Former Emap CEO Natasha Christie-Miller has ambitious growth plans for Financial Times-backed start-ups newsbrand Sifted as she replaces Caspar Woolley as chair of the title.
Sifted, a website covering the world of European start-ups, was launched in 2019 by FT innovations editor John Thornhill and startup entrepreneur Caspar Woolley. They aimed to reach a younger generation of European entrepreneurs who may not be reading the FT.
Private equity firm ScaleUp Capital purchased a 25% share in Sifted in 2021 and therefore became its biggest shareholder. The FT, whose original 25% share was diluted by that investment, is its second-biggest, and the rest of the business is owned by other investors.
The site now says it reaches 120,000 people with its newsletter Sifted Daily and claims 32% year-on-year growth in subscriber numbers for its Pro offering.
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The Sifted Summit is due to take place in London on 2 and 3 October and will bring together 3,000 founders, operators and investors from across Europe.
Woolley remains a significant shareholder in the business.
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Christie-Miller told Press Gazette: “What I really like about B2B media is that we are genuinely giving fantastically helpful information and insight to a professional audience to help them do their jobs better, and to help businesses develop.”
She added: “The single point we focused on [at Emap], and this gets replicated at Sifted, is asking: ‘Who is the beneficiary of our content? Who needs that support?’ And you’re having a very focused idea of who your market is. The amount of energy that goes into that is absolutely critical, because everything starts from there.
“If we’ve got an engaged audience – our start-ups – then we’ve earned the right to invite the investors and the business partners into that community. If we start to get confused that other audiences are more important, then the whole thing falls apart. And Sifted has been really clear from day one about who the most important audience is, and who we’re here to help, which is the start-up community in Europe in tech.
“We can be a lot bigger. We are only a few years old, and it’s rare that these businesses launch, so the opportunity to come and work here is fantastic.”
Growing online subscribers is a key part of the Sifted growth plan.
Christie-Miller said: “I’m a firm believer in value-exchange between fantastic information that is of high enough quality that our audience absolutely understand, and want to pay for it.
“We will grow paid-for subscriptions. We will grow our reach with start-ups across Europe. There will be a really good value-exchange with each of those different audiences. With start-ups, in some instances that’s money, or certain content, and in other circumstances, it’s a different value-exchange, whether that’s us getting to know them well, or about sharing information and insight.
“Our ambition is more customers, higher reach, higher-value content, and more paid-for subscribers.”
Christie-Miller was chief executive of Top Right Group’s publishing division Emap from 2010 to 2015 when the company was bought by Ascential. She then became CEO of Ascential Intelligence and left the business last year.
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