Businessweek Extra - Joey Levin

headquarters alone are iconic now on the West Side. You can't drive up the West Side Highway without picking them out. Barry Diller, he's behind it. Joey Levin, though he was a longtime lieutenant, he's now running the show. Here's your conversation. So congratulations Bloomberg fifty. Here at I A c headquarters, Thanks for hosting. So I want to go back to the beginning and and understand how you got here because you're a banker. Yeah, I don't like to admit that

that's true. I was. I was a banker, and actually I learned a tremendous amount. I'm I don't I don't at all regret having done it. I didn't. It wasn't

my favorite thing. I ever did, but I learned a tremendous amount, and I think it opened up a lot of opportunities for me in terms of just how to think about things and and uh, I didn't know what I wanted to do out of college, and there was where I went to college, there was a lot of banks that did a lot of recruiting, and they pulled me into uh the sort of tech bubble, which sort of the peak of the tech bubble, which is when

the recruiting started. It was a fall two thousand when things were just about to crest over and by the time I started, they had the bubble had burst. And uh, they offered me thirty thousand dollars not to show up to the job, but I decided to show up anyway. Yeah. Wow, Yeah, it was. It was a really interesting time. And I think it's a great time to get started on a career because you could if I had started two years early,

I would have thought you could do nothing wrong. Uh, And I started, uh two years later, and it was you could do nothing right and you really had to grind out to figure out how to make things work. And uh, I'm actually pretty I'm grateful for that, but so I came to I See to do mergers and acquisitions, which is what I was doing as a banker. Uh and really Barry had told the market he wanted to

spend ten billion dollars on acquisitions in the Internet. And I thought that that is Uh, that sounds like a lot of fun. And the this was two thousand three and the Internet was not popular. It was people said, we we advertising doesn't work on the internet. We were not buying eyeballs anymore. And and this thing's overdone. And we thought there's still a lot of opportunity here, and uh we did. We went and spent most of that money in travel, but we we were very active in that.

And and M and A was very sort of core to the center of I C. And so I got to know uh, Barry and the vice chairman, Victor conform very well. We're all very involved in this process, uh and uh and and Dara was there then who's who's now at uber And it was a great group of people who I learned to train his tremendous amount from and UH started doing acquisitions, then started doing some finance stuff, and then started running my first business in two thousand nine.

And so go back to sort of joining and I mean at that point, Barry Diller is capital B, capital D, very dill. I mean like he's he's not an unknown at that point. What were your first impressions of working for him? It was funny. People had all these things of Okay, you're going into your first meeting with Berry. Are you're going into a meeting with Berry. Don't look at him. I don't look directly at him, but don't

look away from it. I was like, what, there was all these like rules that people were trying to give me, and you go into the meeting. He's he's the regular person. He's very intense, and he's very sharp, and he gets to the point on everything very quickly, and and sort of intolerant of kind of nonsense or waste. But he's just the person in a meeting. And Uh. The thing that I appreciated right away and still appreciate today very much is this culture of debate and discussion and challenging

and it's it's it's a lot of ways. It's it's hard to do as a leader because you say to everybody you know, essentially everything I say, you should challenge everything I say, you should disagree with everything and and to make sure that that you get to the right answer. And it is a definitively a better way of getting to the right answer. But it is a hard thing and something that Barry has has always embraced. And it doesn't work for everybody, you know, some people don't don't

like that kind of culture. But but it worked well for me and my personality and and we end up getting along. But I didn't really get to Nobury even though I was in meeting with Barry. I protaly didn't get the no Bury it until several years into being a right And did you anticipate when you got here that you would be here for for this long? Because you know, in today's day and age like it's a pretty long tenure at one place, it is? Uh? And

did I anticipate it? No, I definitely did not anticipate it. But did I desire that? Yeah. When I remember when I was interviewing for jobs out of investment banking, I very quickly knew I didn't want to be an investment banker, and and I was learning a lot, and I was grateful for all the people that I was working with. I just knew that that wasn't for me long term. So I started doing interviews. And one of the things that investment bankers frequently interview for his private equity or

asset ban mantural alterna advances, and I was uh. So, I was interviewing with a private a great private equity fund, and they said, what do you want to uh, you know, talk to us about what you want to do or where you want to be in a few years. I said, I'd like to be, you know, in a company, running a company, you know, driving business, building a product. And

they said, well, then what are you doing here? I said, A good point, and so I left and I actually started talking to Ice then, and I thought when I went there, I want to be a part of building something. And uh, Barry is very much a builder, and I see as a company very much about building and building companies and uh and so I got very lucky in that sense. Well, and as you pointed out, I mean M and A has been at the core of this company in a lot of ways, Um, both buying and

selling in many ways and spinning off. And we'll get to that, I'm sure a little later in the conversation. Um, how does that sort of help define the culture because there's a lot of movement, and there's a lot of constant uh coming and going in many ways, and a lot of innovation, I would imagine, but also potential friction among all of these new things happening all the time. How do you manage that? Uh, Well, there's a lot in there. We we we like the friction. Um. We

like that things challenge themselves and each other. We frequently have multiple businesses in the same category competing with each other. Our view is we'd rather disrupt ourselves than have somebody disrupt us, and so so we're we're often if we have a thesis on a category, we want several teams going after it and several businesses going after it. And it's okay if they compete with each other and challenge each other in in going after that um and result.

Because in many ways you can you can predict some components of the future. No one can predict the future, but you can say there's here's one way of doing something, and here's a better way of doing something. Five years from now or ten years from now, our people are gonna be doing it the better way or the worst way. Well,

they're definitely gonna be doing it the better way. Right, you don't know where you're going to get the right team that that's going to figure out how to do the better way better than the other people figuring out the better way. But you you do know that that's what the future is going to look like. And so what we try and do is put a lot of bets against that future so that that we can meaningfully

participate in it. And uh that that sometimes leads the conflict, that sometimes leads to multiple bets in the same category or friction in your words, and that's something that's okay with us, right. It feels like it's baked in it is. I was we uh one of our board members, h Chelsea Clinton. We we did a town hall yesterday with a bunch of employees. So I was, you know, I was in your seat interviewing her, and she said something

which I thought was very interesting. It's it's a a sort of revolution on something or a turn on something that we say internally, which is inertia is a very powerful and the most underrated force and in in business, both for good and for bad. And what Chelsea described said from her observance as a board member, is that we go out of our way to reject inertia, you know, and again for good and for bad. Don't don't overestimate a tailwind. Uh, don't don't believe too much that that

a tailwind is your own brilliance. Um. And also don't be sort of intimidated by those those headwinds and figure out how to push through that. And I think that that is an important point in there. And so, you know, going back to two thousand three and sort of fast forwarding to the present, the internet is a very different place than it was in two thousand three. How do you define the Internet? It's a big question, But how do you define the Internet from a business perspective in

twenty nineteen, Um, what where the Internet? The sort of mind blowing thing In the beginning of the Internet, the sort of I don't know, we'll call it the first phase. I'll call the first phase for now of the internet was choice and breadth. You recall when Google came out, people that they're big thing was one of you know, million results when when you do a search and people's

minds were blown by that. Appropriately, I mean, it was just amazing that you could ask about some uh, Nike shoes of some particular year and see ten million results of about that and UH, that was the first and really interesting phase of the Internet. And in a way it's gone, it's gone the complete opposite of that today. So today it's actually about how do you narrow the choice right? How do you get to the one answer? Because now all ways ten million you can't really do

anything with ten million U choices. You you that that's not that helpful. As much as it is fascinating, it's not that helpful. You need to get to the answer right, the one answer. And so now all the platforms are about not giving choice, but giving uh a solution, right, And we're thinking about that in a lot of our businesses. Take um Angie Homes Services for example, where we are

matching consumers with home service professionals. Right now, we match you with with several and UH, to the extent someone wants that, we will continue to match them with several. What we see is many consumers want to be matched with just the right one. Just just tell me. I. We've grown up knowing platforms, knowing the Internet, and we know which brands we want to trust and which brands we don't want to trust. And if it's a brand retrust,

just save me the trouble, give me the answer. And and that's what what we're we're trying to do now with Angie and with other our businesses too. I mean, it's it's it's harder in dating. I'd like to say that we could find a person and we can say, okay, boom, here's a person for you, married next week, and and off you go. I don't think that's realistic ever in that category. But we can get better with our algorithms.

We can't get better at matching people as we learn more so that you don't have to go through, you know, hundreds of conversations, maybe you go through dozens of conversations or less than that, and to get to find people

that you might be compatible with. And when you think about sort of the Internet again broadly defined in twenty nineteen, it feels like if we went back to two thousand three, or certainly even in earlier, there was a lot of enthusiasm, you know, a lot of just excitement about what it could be. Today it feels like there's more skepticism, you know, whether it's from regulators, whether it's from some of the

companies themselves, whether it's from consumers. How do you read this moment where we are, you know, sort of broadly defined as this sort of tech lash for lack of a better term. It's funny because it's the exact same thing that was what everyone was so excited about in the beginning, which was the the the monopolies of the duopolies or the or the the power that was concentrated in the hands of a few. The Internet came through and said no, no more, We're gonna distribute this and

anyone could do anything. Anyone's empowered. You can start a business, you can reach consumers. You don't need to go through a a privately owned platform to reach end users. You don't need an infinite amount of money to reach end users. You can open your shop on the Internet and boom, you can reach the world. And that distribution was phenomenal and led to so much innovation and so much excitement.

That's why people were so excited. What happened is that power got reconcentrated again and a handful of hands, uh. And those are the companies that are in the headlines and part of that tech lash, and those companies do have enormous power they're kingmakers of other companies, of individuals, of of UH politicians for not necessarily by design, but

sometimes by accident. UH. That is a you know that that goes back to that scary thing, and people don't like to be in that position where there's a handful of people with a very significant amount of power. It's a sort of more American democratic thing to see that distributed. And I think people want to see that happen again. And what do you see as I a c S

role in essentially combating that. Well, our biggest thing is having great independent products and having those products resonate with users. If we are UH, if we can communicate a very compelling product experience in our category to a user, I believe we can win. And I believe we can we have historically, and I believe we can continue to defeat the giants. UM. The giants can compete with us, sometimes over implicitly, sometimes explicitly, but they do compete with us.

We also benefit hugely and have benefited usually from their scale, UH knowing how to use those platforms to to acquire audio its, to to interact with with customers or potential customers, and those platforms have been hugely helpful to us in building our business, but also increasingly as they look for growth, they are competing with us, and that's something that we have to do and you just win that on on

a better product. So help me understand. One of your strategies seems to be keep me honest here sort of a build, build and spin or build and sell. Obviously that happens with with matches in the process of happening with match And I think you've said that you want things only to get so big. You're not empire building to something said, help me understand the thinking underneath that. Sure, so I'll correct one small thing, which is build and sell is rarely something that we do. We don't think

of a spin as a sale. We have sold companies that generally, when we're selling a company, it's just because we haven't figured out how to make it work for us. Um it doesn't sort of fit and we we can't. We can't get it going and in our ambition and else may be able to do it better. Uh, spinning is different. Spinning, it's our shareholders get it. We just give it to our shareholders and they can continue to hold it forever. And when we look at our track

record over time. We we presume that somebody comes in and from the moment they come in, they continue to hold everything forever. They can just hold it in separate pockets instead of all in one pocket. Uh. And the reason that we do that is it there's lots of micro reasons, and sometimes there's tactical reasons, but the main reason that we do it is we like the process of building. We like the process of starting over. And

when you have something huge, it overshadows everything else. And Match is such a good business, is doing so well right now, and and and investors care tremendously about it, and anything else we do is basically irrelevant relative to how many subscribers Tender had in the quarter. And when you get to that level, at some point you say, Okay, this thing has the ability to be off on its own. And if we if we put that thing at zone,

then we can focus again on the smaller things. Because when we're focused on the smaller things, you put that kind of energy in it, there's nowhere to hide and you you've gotta uh, you've gotta make those work. And we like that process. So Match underway. It is the idea you'll do something similar with Angie Home Services. I'd hope to at some point. Uh We've said right now we're not focused on that. We're focused on trying to get matched on um but at some point that that

that very well may make sense. But you know, there's all kinds of considerations and and where and when, in timing and how and all those things are are kind of wide open. And so when you look through the rest of the portfolio, where are you spending a lot of your time either building or uh, you know, expanding, what are you what are you most excited about? I know that's like having you pick among your children. But uh so, first of all, you maybe do it in

terms of size. Angie is a huge one and is a I think a fantastic business in a fantastic category with an incredible lead that we can do really cool things on product, and we're we're doing kind of the most aggressive product evolution in Angie's history right now, and we're very optimistic about what we can do with then. So that's pretty exciting. I'm I'm spending a decent amount of time on that. Uh. Next is uh in I guess we could do it in order of profit, but

dot Dash. Dot Dash is I think the modern publisher, uh, digital publisher, the all these other businesses have been in the publishing category. There there's been a tremendous rise and fall of publishing business and dot dash has just stayed very focused on delivering people content what they call need to know content. You can call it sort of pull

content as against push content. Push content. Is what you and I are doing right now is we're presuming that people want to hear from one of us and we're doing an interview and we're shipping it out. They do, I guarantee you they did. What what Dash is doing is saying we know people are looking for this thing specifically, which is what are the best hiking boots? Or uh, what do I do about lower back pain? Or things like that, and we're making sure that we create the

best content to answer those questions. What we say freshest, fastest, fewest, freshest meaning to the extent there's anything updated in the category, we're always constantly updating that. Fastest meaning we actually deliver our our site faster than anybody else. And fewest meaning having the fewest ads so that there's no room for anybody else or no reason for anybody else to come in. We want a great consumer experience. We don't want to over monetize it, and and nobody else is doing that

in that area. And we're finding that we can do it very well, and we're we're going to outspend everybody and having the best content in there. It's a I am viciously make a Netflix analogy, and that what Netflix is doing on video content, we're trying to do on sort of print or or this need to know content outspending by far the best content in the category. And uh, it's turning out to be a real business with a real mode, nicely profitable and I think great growth potential.

All right, so let's go full white space here, you know,

beyond what you're doing now. When you're entertaining new ideas, it needs you to tip your hand necessarily about the next bit of while that you're welcome to um, But what what do you see out there for a consumer in the media world and the publishing world, in the broad internet defined where maybe there's some maybe there's some space, there's a theme that's hitting on a bunch of our businesses and totally new businesses, new categories altogether which is

how people find work and get work. We have a very very tiny business today which is doing that called Blue Crew, which is in the light industrial matching um uh temp labor, hourly workers with employers and uh that's a really interesting one. But in more broadly, the process of hiring and finding people who can do work, whether it's for an individual in their home, whether it's for an employer with a full time employee and employer with

a part time employee. That entire process happens offline, and software is very kind of minimally involved. It's involved the front end, which is you can find people's resumes or lists of resumes or lists of list things online. But that matching process I think can be done very well with software, and we're doing that in Blue Crew in this one area, and I think it can be done in lots of areas, uh in a really interesting way. And so we're spending a lot of time thinking about

that and pretty excited about it. What's your one big lesson so far in your career? Best advice or best best advice you've gotten, our best advice you give now as a CEO, uh Man, there's a lot. There's there's a lot to choose from advice I've gotten. Um, my favorite is really something that that Barry has pushed always at I A C. Is think bigger and be ambitious and passionate. That's what are the things that get people excited.

That's what's great for deciding your career. You know, thinking big and thinking ambitious and thinking passionately about something that means you're gonna be doing something you love. That means you're going to be doing something that that excites you. That means you're going to be doing something that has great potential. And and think about it in a big way, not in a small way. And if you if you think in a small way, the best you do is

achieve that you think in a big way. You you and maybe you get a chance of achieving that big thing. All right. Joey Levin, thank you so much. Thank you good to be here. That was Joey Levi and I c CEO. Great conversation. Jason, thank you. I mean, what I really liked about it was catching up with him in sort of a fulsome way, you know, understanding where

he came from. He started on Wall Street. He quickly realizes he doesn't want to do that goes to work for Barry Diller, one of the most iconic business people of our time. Like a great teacher, right totally. I mean you learned so much by osmosis in some ways. But what Joey Levin now has ahead of him is the ability to really shape content publishing, even how we find someone to fix something at our house. They've got this massive platform that's going to be very influential going forward. Well,

it's a great conversation. Uh, and you've covered so much ground. You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra and be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Monday through Friday at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. This is Bloomberg