By Steve Seepersaud
Chris Adamo '03, MBA '11, always wants to see impact. It's why he left a secure job with a publicly traded company to move more than 1,000 miles away and create a new path for himself.
Adamo left his eight-year career at Long Island-based 1-800-Flowers.com just after it had grown from a $500 million to a $1 billion company. He was excited to resettle in Miami, where he would be the first employee of WhereBy.Us, a startup helping publishers create sustainable businesses and engaged audiences. He's not just the chief business officer; he invested his own money into the company because he wanted "skin in the game."
"When we started, we had huge ambitions," Adamo said. "We wanted to produce hyper-local newsletters in 250 cities. That's very expensive to do, so we focused on five cities and pivoted our model to focus on providing the back-end solution for all people creating newsletters."
WhereBy.Us provides templates optimized for digital publications and handles tasks including sponsor acquisition, subscriber management and readership tracking. The company owns publications in Miami, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., and Orlando, Fla. Since day one, everyone has been working remotely, so there was no need to adjust operations because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We use a lot of communication systems, such as Slack, Google Docs and Airtable," Adamo said. "Documentation is very important. You have to be able to hand things off instantaneously in a virtual environment. The more that you document things, everyone can see where a project is and collaborate in real time."
The independent local journalist ― finding a piece of the action due to the decline of traditional newspapers ― is a key demographic for WhereBy.Us.
"The value of vetted news is so important for democracy," Adamo said. "For someone already publishing, we can help them find new ways to bring in sustainable revenue. Our back end helps them do the business function of their job much faster and they can focus on their core strength, which is creating essential and engaging content that drives action."
Adamo points to Bridgeliner, a daily online newsletter in Portland, as one of his company's success stories. The publication started from scratch when it partnered with WhereBy.Us, and has since built a subscriber base of more than 10,000.
"You're not going to make millions of dollars in year one, but [this example] shows you can turn your publication into a viable business," Adamo said.
WhereBy.Us has grown from a staff of five to 24, with continued growth to come. When Adamo started, the company had $200,000 in annual revenue, a total that has grown nearly tenfold.
"A startup is not for everyone, because you fail a lot every day," Adamo said. "But, you have to fail in order to grow. It was a risk to do this, but what I like most is that my work has a direct effect on the business we’re running and on people around the world."
The idea of making an impact drives what Adamo does outside of work. He helped start the Miami chapter of Social Venture Partners, a group that raises money from philanthropists who want to invest in for-profit or nonprofit organizations that advance societal causes. In the past three years, the chapter has invested $500,000 into Miami-area organizations.
"Before we formed the chapter, this type of investing wasn't really happening in Miami," Adamo said. "Once you show people how their dollars can be put to work for good, it's a win-win. It doesn't always have to be a zero-sum game in business where someone wins and someone else loses. We can do good for everyone involved and we hope that we can inspire similar actions across cities."
