Mitra's an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant who's started three companies, sold two of them, and refused a deal with Ralph Lauren for the third company. She's advised and consulted over 80 companies, from SAP, to Cadence Design Systems, and Webex, and many more.
Sramana Mitra's not afraid of giving advise, and candidly, this blogger should add from personal experience. She doesn't see the TechCrunch deal as a reason VCs should jump in and start investing in blogs. In her blog post she says and has said:
I am personally not in favor of venture funding for blogs, since they are essentially small businesses, not venture scale enterprises. The only way to build an “enterprise” out of this business model is to put a lot of successful blogs under one banner. So, if GigaOm, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, paidContent, etc. could come together as a “network”, that could, conceivably, build critical mass. They would still need to graft more properties, but the only way I see in which venture-style “bulk” can be built in this niche of the media business is through a roll-up.
Mitra observes that with TechCrunch under AOL's wing, CEO Heather Harde, a mergers and acquisition specialist, now has enough resources to launch a roll-up strategy (where they get other online media platforms) that could see the new division of AOL eventually taking in $50 million. And, as this blogger has stated, the next round of activity is in acquisition of blogs looking for an exit.
While $10 million to @20 million may not be a VC level exit, there are a number of angel investors that would not look down on such deals.
Keep an eye on this new phase in the blog industry.
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