since I first called you as you founded Status. What would you tell yourself if you could go back in time to two years ago?
Darcy: I’d tell myself: It’s going to be OK, just do really good work every single day and things will work out. The first couple of months are genuinely scary, because there’s no guarantee of anything. Early on, you’re facing new business pressures on top of the editorial work, and it can be daunting — especially coming from a place like CNN, with a salary and benefits. Something like 90% of small businesses fail in their first year, and journalism is arguably an even tougher business than most, so the odds are slim by the numbers. But if you create value consistently, and there’s an addressable audience willing to pay for that value, it works out.
It was just you at the start, doing everything. When did you realize you’d need more people — and did you always intend to build a team?
Darcy: I always wanted to bring on more people. I could have kept it to just myself, maybe with one editor in a support role, and made it the “Oliver Darcy media newsletter.” But my goal was always to build something bigger than myself: an actual media publication with other voices, where maybe one day I’m writing one column a week and there’s a roster of authors doing reporting and covering the industry.
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