// community building

Source: Simon Owens's Media Newsletter

Daniel Scharff's B2B media company—built on in-person connection rather than venture capital or editorial ambition—shows that audience aggregation still begins with solving a specific problem. In this case, CPG professionals needed peer networks. The multi-platform monetization (podcasts, events, Slack community) works because the Slack became the asset. Scharff didn't start with a distribution channel and retrofit community into it. Instead of building audience to sell ads, he built infrastructure where an audience already wanted to congregate, then commercialized the trust and data that followed.