I was half-right,
When I was at Paid Content’s Economics of Social Media conference in LA in late April, I realized Gorilla Nation Media was working with Paid Content sponsor DeSilva and Philips Jordan Edmiston to raise some money, or sell the company.
Having worked with GNM founders Brian Fitzgerald and Aaron Broder, I knew it was the former, and not latter. These guys would not be content with a modest sale, they were aiming for the fences.
Brian and Aaron are ambitious and aggressive guys. The two are former LA-based lawyers who started a site called CelebrityBlvd.com to manage web presences for stars. Yes, sort of like a MySpace before online was kicking and booming.
“We were horrible at content,” Broder told me when I first spoke to him in 2003 or so. At the time I was the VP of Sales for a men’s online publisher, and Broder had just cold-called me trying to win over our ad inventory. GNM was in the business of repping websites, but soon afterwards branched off into many other things.
Broder, it turned out, had given up on the idea of managing online presences for stars in lieu of repping websites to advertisers and ad agencies. Between 2003 and 2005, Broder and his partner Fitzgerald were one of the many ad reps we worked with to generate revenues for our site. Throughout that period, I outsold the ad reps we worked with 75-25%, but I could tell that their firm, Gorilla Nation Media was printing money.
The duo were adding headcount, publishers they repped and even though they did little to meet our expectations (partially because I was doing a better job, in all honesty/fairness), I could tell they were building a massive business.
Over the years, they were launching and or buying websites, selling them, as they did with Quizilla to Viacom.
Today they announced a whopping $50M financing round with a PE fund. I saw this on Paid Content, and while the post did not say that DeSilva and Philips was involved, I just know that they were - or rather, have a gut feeling that they were - based on a few conversations I overheard and was involved in.
Today, this gut was confirmed because Paid Content broke the news in an exclusive, and of course DeSilva and Philips is a marquee sponsor on Paid Content. Of course, so is Jordan Edmiston.
Coincidence I think not.
In all honesty, I thought of writing a post called “Is DeSilva and Philips Raising a Boatload for GNM” upon my return but knowing where to draw the line between executive and reporter, I put the kibosh on that post. To the readers of this blog, I guess I apologize but please understand my position: I get some good scoops as an executive, and having no filter will invariably mean I’ll be cut out of those circles.
UPDATE: it would have been interesting, since GNM worked with Jordan Edmiston, also a PC sponsor.
Point is, props to GNM and Jordan Edmiston for this deal, and I guess, to Paid Content for the exclusive.
Does GNM need all of this money? No.
But much the same way they realized that ad repping was limiting their potential and launched sites and developed technology, they realized that they can raise some money and aggregate a lot more value in terms of media properties and tech applications and sell for hundreds of millions down the road.
In fact, something tells me the timing is not a coincidence, considering that WPP bought 24/7 Real Media for $649M and critics (us included) calling for MSFT to buy content sites, and not marketing enablers… something tells me GNM is one of those companies - like our own Mojo Supreme on a much smaller scale since we’re born in January 2006 - that presents a helluvan acquisition by a larger company.
Anyway, I could write a lot more, trust me, but the bottom line is that this deal, the timing thereof and everything is a testament to how shrewd and sharp Brian and Aaron are.
Congrats on this deal and looking forward to reporting on the company in the future.
For more on the deal, check out - where else - Paid Content.
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May 17th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Ash
when you spout on something about us, drop me a damn e-mail before you speculate about the world…you know i am online most of the time. your speculation about somehow us being connected is ridiculous, and unfair. both the banks are our sponsors, yes, and no, GNM going with us on breaking a story has NOTHING to do with that. i am not even sure which bank helped them, and we don’t disclose banks in any of the deals stories that we do, as an editorial rule, as our focus is the content companies, not the banks involved. the founders e-mailed me yesterday asking if would we like to do the story, i passed onto david, he did the interview, and we broke it. simple. nothing more, nothing less.