What Does Smooth Really Do?

A few weeks back, we announced some very big news: We acquired Energy Central, a leading community platform and media publication for the electric power industry. In the eventful weeks since, we’ve had some really intriguing conversations about how we got to this point and, most notably, where we’re going.

Coincidentally: We’re also marking a special occasion. It’s been just over two years since Jenny went viral on Twitter with this masterpiece that, quite frankly, deserves a spot in the Louvre.

So today, three years after we founded Smooth, two years after Jenny’s family still didn’t understand what it was, and one month after our first acquisition, we’re offering a definitive breakdown of what Smooth is today and where we’re headed next.

Really, it’s simple: We’re building a new era of business media. And we’re doing that in two core ways →

First, Smooth represents knowledge creators. Knowledge creators educate and empower their audiences through smart, insightful content. 

By publishing their expertise freely and accessibly, knowledge creators have ushered in a new age for the internet—allowing anyone to explore diverse topics, develop skills, advance their careers, gain perspectives, overcome challenges, and grow.

And here’s where we come in as managers: We bring these knowledge creators (in niches like tech, AI, finance, the creator economy, and entrepreneurship) brand partnerships revenue and help them operate. A little more on those two →

• For brands: We work with major companies—Notion, Shopify, Hubspot, Nvidia, Uber, and Salesforce, to name a few—to tell their stories through multi-channel, creator-forward campaigns. See here and here for some stellar examples.

• For creators: We offer strategic support, operational backup, and a quality > quantity ethos rooted in the knowledge that long-term partnerships + active account management = a winning approach. All this helps creators scale their revenue strategies and businesses.

Second, Smooth is building a portfolio of niche media brands. In partnership with Colin and Samir, we’ve built The Publish Press into a thriving community for content creators and we recently acquired Energy Central to do the same for electric power professionals.

We’re big on niche media brands, especially in the B2B space—after all, the internet has made it possible for people to self-select into pretty specific groups based on interests (vintage clothes on eBay, sports tourism, or Gen Z culture, if you’re taking a brief tour of my personal inbox). We see the professional interest group subset as a bottomless well of growth.

More to come here. Which brings me to…

The future of Smooth: We’ve built a top-notch team of marketers, managers, operators, and sellers who are locked in on the following →

1. Growing the Smooth platform and repping the best knowledge creators. We’re strengthening our agency offerings for knowledge creators to more effectively set them up for growth.

2. Scaling our portfolio brands. We have the operational tools and the tenacity to power significant growth for our niche media brands. We’re thinking big.

3. Expanding our portfolio. We want to launch new brands from scratch and acquire niche media companies that fit our thesis.

Got questions or want to recreate Jenny’s family meeting sometime? You know where to find us.