Melissa Rosenthal is the Co-Founder of Outlever, the company helping B2B brands build their own media properties, full newsrooms, daily publishing, real interviews, and journalism that companies actually own.

Before Outlever, Melissa scaled BuzzFeed’s creative team, helped build Cheddar into a modern media brand, and later became Chief Creative Officer at ClickUp, where she helped turn the company into one of the most recognizable names in SaaS.

In this episode, Melissa gives a behind-the-scenes look at how company-owned newsrooms work, why traditional PR is broken, how Outlever produces journalism at scale, and why the future belongs to brands that control their own distribution.

We also talk about B2B storytelling that people actually want to read, the new rules of thought leadership, and how AI is reshaping content creation from the inside.


What You’ll Learn

• Why traditional PR doesn’t work anymore

• How to build a company-owned newsroom

• The system Outlever uses to create journalism at scale

• Why founders should own their audience, not rent it

• How AI fits into modern editorial workflows

• The ClickUp lessons: brand, creative, and B2C thinking in B2B

• How to use interviews to build trust at scale

• What happens when every company becomes a media company

Perfect for founders, CMOs, and B2B marketers who want to:

• Build a real moat around their brand

• Escape the limitations of traditional PR

• Use interviews to drive trust, authority, and distribution

• Understand the future of B2B media

• Blend AI + human storytelling effectively
  

Connect with Melissa:

Melissa’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissarosenthal5/

Outlever: https://www.outlever.com/

Connect with me:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/

Website: https://www.project33.io/

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03CXzsZp7wdqIRVDcqPTFH

Chapters
00:00 Who is Melissa Rosenthal? From BuzzFeed to ClickUp to Outlever
02:00 Why traditional PR is broken (and what replaces it)
05:06 The reality behind earned media and pay-to-play
06:46 Why companies should build their own newsroom
08:37 What it takes to launch a media entity from scratch
10:47 How Outlever produces journalism at scale
12:50 The companies doing this best today
14:14 Should every company build a newsroom?
16:07 AI search, AEO, and why third-party content wins
17:25 How Outlever does its own marketing
19:20 How direct the brand to newsroom link should be
20:40 Why this model is a moat for companies
22:20 Will new “gatekeepers” emerge?
24:30 How Melissa explains this to CMOs
26:20 Distribution: LinkedIn, newsletters, and peer networks
28:21 Quality vs. quantity in content publishing
29:55 How AI assists interviews and drafting
31:18 Why humans will always run the interview
34:07 AI-assisted interviewer workflow, explained
35:38 The rise of thought leadership and personal brand building
37:46 The hardest part: going from 0 to 1
39:23 Why POV comes from your ICP, not your boardroom
41:06 What media companies can’t do anymore
44:35 Forbes 30 Under 30, and what it meant at 25
46:28 What makes a truly great interview