“Now we’re going to talk about money”

After a Random Act of Media, the WeMedia Forum Miami dove into its Investment forum, which asked “Who will pay for new ways to understand news and act on it?”
The panel included a mixture of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs; Scott Rafer, MyBlogLog; Chris Ahearn, Reuters; Jeff Taylor, Monster and Eons; Chris Versace, Agile Equity; Brian O’Malley, Battery Ventures.

Some highlights:

– Big media companies are struggling with the new media world, but they need to let go, they need to understand they can’t control the world
– Relations between new media and old media is like that of parents/teenagers
– Venture capitalists will be open to those entrepreneurs that are product visionaries and understand their communities.
– As a blogger, you might start out doing things to follow your passion, but at the end of the day, as your traffic grows, you’ll start thinking more and more about money.
– People need to be honest about what success is for their company: some will need to accept smaller investments, but in the end they all have to remain responsible to shareholders
– Can we create an information co-op?Who’s going to be the Craigslist for news? What about co-op funding for journalism? Can we ask the audience to fund their own start-ups?
– The issue is how to meld the bottom-up and top-down models. Who will provide the tools and capabilities so that those who have brands don’t destroy them?
– We can’t just use advertising crack, hoping that people will come to a site. First the site needs to provide the users with something they need.
– Need to believe that the audience will be smart enough to distinguish between content worth paying for and content that should be free.
– Today there is a much greater pool of capital
– Make sure that if you approach a VC, you are passionate about what you’re doing
– Be cautious of big business – they tend to ‘muck up’ small, innovative start ups.