The Knot

“Brides Magazine had been around for 50 years, Modern Bride for 35 years, Martha Stewart was like a hot thing that had been around for 10 years”

“We had our first date in February. We moved in together in June. We were married in July.”

“There's no IAB. There are no banners. It was, you know, all basically a subscription business.”

“Completely disaggregated, like, the industry is old fashioned. And then, of course, you have that moment, you're like, right, it's a disaster, and it would completely and fundamentally change if you introduced technology to it.”

“We never had layoffs. We always, we were able to downsize through attrition. But we never formally had to lay people off, in part because we were always running relatively lean and there were people who panicked and basically sort of got out.”

“If your audience churns a hundred percent every year, you never, if you do your job right and they find the right person, you will never have them as a customer again.”

“My litmus test is if they would never, ever, ever write for a wedding magazine, then they could write for me.”

“Yeah, 70,000 dollars. Remember, like, 71,000 dollars.”

“And we suddenly saw within, I think, three or four months, We had close to a 150,000 couples registered in our registry. To put that into context, that's more than what Bloomingdale's was registering back then.”

“I mean, it was hard to raise money for anything that was female-centric in the digital space.”

“We suddenly realized, based on, you know, also Carly's, you know, belief in the differentiation of our brand, that we would become weddings for the real world. And we defined that as interracial couples, interdenominational couples, same-sex couples. Hipster c…”

“I mean, in 2006 and seven, we wound up we bought Wedding Channel. There was unbelievable sort of frothy expectations on what that acquisition was going to net us, and the stock hits 32 dollars. We have a billion dollar market cap, and, you know, then precipita…”

“Our stock actually held up relatively well. I think, you know, most media companies were down 20%. We grew five percent. You know, we actually grew that year because a lot of the marketers realized that the only people who were going to continue to spend money…”

“We got our seed financing by 1.6 million. I think it was their largest investment at that time, too, in any content partners.”

“I think our first year total revenues were maybe 70,000.”

“We had our competitors faxing our stock charts to our advertisers saying, look what's happening. They're going out of business. Do you really want to give them that money?”

“It just over the course of a year and a half went from 20 dollars and settled down to 26 cents.”

“We got our seed financing by 1.6 million. I think it was their largest investment at that time, too, in any content partners.”

“I think, you know, most media companies were down 20%. We grew five percent. You know, we actually grew that year because a lot of the marketers realized that the only people who were going to continue to spend money during this great recession are brides and …”

“We lived off of that advance for probably a year and a half.”

“Within, I think, three or four months... We had close to a 150,000 couples registered in our registry. To put that into context, that's more than what Bloomingdale's was registering back then.”

“And we walked away from that evening being like, oh my god, I never want to do anything related to weddings ever again.”

“And I remember the day we got relisted in 2005”

“I mean, in 2006 and seven, we wound up we bought Wedding Channel. There was unbelievable sort of frothy expectations on what that acquisition was going to net us, and the stock hits 32 dollars. We have a billion dollar market cap”

“Well, was, the irony, that one of the starting ironies of the story is that, you know, I have divorced parents. I never thought I was getting married. I didn't believe in marriage.”

“We suddenly realized, based on, you know, also Carly's, you know, belief in the differentiation of our brand, that we would become weddings for the real world, and we defined that as interracial couples. Interdenominational couples. Same sex couples. Hipster c…”

“Our whole set of brands kind of celebrated the imperfect. I think what appealed to people is that we were like, there is no perfect.”

“The Knot is the center of a media group now valued at more than half a Billion dollars.”

“My litmus test is if they would never, ever, ever write for a wedding magazine, then they could write for me.”

“If your audience churns a hundred percent every year, you never, if you do your job right and they find the right person, you will never have them as a customer again.”

“We had aliases. Like, mine was Anya, and I would sit in this chat room waiting for people to show up, and most people tend to just lurk. They wanted to hear and want, read other people's conversations, and you had to try to figure out a way to get people engag…”