Business Development Incubator

More hands, more headlines

Got an idea for your business but no time to implement it? Let us do it for you. 

While we’ve been thrilled to see the success generated by publishers participating in growth programs in various formats, a common barrier for small businesses is having the time to build a new product, service, engagement activity or workflow tool.

We think the hardest part is the set-up, so we’ve brought in Olivia McDonnell, a media strategist with expertise in building sustainable models for independent publishers, to help. 

Over the course of the next year, Olivia will work alongside publishers on specific projects, literally doing the establishment work for you to break ground on your project dreams. Then she’ll hand you the keys to maintain, iterate and grow it into the future. 

What project? Well, that’s up to you. Pitch us ideas that you’ve had on your to-do list but never quite seem to get to. The ones that you know would probably be beneficial, if only you could find the time. It could be a way to reach new audiences, a product you want to offer, an expansion on a revenue stream you already have, a better workflow for part of your business… anything that could help you grow that’s not creating news content.

We’ll select around 20-25 projects to work on throughout the year in an identified timeframe. 

Olivia McDonnell is a media strategist and former Managing Director at Private Media and SmartCompany, with a background spanning The Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey and The Economist. She specialises in building sustainable, reader-first strategies for independent and niche media.

Pitch your project

Note: you can pitch up to 3 ideas, a maximum of two projects will be supported for any one publisher. 

We will select the best pitches we can support and will contact successful pitches in August to line up timing for implementation.