How Thrillist went “from $0 in ecommerce to about $50 million”

If you want to be a successful media company, you’re probably going to look beyond display advertising. When you’re looking for that next option, you’d do worse than to look at the ecommerce story of Thrillist, the SoHo-based men’s lifestyle brand.

By pairing affiliate links to merchandise and sales with its content, Thrillist Media Group has grown into a $50 million a year ecommerce company, as CTO Mark O’Neill told Brooklyn Tech Meetup last week.

After using its sales team to sell ads for Jack Threads, the two companies realized they had a lot of overlap in their audience. Thrillist acquired JackThreads in 2010, which took them, as O’Neill describes it: “From 12 dudes in a room, when I started, to 200 people worldwide.” (With well-known offices.)

Watch O’Neill share other lessons:

O’Neill offers different pieces of advice for startups, from not being afraid to build your own product from scratch, to giving employees “the bad news” before hiring and keeping in mind all the motivations people have for doing the work right.

He explains a number of his work philosophies, but focuses on this one: “You’re a real company, even when you’re small.”