updated
VentureBeat has just raised a seed round, and I wanted to be the first one to let you know. The news is beginning to leak after we filed a regulatory document.
VentureBeat has grown steadily since launching more than a year ago. We’ve been hiring writers and we have record traffic. I’ve bootstrapped the company thus far, and while it’s been rewarding, there’s just so much more we’d like to do. We’ve been pretty much in the black since I launched, and I’ve hired writers as cash afforded. Now that we’ve got our feet on the ground, its time to get to the next phase.
We’ve raised $320,000 cash from a number of angel investors, including Georges Harik, a very early employee at Google and manager of several of its early products; Aydin Senkut, another early Google employee who is now running a small angel fund called Felicis Ventures; Mike Brown, an investor at Foundation Capital, but who invested on his own accord; Philippe Cases, an investor specialized in open source; MHS Capital; Amidzad; and Elliott Donnelly’s White Sand Group among others.
Obviously, with investors come potential conflicts. Each one of the investors is aware of VentureBeat’s determined focus on independent reporting, and we won’t be changing that. If we write about a topic where we feel we have a conflict, or a perceived conflict, we’ll disclose it clearly in a story.
Update: We’ve just seen a piece published by PEHub, which suggests our traffic is falling. The reporter who called me up just now didn’t even bother to ask me about it. Too bad, because our traffic hit a record high last month, and it’s been growing strongly. That’s confirmed by all our direct-measurement stats, from Google Analytics to FM’s page tracker. We’ve got syndication deals, too, plus growing RSS feeds. Alexa and Compete, the sites PEHub cites, are notoriously unreliable, especially for relatively small sites (read this), because they rely on non-direct methods. Wow, now even I know how it feels to be raked over the coals by an aggressive reporter. Though he’s a competitor, so I guess we should expect that.
22 Comments
-
Steven said:
Congratulations! Keep up the great work!
-
Adam D said:
Congrats on the funding!
-
Jitendra said:
Congrats…Its a great site.
-
Yuri Ammosov said:
Ura! Da zdrastvuet VentureBeat!
-
Irv R said:
Congrats Matt! Awesome news.
-
Andreas said:
Congratulations, you really deserve it. So many interesting articles to read in one place, truly impressive.
-
Jeremy Wright said:
Congrats Matt. Actually saw you at the Valleywag thing on Friday and didn’t have a chance to say hi. Between this news and the recent acquisition of someone else who was there (haven’t seen the news break yet, so don’t want to break it) it was a good party to be at!
-
Paul Michelson said:
Matt,
This is great news. We’ve enjoyed working with your team from one guy (you) to many more. You’ll keep hearing from us!!
-
allen stern said:
Congrats Matt! Maybe we can work together sometime!
-
Ray Burt said:
Nice.
Is this recursive?
-
Saumil Mehta said:
Congratulations Matt! Great stuff, looking forward to chatting with you soon.
-
David Stern said:
Congratulations, Matt. You’ve worked your tail off!
-
Eze Vidra (VC Cafe) said:
Matt,
Your investors are smart guys but I’m sure that whatever valuation you have received, was too low. Keep up the great job.
Wishing you and the Venturebeat team continuous success.
Eze
VC Cafe -
Ramon said:
Congrats for the funding, keep up the good work.
Best to VB
-
Mark Bao said:
Congratulations VentureBeat! It’s a great source for funding news.
-
Jason Vu said:
Good news for WP based content sites
-
John Furrier said:
Congrats Matt. Creating original content is difficult. Being a one man band running around the valley is different than building a multiperson editorial organization. Building a company from scratch is difficult - congrats on the milestone.
However costs will be increasing and you will need to scale your revenues.
I have to admit that I’ve stop reading your site because others sites have been faster and deeper with the news. Having a team will help bring back your mojo again.
Can’t wait to see the scaling.
btw: the traffic question regarding alexa and compete always comes up when everyone knows how inaccurate those tools are.
-
Salman FF said:
congrats.
s -
Alex Le said:
Congrats!
However, my concern is about the quality of the posts. I’ve been reading since VentureBeat was still SiliconBeat. My personal opinion is the post quality back then was higher. The articles were more in depth, better coverage, better analysis, and reflected the personalities of the staff writers. Most readers of VentureBeat are pretty tech-savvy. I don’t think we come here to read some short paragraphs that seem to be more like PR pieces that we can easily find other places. I’d prefer Digg for that.
Anyway, still congrats on this new milestone. Keep up the good work!
Alex
-
shuaben said:
oh. good big news！！
8 Trackbacks
3:43 pm
VentureBeat Gets Angel Round Funding : The Last Podcast said:
[...] to the guys and gals over at VentureBeat, a blog that focuses on technology VC news. According to VentureBeat’s own Matt Marshall, they raised $320.000 cash from a number of angel investors: VentureBeat has grown steadily since [...]
5:54 pm
VentureBeat » Roundup: Ads up, AOL launches mobile social platform, Starbucks changes WiFi, and more said:
[...] had a heavy news day today, including our funding. Here’s what we [...]
6:46 pm
VentureBeat Takes $320,000 First Round said:
[...] (via VentureBeat) [...]
8:49 pm
Congrats Matt. - GigaOM said:
[...] pal, Matt Marshall, former VC reporter for San Jose Mercury News and founder of Venture Beat has raised $320,000 in Series A funding. Ex-Googlers Aydin Senkut, Georges Harik and Mark Sugarman are among seven folks who invested in [...]
9:56 pm
Fellow Blog Company, VentureBeat Raises $320K In Seed Capital. Wo0T! said:
[...] Inc. (a network of blogs) to AOL for $25 million. Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems peHUB and VentureBeat are beefing with each other over the news. But both companies shouldn’t be trying to run [...]
6:21 am
Talking Biz News » Venture Beat raises money said:
[...] more here. Posted by Chris Roush [...]
2:25 pm
Profit Baron dot Com said:
[...] focused blog VentureBeat has taken a seed round of $320,000. It was founded in 2006 by ex-San Jose Mercury News writer Matt Marshall and has as its goal [...]
3:06 pm
A life in the River - February 11, 2008 | Athow.com: Internet, Media and Technology at its fullest said:
[...] Matt Marshall / VentureBeat: VentureBeat raises $320,000 seed round, traffic growing [...]