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News & Updates - Tuesday, October 4, 2005

VCs Want Bloggers; But The Feeling Is Not Necessarily Mutual

The a:c has received unsolicited calls from a couple of venture capitalists who want to invest in our venture. We have taken a lot of VC money in the past (really, we have), but one of the things that we like best about the status quo is our independence and our profitability. It's very nice to not have to hold board meetings or lawyer-up, plus we fantasize about getting work done while hopping from tiki bar to tiki bar. Moreover, we don't know what we would spend the money on. We don't want an office. A secretary is a nice to have, mostly to kill comment spam and to make coffee - but we're content for now.

We have also heard from a number of blogging networks about the calls that they are getting from venture capitalists. The VCs, it would seem, are hearing over and again from the ad networks that content is king again. But for the most par,t nascent blog networks are uninterested in taking VC dollars. Sure, they are flattered to get the calls, but in the end they realize that Weblogs Inc., Gawker Media, and other content companies got big without outside investments and interference. Here are a couple of recent posts on the subject.

9Rules Blog Network
Last week we were offered a "generous" sum of money to fund some of the projects that we wished to work on. Initially, we jumped all over the offer for the simple reason that we continue to tell ourselves that if we could get away from doing client work for a couple of weeks/months then we could dedicate 100% of our time to the stuff we really want to do. After some time though and a lot of discussion we decided to turn down the money mainly because the offer didn't feel right to us. I wish I could say it was an easy decision to make.
Read - Boom 2.0 (9Rules Network)

Problogger
I’m not anti VC. I know some bloggers are totally against it on principle - but I see that there can be times and places where investment can be very appropriate. Having said this - I’m a pretty picky and choosey kind of guy and would only enter into this type of deal if everything lined up well. One of the dangers of going down the VC path can be that you put your blogging business on hold while you negotiate the deal and get bogged down in contracts and logistics. I know of a few small-business owners who have become quite obsessed with VC - to the point where the businesses that they were trying to get funded suffered.
Read - Venture Capital and Your Blogging Business (Problogger)