About Owned Media Directory

Who makes Owned Media Directory?

Owned Media Directory is researched and maintained by Isaac Peiris, founder of Pistachio, a B2B content studio in Sydney, and writer of the Brand Chemistry newsletter. He adds every entry by hand. The directory is published by Pistachio as a free companion to Brand Chemistry, not as a paid product.

Runs

Pistachio, a B2B content studio in Sydney, founded 2024

Writes

Brand Chemistry, a weekly newsletter with 80,000+ subscribers

Previously

Growth at The Daily Aus and Mamamia; B2B SaaS product management

Isaac began his career in B2B SaaS product management before leading growth at two of Australia's largest independent publishers. At The Daily Aus he scaled the newsletter to 180,000 subscribers in ten months; at Mamamia he grew the subscription business past 30,000 paying members. Those numbers are from his Content Summit Australia speaker bio, which also puts Brand Chemistry at more than 80,000 subscribers.

In 2024 he founded Pistachio, a Sydney studio that builds owned audiences for B2B brands. The directory grew out of the same research habit as the newsletter: collecting examples of companies that publish like media businesses, then working out what they have in common. His professional profile is on LinkedIn.

What qualifies as an entry?

An entry is a media property a company owns and runs for an audience: a named newsletter, podcast, video show, print imprint, community or publication with a regular cadence and readers who show up for the content itself. A company blog does not qualify by default. It is listed only when it works as a publication in its own right.

Four markers are checked before anything is added. None is a hard threshold, and no subscriber minimum is applied, but an entry that misses most of them is not owned media in the sense this directory tracks.

• A name of its own. The property is called something other than the company (Stripe Press, The Hustle, Acquired), or is at least treated as a title rather than a section of the website.
• A cadence. It ships on a rhythm readers can rely on: weekly, daily, seasonal. A page of occasional announcements does not.
• Distance from the product. Most of what it publishes would still be worth reading if you never bought from the company. Release notes and feature tutorials are documentation, not media.
• An audience measured as an audience. Subscribers, listens, views or members, rather than leads and pipeline. If the only figure anyone tracks is form fills, it is a marketing asset.

Three consequences follow. A blog is listed only when it works as a publication (Gong Labs and PostHog's Product for Engineers are in; ordinary company blogs are not). A social account is listed only where it carries a real show with episodes and hosts, which is why TBPN is in and brand X accounts are not. And a channel that has stopped publishing stays listed with an Ended badge, because a channel that ran for years and closed is still a fact about how the brand invested. Definitions for each origin and type are on What is owned media?.

How are Built, Acquired and Founder-led assigned?

Built means the brand started the channel from zero under its own name. Acquired means the brand bought a property that already had an audience and kept publishing it. Founder-led means the channel is published under a founder's own name and voice, with the company benefiting by association. Each entry carries exactly one of the three.

The edge case that comes up most is a company show hosted by its founder. Cheeky Pint is hosted by John Collison but is a Stripe production under Stripe's name, so it is Built, not Founder-led. The test is whose name is on the masthead, not who is behind the microphone. Where a call is genuinely arguable, the entry's notes say so.

Where do deal values and dates come from?

Deal dates and values on Acquired entries come from press coverage, not from the directory's own estimates. The date is the announcement date. The value is shown only when a named outlet reported one; a tilde marks a reported figure the parties did not confirm. When no outlet reported a figure, the card says undisclosed.

The rules, in the order they are applied:

1. The date is the announcement date, taken from the acquirer's own release or the first day of coverage, not the closing date and not the date the directory found out.
2. A value appears only if a named outlet reported one. Analyst estimates, forum speculation and later retrospectives do not count as reporting.
3. A tilde (~) means reported, not confirmed. The figure came from a source the outlet considered credible, but the parties themselves did not state it.
4. Undisclosed means exactly that. The parties announced the deal and no outlet reported a price. It is not a placeholder for a number still being looked up.
5. Seller and date are left blank rather than guessed when no credible source records them.

Worked examples from the directory:

• The Hustle, ~$27M, 4 February 2021. Axios reported the deal as valued at roughly $27 million, citing a source familiar with the terms. TechCrunch noted that HubSpot declined to confirm and Sam Parr said the price was not disclosed. Hence the tilde.
• TBPN, undisclosed, 2 April 2026. OpenAI announced the acquisition without terms, and CNBC reported that OpenAI did not disclose them. A later Financial Times estimate in the low hundreds of millions is reporting about a range, not a disclosed figure, so it stays off the card.
• Chartr, undisclosed, 21 December 2023. Robinhood's release and Axios both describe the deal with no price.
• Snacks (formerly MarketSnacks), undisclosed, 25 March 2019. Robinhood's release carried no terms, and Technical.ly reported that Robinhood declined to disclose them.

Deal figures above were checked against the linked coverage in September 2026. If a party later confirms or corrects a figure, the card changes and the footer date moves.

How often is Owned Media Directory updated?

Owned Media Directory is updated continuously rather than on a schedule. Entries are added and corrected as Isaac Peiris finds them, and the site republishes within an hour of any edit. The footer date on every page reflects the most recent change to any entry. The directory currently lists 37 channels from 20 brands.

Beyond new entries, three kinds of maintenance happen: a channel that stops publishing is marked Ended rather than removed, outbound links are re-checked with a script and corrected when they rot, and deal details are amended when new coverage appears. There is no quarterly review or annual edition; the list is a living document, and the date in the footer is the honest measure of how living.

How do I get a channel listed?

Suggest a channel through the short form linked from every page of Owned Media Directory. Include the channel name, the brand that owns it, a URL, which origin you think applies and, for an acquisition, a link to the coverage that reported the date or price. Every suggestion is reviewed by hand before it is published; nothing goes live automatically.

1. Check the channel meets the criteria above. Company blogs and social accounts are the two most common suggestions that do not.
2. Open the suggestion form (a short Tally form, no account needed) and give the channel name, the owning brand and a URL.
3. Say which origin you think applies. If it is an acquisition, link the release or article that reported the date and, if any, the price. A suggestion with a source is published faster than one without.
4. Wait for review. Entries are checked and written up by hand, so there is no fixed turnaround. Nothing is published automatically, and nothing is published for a fee.

Corrections go through the same form. If a card shows a wrong date, a wrong seller or a figure you can show was never reported, send the source and it will be fixed.