I’d say success is equal or a function of vision, ambition, execution, luck and timing… Nick Denton’s says timing’s got a lot to do with it. Read more here via Valleywag:
A British-born Financial Times beat reporter sent to cover Silicon Valley during the dotcom boom, Denton reinvented himself as a technology entrepreneur. He sold a dotcom events business, First Tuesday, in a luckily timed deal as the bubble was bursting. He briefly entangled himself in an online newsfeeds venture called iSyndicate before starting a direct competitor, Moreover (that’s “more OH ver,” you Yanks.) But he quit as CEO years before VeriSign bought the company. He’s the first to admit that his success is more from good timing than hard work.
Interesting.
Nick Denton - journalist, author, publisher, entrepreneur, event promoter - has consistently rewritten the rules of publishing while adhering to the most important values in journalism. As blogging becomes more commonplace, influential and important, the line between blogging and publishing becomes quite blurry, but wherever that line sits, Denton is pushing it relentlessly.
Today Valleywag - a Gawker Media blog - published a memo from Gawker Media management about the new bonus system being introduced by Denton to drive traffic and ideally, boost quality of the sites’ content in an increasingly cluttered and noisy blogosphere and publishing landscape which is seeing bloggers become publishers and traditional publishers become blogging empires.
Frankly, I just got back from a trip and a two-hour drive in a blizzard to give the concept and premise itself much thought, yet, but by having Valleywag break the story on a company initiative, Denton is beating would-be critics to the punch (if there would be any) and ensuring that the link mojo and traffic filters to his empire. That is one example of Denton’s savvy and one-finger-salute to the establishment (whichever one) that would have a comment on the practice. You can imagine other bloggers take notice, and traditional publishers’ journalists shake in their boots at the mere concept of a performance-based compensation system.
Denton has consistently said that Gawker Media is unsellable, which only adds to the hype and aura of his empire. I fully think that Denton turns away calls from investment bankers and private equity firms day in, day out… long-term, I don’t doubt that Gawker could fetch quite a tidy sum in a sale, but in Gawker Media, Nick Denton might have built the Conde Nast or Hearst of the 21st century, with little or no outside capital.
More power to him for that.
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