10 Lessons on 10 Years of Skift

This, then, is 3,652 days later.

The promise of the journey of thousands of serpentine miles that we started on July 30, 2012 has now turned into one for the ultra-long haul. I have said it many times before, “F**k it, Let’s Do It” will take you far in media. Or really anything else in life. So it has been for us at Skift in travel industry, a sector we knew little about when we started and as the naïveté and arrogance of our early days has settled, the curiosity about the creative and business possibilities of travel remains as febrile in our minds.

These lessons I have learned along the way, a decade-of-brevity version:

1. Ownership matters: we give a shit because we own this and in it with everything we have to give.

2. Consistency of output. Show up every day and produce, day in and day out.

3. Expansive worldview matters: how widely you look at the world defines how deep your editorial can be.

4. Consistently launching new things matter, surprise and delight the industry and keep the teams excited.

5. Always, always doing your own thing, without fear, a motto that I have internalized in my life and companies that I have created, and it seeps through all of our work.

6. Brand, style matters: we have created a premium brand with our design, with how we bring our brand to life at events, etc.

7. At all times, optimize to simplicity and efficiency of effort, it is the only thing you have complete control over in building a business.

8. Trust your team to do the right thing, assume good intent. This one as a now fully-distributed remote company has been the best way — the only way — to operate for us.

9. Contentment, a word which should never be spoken, only spat. That has been the beauty and excitement of the Skift brand, there is a sense of satisfaction on doing our best, and this sense of excitement of so much more left to do.

10. Accessible, human face to everything we do. And bring people who consume your product into your human story, they will reward you for it.

So we are here, 3652 days later. Thank you to *everyone* who has been along for the ride, in ways big and small.

F**k it, we’re still doing it.