HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do VCs or Angels invest in blogs?

8 points by traviso ↗ HN
I've started a blog (http://thestartupcafe.com) and I really want to focus my time fully into building it up into a quality destination and community for entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. However, between my full-time gig and other projects, I'm finding it difficult to put 100% into it. As I'm sure this is a problem many people have, I've started to wonder if angels and VCs invest into blogs like they invest into apps and such. I'd like to raise some seed money to allow me to invest my time fully into this. What would you suggest I do? Is this possible or should I keep this as a side-project/hobby?

7 comments

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traviso
If there are any old HN thread on this, I'd love to read them too.
stevenj
I believe OM Malik (gigaom.com) took funding, but I'm not able to find the source right now.

I'm not sure if any of the other major ones did too -- TechCrunch, Engadget, The Next Web, Venture Beat, etc.

maxbrown
IMO an angel might, but not a VC. VCs look for 10x return on their investment of at least 500k-1mm, and a blog needing that kind of investment or providing that kind of return is highly unlikely.
tomkarlo
Even if they did invest money, would you want to take it? The minimum it's probably worth raising is say, $50K, when you figure that the legal fees alone might run $3-5K. To make the investor a good return on that, you probably need to create a business worth $250K minimum (for a 5X return.) A single-writer blog just isn't going to be worth that much, especially when you consider that you have to subtract your own comp from the profits before calculating the value of the franchise.

If you're going to build a small lifestyle business that has relatively moderate growth trajectory, you need to do it without raising money that expects a big growth rate. If all you need is say 15-20K, just borrow it on a personal basis from a microlending club like LendingClub.

If you're not willing to take that kind of risk? Don't expect anyone else to, either.

traviso
Solid, grounded advice. Thanks! You're right especially on you're last point, I gotta be willing to take the risk if I expect someone else to.
pclark
Yes.

The Huffington Post, Business Insider, GigaOM, The Bleacher Report and many more have.

You have almost 0 chance of raising money until you have a serious sized audience though, unless you have a rockstar background like being Editor in Chief at Engadget. There really is no excuse not to be able to organically grow a blog.

With blogging do you not find that you have to have the determination and dedication to wanting to get your words out there (and thus you find time to write one blog post a day) or maybe you shouldn't be doing a blog - perhaps reach out to the startup foundry or the next web as a contributor?

traviso
I've definitely got the drive and determination to push this blog to the forefront. I've been kicking my own butt to make sure that there's always a new post M-F. I've also been asking for advice/feedback and looking at analytics to see what's working and what's not.

As for Paul at The Foundry, we're chatting on the phone tomorrow. I hope he'd consider contributing :)