Like all start-up origin stories, Jenny came into existence around a kitchen table with too much coffee and a shoestring budget. But before we were excitedly typing out our stories and worrying over logo choices, Jenny was a desire for a website with stories that I wanted to read.
I’m just like the rest of us; I sit on my couch at night and scroll through Instagram while I ignore whatever is on the TV. And while I’m as tethered to social media as anyone, I missed having a place I could go to find stories that I could see myself in, that I could learn from, that I could commiserate with. I missed being understood like I was by the editors of Sassy. I missed getting the chance to read More because I was too young when it was closed. Where was the place for women like me or any of my cool, smart, interesting, fashionable, complicated friends? No one was writing stories for us. The seed for Jenny was planted in those questions.
Why are magazines women love shuttered? Why are websites women love closed? In short: because of money. The publishing business works by making money from ads sitting next to stories–or in the case of the internet, with 15 ads embedded in, around, and on top of stories. The value of a story isn’t determined by how many people care about what’s being said. The publisher is not paid on how beautifully a story is written, nor on how important it is. It’s just ads. The writing is a means to collect dollars. And here is the unsurprising fact of the advertising marketplace: The only group deemed truly valuable are males aged 18 to 35. You know what sites are successfully publishing? Sports sites. Tech sites. Car sites. Video game sites. And so many other sites aimed at 18- to 35-year-old men. It’s no coincidence. How will any sites about women, for women, by women survive? I’m not sure, but I won’t let not trying be the answer.
Here’s a little radical transparency that angel investors and venture capitalists don’t want to read: