Semafor co-founder Ben Smith on building a profitable media company through journalism credibility and a high-end events business

text search built from first principles on object storage fast 10x cheaper and extremely scalable. And you know who we got next? We have Ben Smith from Semaphore on the best day of 2026.

What's going on? Look at this again.

Look at this setup.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Upgraded setup.

New round. New round. New setup.

New round. New setup. Wait, the dollars are already at work. I see this spend $30 million on a podcast. I mean, look at us. We have a gong, we have a horse, we have all sorts of stuff. We need to ring the gong. Give us the details. What was announced today?

Media is back.

Yeah. You know, media is a hard business. I' I've spent my whole career uh mostly at media startups and and and it's exciting to be at one that's working as a business. You know, we're we're profitable last year and and wow, one one person clapping. Incredible. Um, sorry. Whole team.

I had to hit

whole team for this. We love profit. We love profit. Cha-ching.

I mean, honestly, that that is how I feel like I'm a journalist and it like took me a large part of my career to realize that the that you're trying to bring in more money than you spend because I'm mostly, you know, obviously trying to hire more journalists. But, but, you know, it's a tough business and having been through a bunch of ups and downs, it's just very exciting to feel like we've kind of figured out a sustainable model to do really quality journalism.

That's great. um

talk about why true journalism, not you know a newswire account that's sharing fake news is more important uh than ever because it it feel like it feels like like act like

actually getting information from a journalist that did original factf finding on a story is actually more important than ever. I've when I uh I I I used to trust stuff. I I feel like you actually could trust a headline on social media a lot more 5 years ago than you can today.

And I think it's only going to get more insane as you can't even trust like you will get to the point where you can only trust in in some situations somebody that actually did the factf finding because somebody else could make

a video easily uh of some news that just or an interview that just never even happened.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think the you know that and particularly for our audience who in these different verticals that we're in from you know from tech to finance to to DC are often the most informed the most plugged in people the people who ought to have access to the best information. They probably like you and me feel like on one hand you're totally overwhelmed by the volume of incoming and then on the other hand don't know what to trust. And so we've just focused very very intensely on delivering kind of careful straight up the middle trusted information from journalists who like goodbe reporters are real experts and often in the kind of traditional journalism you're supposed to kind of hide your point of view or find some way to smuggle it in through expert quotes or adjectives and I think like our view is you know the audience particularly sophisticated audience has caught on to that and you'd rather just hear directly from a journalist who knows what they're talking about hear what they think with some room for disagreement but really the the place we found value as a business too is both in these email briefings and in these big convenings in this big one we do in Washington that people are just like very hungry for trusted really smart dense information from the source.

Yeah. What are the underrated strategies that you use? I feel like Semaphore is interesting because it's a place that it has the patina of like legacy media almost and I mean that in the best way possible in the fact in the fact that yeah you land on a semaphore page and you trust it with the authority of other larger older institutions and that's not true for every new blog or substack that pops up because anyone can spin those up. Anyone can spin up a website but you've built a credibility very quickly. Do you know like how as you reflect on that like how did that come together?

I mean I think it is partly that you sort of have to realize that we're living in this very kind of talent driven moment. Sure.

And and we definitely kind of built it to provide a platform for great reporters and great beat reporters who mostly with some exceptions but mostly aren't going to go out and do a substack because you know particularly if you're a beat reporter you might be telling this side what they want to hear today but the other but tomorrow you might be telling them what they don't want to hear. Yeah. And that's not always the best sort of creator model. And so, so in any case, we provide this sort of platform.

Not to mention, not to mention some of some of the stories like a great there's certain stories that take 6 months to do properly

and you can't do that if your audience is like, I pay you monthly for this thing up and you're not delivering.

Yeah. And Yeah. And you might need legal support. You might need a team, some editing. I mean, we've we've broken a lot of news because we have some a guy in Riad and a guy, you know, and somebody in Silicon Valley. And a lot of the a lot of the chip stories are really Gulf Washington Silicon Valley stories. Um but you al you need legal support. But no but I think you know it's funny almost what you say about our design is true. Like that's definitely we are trying to you know take the best of the values of of legacy media in terms of fairness and reliability but then also give a real kind of condensed intelligence. I actually think the thing that people that helps people trust you now is if you can pull in points of view from people who disagree. A lot of what we do is try to read across the whole internet. say here's what the Chinese media is saying, here's what the Japanese media is saying, here's what the right's saying, here's what the left's saying, and not not try to shove our own perspective through.

Yeah. What about uh the events business? I'm very interested in understanding how you're splitting your time, how Seaphore is thinking about these two. They're obviously a lot of synergies, but they are two different projects. I imagine there's different folks staffed on each side of the business. Walk me through the thesis there. Yeah, I mean this is actually sort of a nerdy journalism industry point, but a lot of the events business in newsrooms, the news rooms I have come up in, it's like you have a journalism business that's often based on scaled web advertising that starts collapsing and you panic and look for other businesses that work better and staple on an events business. That's what a lot of news organizations have done for, you know, two better and worse degrees. We definitely started with the premise that we're talking to an audience who and it's the same audience. We're reaching them in emails, but these are decision makers. These are people the tops of government and of businesses reaching them in emails and convening them in person and they want to hear from the same journalists and they want and and so our journalists are you know who are writing the briefings are the ones doing the interviews are the ones figuring out how to structure an event so that it's interesting I mean but of course as you say also you know like in some sense as you know an old blogger like it's incredibly easy to sit in your pajamas and type things and then like incredibly hard

to put on an event where the security is perfect and the food is perfect and the music is great and the staging is great. So we do have a unbelievably capable team of people who do that.

Is there something uh just understanding like the journalism that happens at an event? I experienced this for the first time last year where uh every interview that happened on stage, the key quote or the key fact that was discovered was turned into an article. Is is that sort of a virtuous cycle where the events businesses and the actual publications can work together synergistically when it's done right? Is there something that they're they're maybe less desperate when they're done well?

Yeah, for sure. And I would actually put it more on the other end which is like you definitely go to events that are not journalistic and that are fundamentally kind of promotional and the interview is often like the chief marketing officer of company A is interviewing the chief marketing officer of company B. And the thing is like journalism like and tough interviews bring a kind of tension and drama and interest and you lean forward that you if you and

the deal book this year was amazing. It was just like it may as well have been a pay-per-view boxing fight in some of them and it was amazing content.

It was great content. It was so good.

Yeah. And people want to watch you know like us in well-informed interviewer and again like whether they're a journalist or not actually they like professionally like ask hard questions. So, the thing is like smart CEOs would also rather be asked hard questions than sit on stage for an hour and like recite monologues that they memorized.

Yeah. I want to watch a serious journalist ask a public official a hard question and have that public official turn around and call him a pop pop pop historian. That's what I want to see.

Exactly.

Yeah.

We were we were uh uh off air. We were doing uh we got invited to like moderate a panel last year and there and the a PR person gave us some question. And here's like here's some qu we'd love if you ask some of these questions. And the first question was like you have changed the world in so many ways. How could you possibly do this? And we're like, "Yeah, we're I don't think we're asking that,

right?" Because you're thinking about the audience, right? In the end,

having an interesting conversation,

right?

But um

uh what why uh what was the real catalyst to raise your profitable and that that gives you the luxury of saying like we're going to be here for a long time, but I imagine there's a lot that you want to do with the money besides your new your new podcast setup.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, once you know with with with what's remaining from this uh lavish room. Um yeah, you know, I mean I think really two things. One, we're going to hire some more journalists. Like we're, you know, we're very light team. I think we're about about 50 journalists. And I think in their places, particularly, you know, the Trump story in DC and the global business story where we just have some hires we want to make. Um I don't think the newsroom of the future has a thousand journalists the way the old ones did. It's like kind of like in a post-industrial world, it is fewer people, I think. But between the technology that helps you and and the audience wanting to connect with individuals, but still we are very eager to hire some more great journalists and then as you as you would imagine the uh the convening business. It's like a expensive business like we're we're renting out a we're renting out the Conrad Hilton for a week uh in Washington in April and that's like it's it's

amazing. Um that's great. That's great. Uh I want to ask you about the anatomy of hard questions. I was listening to Joe Weisenthal talk about this and he said that oftent times uh audiences want people to ask hard questions and they imagine a situation where uh interviewers sitting down someone and they say are you a fraud and the interviewee just says ah you got me I am a fraud instead of just them shutting down and just delivering a talking point. So what makes for a great hard question where something's actually learned

and when's the right time to move on from a hard question because we we'll get we have a chat right so if we're talking to somebody People be like, "Ak,

is that does that need to be rehashed?" I mean, there's like 50 other interviews that that got into that. It was not great, but can't let's focus on like what matters now.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I think I was I think I may have been Laura Loomer's like first victim many years ago when I was at BuzzFeed and she came up to me and she was still like kind of young nervous Laura Loomer and her hand and her hand was shaking on the camera and she just asked me if I was fake news.

Oh,

which is like one of those questions like what are you going to say? You're not like

you got me. Um but um but

Ben fake news. I think it's um I I I think actually it's a sort of about creating an environment of mutual respect almost in a certain way where they are they feel committed to the conversation and you're asking serious questions and you're hopefully ask things they they haven't

necessarily been asked before but that are really top of mind and whatever is like the core question like why did you like why did you make this decision like like when I look at this decision it looks kind it looks kind of reckless like why would you do that and just sort of are sometimes like kind of verbalize the criticism in a respectful way and really but push them to actually respond like bull fighting, you know, like the journalist has the thing and the bull's running. Sometimes the bull runs straight into the journalist, right? But,

you know, it's a dance. It's a dance.

It's a great metaphor. Nailed it.

And sometimes you want to just run right into them though. I do think like

Yeah, exactly.

If you feel weird and bad asking the question, sometimes that's a really good question. Like if you feel like, ah, this is a little awkward.

Yeah. Yeah, that's wild.

Uh, we got to hit the gong.

Yeah. Uh g give us the details of the fundra who came

yeah who who came into the round because it was it was really a who's who of uh saw Henry Kravis and uh

yeah it was a it was really I mean it was honestly like a great vote of confidence a number of our invest existing investors um came back in including Henry Kravis David Rubenstein George Palo Leman the Gallup organization um and then some new investors including a couple of great European media investors a guy named Thomas Leen Um and uh and Penny Pritsker, the former commerce secretary.

That's right. That's right. Well, we're excited to see you put it to work. We're very excited for the event next year or this year and uh and the rest of the year.

Yeah. I hope we can get you there. Do you ever do you travel? Do you go east? Can we can we like drag you to this event?

That would be a lot of fun. Yeah. Uh we I mean, we have to check the schedule. We we we're working on figuring out how to bring the show on the road and still do our show while we're at other things. It's a lot of the show must go on. That's our non non-negotiable. The show must go on.

I would love to like find a way to get you on the road. It's April 13th to 18th in DC. So,

yeah. Yeah, we'll talk.

Prepare for your Trump interview. Yeah.

Fantastic. That sounds

I don't know if we'll ever uh

purely business and technology focused.

We could talk to him about Truth Social or World Liberty or, you know, any we get Sachs. I bet Saxs would talk to you. I don't know if he'd talk to me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'd have fun with Sax.

Let's work on this.

I I introduced him at Miami Tech Week uh three years ago or something. and I was the MC and I introduced him.

You got asking hard questions.

Yeah, that'd be fun. Uh, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Congrats on all the part.

Yeah, congrats to the whole team. It's it's awesome. Uh, like you said, vote of confidence and and I mean I'm I'm excited for you guys. Sometimes you're like a company raising money and it's it's like, okay, they have more money. But I'm genuinely excited for you guys to have more money. Yeah.

Be able to do more.

Thank you guys.

Yeah.

Thank you. And thanks for having me on. Awesome.

We'll talk to you soon, man. Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye. Uh, our next guest is Jacob Richaki. He's written a fantastic piece about humanoid robots. Before we bring him in, let me tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents