Om Malik Leaves Business 2.0 to Start Own Venture

Posted on June 13, 2006

Om Malik now has his own announcenment about his decision to leave Business 2.0 and take money to expand and focus on his own site. Gawker's Valleyway beat Om to his own announcement. Om cites his rise of the micropubs pubs post as one of his reasons for venturing out on his own.

A few years ago, I wrote about the rise of the micropubs, and how that could help one or two person editorial teams to be successful building niche media properties. Paidcontent's Rafat Ali has been a pioneer of micro-pubs, and then we have Mike Arrington and Techcrunch, celebrating its first anniversary today. (Congrats, Mike!)
Their success has given me strength to make the decision to go out and try something of my own. While I will be devoting more time to GigaOM's content, I have some other ideas including developing web services that enhance the experience of my reader community. You will see these ideas unfold over a period of time, and hopefully you will enjoy them as much I would in creating them. Unlike those of you who are blessed with the smarts, I have to bring in outside help � smart engineers and code jocks. Thus, the need for some venture funding.
Perhaps, I am burying the lead (my B2 editors would say � there he goes again.) I have raised a tiny amount of money from True Ventures, a new very early stage fund based here in Silicon Valley. (The amount remains undisclosed.)

If you are considering following in Om's footsteps ABC News offers an article called Should You Quit Your Own Day Job to Blog. In the article Henry Copeland, the president of BlogAds, says that very few bloggers could afford to quit their day jobs.

"Only about 200 bloggers out of the estimated 20 million out there could actually quit their day jobs," he said.
But for would-be professional bloggers, he advised, "be diligent, develop a name brand. You don't just start making money the moment you sit down and start blogging."

Om Malik is a top blogger with an established audience and even he took an undisclosed amount of funding in order to do it. Any other bloggers considering going solo should keep this in mind.