How Skift survived and thrived during the pandemic

Peter Bale of the International News Media Association writes about travel industry site Skift and how it survived and thrived during the pandemic.

Bale writes, “[Rafat] Ali and his co-founder Jason Clampet moved fast, firing more than a third of staff (many of whom had only been hired relatively recently and were part of an ambitious growth programme) and closing physical offices everywhere — offices they’ve decided they’ll never return to.

“‘If it wasn’t exhausting, it was exhilarating,’ Ali said. ‘The energy that we were generating among all of us but particularly Jason and I as the co-founders. We had to be decisive. Decisions have to be made and we move on.’

“It really was touch and go, and Ali acknowledges Skift might not have made it.

“‘I had to lay off one-third of the team, take it down to 38. We sacrificed Asia, Southeast Asia, four people in Singapore, we shut our offices down,’ Ali said. ‘We really were three weeks away from running out of money at some point in April 2020.'”

Read more here.