Big Cabal Media is in its Apple era

Written by: Oritsejolomi Otomewo

1. Shoot for the moon

“We would have failed our people and the future generation if we sleep on artificial intelligence because these are a set of technologies that will control what you think, how you think, and how you do everything.” One year into his tenure as Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Communication, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani was giving a passionate defense of his AI-first policy approach during a fireside chat with Tomiwa Aladekomo, CEO of Big Cabal Media (BCM), at Moonshot, a tech conference organized in Lagos, Nigeria.

The previous year, Bosun Tijani had used the maiden edition of the conference as the platform to explain his strategy to train three million young Nigerians in technical skills. Moonshot was the perfect opportunity for him. There, in the air-conditioned halls of the Eko Convention Centre, hundreds of stakeholders had gathered to discuss the most pressing issues in the country’s tech ecosystem and across the continent. Innovation was center stage, and after Tijani’s session, a slew of tech ecosystem leaders followed, explaining the innovative ways they were using technology to solve the continent’s most challenging problems. They were all brought together by TechCabal.

This year, Moonshot attracted over 4,000 attendees, nearly double what it did last year.

Big Cabal Media, TechCabal’s parent company, is no stranger to innovation. It had come back from the brink of demise to define what innovation meant—from new storytelling formats to novel funding mechanisms — for Nigeria’s media industry.

Moonshot was another exercise in defining what was possible for Nigerian media, and it has been wildly successful. But it also made me begin to think about another company, also a market leader, which had come back from the brink of demise to define what innovation meant for several industries, including media, for over a decade. That company is Apple.

2. Dancing with the stars

In 1997, 12 years after he departed from Apple, Steve Jobs returned to a company on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs acted quickly to save the sinking ship, terminating several projects and streamlining the company’s product focus while also empowering a young British industrial designer to lead the design of new products. The results were immediate. A year after his return, Apple released the iMac G3; its translucent, all-in-one case set new standards for aesthetics in personal computing design, and the resulting sales helped Apple recover from the threat of bankruptcy.

Building on the success of the iMac, Apple went on a product development spree over the next 12 years. Products like the iPod, iPhone, and MacBook redefined excellence in their individual product categories, immediately gaining market share while competitors struggled to catch up with copycats. A little over a year after he launched the iPad, Steve Jobs succumbed to pancreatic cancer, leaving the company in the hands of his trusted operations executive, Tim Cook.

Tim Cook’s biggest contribution to Apple has been efficiency. He was the architect of the company’s move to outsource manufacturing of Apple products to Asia, helping reduce costs. Under his leadership, Apple’s market value has increased more than sevenfold, but product innovation has slowed down.

Granted, Apple has launched new product categories like the Apple Watch and AirPods, which have been successful in their own right. But none have been as successful as the iPhone, and the success of these new devices can be attributed to dependence on the iPhone. The iPhone remains the company’s biggest revenue driver. This is concerning, as iPhone sales have already begun to slow down.

Apple has instead focused on a new push into providing digital services like Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Card, a strategy that relies on an ecosystem of existing Apple products, of which the iPhone is the core. If Apple is a products company that is now becoming a services company, then BCM is a publications company that is now becoming an events company.

3. Of meteors and asteroids

In 2022, Tomiwa Aladekomo, not long after BCM’s $2.2 million raise, defined the thesis of the business on Founder’s Connect, a business video series: “The original thesis of BCM is to build robust and important publications in niche spaces.”

BCM had followed this blueprint from its inception in 2014, starting with TechCabal, a blog that soon became the publication of record for Nigeria’s tech ecosystem. Building on the success of TechCabal, BCM launched Zikoko, a youth and culture publication. The BuzzFeed-like site quickly gained popularity with its humorous takes on pop culture. Then things started to go wrong.

An earlier edition of Communique? detailed the troubles at BCM:

“BCM also went through a rough patch in 2017 that saw poor management decisions and infighting lead to a loss of momentum and an identity crisis. During this period, the company’s co-founders split. In 2018, the board brought in Tomiwa Aladekomo, the former MD of Ventra Media Group. Aladekomo had helped to digitally transform one of Nigeria’s legacy publishers, Guardian Nigeria. Now, his task was to steady the BCM ship and set course for new territories.”

Aladekomo’s takeover marked the beginning of a new BCM. Fu’ad Lawal, a Pulse.ng writer who had become popular for his trip around Nigeria’s 36 states, joined the company to become Zikoko’s editor-in-chief. When Lawal wrote the first Naira Life, the trajectory of Zikoko changed irrevocably. The company took the Naira Life format and replicated it across several other topics, spinning out new verticals on sex, love, and masculinity. A new Zikoko was born. For TechCabal, stories had become more in-depth, fulfilling the long-held media role of watchdog for the Nigerian tech ecosystem.

4. Building spaceships

TechCabal has always hosted events like TC Townhall as part of its product offering, but beginning in 2021, there has been a new focus on events for the whole BCM. Z Fest, Hertitude, and Future of Commerce joined the company’s lineup. In 2023, Future of Commerce expanded to become Moonshot, and Burning Ram, a food festival, was launched.

However, BCM has not succeeded in developing any new publications. Ahead of the 2023 Nigerian general elections, Zikoko’s politics and civic engagement vertical, Citizen, was spun off as a new publication. Citizen reached over 5 million people during the elections, but this was not enough to sustain it. In August 2023, it was downscaled from a full publication back to a Zikoko vertical, with most of its team laid off. At the time, BCM cited harsh market conditions as the reason for the layoffs. Similarly, Apple recently shut down its effort to develop an electric car.

BCM’s push into events offers several key benefits that complement its existing media business. First, events provide an opportunity to diversify and increase revenue streams beyond traditional advertising and content monetization. With ticket sales, sponsorship deals, and branded partnerships, events can become a significant source of income. Second, hosting events allows BCM to strengthen its relationship with its audience by offering in-person experiences that build a sense of community and deepen audience loyalty. These events bring readers closer to the brand, giving them direct access to the people behind the publications and creating memorable, engaging experiences that foster long-term connections. Also, events are a powerful tool for brand building, as they position BCM not just as a publisher but as a key player in driving conversations, cultural movements, and thought leadership within the communities and industries it serves.

However, there are some concerns about the company’s new focus on events:

1. Events depend on publication IP: There is a symbiotic relationship between BCM’s publications and its events business. Think of it like the relationship between Disney’s films and theme parks, where the theme park experiences are built around movies and characters. In the same way, BCM’s most successful events like Moonshot and Hertitude were organized to cater to a community that had already been created and cultivated by one of their publications. More publications would allow BCM to develop tailored events that attract different audience segments, bringing fresh ideas and new themes to the events. Burning Ram, BCM’s first attempt at a food festival, was relatively successful, but the impact and reach could have been increased if there was an existing cooking or food publication with a dedicated following.
2. Events are location-based: Events have an inherent geographical limitation. Unlike digital publications that can reach a global audience instantly, events are bound to a specific location, which restricts their reach. Even with live streaming options, the core experience of many events relies on in-person participation, where attendees network, socialize, and interact with the content or speakers firsthand. For a media company like BCM, whose publications attract diverse audiences from across Nigeria and? beyond, focusing heavily on events means they are primarily serving only those who can physically attend.
3. Disruption in events will affect company revenue: Events have become a key part of BCM’s revenue stream. However, they can be affected by external factors beyond the company’s control. Any disruption, like a pandemic, for instance, will have serious implications for the company.

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson records a conversation between Steve Jobs and Apple board member Mike Markkula just before Jobs became interim CEO of Apple in 1997:

“Jobs’s ambition was to build a company that would endure, and he asked Markkula what the formula for that would be. Markkula replied that lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then became a calculator company, then a computer company. ‘Apple has been sidelined by Microsoft in the PC business,’ Markkula said. ‘You’ve got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like other consumer products or devices. You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.’”

Apple has reinvented itself over the years, now BCM is following a similar trajectory to provide value to its audience. In 2014, the primary channel was a tech blog. A decade later, it is a sold out tech conference, among other events.