Another Blog Buyout: Guardian Pays $30 Million-Plus For Paidcontent
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.
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
But I won't leave this chair in which I'm sitting until SOMEBODY posts a hypothetical conversation that would convince the Guardian purseholders to unleash 30 million pennies for this property, much less 30 million dollars.
Shorter version of same argument: JupiterMedia bought MediaBistro for $20M + $3M earnout last year.This is a much better property. Plus they're paying in pounds, so the entire US is one big bargain basement sale.
Well, good for Rafat. I'm also a fan of MediaBistro (I've obviously got a lot of free time on my hands) and I agree that on my deathbed with just one more site to visit, I would choose paidcontent over MB.
But I think MB's revenue driver is less conferences and more the $49 annual fee, no? Does paidcontent have a similar service?
In this economy with the cost of transportation, I'd rather hang my hat on virtual, scalable activities like MB than getting people to fly/drive to sit in a darkened hotel room.
But, then maybe that's why I'm not running Guardian.
Yet.
And Neil, the truth is that you're never going to get a media business to do a good reporting on itself - or its owners and partners, for that matter. Even the most independent-minded pubs eventually wind up with knotty conflicts of interest. In this case I think Rafat did as good a job as possible - and the fact that he didn't contest Kara's report is a tacit acknowledgment that it's correct.
a question for the thread - do you guys go there and comment as much as you do here? from what i can see there is much more debate here; which seems must be a big part of the attraction for an oldline media company when buying a blog.
I've noticed the lack of commenter activity at PC, as well. Two reasons we're talking about it here, and not there:
1. Traffic--my guess is that that Alley Insider has 50x the uniques that PC gets (Quantcast figures back that up, for what it's worth).
2. Tone--PC is straight-ahead factual, without much slant to the press releases they re-publish. AI seems so much breezier, which for me is more engaging, and invites more debate.
After all, it's hard to argue with what's on a tombstone, and not very much fun, either.
Thanks, that makes sense on both counts.
From an investment POV does the reported 30mm make sense? seems like a lot for what's actually there.
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