Well, this is what happens when you break news about your competitors getting acquired by AOL (s aol). They get back at you by revealing news that you raised additional venture dollars while you are fast asleep. I was planning to write about the fact that we received a fresh $2.5 million injection from True Ventures (see disclosure below) and Alloy Ventures on Monday. Oh, well! By now you must be wondering what the new money is for. No, it is not for acquiring smaller blogs. Instead, it’s about the future.
Let me explain: Our traditional businesses — ad-supported blogs and our events (which include Structure and upcoming NewTeeVee Live) are humming along nicely. We have five events and over 4 million monthly unique visitors across GigaOM. Even through the 2008 recession, we grew our business, and in 2010 — just as in 2009 — we are going to double our revenues.
Paid Content, Yeah We Got That
We are much more than just a collection of blogs. Over a year ago, we launched our research service, GigaOM Pro. We started this paid subscription service at a time when most of the big media companies were merely toying with the idea. When we started Pro, it was clear to me that we didn’t want to compete with existing research firms. They do an admirable job, and frankly, as a disruptor, we needed to do something different.
[inline-pro-content] But unlike some of the larger media companies, we didn’t want to charge for our existing offerings, aka our blogs. That just doesn’t make sense. From that, GigaOM Pro was born. We didn’t know how successful it was going to be. Fast-forward to today, and the growth and success of GigaOM Pro has surprised us. We have over 10,000 subscribers on the platform and are growing fast. The biggest success of GigaOM Pro has been with the large corporate customers. From Silicon Valley giants to the fast-growing upstarts, many are turning to GigaOM Pro.
Welcome Skip Hilton, Leader of GigaOM Pro
A year after we launched the service, an authority none other than Gideon Gartner (yup, you read that right) gave GigaOM Pro his blessing. So now comes the hard part: sustaining and keeping the momentum of the GigaOM Pro side of the business.
In order to do that, we are fortunate to bring on Skip Hilton, who joins us from Focus Research. His job will be to press the gas on GigaOM Pro. A graduate of Stanford Business School, Skip has oodles of experience. He has worked for JRG Software, Octel, Nuance, and Price Waterhouse in his long and storied career. I am super-excited to bring him on board.
The Technology Within
But there’s more! We’ve been building out our technology team and adding developers to helps us build the next-generation technology platforms to allow us to take content to any and every device that consumers might be using.
Most folks think of us as a blog network, but we have quietly built-up a large, custom laundry list of technology assets that could exist as standalone tools. For instance, we’ve built a dashboard that gives us near-real time view of what’s happening on our network. It allows us to constantly monitor our revenues, page views and site performance
We’ve developed a virtual content router that allows us to not only take content from our sites and make it ready for any screen: iPhone (s aapl), Android (s goog) phones and iPads. If Steve Jobs wants to throw another device at us, we’re ready for that too.
Believe it or not, we have one of the most complex WordPress.com deployments, and have made modifications to their service, which we could package up and sell as a standalone offering.
But We Are Content Guys
No, we aren’t a technology company. We are simply a company that uses technology to help us with what we do best: content. In this age of whiz-boom-bang news blurbs and re-blogging, we strive to bring our readers context-driven and timely analysis day in and day out. It is not an easy job, and when we falter, many of you personally remind me within seconds (I’m looking at you, Mark Hernandez and Ronald), and we are better for it. For that, we work incredibly hard; each one of our writers understands the need for context.
New York New York
In order to keeping our content top notch, we keep bringing top-notch people. The latest to join us is Ryan Kim, who, until recently, was a reporter for San Francisco Chronicle. He’s joined us to be our New York correspondent, and has moved to the Big Apple to cover what’s turning out to be an incredible technology renaissance in my spiritual hometown. Needless to say, we have plans for New York.
To sum it up, we’re a big company that’s over four years old, and we’re trying new ideas and new things. As we in the technology industry know, inventing the future takes time, and, yes, money.
Disclosure: Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a partner at True Ventures.
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar
Great job guys ! Good luck with future efforts. We’ll be watching carefully 🙂
Congrats, Om! Amazing news on the success of Pro.
I’ll be watching carefully, too.
thanks rahul and mark. we keep pushing.
Congrats Om! I am happy for the amazing GigaOM network team. You made some interesting revelations today apart from the announcement. Those tools you talked about (like the dashboard) sound impressive! Hope you talk a bit more about them in some of your future posts. 🙂
I will let our tech team talk about it soon.
Congratulations Mallik! You deserve it.
I hope this give you more flexibility to hire more people and bring more content to the world.
Congrats, Nag
Thank you Om for assembling such a fine crew of Journalists/Analysts.
As a Management Consultant, I do rely heavily on the GigaOM Network (Mostly GigaOM Flagship and GigaOM Pro) for news as well as in-depth analysis and forward thinking (@GigaStacy, @MichaelWolf, @KevinCTofel, @Om…)
Looking forward to meet you all at Mobilize ’11!
Thanks amigo for your constant support and appreciate the kind words. I know rest of my team is going to be happy to hear about this.
No need to apologize/explain away your new funding round. GigaOM is of the highest quality content. May not be the first, but always the best and most insightful. Keep up the great work!
thanks Peter. working on it.
Congrats, Om. Can’t believe how far you’ve come since that day we had coffee at Starbucks when you told me that same day you had started GigaOm.
Indeed. Those were simpler times.
Cool insight into the mystery company, lol. Thanks.
Oh! Mystery and me!
Congratulations Om. So you finally decided to get serious and move back out east 😉
Thanks Jay!
Great going OM !!
Wish you and Crew all the best
I still remember the days.. When MikeA wanted you to join up with TechCrunch, and were wishing that you did not as I felt you had a better and cleaner sense of busines vision. Kudo’s to you for turning the ffer down !
For along time, I have been a circa ’04..been taking your feeds.. and still do .. looking forward to you and team continuing the good works !!
..and dont stress out .. !!
/pd
thanks for being with us for so long. It is awesome to know that folks like yourself still believe. It is very humbling for me and our team.
Congrats Om and team,
Keep up the good work (and stay indie).
Thanks Robert for your support along the years.
Om and Team,
Congratulations and I am glad to see that one Tech blog I never miss reading is doing great. Gigaom is an inspiration for many others not just from the business side of things but, also, in showing how tech media should do analysis.
When you started GigaOm, I was one of the folks who was skeptical about the long term sustainability and scalability. You guys have shown the skeptics how it can be done successfully. Kudos.
Thanks Krish. Appreciate the kind words.
Well done Om and team
We gotta get you back Dan. I am sad we lost you to NYC
congrats, Om! Funny you didn’t mention this on our call yesterday. 🙂
Yo Mike,
You got some good peeps and they are good at digging news. Not that I wanted it out today!
oh, sorry. I feel terrible that you weren’t able to control your own news. 🙂
Look who’s talking 😉
Congrats, Om!
Congrats Om and team! You guys work really hard, and I’me excited for the future of GigaOm! 🙂
Congratulations.
p.s Given how much you benefit from WordPress, perhaps you could consider open sourcing your enhancements.
Congrats Om and the crew, you have guys have come a long ways and it keep getting better!
I know it will be money well-spent, and I’m looking forward to being a part of your future as a reader and a customer.
See you guys @ NewTeeVee Live!
Cheers…and well-done.
Rachel Parker
Thanks for listening.
Great news. Good luck!
Om, you were impressive when you spoke at Mesh 1 a few years back and then made another smart move when you brought Mathew Ingram over.
Though we’re not in the same space, you’re one of the few SV guys that I watch and learn from.
Continued success and I would also love to learn more about your virtual content router.
Congrats,
George The Greek
Congrats Om!
I am confident you will invest wisely.
Best,
Yuri
Thanks Yuri. and appreciate your awesome ideas as well.
Hi Team,
Just want to say a massive congratulations and excited to see the amazing things you guys will do in the future
John Lai
#LoveFromNewZealand
congratulations – now who’s covering boston?
We need to figure that out 🙂
2 thumbs up for Om!!!!!
Keep pushing on forward. Congrats!
This site is my first resource for tech and trends. As a journalist, I look for balance and insights, but most importantly, who has the story first, written most accurately.
Excellent. I’ll keep tuning in and hope that FL catches up to tech soon. I’ll share this site with clients and friends.
Wow. We have a lot to live upto. Thanks Rebekah.
It’s nice to read about an investment in a top quality product (as opposed to some others ?! 🙂 Kudos and best of luck OM (and all!). No doubt we’re looking at a piece of the future right here.
Congratulations, Om, to you and the team, especially Mike, Celeste and others who have built up GigaOm Pro. As a GigaOm Pro analyst, I’m proud to be a contributor and believe you’ve created an important new forum for insight, content and exchange. Under Surj’s leadership, the GigaOm events (especially Mobilize for me and others in the mobile space) are also among the best available. Again, great job and I look forward to continuing to collaborate.
Dr. Phil Hendrix, immr and GigaOm Pro analyst
hey i love reading post from the gigaom network
just one suggestion u should have a free subscription of gigaom pro for students or ppl who cant afford that …..
congrats once again
Congrats Om, way-to-go!
Congrats Om! Great news and excited to see where things head from here…
Best of luck and talk soon!
Great job. Will be keeping an eye on your progress. All the best.
Congrats Om! Thanks for continuing to put out great thoughtful content. Excited for the future.