Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested $50m in Hearst and Softbank-backed media website Buzzfeed, according to a post yesterday on the blog of Chris Dixon, a general partner for the firm.
Buzzfeed is best known for its lists and quizzes, which utilise memes, fun content or social commentary in an article format meant to increase sharing across social media. It has also begun to delve into serious news and politics reporting. The website has a readership of over 150 million each month.
Reports in June suggested Buzzfeed was in talks to raise $200m in series E funding at a $1bn valuation. Rumours also circulated in April that entertainment company Walt Disney had been interested in acquiring the website, only to balk at Buzzfeed’s insistence on a billion-dollar valuation.
“Many of today’s great media companies were built on top of emerging technologies,” Dixon said, citing Time (colour printing), CBS (radio) and Viacom (cable TV).
Buzzfeed, he stated, started out with memes, lists and silly photos, which led upmarket rivals – almost everyone – to dismiss it, but is now moving into wider topic areas and “plans to invest significantly more in high-quality content in the coming years”.
Dixon, who claimed to be an early investor in Buzzfeed, described it as a ‘full-stack start-up’, in other words a company pioneering a business model that disrupts older ones, in the same way Tesla has done for the automotive industry or Netflix for movie streaming.
Buzzfeed has now raised more than $96m from backers including the corporate venturing funds owned by telecommunications firm Softbank and media company Hearst, as well as New Enterprise Associates, Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, SV Angel and Founder Collective.