Comment by seo-throwaway a year ago
The dirty secret is those are also run by Marketplace, it’s the same team under the hood once you get past the handful of people dedicated to each brand.
The model has proven very successful and these brands are happy to lease their reputation for a cut of the profit and none of the work.
As you can see this is a throwaway since I don’t want to identify myself, but a wrote a lengthy comment elsewhere in the tree describing how the company has changed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466#41598797
The aforementioned companies in the parent comment have partnerships with Marketplace to replicate the Forbes model. I didn’t mean to imply everyone who does this thing is using Marketplace.
Is there a source for this?