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Another Blog Buyout: Guardian Pays $30 Million-Plus For Paidcontent

rafatali.jpgGuardian Media Group, best known as the home of the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, is buying Rafat Ali's ContentNext, the holding company whose best known property is the PaidContent blog. Kara Swisher quotes a source who puts the the price at "north of $30 million," including earnout provisions; Rafat confirms the sale but won't comment on price, etc. Here's Rafat's post and press release.

This is a very nice outcome for Rafat, who started PaidContent in his studio apartment six years ago, and a very nice outcome for Alan Patricof's Greycroft Partners, who is the sole investor in the company; he invested "well under a million" in Rafat in 2006.

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Rafat says the Guardian had previously made an offer for ContentNext, but that he decided to pursue a $1 to $2 million fundraising round instead. The Guardian came back with a new offer three weeks ago, he says, and this one was too good to pass up. ContentNext will remain an independent unit of Guardian Media's B2B group, he says, and won't be directly affiliated with the newspaper.

"if it was just a regional business to business company, even if the price was higher, that wouldn't have been of interest to me or anybody else."

See Also: What Ars Technica - Conde Means For Blog Wars
Conde Net Buys Ars Technica For $25 Million
Paidcontent Raising $1-$2 Million Series B, Blog Wars Heating Up

 

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