Rafat Ali's turn to get micro-publishing venture funded

Very slow posting week ahead, at least until Gnomedex, but I have to congratulate Rafat Ali for his scoring an investment from Alan Patricof and his new firm, Greycroft Partners. PaidContent has been one of the first blogs I have started reading 3 years ago, and I have always appreciated Rafat's unique take on the world of media, old and new. Rafat offered the following comment on the (undisclosed amount of) funding he received:

ContentNext Media, the parent company of our three sites – paidContent.org, MocoNews.net and ContentSutra — has received its first round of investment from Alan Patricof’s new venture firm Greycroft Partners. [...]
Alan, as most of you know, has helped define the venture-capital industry in the U.S., having helped provide early stage financing for companies such as Apple, AOL, New York Magazine, Audible, Cellular Communications, NTL, Office Depot, Harman Intl. and more recently Zinio, Handmark and The Newsmarket. He is a co-founder of Apax Partners, a private investment firm he started in 1969 that has now evolved into one of the largest PE firms with more than $20 billion under management and advice.
Greycroft is his vehicle for going back to his roots: investing in startups at the intersection of techology and media. Alan’s team approached me in January, and when I met him in New York later that month, within 20 minutes of us talking, he instinctively got it … the issues, the challenges, the opportunities … that’s what amazed me. Out of everyone hovering around us (and I really mean everyone), this made the most sense.
Our opportunity is to take some money, organize and solidify, choose the right partners, and expand/accelerate what we’re doing. In the end, keep our heads down and keep doing what we do best: write, report, bring the industry together to discuss and help them do business…in other words, keeping it real.

It is an awesome development for Rafat, Staci Kramer and their colleagues, and I wish them the best in scaling their operation. It is also amusing that Rafat's announcement comes just a week after his close friend Om Malik disclosed his own financing of GigaOmniMedia Inc. The Wall Street Journal Online has more on the story.

[Photo credit: JD Lasica]

Tags: paidcontent