The man who bought out I Can Haz Cheeseburger is slowly building one of the best content empires on the web.

“The privately held company was launched in 2007 when Mr. Huh acquired I Can Haz Cheezburger; since then he’s built it through acquisitions (Failblog in 2008) and launches (It Made My Day), into a network of 30 blogs visited by 11.5 million people a month. Failblog’s video site just passed CBS as the 7th most-viewed channel of all time on YouTube. It now has 21 full-time employees and five part-timers and is profitable, though Mr. Huh wouldn’t discuss specifics.”

I love hearing these kinds of success stories although having seen the industry from all sides I don’t envy anyone having to run this type of machine. It’s a hard life that requires a lot of work and lots of tough decisions especially in this digital economy. But Ben Huh has done a marvelous job building an impressive empire of hilarious sites.

Source: Ad Age

Originally posted on October 12, 2009 @ 4:09 pm

Jason Calacanis get’s it right when he says that Angels shouldn’t be asking Startups for cash for the time to pitch to them. First off Angels have the cash, and the time to listen to startups, and if they don’t have the time they shouldn’t ask startups to pay.

Jason Calacanis says it a lot better than I can, and in a rare moment I really agree with him on this.

I’ve been in the startup scene since 1994 and in those 15 years I’ve met, interviewed — and in some cases, pitched — the most powerful investors in technology. None of them have ever charged me a dime for doing so.
Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE RICH!

It’s low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time. Seriously, what is the cost to the party hearing the pitch? If you answered “nothing” or “the cost of two cups of coffee” you win the prize!

Originally posted on October 10, 2009 @ 10:04 pm