Kudos to Brian and Jason

I’ve known Jason Calacanis since early 1996 and have watched him build a number of businesses only to come up mostly empty. 

Jason is controversial, scrappy, and not universally loved to say it nicely.  But I have always been impressed with two things about Jason; his intensity and his instincts.  They are both essential traits of the successful entrepreneur.

So the news that Weblogs Inc has been sold to AOL was music to my ears.  Jason and his partner Brian Alvey deserve kudos for building something valuable and important in the blogging world.

Engadget alone is a juggernaut.

If you add Autoblog, Blogging Baby, etc, you get a mini empire and that is what AOL bought.

The rumored prices are anywhere from $20mm to $35mm with a very healthy earnout component, which is fair and smart on AOL’s part.

I wrote a blog post back in June where I said that Weblogs Inc and the other major player in this blogging network model, Gawker, were going to be very valuable properties pretty soon. 

$30mm isn’t close to the $410mm that New York Times paid for About.com, but Weblogs does’t have About’s reach or revenues.  But its getting there and the rumored price of $30mm is recognition of the kind of value these lightweight adsense supported businesses can create.

Well done guys!

#VC & Technology