Endpoints News History: 10 Years, Bootstrap to FT

John Carroll and Arsalan Arif at #JPM25 in San Francisco (Endpoints News) June 20, 2026 12:37 AM EDT Editor's notePublisher's note No in­vestors. A 50/50 split every­one warned us against. How End­points sur­vived its first decade — and end­ed up at the FT Arsalan Arif Founder and CEO John Carroll Editor & Founder We were broke when we launched End­points on this day ten years ago. Not start­up broke, with a seed round and run­way. Ac­tu­al­ly broke. No bene­fac­tors, no back­up plan. No­body to an­swer to be­cause no­body had writ­ten a check. So we did some­thing every ad­vi­sor told us not to: split own­er­ship 50/50. That type of dy­nam­ic usu­al­ly ends bad­ly for founders. But it was the on­ly way that made sense for us. And that bond turned out to be the sin­gle most valu­able as­set we had. We’re still as­ton­ished, and grate­ful, that it held — from a boot­strapped start to a Lon­don board­room. This was not our first rodeo. We met 20 years ago — a decade be­fore there was an End­points News. Ar­salan need­ed a re­al job at 26 af­ter wrap­ping yet an­oth­er en­tre­pre­neur­ial project: an am­a­teur bas­ket­ball league in Wash­ing­ton, DC, where games got re­al box scores and news write-ups. He was re­cruit­ed by a friend to join the busi­ness news start­up Fierce­Mar­kets as a sales rep, and fig­ured, let’s give it a few months. His first as­sign­ment was to walk the 2006 BIO In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion trade show floor and sell on­line ads to biotech brands. John was al­ready there — a writer for Fierce­Biotech, a cou­ple of years in, cov­er­ing drug de­vel­op­ment with a re­porter’s pen. He’d tak­en a long route to bio­phar­ma too. Decades in print, in­clud­ing a turn as an ed­i­tor and pub­lish­er, then a swing at run­ning his own thing, then free­lance. We had ar­rived at the same com­pa­ny at the op­po­site ends of a ca­reer. We then spent years build­ing a biotech news fran­chise as em­ploy­ees. So we knew the shape of things go­ing in to­geth­er as own­ers in 2016, and agreed over­whelm­ing­ly on most things: End­points’ mis­sion, the qual­i­ty of our writ­ing, fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent re­port­ing, not mak­ing our­selves the sto­ry, own­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion, hav­ing a di­rect re­la­tion­ship with read­ers, and be­ing avail­able to the job every mo­ment you are awake. Be­fore launch, we had a face-to-face in a mid­town NYC din­er. We promised to be straight­for­ward and tell the en­tire truth to each oth­er, no mat­ter how in­con­ve­nient or in­signif­i­cant. We knew the read­ers and the com­pa­nies, and built a prod­uct serv­ing them. There were four staffers on day one, in­clud­ing the two of us — al­most no over­head, and noth­ing to pull us off the dai­ly grind. With­out an au­di­ence, we’d have been out of busi­ness in­side a few months. What kept us alive was the ear­ly re­sponse from the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try — read­ers who showed up when we had al­most noth­ing to of­fer but the work it­self. Our cor­ner of the busi­ness-me­dia world runs on a com­mu­ni­ty that reads us every sin­gle day, and you found us fast. Six months in, your re­cep­tion let us put on our first re­al event at the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence. See­ing you face-to-face, watch­ing the sub­scriber count climb hour by hour, know­ing many of you first­hand — that was every­thing. We weren’t just beat­ing our heads against a wall — some­thing we both have ex­pe­ri­ence in. When it worked, it re­al­ly worked. At times one of us led, the oth­er backed him, and we’d switch with­out score­keep­ing. We were good to­geth­er, and we knew it about each oth­er. Covid was the clear­est case. Biotech was the biggest sto­ry in the world, the re­port­ing was re­lent­less, high-stakes. End­points was grow­ing in­to all of it at once. We were nev­er more in sync. Our worst mo­ments rarely hap­pened in the room. They’d sur­face days lat­er, over the phone or Zoom, once some­thing had been sit­ting too long. We went to the mats a cou­ple times, and the fights were the price of telling each oth­er the truth. But we nev­er held grudges. Be­ing right about some­one for so long is hard work. Nei­ther of us could move un­til we both agreed what had to be done. That’s the whole rea­son we avoid­ed the ac­ri­mo­nious splits that take founders down on every side of us, in dig­i­tal me­dia and every­where else. By year sev­en, we ful­ly agreed it was time to sell. The com­pa­ny has been prof­itable since day one — rare in this busi­ness — and nei­ther of us comes from mon­ey, so turn­ing what we’d built in­to some­thing for our fam­i­lies made a hell of a lot of sense. But first we want­ed the right peo­ple in place for the next stretch. We were lucky to land Drew Arm­strong to run ed­i­to­r­i­al, and lucky again when Ryan McRae took over the busi­ness. The brute hus­tle that launch­es a com­pa­ny isn’t what grows an es­tab­lished one, and we knew it. In 2023, the Fi­nan­cial Times ac­quired End­points — one of the most trust­ed names in jour­nal­ism, and a place where End­points can keep do­ing this work for a long time. Both teams col­lab­o­rate with a shared pur­pose. We’ve called End­points a work in progress for ten years, and we still do. What’s changed is that it no longer de­pends on the two of us agree­ing be­fore it can move. It’s a team now — a great one — and we built it to out­last the part­ner­ship that start­ed it. That was al­ways the point. To every­one who built this with us, the ones who showed up be­fore any of it was ob­vi­ous — thank you. Hap­py 10th birth­day to End­points News! AUTHORS Arsalan Arif Founder and CEO aa@endpointsnews.com @arsalanarif Arsalan Arif on LinkedIn John Carroll Editor & Founder john@endpointsnews.com @JohnCendpts John Carroll on LinkedIn