From humble beginnings in 2004 as a daily email targeted to men in New York City, lifestyle destination Thrillist has grown steadily and has evolved one city and one topic at a time.
Today, the site operates in over 30 markets, including a few outside the United States like London and Amsterdam, and attracts more than 15m unique visitors each month. Thrillist.com is one of three properties owned by Thrillist Media Group (TMG); the others are ecommerce site JackThreads and tech site Supercompressor.
Not content with steady growth of core businesses, earlier this summer, TMG CEO Ben Lerer was out and about talking to potential investors. The result was a US$54m investment from German publisher Axel Springer, Oak Partners and SBNY (formerly Softbank) in late September. To appeal to investors who were interested in either content or commerce, but not both, TMG decided to split Thrillist and JackThreads as separate businesses, with Axel Springer being the lead investor for the content site.
This week, it became clear how Ben Leher, now the CEO of Thrillist and chairman of JackThreads, plans to spend some of the new capital. Building on the company’s history of continuous geographic expansion, Thrillist is now expanding its vertical coverage beyond food and drink to include health, entertainment as well as sex and dating.
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