Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thanks Rich, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So we've got the We are in the shadow of
the Hollywood Sign here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Tell me how you describe what Ranker is all about.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Right. It could be best songs of the summer, it.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Could be best TV shows to binge watch, whatever it
might be.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
We have literally one hundred thousand plus rankings, right.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
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,
(01:24):
and you'll start voting on the stuff that you like
and dislike. And so with a very sort of easy,
friction free you don't have to log in. You know,
you don't have to write a bunch of messy texts.
You can just kind of start expressing your opinion right
off the bat. And you know, literally we're collecting you know,
tens of millions of votes a month across all these
(01:44):
different rankings, and so the world is shaping the content.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
And so do I have to like log in or
anything or can I just get it right to business?
Speaker 4 (01:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, So I find the website via Google because I'm
looking up top movies of all time and then you
guys come up.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I go there and I see.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
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.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
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
(02:46):
in front of you, and.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
People like a visceral reaction to something they're doing.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So clearly people like lists. I mean, I've always loved list.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
What made you want to kind of start this website.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah. So, like I I'm an entrepreneur.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
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
(03:28):
or whatever the topic was I was looking for when
I would.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Do a search myself.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And you know, it's really worked.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
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?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Sure, best fast food restaurants, Oh yeah, yeah, we have
best fast food fries.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Oh wow, do you know what the number one is?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
The right debate. I'm trying to not eat french fries,
so I don't even look at that.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Don't look at that loss.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
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?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Do you? Yeah? Do you make money? So that's a
great question.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
So you started the company, clearly you've grown.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
You've got a bunch of people in the office doing
what what are these people are doing?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
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
(05:06):
the shell.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Of the list.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
We've got a video team.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
We're branching out into taking rank or lists and making
video versions of them because some people like to consume
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Video form, and we've got to you know.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
You have to change those videos a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Though yesterday it was number one, now today it's different.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
You'd be surprised about the meetings we have to have
about that, right, it has to be a modular thing.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So you're absolutely right. We have about fifteen engineers.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
We are here on Wilshure.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
So the company's growing nicely and I enjoy having these
growing pains.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
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?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
No?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
This is really fun.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I mean the only thing that's a bummer is I
don't have enough time to make my own lists.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, hold on, tell me about that.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
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
rank them all. So you can, you know, google Clark
(06:53):
Benson one hundred bands and you will see really nerdy
deep dives into every concert I saw, you know, and
how I liked that will go show versus the Will
Go Show three years earlier and seven years earlier.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Out of the twenty times I've seen Will Go. So yes,
that's the way my brain works.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
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?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I'm sure if it was at the bottom. So I
know I'm not off the top of my head.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
If anyone visits you at the Ranker offices, they will
notice you do not wear shoes in the office.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So now the cat's out of the bag.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
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
(07:54):
some employees won't wear shoes.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
You know, we have eighty five employees.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
So I think that I'm pretty weird.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
So no one's following your no shoes lead.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Okay, so tell me before we go, tell me why
people should come to rancor dot com.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
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
(08:37):
of queries, but there's also sort of just this like
trivia slash fandom slash nerdy.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
You know, I.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
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
(09:07):
end up on you know whatever?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Eighteenth century pottery or whatever it is, right right?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Done an opinion wormhole, you get it, and everyone has
an opinion.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
We all know that.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Clark Benson, thanks so much for joining me today, Clark
Benson of ranker dot com.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Go check out the website and thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
M