Earlier today, long-time friend Sarah Lacy launched her new site PandoDaily. As was covered in many places, I am one of the angel investors in the round Sarah raised to help start her company. In addition, I am going to join the board of parent company PandoMedia along with Michael Arrington and will be pretty actively involved in helping Sarah build her company. It is an exciting time in the web media space and Sarah is one of the most talented journalists I have known. The strength of the team she was able to bring together before even launching a site is a testament to her abilities and reputation. Her completely unsustainable output on day 1 a testament to her drive to make the site wonderful.
Thinking back to my earliest involvement with Wired magazine and then launching HotWired (amazingly, almost 20 and 18 years ago respectively), I am continually impressed with how much fun the business of media can be. Media sites make for inherently cyclical, constantly transforming businesses where you’re only as good as the last story you pushed out. The people who contribute are the ultimate product — the media are just the messages. If I’ve learned anything in my few decades of experience in media, the hard part is hitching yourself to the right star. Sarah is taking very seriously her goal of building the site of record for Silicon Valley and has the network, smarts and focus to reach that goal.
In other words, those who can launch web sites. The rest of us are happy to be involved. I’m very happy to be involved with Pando.
