Zachary Richner, 33

Founder and managing partner, Arrandale Ventures New York, N.Y. Education: Northwestern University, master of business administration, general management, master of science, design innovation; Harvard University, atrium baccalaureus, government

What advice do you have for other young professionals in the news industry?

Be sure to work with great people.

It’s a challenging industry, but with challenges come tremendous opportunities. Surrounding yourself with a team of smart, dedicated people that you enjoy working with—both inside and outside of your organization—will help you to achieve your goals and to take advantage of these big opportunities.

What is your approach to creating a sustainable business model for local media companies?

At Arrandale Ventures, we encourage media companies to stop thinking about their business model as a closed loop system, where the only inputs are advertising and subscriber revenues; rather, we see the industry’s future business model as a platform, where local media companies promote other businesses and then participate in these other businesses’ upside. That’s why at our venture capital firm, Arrandale Ventures, we have built an unprecedented partner network of over 4,000 local media outlets across the U.S. Our media partners are providing an expected $1 billion of in-kind marketing services over the next few years to our portfolio of B2C startups in exchange for equity value in those startups. It’s a novel model, but one with some mind-blowing economics for media companies—the value received by our media partners is nearly five times their cost of sale on day one, before any appreciation of the underlying startup that Arrandale has invested in. What’s more, this model is a beachhead for a whole new universe of cash-paying customers for local media companies: venture capitalfunded startups, which are currently spending nearly $60 billion per year on advertising with big tech platforms.