Content is king. It always has been and always will be.
Grant Brown, co-founder of Rant, Inc and Startup Grind OC guest, embodies this adage wholeheartedly. This, coupled with Brown’s dynamic approach, is exactly why Rant, Inc has become the leader in online media consumption.
As Brown shared Rant’s story with the Startup Grind community, he highlighted a couple interesting secrets to his success: branding and strategic partnerships.
When we talk about the importance creating a cohesive brand, nobody’s more qualified to speak than Brown. Rant grew rapidly after its inception, expanding its content base from sports to different verticals and swelling to 155 domains under 65 writers. Naturally, this was a huge challenge to manage and promote, not to mention an inefficient use of resources. But how can you unite 155 individual brands under one cohesive brand without diluting the passion in each? Enter Rant, the company that made this pivotal transition in June 2011 and hasn’t stopped growing since. 
What I love about this story was that co-founders Brett Rosin and Grant Brown didn’t believe in baby steps. They established Rant for the media behemoth it is today by taking a bold, daring step and doing a complete brand makeover, uniting all 155 brands at once. “I think that every company needs to get out there, take a stand, assert their segment in the market, and pivot [later],” Brown stated. “Don’t be afraid to veer off the path. If you want first place, you’re going to have to be different.”
Rant established themselves as the ultimate source for sports team blogs, enabling them to focus their energy on building the overarching brand. They consistently developed their brand’s voice by producing viral, tangible, and personalized content. Their bold efforts quickly paid off in the metrics, increasing their unique page views from 300k to 1.2 million per month, allowing them the freedom to hire some salaried employees and advancing them into the next stages of angel funding.
The solidified brand, in turn, attracted attention and plentiful opportunities for strategic partnerships, the second element of Rant’s success.
Rant’s strategic partnerships have come in many forms, ranging anywhere from your typical investors to teammates and even to competitors. Yes, you read that correctly. Brown sees what a normal company would consider a competitor as a partner, and I suspect that attitude is what gives Rant a uniquely connected edge.
When you think about this, it makes total sense. We live in an increasingly digital world. Information and new ideas are shared at lightning speed. So it’s incredibly valuable to look at your competitors as collaborators, to piggyback off each other’s audiences and establish new developments from each others’ ideas.
Rant has adopted this approach in developing strategic partnerships with different networks, in which both sides reap the benefits of working together. They’ve been focused on monetization since day one and have taken a data-centric approach, looking at traffic and revenue patterns to determine the benefits of working with a partner, whether as huge as Fox or smaller independent networks.
But the Rant team doesn’t just stop at analyzing formalized working partnerships. This is because they understand that with startups, nearly everyone that touches the business has an influence on it. Brown emphasized the importance of taking ‘smart money,’ explaining that, “Money and contact is smart money.” In hindsight, he recommends entrepreneurs “look at how you take [funding]. Think of what'll help the company grow to the next stage.”
Beyond investors, it’s crucial to look at the people working in your business on a daily basis, be it advisors or employees. Rant owes much of its success to the chemistry of the core four members of the original team, which allowed them to complement each other and hire the right people. Also, many of Rant’s advisors, such as the former CEO of Interlink, helped the company through the rounds of funding and played an integral role in the company’s success.
And how do you find these valuable people? At community building events like Startup Grind, of course! “It’s all about networking and being at events like this; putting yourself out there, making yourself seen, and creating your own voice,” Brown said.
So as a takeaway to all our fellow entrepreneurs, make sure your startup’s branding is on point and keep your eye out for strategic partners wherever you go, especially at the next Startup Grind event!
---
Become a Startup Grind Contributor and get in front of 215,000 entrepreneurs.