How O’Reilly Media Learned To Reinvent Its Business Model And Built A New Future
When Laura Baldwin arrived at O’Reilly Media in 2001 as Chief Financial Officer, she was well equipped for the job. She had previously held the same position at Chronicle books and then spent a few years as a consultant for BMR & Associates, a firm that specializes in helping media companies.
The challenges at O’Reilly, however, were somewhat unique. Over the years the company had become something akin to the official publisher of Silicon Valley and had ridden the dotcom boom to prominence. Now that the boom had turned to bust, O’Reilly was in dire straits and banks were calling in loans.
So Baldwin did what a good CFO does, she instilled better financial management and within a few years the company had returned to profitability. Yet she and the firm’s founder, Tim O’Reilly, began to see an opportunity to truly transform the business. Today, as President, she focuses not just on publishing books, but on everything that comes after.
Humble Beginnings
Tim O’Reilly is an unusual tech icon. Soft spoken and understated, he’s about as far from Steve Jobs or Elon Musk as you can imagine. In college he didn’t major in engineering or physics, but classics. Nevertheless, he began working as a technical writer in the late 70s and…
