Joe Coleman

Co-founder & Advisor, Contently · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutive@JoeDColeman ↗contently.com ↗

Joe Coleman co-founded the content marketing technology platform Contently in 2010 alongside Shane Snow and Dave Goldberg, leading the company as CEO for nearly a decade to connect enterprise brands with freelance creators. Prior to Contently, he created and scaled the online rewards and survey platform CashCrate.

16statements → 9claims → 1claims resolved → 3.94/5average certainty → 1.25/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 8 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 8 assertions · 1 insight · 6 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 8 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Joe argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Contently has raised $20M in equity over seven years
“We've raised about twenty million dollars in equity over the last seven years or so.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 13:34 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Joe Coleman on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Joe Coleman said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Per-user pricing fails in MarTech and collaborative workflows
“We've tried things like per user pricing and all that stuff, and I've come to the conclusion that it just doesn't work very well in MarTech in general, but, you know, particularly in a business like ours where We want as many people on the system as we can get…”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 10:27 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Disclosure
Contently pays freelance creators over $30M annually
“So it's well over thirty million dollars now, mid thirty millions in terms of what we're actually paying these creators each year, which is awesome.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 4:33 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Disclosure
Contently recognizes only its 15% marketplace take as revenue
“What we've decided to do recently is not count the 85% of the dollar that goes to the writer we just count it as pass-through now, and so we count only the 15% that we take”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 12:27 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently posted 71% gross and 90% net retention last quarter
“So our churn across the board this has been something we've been working a lot on in last quarter, it was 71% gross retention and about 90% net retention.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 18:17 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently's creator network includes 150,000 freelance professionals
“Today that network is around a 150,000 professional journalists, videographers, data researchers, Visual designers have any kind of talent that a brand might need to tell their story in a unique format is in that network.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 2:55 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently counts seven of the ten most valuable brands as customers
“We work with a big chunk of the Fortune 507 of the 10 world's most valuable brands are our customers.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 3:44 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Disclosure
Contently charges brands a 15% marketplace take rate
“So we take a pretty small rate of whatever the marketplace transactions are. It's typically around 15% depends on a few variables, but that's sort of where it falls. You know, it's typically where it falls falls in line. Although that's, you know, the way it's…”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 5:18 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Disclosure
Contently pays creators immediately upon submitting first drafts
“And we do things like make sure that they get paid immediately on the submit of their first draft, which is night and day between what they're used to, where journalists will write a column for a magazine and then wait 90 days to get paid.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 5:53 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Disclosure
Contently's average new customer starts at a $60K ACV
“The average customer typically starts with a subscription that's somewhere around 60 K and ACV. And that's just on subscription fees.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 9:40 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Disclosure
Contently has scaled to 200 SaaS customers
“On the SAS side of things, it's around 200.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 11:33 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Contently expects to reach a $20M SaaS ARR run rate
“Fast subscription revenue will end the year at about a, on a twenty million dollar or so run rate and then the content component of that is quite a bit larger.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 12:13 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Supported
Contently has raised $20M in equity over seven years
“We've raised about twenty million dollars in equity over the last seven years or so.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 13:34 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently exceeds 90% gross retention in its Fortune customer cohort
“Getting it to be the kind of customers where we do really well, Fortune, and when you look at that cohort we're at 90 plus percent gross retention and then net negative on the MRR churn side.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 19:08 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently's fully loaded CAC averages $40,000
“Right now it's about 40,000. It's sort of, Goes between 30 and 50 K.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 22:29 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently's CAC payback period ranges from six to 12 months
“Our payback, it swings anywhere between, you know six months and a year, sort of depending on how we do that quarter and those kinds of things.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 23:16 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Contently employs just over 100 people
“Team size wise, we're just over a hundred.”
Joe Coleman Jan 26, 2019 ▶ 16:44 1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
1281 Contently Pays Creators $30m Annually, Passes $20m in ARR 40% yoy growth Jan 26, 2019 17m
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