VANCOUVER — Creator-economy scale-up Thinkific is building a media division, an effort that could include potential acquisitions, and that would make it part of a trend among software-as-a-service companies.

“The media landscape is changing,” said Cameron Uganec, who joined Vancouver-based Thinkific as the general manager of media last October. It’s a new position—and division—at the company, which provides a platform to create, market and sell online courses. In an interview with The Logic, he said brands now face more difficulty reaching people through social networks, for example, as Facebook and others regularly change up their algorithms.

“You’ve got these new media companies that know how to find an audience, reach an audience and create a really engaged audience,” said Uganec. He thinks pairing that with a software-as-a-service company like Thinkific, with its subscription-based business model, is “a powerful combination.”

It’s a burgeoning practice exemplified by Massachusetts-based customer-relationship management platform HubSpot’s recent acquisition of The Hustle. Announced last February, it landed the company a business- and tech-focused daily newsletter with more than 1.5 million subscribers that also operates a research arm focused on identifying emerging business trends and events business.

“The battle for customer attention has never been so fierce,” HubSpot said in announcing the deal. It had invested in creating content, writing blogs, publishing courses and producing videos in a bid to convince more people to spend their time on its website, but felt it needed to go a step further. Months before the Hustle acquisition, HubSpot co-founder and chief technology officer Dharmesh Shah laid out the company’s perspective in a tweet: “Modern media companies have a software company embedded inside. Next-gen software companies will have a media company embedded inside.” HubSpot did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

Shah is hardly not alone in his opinion. Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor, one-time CTO at Coinbase and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, echoed it in March 2021. “Every SaaS company should have a media arm with a newsletter that gives industry news. Just acquire an influencer in your space with a solid following,” he tweeted. “Bundle their content for free with your software subscription. And make all customers readers.”

Thinkific’s new media push will likely include a combination of building internally, partnering with an outlet and buying an existing media company, Uganec said. Any acquisition target would have to hold the attention of people working within the creator economy, Thinkific’s user base. The platform encourages anyone with a marketable skill to create courses, hosting content from an ice-hockey coach, a drone pilot instructor and a guitarist, among others. Uganec declined to say what timeline it’s on for a potential acquisition.

Its mediums could include any or all of websites, newsletters, video or podcasts. Though Uganec acknowledges it’s unlikely Thinkific will succeed at all of the above, he’s keen to experiment and believes a robust social media program, including TikTok, and a newsletter will be part of its offering.

He has already started hiring a team, seeking people who can grow an audience, as well as producers and creators that feel equally comfortable behind a keyboard as in front of a camera. So far, Uganec has hired several freelancers, as well as a social agency and talent agency. The first full-time position he’s looking to fill is a managing editor, and expects to post a job listing next week. The website and newsletter will launch March 1.

He would not disclose the budget for the venture, but feels “pretty confident that we’ll be quite well funded”—Thinkific debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange last April at a roughly $1-billion valuation. The initial public offering “signals that they’re thinking big,” said Uganec.

The list of tech firms buying up or investing in niche media outlets that serve their customers’ interests is growing and will continue to do so, according to a recent CB Insights report. Casino company Penn National Gaming purchased a 36 per cent stake in Barstool Sports in early 2020 in a deal worth about US$163 million. It later acquired Toronto-based Score Media and Gaming, known as theScore, for roughly US$2 billion. In 2019, the stock-trading platform Robinhood acquired the financial-news podcast and newsletter MarketSnacks.

These additions can help tech firms acquire customers at a lower cost and increase the lifetime value of each client, according to the report. When JPMorgan Chase  acquired The Infatuation, a restaurant-discovery and dining-guide website, it gave the bank a way to offer the site’s perks to its credit card-holders and attract new clients through advertising on the site. 

For businesses pursuing this path, getting ads in front of a media property’s built-in audience is a major draw. Since HubSpot acquired The Hustle, the newsletter has been peppered with HubSpot advertising. Recent editions link to HubSpot’s free resources, including a marketing template and help with short-form video production. Robinhood, meanwhile, rebranded MarketSnacks to Robinhood Snacks. 

Uganec expects that any media property Thinkific acquires would act as a separate entity to maintain its editorial independence and keep reader trust intact. Thinkific would act as the media company’s sole advertiser and sponsor, he said.

CB Insights expects more acquisitions to come. NerdWallet, a personal-finance company, could be a good fit for several banks, it projected. Tastemade, which produces food, travel and design videos for millennial consumers, might be of interest to Airbnb or Anheuser-Busch InBev, the global alcohol giant, as “travel and cooking pair well with alcohol.”

Uganec believes it’s forward thinking for a company of Thinkific’s size—despite its big IPO, it’s a minnow compared to the big U.S. names that CB Insights cited—to jump on the media-acquisition trend in its early stages. “I think we’re just at the beginning.”