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Media - Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Beliefnet - Profile

HQ: New York, NY

Founded: August 1999

Management: Steve Waldman is co-founder, CEO and Editor-in-chief. He was National Editor of US News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. COO is David Becker who was at one point President & COO of the online games portal Uproar.

Investors: In June 2005, the company raised $7M from Softbank's Boston office. Blue Chip Venture Company led two venture rounds totaling $1M in 2002 and also participated in the Softbank Capital-led round. Blue Chip and others had helped Beliefnet to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Prior to going bankrupt, BeliefNet had raised a $5.5M round and led by Highland Capital Partners and then a biggie in June 2000, totaling $20M led by Primus Venture Partners. So to put a point on it, in 2 years these guys blew more than $25M on a content site!

Business Model: The site offers discussion forums, newsletters, quizzes, prayers and general information on religion and spirituality. Beliefnet also has an online dating component, called Soulmatch and content for cell phones, which are fee-based. How does a content company spend $7M in these days of blogs running on a shoe string? Beliefnet says it wants "to increase the size of the traffic through the site and through newsletters; to improve the quality and nature of the research about its customers; and to upgrade the site with features compatible with high-speed broadband access, such as more audio offerings."

Competitors: JDate, Christianity Today, Islam Online, The Holy See, Gospel Communications Network

Dirt: BeliefNet is the East Coast version of Salon.com - a heavily funded startup that died and has been resurrected - they earn respect for sticking to it. Still, didn't these guys learn that VC money isn't the answer to everything? we wonder if $7M invested in a content company makes sense these days. So many have proven that they can get a lot of traffic without investments and to add the kind of broadband features that BeliefNet wants to add. As stock-holders, why not be patient and watch the traffic continue to grow?