Contently

Joe Coleman launched Contently in January 2011 with a straightforward mission: build a marketplace connecting freelance creators with brands that needed content. The co-founders were named to Inc's 30 under 30 list in 2012. To solve the classic chicken-or-egg problem of two-sided marketplaces, Contently built portfolio tools for journalists inspired by Scott Belsky's Behance model. This solved the supply-side problem beautifully—within a few years, they'd assembled a network of around 150,000 professional journalists, videographers, data researchers, and visual designers, the largest of its kind in the world. The marketplace grew substantially, and by 2017 Contently was paying out over $30 million annually to creators while keeping just 15% (about $3-5 million) as transaction fees.

The real breakthrough came when enterprise brands like American Express and Coca-Cola started using the marketplace. Joe recalls a conversation with an AmEx contact that revealed a hidden problem: the marketer had seven lawyers who needed to review every piece of content before it could go live. Content was getting lost in email threads, spreadsheets, and Google Docs. Approval workflows were broken, revisions were endless, and much of the produced content never saw the light of day. This insight—that large enterprises needed more than just talent access—became Contently's north star. In late 2012, less than two years after launch, Joe and his team started building actual software to solve this workflow problem.

The SaaS product launched as a comprehensive content marketing platform for enterprises. Customers got access to the 150,000-person talent network *plus* software that streamlined the entire content creation lifecycle: brief management, approval workflows, legal handling, publishing to multiple channels, and analytics to measure performance. The average customer started with a ~$60K annual contract value subscription, and typically spent an additional 20-25% of that on content purchased through the marketplace—a healthy ratio indicating strong product-market fit within that cohort. Contently charged unlimited per-user pricing (having abandoned per-user models as unworkable in MarTech) and focused relentlessly on Fortune 500 and large enterprise segments. By 2018, they'd captured seven of the ten world's most valuable brands as customers and dominated categories like finance, insurance, and B2B.

Contently's efficiency mindset, inherited from Joe's two previous bootstrapped companies, kept them lean even after raising $20 million in equity over seven years. They grew the SaaS business at roughly 40% annually, reaching $20M ARR with just 100 employees based in New York. However, early on they took on smaller, high-growth tech companies as customers—a mistake they spent 18 months correcting. These lower-tier customers didn't retain well and skewed economics. Once Contently refocused exclusively on Fortune 500 accounts, gross retention jumped to 90%+ and net revenue retention turned positive from a dollar standpoint. (Logo retention remained higher because large customers like JPMorgan and RBC ran Contently across 10+ internal divisions; losing one division meant revenue churn but not logo churn.)

The company also had to iterate heavily on pricing. Early on they "literally just picked numbers" and raised them if customers paid. This trial-and-error approach revealed that smaller customers weren't actually paying much less than enterprises—a market insight that prompted pricing restructuring. With a $40K fully-loaded CAC and 6-12 month payback, unit economics were healthy. Though still burning cash in 2018 (to fuel sales and marketing growth), Joe noted they could reach profitability in 6-7 months if needed. They weren't raising capital at the time, instead fine-tuning the sales machine and waiting for Q1 2019 to see the results of their hiring and process improvements.

By the time of this interview, Contently had built a truly defensible enterprise SaaS business: a dual-sided network effect (marketplace + software), strong retention with the right customer cohort, clear path to profitability, and a product solving a real pain point for the world's largest brands. Joe's biggest reflection on entrepreneurship: the commitment and stress of running a venture-backed company far exceeds what you expect at 20. But with a sustainable business model, a talented 100-person team, and a category (content marketing solutions for enterprises) that was still nascent, Contently was positioned for sustained growth.