Startup Spotlight #187: Zette

Zette is on a mission to make high-quality content accessible to all.

Jun 27, 2022

I got the chance to speak with Yehong Zhu, founder and CEO of Zette, about what she’s working on at her startup, and any advice she has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Zette’s innovative “pay-per-article'' model provides access to a diversity of publications while sharing revenue with newsrooms. Download the Zette browser extension to open, read, and share articles behind paywalls. Get one-click access to Zette’s 80+ newspaper and magazine partners, where a $9.99 subscription unlocks 30 paywalled articles each month.

26-year-old founder and CEO Yehong Zhu was a Forbes journalist, Twitter product manager, and Harvard graduate who had the vision to create affordable access to news. Her mission is to combat misinformation and democratize access to journalism for millennials and Gen-Z.

Startup Spotlight: Zette

Problem: When a reader hits a paywall for an online article, they’re exponentially more likely to exit out of the page rather than pay for a subscription. Publisher conversion rates from free to paying subscribers are < 0.5% on average—indicating that readers are looking for a better alternative to access the news.

Market: One in five Americans pay for at least one news subscription, and half of all Americans would consider paying for a news subscription if they could no longer get access to the articles they wanted to read. The TAM for digital news subscriptions was $11 billion and grew by double digits in 2021, and we believe this industry has the potential to crown a new category king.

Solution: For a $9.99 subscription, readers can download the Zette browser extension and unlock 30 paywalled articles every month. Zette unlocks paywalls across our partner sites with just one click.

Team: Zette’s fully remote team (with offices in Los Angeles and New York) consists of veterans from across the media and technology worlds. We work with operators and technologists from tech leads at early-stage startups to product builders at Twitter to consultants at Accenture and media partnership executives at AOL, with alumni from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

Recent Success:

Zhu: We’ve recently closed a major publisher deal with McClatchy, one of the largest local news publishers in the United States. They own dozens of papers, including the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee. We’re a huge advocate of local news and we see this partnership as a signal that more publishers are trusting Zette to help them execute their digital strategy. This deal also brings our total supported publishers to over 80 paywalled sites, both locally and internationally.

Recent Struggle:

Zhu: We’ve wanted to build on so many ambitious ideas that we haven’t had enough headcount to staff. To solve this problem, we’ve hired a stellar team of incredibly talented contractors, but the nature of working with contractors makes it hard to invest in institutional knowledge and plan for Zette’s long-term future. With our upcoming $6M fundraise, I’m really excited to be able to hire more full-time employees! We’re planning to open up more jobs as soon as we raise our next round, so email me at y@zette.com if you’re interested in joining the Zette journey.

Founder Advice:

Zhu: Resilience will get you so far in entrepreneurship and in life. As a founder, I’ve been told “no” by so many people, ranging from investors to potential partners to everyone in between. In the end, none of the nay-sayers mattered, and many of the doors that were closed to us at first opened up later because we kept knocking them down. As I always tell my team: it’s the optimists that change the world, not the pessimists.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Zhu: Here are three founders you should check out next!

Christine Hong, Founder of CakeShop: Cakeshop is a commerce-enablement platform for creators to monetize their expertise.
Jacob Cole, Founder of IdeaFlow: IdeaFlow.io is a notebook that augments your intelligence as you type.
Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran, Founder of Luminai: Luminai is an external layer on top of existing helpdesks to help you get through your support tickets twice as fast.

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