Category Archives: Next-Generation Content

This is Digital First, at the Financial Times

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financial times

Based on the calculations below, for the Financial Times, digital leads print in

  1. Paid subscribers
  2. Total Revenues
  3. Revenue per subscriber.

“The number of readers subscribing to FT.com increased 18% in the year to 31 December 2012 to almost 316,000, bringing the total circulation of the Financial Times to 602,000. It said 15% of these subscriptions had come from mobile which accounts for 30% of all traffic.”   Source of quote:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/25/pearson-ft-sale-digital-subscriptions

Digital Revenues:

ft digital pricine

316,000 @ $446/year is $141 million from digital

Print Revenues:

 ft print pricing

286,000 @$339/year is $97 million from print.

Digital revenues are 59% of total revenues, excluding any impact of discounting or single copy sales.

This is digital first.

Is Hyperlocal Dieing?

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Hyperlocal journalism took two big hits this week.

everyblockFirst, NBC closed EveryBlock, a pioneer in the emerging field of data journalism that started with $1.1 million in funding from the Knight Foundation in 2007 before being acquired by msnbc.com in 2009.  Everyblock was innovative in bring highly community data-driven, with open data and custom maps.  The original open-source code is actually still available. I don’t have the facts to know if EveryBlock can truly be viewed as a failed experiment in hyperlocal journalism, or if fell victim to the legacy of the General Electric cost-cutting knife, as new management at NBC, the former GE subsidiary, gained control of the site last summer.

And, second, AOL admitted what most observers expected, which is that its hyperlocal news network Patch will miss its ambitious revenue prediction of as much as $50 million in 2012 revenue, with only $34 million in 2012 revenue. AOL reportedly lost $100 million on Patch in 2011, a number which they denied.  And so the cost cutting axe will be falling on Patch since AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is committed to bring Patch to profitability by the fourth quarter of 2013.

The right formula for sustainably profitable hyperlocal journalism is still elusive.  The search, however, is far from over.

OnGridVentures Top VC Deals of 2012

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Here’s our list of the top Venture Capital deals of 2012 in our sectors, culled from the VentureBeat Top 15 list:

Big Data-Enabled, Next Generation Content

Drilling Info, $166 million

Drilling Info might have the least interesting name on this list, but what it offers is certainly attractive — so much that it raised $166.2 million in a major Q1 funding round. It offers a SaaS-based oil and gas business-intelligence platform, and it claims to be the “most complete source of North American and offshore waters oil and gas information.” It’s easy to see how a company offering easy access to that kind of data could get some serious cash. The round was raised by Insight Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, and Eastern Advisors Private Fund, with Vaquero Capital advising the deal.

Big Data Enabled

Box, $125 million

Cloud storage and collaboration startup Box had a huge year with lots of developments including its OneCloud syncing solution, the opening of an international headquarters in London, and more. But one of its biggest pieces of news was when it raised $125 million in fresh capital for aggressive growth around the world. This latest big round was led by General Atlantic, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, New Enterprise Associates, SAP Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and new investor Social+Capital Partnership.

E-commerce; Social Frameworks

Fab, $117 million

Social shopping startup Fab had a big year, and it recently announced that it sold $6.5 million worth of goods between Nov. 23 and Nov. 29, which is a very good number to kick off the holiday season. With that kind of traction, we’re sure its many investors — Atomico, Pinnacle Ventures, re-Net Technology Partners, Mayfield Fund, DoCoMo Capital, Menlo Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Baroda Ventures, and First Round Capital — were glad they put up more than $100 million back in July. Fab CEO Jason Goldberg also informed us that his startup raised another $16 million in October and November at the same terms as the July round, bringing the total to an impressive $117 million. Fab also recently said it plans a “pivot” in 2013, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Social Frameworks, Next Generation Content 

Pinterest, $100 milion

Pinterest, now the third most popular social network in the U.S. after Facebook and Twitter, had a hard time getting VCs’ attention when it first started out. But it didn’t appear to have much trouble raising a new $100 million round in May. The round was led by Japanese web retailer Rakuten, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Glencoe Capital, and other angel investors. As 2012 has continued, Pinterest has gained more traction. Recently, it added pin previews inside Twitter and opened its doors to business accounts.

Health Efficiency, Social Frameworks

Castlight Health, $100 million

Castlight Health, one of two health care companies to make this list, dubs itself as “the leader in health care transparency.” It offers consumers and companies comprehensive data about the price and quality of health care, ideally to help them save money while also improving their care. The company attracted astellar $99.9 million investment in May from T. Rowe Price, Redmile Group, Allen & Company, Maverick Capital, Oak Investment Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, and Venrock Associates.

Social Frameworks

Github, $100 million

GitHub, easily one of the most exciting startups of the year, caught a lot of attention in July for raising nearly $100 million for a Series A round. (It could be the biggest Series A ever.) Investors Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel clearly believe in GitHub’s mission of supplying social coding tools to developers. The company has grown quite popular since its launch in 2008, and it has more than 1.7 million members who have shared more than 3 million code repositories. It recently hired Vlado Herman, the former CFO of Yelp, to help it manage its huge round of funds.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/28/top-venture-capital-deals-2012/#qQ7hmThIhFLXi8qk.99

Vox Media Gains Traction with SB Nation

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Vox Media, fueled by $30 million in VC funding, is building an engine for  next-generation content.  The ingredients are a clear vertical focus,  low cost digital-only content, highly social.  In Vox’s case, no paywall and fully ad-supported. The numbers:

  • 800 paid bloggers, who I presume are fueled by their team passion more then money.
  • 9.4 million unique visitors, half which return 20x each month, growing at 20% per year.  A fraction of what espn.com gets, but the trend is positive.
  • Direct sales force of 25 people, focused on premium CPM sales to big national brands.
  • Proprietary CMS called Chorus:  supports robust commenting and forums, and links sites with databases on teams and players.
  • Revenues of $25 million, reportedly at breakeven now.
  • Valuation of $140 million, based on most recent round.  Accel Partners is lead VC, with additional funding from Comcast Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Allen & Company, Providence Equity Partners, and Ashton Kutcher.  CEO is Jim Bankoff, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The valuation is hefty at over 5x revenue, but sports sites with passionate fans are highly valued, plus the engine can expand to other verticals.

Data sources:  Forbes and TheNext Web.

Mobile First?

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It’s about time that some are questioning the mobile first gospel.  Check out this post by Fred Wilson, citing also Vibhu Norby.

The Wall Street Journal bets on e-commerce with 72Lux

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E-commerce is a key component of a next-generation content model, and the Wall Street Journal has taken a big step in this direction by launching a launching a shoppable gift guide for the holiday season, with more to follow for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s day in 2013, as reported in Advertising Age.

72Lux is “the software that sits behind the site and lets them create any form of content that is shoppable,” according to Heather Marie, 72Lux’s 28-year-old CEO.

Wall Street Journal Select allows readers to purchase the gifts — which range from a $2,900 Tag Heuer watch to a $19.95 book about home-brewing beer — directly from WSJ Select.  Customers can add products from participating retailers, which include Nordstrom, Best Buy, and Coach, to a single shopping cart and pay for them all with one payment.

“The release of the gift guide is really the new beginning of a more-concerted effort to develop additional revenue streams around commerce,” said Alisa Bowen, the chief product officer at Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones.

More from Advertising Age here.

Plus, the Wall Street Journal even promoted the site with a full page ad, Monday, December 8, 2012, page b8:

The Big Data Landscape

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Once again, bigger than ever, here is the 2017 Big Data Landscape:

 

For more on Big Data, click here.  

For our investing criteria:  Investment Criteria.

For Matt’s useful 2017 update, here.

Here is version 3.0 of the Big Data Landscape, from Matt Turck, now at FirstMark.

Big Data Landscape

 

And, for some context, here is the prior version:

 

The New Math of Content Creation

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The business model for creating original print content is broken, and the model for creating original web content is unproven.  But Jim Spanfeller, who had great success as CEO of Forbes.com, is making nice progess with The Daily Meal.

His recent results:  5 million monthly uniques after 18 months, the #8 food site in Comscore.

The math behind it:  edit team of 20, each turning out 6 stories per day = 120 stories per day; plus 700 special contributors posting weekly = 100 stories per day; plus user-generated content spurred by a rating system.

Next numbers: 10 million uniques by end of 2012 and aiming for 20 million after that.

The full story from Folio is here.

Can a social network be hyperlocal?

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Betakit has a good overview of the new neighborhood social networks here.  These businesses are hard to scale and require users to be open to their neighbors…not always a welcome thing.  The upside, however, is huge.  Just as facebook encouraged people to share more about themselves, the winner in this segment will figure out a way for neighbors to do the same. The early leader seems to be NextDoor, with $18.6 million from Greylock and Benchmark Capital
.

It’s hard to break out of the pack

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Noted investor Chris Dixon’s recent blog post on the crunch in consumer web start-ups has gotten a lot of notice.  It’s unfortunate that so many start-ups tend to chase the same concept. That’s why, generally, Chris’s points are correct, e.g., you do need 10 million uniques to get anyone to pay attention to you.

But you don’t have to follow the pack. Find a niche segment, where your content had real value.  Don’t jump on the next popular trend, like a new app to figure out what to do tonight. Create a real new idea, and calibrate your own metrics.

“Ten million users is the new one million users.

Entrepreneurs and investors have been enamored with consumer internet startups for the last few years. But there are signs this is ending.

Some observations:

– Thousands of early-stage consumer web/mobile companies were started and funded in last 24 months.

– There are only a few dozen VCs who actively write consumer Series A checks, and those VCs will only do a few deals a year.

– Facebook’s market cap is about half of what most tech investors expected before the IPO.

– A few breakout early-stage consumer hits (Instagram, Pinterest) have reached tens of millions of users in record time.

– Internet users have tens of thousands of services/apps to choose from but limited time and attention…”

Read more here.