Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Why the'Printed Blog' Failed, IMNSHO

It's not that Print is dead.

It's because the overhead was too high, too fast. Instead of trying to scale to attract investors, it might have made sense digging deep into a community of interest. Then getting enough local ads to support the costs. Use digital printing to keep the paper printing costs aligned with the revenue.

The rules of funny money is convincing a VC to buy you time to get to scale. The rules in the absence of funny money is to be profitable from day one. The amount of profit doesn't matter. If the product works it will grow. If the product grows it will earn a revenue stream. If it grows alot, the revenue stream could be substantial.

If the funny money hadn't disappeared in Q4, Printed Blog probably would still have the time to fine tune the model to get it right.
Printed Blog,' Curiosity that Piqued Newspaper Industry Interest, Folds:
"CHICAGO The future folded Tuesday. If, that is, the future of the print newspaper was indeed The Printed Blog.

In an announcement, the Printed Blog's creator and one-man financier, Joshua Karp, said the newspaper had failed to attract outside investment capital and needed to be shut down immediately.

While the Printed Blog apparently could not attract money, it definitely attracted newspaper industry interest. Before a single issue appeared, it was the subject of articles worldwide, from The New York Times to the Irish Times. With just three issues under his belt, Karp talked seriously to E&P about establishing editions in South Africa and Fairbanks, Alaska."

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