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John Battelle
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jackpot
John Battelle takes $22 million in fuck-you money
Anyone telling you that Federated Media, the online ad network which reps Boing Boing, GigaOm, TechCrunch and other blogs, has raised $50 million from investors is dead wrong. It's true, Oak Investment Partners and others paid $50 million for shares of Federated. But only half of that went to the company, we're told; the rest went to founder John Battelle and other employees. According to our source, Battelle's take was roughly 90 percent of the insider shares sold, or about $22 million. More »
1:00 PM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,525 views,
4 comments
Latest by n/a: Word on the street is, he'll lose most of that in one incredibly bad hand of poker at a suitcase gambling stand by Capitola beach. more »
marc andreessen
Why Marc Andreessen should stick to his keyboard
Every time Marc Andreessen steps away from his desk, disaster abounds. For the father of the Netscape browser, the creator of the Web as we know it, the legendary barefoot geek from the magazine covers, expectations are way too high. And so the disappointments pile up. The Andreessen of today is not the Marc we remember. His pate has gone from mophead to Klingon; his wardrobe, inevitably a tracksuit with leather shoes, is an utter disaster. And when he speaks, he says absolutely nothing. John Battelle, the slickster salesman-interviewer of bubbles past and present, tried to get some fighting words out of Andreessen on stage at Web 2.0 Expo. He failed, utterly, epicly. Andreessen praised Bill Gates, said competing with Microsoft was interesting, described Microsoft-Yahoo as "a good deal." More »
9:40 AM on Fri Apr 25 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,788 views,
12 comments
Latest by n/a: @broozier: Males shouldn't be jealous that's a female trait Watch you mad 'cause you push dimes and he sell weight? more »
jackpot
John Battelle raises $50 million as AOL snatches away his prize
For once, tech publisher John Battelle has timed a bubble just right. With Wired, where he was a founding editor, he was too early; with The Industry Standard, the tech weekly which crashed and burned early in this decade, a bit too late. But with Federated Media, he's proved his dealmaking prowess. He's all but nailed what we hear is $40 million to $50 million in venture capital for the online-ad network , on a $200 million valuation. And this right before AOL bought Sphere, a blog search engine which, by a rough count, serves more than half of the pageviews Battelle sells to advertisers. More »
venture capital
Federated Media to raise as much as $50 million in VC round
Federated Media is close to announcing it has won between $40 and $50 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners and others, including Omidyar Network, the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Series C round sets the value of the blog-friendly online-ad network at $200 million. Insiders have said past reports of Federated's fundraising were premature, but we hear the news is for real this time. At this point, we'll believe it when we see the term sheet. Do send us a copy? [PeHUB]
Federated Media snags $50 million investment?
A tipster reports that John Battelle's Federated Media ad network just scored a $50 million investment. We've emailed FM but haven't heard back yet.
rumormonger
Is John Battelle selling a piece of Federated Media?
VentureBeat reports that online ad network Federated Media is close to raising a $30 million round of financing, at a valuation of $200 million. The deal is not as advanced as VentureBeat suggests, we hear. But let's assume a large investor is seriously weighing a term sheet. Awesomely tan tech-reporter-turned-salesman John Battelle must be torn. More »
silicon alley insider
John Battelle welcomes Henry Blodget into snuggly embrace
Henry Blodget, editor of Silicon Alley Insider, has established himself as a connoisseur of male beauty. And John Battelle is a handsome man. He's also chairman of Federated Media, the online-ad network and paid friend to bloggers, which is more likely where the attraction lies. Blodget has publicly documented on his New York-based tech blog his struggles to find an ad model that works. At last, he has: Toss his banners in Battelle's lap. More »
deals
John Battelle turns down $100 million offer for Federated Media
When word leaked that John Battelle had hired San Francisco investment bank Savvian to "manage investor interest" in Federated Media, his online-ad network, the move raised a question: How interested were investors? $100 million interested, reports Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch. That's the offer Battelle got, and turned down, from one unnamed investor. Schonfeld also points out this curiosity: At Battelle's last venture, the Industry Standard, the entrepreneur was the one pushing to sell out, not wait for a better offer.
forecasts
John Battelle's secret to making year-end predictions
Along with gifts, wassailing, and bah humbugs, the holidays bring an onslaught of predictions for the new year that mostly aren't worth reading. But if you are interested, egoblogger Robert Scoble sits down with the Supremely Tanned One, Federated Media chairman John Battelle, to ask how he manages to make predictions that are remarkably accurate. The secret, replies Battelle to the fawning Scoble, after first congratulating himself for his success rate, is: "A lot of these are not that difficult to predict." It doesn't take the ambiguities of a Nostradamus quatrain to predict that Microsoft would buy its way into advertising, Yahoo would struggle, blogs would get better, and people would call Web 2.0 a bubble. So if you are preparing your own predictions for 2008 and want to achieve a high success rate, don't predict — just state the obvious.
hulu
A gift for our dear readers: 10,000 Hulu Invites
I saw a theme this morning as I perused the various other tech sites: Hulu invites! Hulu, the video-streaming partnership between News Corp. and NBC, is throwing open its doors to many early adopters by offering up thousands of invites on several tech sites. If you haven't gotten a chance to play around with Hulu and want to see just what the hell Paul Boutin is complaining about, here's your chance. GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, TechCrunch, and Mashable are giving away 2,500 invites each. All, we note, are clients of Federated Media, John Battelle's online-ad network. Coincidence, conspiracy, or just part of a future Hulu advertising campaign?
larry and lucy
Google wedding details -- eco-furniture, overcrowding, and Bono
New York gossip column Page Six has more details on this weekend's wedding of Google founder Larry Page and future Stanford Ph.D. Lucy Southworth. Even bilionaires have planning snafus. Logistics have turned nightmarish, to be expected when you cram 600 guests accustomed to penthouse suites and private jets onto a tiny island. The Southworth-Page nuptials, scheduled for Richard Branson's private Caribbean getaway, Necker Island, have taken over neighboring Virgin Gorda, a short boat trip away from the wedding site. Other details we've heard from a plugged-in tipster: More »
followup
MerchantCircle gets new funding to continue spam campaign
MerchantCircle has secured an additional $10 million in series B funding from past investors Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and Steamboat Ventures (Disney's VC arm), as well as new investors including Barry Diller's IAC and Square 1 Bank. The press release claims, "the investment validates the company's 'merchant-first' business model." I'd say, rather, it confirms that investors who should know better will sink cash into a disreputable business. More »
"Quite rationally, our board felt we were giving away a really valuable asset, and no amount of provocative quotes from John Battelle or The Cluetrain Manifesto could assuage them," Stephen DiMarco, chief marketing officer of Web analytics company Compete, on how the board reacted to providing free access to their data. [How to Change the World]
web 2.0 summit
Web 2.0 Summit returns to Web 1.9 roots
Can you believe that last week's Web 2.0 Summit was the fourth such conference? Its humble beginnings were barely in evidence, as venture capitalists, corporate biz-dev types, and M&A scouts seemed to outnumber the startup founders they were trying to hunt down. Friday afternoon was a return to the old school, however, with Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield and LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick among the presenters. Sadly, John Doerr, the expert inflater of the first dotcom bubble, did not cry. Check the photo gallery for the conference's final, terrifying orgy of schmoozing. Some participants were so exhausted that, by the closing cocktail party, they were making deals with their eyes closed.
web 2.0 summit
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — At this conference's closing cocktail party, organizer John Battelle noted that Valleywag had stopped using our favorite photo of the George Hamilton-lookalike online-advertising magnate. So sorry, John! Consider this your fond farewell to all the moneybags who paid $3,595 to mix with a handful of geeks and hacks. "Now I'm going to get blotto," said Battelle. In case you want to join him, check out this weekend's Valleywag Calendar.
John Battelle has left the building
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — At this conference's closing cocktail party, organizer John Battelle noted that Valleywag had stopped using our favorite photo of the George Hamilton-lookalike online-advertising magnate. So sorry, John! Consider this your fond farewell to all the moneybags who paid $3,595 to mix with a handful of geeks and hacks. "Now I'm going to get blotto," said Battelle. In case you want to join him, check out this weekend's Valleywag Calendar.
lazy valleywag
John Battelle's million-dollar ad deal
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — At a panel discussion about making money in online video, Federated Media VP of sales Chas Edwards said he'd pulled checks "from a million dollars down to $10,000" for video ads on Federated's network, which includes the popular shows Diggnation and Ask a Ninja. The burning question: Who paid a million bucks to Federated, run by Web 2.0 conference co-chief John Battelle, and for what? We were unable to tackle any of Federated's execs at the jam-packed conference Wednesday. Somebody get Edwards or jbat to spill the details, and send it to us. Otherwise we'll wonder if Edwards wasn't actually referring to Microsoft's non-video advertorial deal for which Federated bloggers wrote ad copy. Why? Because Edwards also said the biggest dollars come from selling "host endorsements" rather than separate advertiser-produced spots.
web 2.0 summit
