Santa Cruz Native Michael Sikand Shares Story Behind Our Future Media's Acquisition by Morning Brew
Our Future Media founders Michael Sikand and Simran Sandhu
Since Michael Sikand attended Gateway preschool, Santa Cruz Works has been aware of his talent for creating close friendships and excelling academically through strong communication skills, creativity, and imagination. He wrote several articles for Santa Cruz Works including: Startups & Espionage with G Craig Vachon, Choppin’ it up with Socrates Rosenfeld / Jane Technologies, and others.
Not long after those first articles, Michael founded Our Future Media, Inc. And of course, Santa Cruz Works wrote about him as The Next Media Mogul. Michael seems to be following in his father’s footsteps: Talking Super Super Cars with Shiv Sikand.
In May 2022, Forbes announced that Santa Cruz native Michael Sikand joined the 30 Under 30 list.
In January 2023, Morning Brew announced the acquisition of Our Future Media, Inc. In late February, Santa Cruz Works (“SCWorks”) caught up with Santa Cruzian Michael Sikand, co-founder of Our Future Media, Inc. to get the scoop.
SCWorks: Hi Michael. Let’s start with your background in Santa Cruz.
Michael Sikand: I grew up in Santa Cruz, went to school at Gateway, and it was always a very cherished part of my life being part of that community. We were close in Santa Cruz with you and with some of the other parents connected with Silicon Valley. Being close to the innovation going on in the Valley in the early 2000s, really shaped me. Yet in those days, I didn't believe business and startups were a route for me. I wanted to be a marine biologist, I wanted to be a vet, I wanted to be a number of different things. But it was always like an ever present theme in my life. My dad being an entrepreneur, being surrounded by innovative people in a really cool part of the world: Santa Cruz and the San Jose area. It wasn’t until after middle school, I pursued big business dreams by going to the University of Michigan Business School.
And it was there when I looked around, looked inside myself and found that a corporate job was not the route for me. Not being a technical guy, I couldn't code an app, couldn't or build a website. But what I could do was talk. And you got me involved with interviewing a few VCs in the Santa Cruz area (e.g., Craig Vachon, Guy Kawasaki, Marc Randolph, etc.) and doing an article piece for Santa Cruz Works. That is when I fell in love with the process of media. And what really was energizing to me about creating content, podcasting, writing articles, was I didn't need any crazy skills or a computer science degree to do it. I could create and I could build an audience using these easily accessible tools. And that was the inception of Our Future, which has now been acquired by Morning Brew. It started as a podcast, which was kind of a direct transition from the work you had me doing. It evolved to a TikTok focused, short form video media brand, creating business news for Gen Z – on the platforms they use every day – differentiating from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and some of these more traditional outlets – giving kids business news in a fun, digestible and entertaining way. So we've become Morning Brew’s short-form video weapon. It's a really great natural brand fit and it was a really an amazing opportunity to get the deal done.
SCWorks: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before Congress in March 2023 regarding the viral app’s data security measures. How will that impact you?
Michael Sikand: This was a major factor that we brought into our consideration of whether we should exit this business. You think about a number of different factors in selling your company, and one for us was the geopolitical landscape surrounding TikTok. Now that our business has been acquired in full, it's actually the Morning Brew’s problem. Regardless, if TikTok gets banned – and though it might be a little bit crass to say, this industry is here to stay. I think there's a high chance that TikTok does get banned, especially with the tensions going on with China. However, the consumption of short form video will not change if someone uses TikTok as their primary short form video consumption app. It will simply shift their time and behaviors over to YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels. Not a bad thing. In our industry, it's great to be diversified across as many social media channels as possible. When I was building Our Future, I made a point of distributing our content in addition to TikTok, but also on YouTube and Instagram. So with YouTube and Instagram, we've got a combined 600,000 subscribers. We'd lose about 400,000 subscribers if TikTok was banned. But we'd still have a great audience, a sizable audience, and a solid business.
SCWorks: What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?
Michael Sikand: Yeah, I'd say when you're young, you have so many competing priorities: you want to party in college, big companies want to recruit you, your friend's dad is running a new site, or you want to build your own startup. There's just so many different things that a young person can do with their talent. But what I would say is just focus on one thing that you're excited about and that maybe isn't instantly a super promising opportunity in your eyes, but something you can do every day and build on and build skills through. For me, the podcast wasn't monetized for a year and a half. The business was making no money. It was a hobby. But I treated it as if it was a business, and I loved it, and it opened so many different doors. So my advice to young people is just to pick one thing and focus on it, especially if they're in college or maybe they're already working a job. But if there's some creative pursuit, something that excites you, something that interests you, you can focus on it for a couple of hours in the evening after your main job or after you get your studies done.
I think that can open so many doors and allow you to meet different kinds of people and allow you to maybe discover something that is worth pursuing. So it's all about just having some focus on one thing and seeing where it takes you and having faith that it can take you somewhere.
I have also learned that there's always an opportunity in Media for anybody. Maybe you're not a great public speaker, but you can probably write and you can Tweet and you can meet people through that. You can do a podcast and interview cool people in an industry that you want to enter. You can talk about mushrooms if that's your interest. You can just bring any passion or personality to a media format and use it to either network or grow an audience. And those things open a lot of doors.
SCWorks: What can you share with us about your deal with Morning Brew?
Michael Sikand: Yeah, so I can't share anything in terms of the financial structure, but I can share things about the fit, the synergies and negotiations. We started talking with Morning Brew originally because I wanted to raise some investment for Our Future. Our content was doing 100 million views a month and we were getting some really big advertisers who wanted to be a part of the content. And I was really bullish on being able to scale the model. I called the Morning Brew CEO because he went to Michigan, we had that connection, and he was more interested in buying the business outright. Being an operator of a media company, your goal is to always find young talent, young emerging companies to bring into your fold and make your enterprise more exciting. We warmed up to the idea after a while, after weighing in the geopolitical risks of TikTok, after looking at how the ad market was changing with the recession and the layoffs. We realized that we could sell the business now rather than in several years. So we were happy with the deal.
It was a great start for me. I didn't see Our Future being my billion dollar scalable idea, but I saw it as being a great first win. And really, there's nothing that compares to having that first win. The confidence, the connections, the credibility. I think about my time horizon: I'm on a two year contract with Morning Brew. So where am I going? I want to build several companies in my career. I know that when I'm getting ready for the next thing, it's going to be easier because of this first win. Just from Santa Cruz, I know investors who can see my next idea. And I think next time around I'm going to be very knowledgeable and know exactly what I'm doing to get from point A to B. So that's the plan. This is just the first one.
SCWorks: How would you describe your attitude towards success?
Michael Sikand: Vocation and passion versus ambition. Initially, my mind was polluted by Silicon Valley. I thought that my focus needs to become something bigger. It needs to be worth a lot of money. It needs to make me rich, it needs to get me to X level so I can raise more investor money for the next thing. Right. That's pollutive Silicon Valley thinking, and it's kind of a blessing and a curse, right? But knowing yourself, your passion, and turning into a vocation, is healthier. I think I just got lucky that my passion was business because it's a very lucrative space. And building all of that with your friend, with a community, makes it even better.
SCWorks: Your childhood friends are a lifelong core of who you are?
Michael Sikand: Always and forever. Whenever I return to Santa Cruz, I’m out with the Gateway crew, boys and girls. I think the people at my recent birthday party in Austn were a little bit blown away. I had friends from all different parts of my life there, and I was like, oh, yeah, I've known these Gateway guys for nearly 20 years now. Jonah Rubin and Neil Erickson, those are my day ones. I'm always going to have those guys there. They're going to be at my wedding. They're going to be at my next company acquisition party. They're going to be at my next birthday party. And I always had big dreams to keep those friends in my life. After Gateway, I went to Harker. My parents wanted me in a different environment. But I never let those friendships go away. I worked really hard, and I'm grateful for my parents because they drove me to your house (Ericksons) on Friday nights. And we got to do tarp surfing and we got to go skateboarding and all that shit, man. I'm very grateful. And I always had a special connection and felt a little bit closer to those guys. I always had that connection to Santa Cruz, and I always felt closer to it and just grateful and so blessed to have so many people from different adventures in life to stay along for the ride. And you can't ever expect these relationships to come to you. You have to work for them. You have to work for your relationships. You have to cultivate them. I think that is just something that you have to do to make new friends, but keep it all. One is silver and the other is gold.
Gateway Gold Crew: Michael Sikand, Jonah Rubin, Neil Erickson, Ben Zuniga
