Jan 28th 2014, 20:21, by Alex Wilhelm
According to a report by Recode, the popular blogging platform Medium has closed a $25 million round of funding led by Greylock, with participation from Google Ventures and several individual investors including Chris Sacca.
This meshes with TechCrunch’s earlier reporting that Medium was looking to raise around $20 million. We also reported at the time that Greylock was a leading contender in the race to fund Medium. Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams is a co-founder of Medium.
With $25 million in cash, Medium will have all the capital it could want to expand its content strategy and strengthen its technological underpinnings. The service is known for its clean design, and open doors to those looking for a platform to write. It’s the thinking person’s Thought Catalog, in a way.
Medium faces competition. Blogging platform Svbtle today announced that it is now open for all, meaning that the formerly closed club has taken down the red line and invited the masses in. With this move, Svbtle could pull writers from Medium, which would stall its growth.
Presumably a chunk of its new cash is earmarked for editorial efforts. Whether Medium will expand the number of writers that it pays, or perhaps boost its copy oversight staff are reasonable guesses as to what it might do. Regardless, if there is a business model for companies like Medium, the company now has the capital to prove it.
Famous founders or not, Medium remains a nascent project, if now a very richly funded nascent project. How it intends to monetize isn’t clear, and how much attention it might have attracted from investors sans the name brand of its founding duo is an interesting line of thought.
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