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?
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.<p>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.<p>If you're not willing to take that kind of risk? Don't expect anyone else to, either.
Yes.<p>The Huffington Post, Business Insider, GigaOM, The Bleacher Report and many more have.<p>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.<p>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?
I believe OM Malik (gigaom.com) took funding, but I'm not able to find the source right now.<p>I'm not sure if any of the other major ones did too -- TechCrunch, Engadget, The Next Web, Venture Beat, etc.
IMO an angel might, but not a VC. VCs look for 10x return on their investment of <i>at least</i> 500k-1mm, and a blog needing that kind of investment or providing that kind of return is highly unlikely.