Vox’s new mega-round puts a bow on content’s “holy shit” moment
Today it was revealed that Vox Media, owner of The Verge, SB Nation, and Polygon has raised another $40 million of funding. Then came BuzzFeed’s scoop that Glenn Greenwald, the political reporter who broke the ongoing saga of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, is leaving the Guardian to join a new, “very well-funded” media venture that will cover general news. The new publication, which Reuters reports will be funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is yet to be revealed.We must now take a break from our scheduled programming to say: “Holy shit, content is back!”It’s not just the mysterious Greenwald venture and Vox Media, which has now raised a total of $80 million and is expected to reach profitability this year, that are cause for mild tech-media enthusiasm, however.
It’s also BuzzFeed, which has raised $46.3 million and is now profitable.It’s Vice Media, who sold a 5 percent stake to 21st Century Fox for $70 million, valuing it at $1.4 billion.It’s Business Insider, which has raised $18.6 million and is investing “hundreds of thousands” in longform content.It’s the Washington Post, which was just bought by Jeff Bezos.It’s The New Republic, which was bought by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.It’s Bustle, which raised $6 million in seed money, pre-launch. [Disclosure: Bustle founder Bryan Goldberg is a contributor to PandoDaily.]It’s PolicyMic, which has just raised $3 million.It’s Contently, which has raised $3 million in a Series A and is now meeting investors looking for more.It’s NowThisNews, which has raised close to $10 million for shortform video news.It’s Wall Street Cheat Sheet, which bootstrapped itself to profitability.It’s Upworthy, which recently raised an $8 million Series A and is one of the fastest-growing media companies the world has seen.It’s the impending Kara Swisher-Walt Mossberg deal.And don’t be surprised if, within the next day, we hear of another major funding round from a prominent new media company. (Keep your eyes on PandoDaily for more on that front.)Large funding rounds don’t prove that new media companies are ultimately going to be successes. But it’s certainly a new trend in a venture capital community that’s historically seen content companies as low growth and unscalable. It’s not product, platforms, design, hacks, or algorithms – it’s people. Creating content is downright artisan compared to scalable tech startups. And those sub-$30 million exits from Weblogs and TechCrunch have just weighed on the industry like a wet blanket....MORE
HT: Abnormal Returns
