The co-founders of theSkimm, a daily email newsletter, discussed turning their passion for news into an innovative startup and reaching over 5 million subscribers worldwide on the last day of UT Entrepreneurship Week. 

theSkimm seeks to provide easy-to-read news for urban women aged 22-34. The founders, Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, talked about the decisions to quit their jobs given the declining economy, to target urban working professionals and to work and live together.

Weisberg and Zakin met in college during a study abroad program and had previously worked at NBC before starting theSkimm. 

“Be nice because you never know who’s going to be your business partner,” Weisberg said.

Although Weisberg and Zakin were unemployed, they continued to work on their vision, ultimately resulting in theSkimm.

“Living with each other and literally seeing each other every day prevented us from procrastinating,” Zakin said.

Weisberg and Zakin’s marketing strategy was to target young professionals and their busy routines because they saw how difficult it was for people to keep up with the news. 

“We wanted theSkimm to make it easier for them to be smarter,” Zakin said.

They noticed the first thing most people do when their alarm goes off is check their emails from family and friends. Their goal was to find a way to be a part of people’s early morning rituals.

Weisberg said while they both grew up as news junkies, they didn’t want to wait around for the industry to pick up.

“Making the decision to start was the toughest thing,” Weisberg said. “We had this feeling that we could do something else for a really long time.”

Weisberg and Zakin encouraged students to go beyond “staying in their lanes” and commit to their passions.

Art history senior Danielle Meyer is a member of the Longhorn Entrepreneurship Agency team who worked on She Started It, an event for women in entrepreneurship. LEA immediately reached out to theSkimm.

“Even though they were unavailable the day of our She Started It event, they were so enthusiastic about coming to campus,” Meyer said. “We knew we had to create an event for them.”

Meyer said students should not feel intimidated to enter entrepreneurship based on the fear of not following the traditional path.

“I felt discouraged by the expectation that because of my major, my only career option was curator,” Meyer said. “I became really intrigued by the whole startup scene, and how my field of study could relate.”