Dany Levy's Success Story

Founder of DailyCandy

Dany has always had a passion for writing and reaching people’s soul with her articles. She turned that into a multi-million dollar business by starting Daily Candy, a daily email newsletter that delivered instant news to millions of people all around the globe.

Dany Levy has worked for a couple of publications, including Vanity Fair, Martha Stewart and The New York Times. Being in the print business allowed her to understand the time that it takes to disseminate news to the public through print media. She was aware of the number of hours it would take to put the stuff in writing, get it approved and then printed on paper. So Dany started getting interested in the web and saw its potential for spreading news instantly. If she saw something, she could report it through email within a matter of minutes. For a person in the print media industry, this was like traveling at light speed.

So she quit her job and started her website called Daily Candy in the year 2000. It was a simple concept wherein people can subscribe to her email newsletter which would give them tiny news snippets about the latest happenings. She basically told her readers what is that one important thing that they needed to know for that day. The concept caught on almost from the very beginning and people loved the news bytes that she delivered to their inboxes everyday. Although she initially started with a very few addresses in her mailing list, the number of subscribers grew rapidly.

Dany knew that her concept was new and different from what others may have envisioned earlier. She believed that if she provided good content, the number of visitors and subscribers would increase. So she focused on providing unique and relevant articles, not worrying much about making money. She even hired good writers to bring new ideas and different interesting perspectives.

Dany started generating revenue by selling ads space on her site. In 2003, Bob Pitman bought a majority stake in the company for a couple of million dollars. Dany felt that the experience of Bob helped the company a lot in its growth. Later, in 2008 Comcast showed interest in Daily Candy and acquired it supposedly for $125 million.

When asked to give her definition of success, Dana Levy answered "Success is the moment when you have achieved what you think you set out to achieve, the moment, when you’ve gotten to the point when you’ve created whatever brand or product and you’re proud of it."