Like Top 10 Lists? You'll Love Ranker

The website that's all about lists. What's going on. I'mrich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily. I'm in the offices of Ranker. This is a website based in Los Angeles that's all about lists. I'm here with CEO Clark Benson, who created the website. Clark, thanks so much for joining me today.

Thanks Rich, this is cool.

So we've got the We are in the shadow of the Hollywood Sign here in Los Angeles.

Tell me how you describe what Ranker is all about.

So, Ranker is a list about everything, right, But the hook that we have that our technology supports is that the lists are shaped by you, by anybody in the audience who lands on the list and decides to participate by voting on the lists or potentially adding items to the lists. So basically, our editors will put a list together about any topic you know that might be of interest.

Right. It could be best songs of the summer, it.

Could be best TV shows to binge watch, whatever it might be.

We have literally one hundred thousand plus rankings, right.

But the unique part of Ranker is that when you, you the consumer, land on that list, you're going to vote on it. You're or at least you've got a decent chance you're going to vote on it. And you know, you might come to rank or from a Google search looking for a recommendation about you know, new Netflix sci fi or something like that, and when you land on it, you'll be like, oh, I really like you know, blah blah, and you'll start voting on the stuff that you like

Wow.

And so do I have to like log in or anything or can I just get it right to business?

You just get right to business for you know, in the beginning, we tried to make you log in. We found that many many, many, many many more people will vote if we leave it, you know, just easy to just press a button.

Okay, So I find the website via Google because I'm looking up top movies of all time and then you guys come up.

I go there and I see.

Something like The Godfather's number one and shaw Shank's number two, and I say, I think Shawshank should be number one. And all I do is just press that little up and next thing, you know, it doesn't go up immediately because it has to reach a critical mass of people agreeing with me, right, correct.

You know the list that you're talking about the best movies of all the time. I think two hundred thousand people have voted on that. There's like three million votes on that, So your input is not going to necessarily cause it to magically move, right. But you know, we have a lot of people that come to the site on rankor to find the new stuff, because if you land on a new list that has only been voted on by five people, you can actually see it moving in front of you, and.

People like a visceral reaction to something they're doing.

So clearly people like lists. I mean, I've always loved list.

I think that it kind of makes life easy. You know what number one is, you know what number two is, number three? And I also like that wisdom of the crew idea too, So tell me about that.

What made you want to kind of start this website.

Yeah. So, like I I'm an entrepreneur.

I had a prior internet startup that I sold at the end of two thousand and six, and I had this kind of gnawing thing of like, I want to do another you know, internet business because I know that and I was as a list nerd myself, I was very frustrated with the fact that like it would be like this is one twenty three year old bloggers opinion of you know, the best punk bands of all time or whatever the topic was I was looking for when I would.

Do a search myself.

And you know, I was also a fan of the wisdom of crowd So we decided to build a technology platform that would allow you know, the world the crowd, so to speak, to shape the content.

And you know, it's really worked.

What it means is that, you know, in theory, if you believe in the wisdom of crowds, we have the best answer to anything that could be asked in list format.

So I was going to throw out some ideas. You tell me if you have these on Ranker. Obviously, best TV shows of all time?

Sure, best fast food restaurants, Oh yeah, yeah, we have best fast food fries.

Oh wow, do you know what the number one is?

The right debate. I'm trying to not eat french fries, so I don't even look at that.

Don't look at that loss.

So with something like that, I mean, how do you monetize? So I mean, do you sell me french fries to McDonald's do you know what?

Do you? Yeah? Do you make money? So that's a great question.

So Ranker we make money in sort of the traditional internet way of advertising, and Ranker has a really big scale at this point. We did like a billion and a half at Impressions last month, so we are very solidly profitable on mostly online advertising. We also make some money from e commerce referrals to like Amazon and another.

So you started the company, clearly you've grown.

You've got a bunch of people in the office doing what what are these people are doing?

Yeah, So we're at about eighty five employees and we have about fifteen job specs out so anybody listening there. We're hiring an engineering and in editorial and in social media, all Los Angeles, All Los Angeles. Well, we do have a New York sales office, but we've got like about a third of the company is in editorial, so they're basically making the they're making what I call sort of the shell.

Of the list.

So they'll they'll they'll spend you know, they'll take a topic and they'll put the first fifty items on the list, and then the visitors will kind of vote on it and shape it and add more items and it sort of takes on a bigger life of its own. So we've got that editorial team. We've got actually a large social team. We've got to fifteen people that just do social media exclusively.

We've got a video team.

We're branching out into taking rank or lists and making video versions of them because some people like to consume that stuff.

Video form, and we've got to you know.

You have to change those videos a lot.

Though yesterday it was number one, now today it's different.

You'd be surprised about the meetings we have to have about that, right, it has to be a modular thing.

So you're absolutely right. We have about fifteen engineers.

We've got business development, ad operations things like that, so it's a you know, it's a pretty diversified company. We've just we but we were outgrowing the floor.

We are here on Wilshure.

So the company's growing nicely and I enjoy having these growing pains.

So is this fun for you? I mean you're a guy that grew up loving lists. Now you're living it every day. So has that become a nightmare or does that become like this is really fun?

No?

This is really fun.

I mean the only thing that's a bummer is I don't have enough time to make my own lists.

Well, hold on, tell me about that.

Because you made your own list, you visited, you have a list on there that nobody can vote on because you did it. But it's one hundred top one hundred concerts you saw in a year.

I so what I did in twenty fifteen, and this is the problem. I haven't been able to do that in low last three Y're working right, I'm working right, But in twenty fifteen, I do like to I have a music nerd and I saw I saw one hundred and one bands in twenty fifteen, and I decided to

Out of the twenty times I've seen Will Go. So yes, that's the way my brain works.

It was the number one on that list, Neil Young, Neil Young, and what was number one hundred? Do you remember that that was a crappy show?

I'm sure if it was at the bottom. So I know I'm not off the top of my head.

If anyone visits you at the Ranker offices, they will notice you do not wear shoes in the office.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, And unfortunately, now my investors now know that I don't wear shoes because every time I do put shoes on when investors come over.

So now the cat's out of the bag.

Sorry, guys, but you know I've been I've been shorting myself, you know, and hyping you guys all along. You know, I hate wearing shoes. I just don't like wearing shoes, never have. And one of the things about starting your own businesses is you can kind of dictate the rules. I thought, you know, I won't wear shoes, and maybe some employees won't wear shoes.

You know, we have eighty five employees.

Now, you know, We've had quite a few that have come and gone in the nine years that Ranker has been going, and not a single one of them chose to not wear shoes.

So I think that I'm pretty weird.

So no one's following your no shoes lead.

Okay, so tell me before we go, tell me why people should come to rancor dot com.

So the beauty of Rancor is like you can come to Rancor to just get a recommendation, right, because it's like there's nothing like seeing a quick list to get a quick thing of Hey, I want to I need a new sci fi show I'm zoning out on. You know, I've watched everything. I watched Battlestar Galactic three times. I need something new, right, So so people do come to us a lot for best current sci fi shows kind of queries, but there's also sort of just this like trivia slash fandom slash nerdy.

You know, I.

Want to organize the world or I want to see how the world is organized aspect to Rancor. And you know, it's to some degree, it's like people talk about the Wikipedia wormhole, right where people you go to Wikipedia, you start looking up something that you came there for a reason, and half an hour later you're just like, you've clicked five ten links and you're just like, how did I end up on you know whatever?

Right?

Eighteenth century pottery or whatever it is, right right?

And Rankers kind of like that in that we do really well, like we have a higher time on site per visit than almost any other consumer website that isn't straight streaming video because people go into the opinion wormhole, and so I don't exactly know how to describe that other than if you've been.

Done an opinion wormhole, you get it, and everyone has an opinion.

We all know that.

Clark Benson, thanks so much for joining me today, Clark Benson of ranker dot com.

Go check out the website and thanks so much for listening.

If you like this podcast, go ahead and subscribe to it on iTunes and also leave me a review on iTunes and Apple Podcasts that helps more people discover the show. I'm shot them up on Best Podcasts. There you go, that's a good one. I'm Rich Stemiro. Thanks so much for listening. You can find a link to everything I talk about here on my website. Just go to richontech dot tv. I'll talk to you real soon.

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