Andrew Curtin is the co-founder of Chronicmedia, a B2B media company providing news and in-depth insights to decision-makers across the UK construction industry. The company has recently launched their first industry publication, Construction Wave – make sure to check out their newsletter.
What’s the story behind the founding of the company?
We started Chronicmedia in September 2020, possibly the worst time in history to start a business! We initially started as a content marketing agency for construction companies, primarily helping their employer branding & recruitment marketing efforts. Construction has had a serious recruitment problem with a number of years so clients badly needed some help.
However, about fifteen months into the business, I began to notice the lack of quality information, news, insights that were available to the sector. There were plenty of construction news sites around but I felt they weren’t creating good quality journalism. Journalism that provides you with information to make your job easier, to tell you about the trends that are shaping the construction industry, rather than bulletins about who won the next big project.
So, earlier this year, I decided to switch from an agency to a publisher. I knew I had a good eye for quality content, and that I had a massive network in the industry. The early ingredients were there. We launched our first vertical, Construction Wave last month at our NextGen Construction event. It’s off to a fantastic start and the future looks bright. We’ve just signed up Katie Kelleher, a well-known construction personality to come on board as a podcast host for us. Katie has built up a very engaged construction audience over the years so it was a great early win to have Katie as the first host to join Construction Wave’s podcast network.
What do you think makes this company unique?
I don’t think there is anything fundamentally unique about us. We are taking a concept that has been around for generations and adding to it. However, we are tackling this from a digital & UX point of view. We want our platform to provide you with the information you need to know, but in a seamless way. Great experience. Construction in the digital age. And that mirrors one of our values: Making Construction Less Archaic.
What’s an interesting challenge you’ve faced while running the business?
The biggest challenge (and blessing) is that we are bootstrapped. We have taken zero outside funding. This is a curse and blessing because we’d love to grow our editorial team a lot quicker and have more reporters on the ground. But, being bootstrapped you have to take things a bit slower until you have enough cash in the bank to do what you want to do. On the other side, it’s great because we have only ourselves to answer to.
We said that we will bootstrap the business for as long as we can. But, if we feel the business deserves to grow faster, we will consider taking on some investment.
What can we hope to see from Chronicmedia in the future?
Making Construction Wave a household brand in the industry is the goal. If we achieve this, we will create more construction verticals e.g. Engineering Wave, Concrete Wave etc.
The short-term goal is to keep growing our newsletter. At the moment, it is weekly, but you’ll soon see us introduce a daily one. This will help us create a daily cadence with our readers as well as give them news that helps their careers every day.
And finally, we are going to be growing our podcast network. We really want to be the next generation of construction media!
