Buzzfeed is Planning to Go Public in 2018: I’m Definitely Not a Buyer Yet

Considering I’ve been in the website business since 2007 and have seen just about everything you could possibly see in the rise of digital properties, I guess you could say I’m “proud” of this news.  While it would be much cooler to say that Uncoached Corp (the parent company of this site) is going public, I’m pretty impressed that Buzzfeed is going public.  The company launched way back in 2006 and became famous for its “list” format populating it’s pages with “20 Things you didn’t Know about…..” content.   It’s public offering effectively means that investors are finally beginning to see real value in digital properties.

After it’s start rooted in cat content, Buzz Feed eventually became dominant on social media, began publishing video, hired more staff, and kept expanding to the point where it’s one of the most dominant digital destinations online.  My only concern as someone in this business is their numbers.  Making money off of a website is incredibly difficult when you have a big staff.  Margins are paper thin and 90% of the time you’re continuing expansion to boost up your valuation for an eventual sale even though you were never technically profitable.

I would need to see Buzzfeed’s numbers because they’re a huge operation. Remember that in 2015 their revenue failed to meet expectations and they slashed their 2016 estimates.  While the company touts a $1 Billion valuation there’s still a ton to prove and frankly I wouldn’t be an investor until I saw proof that they were more than just “big online.”  Here’s the full release from Axios:

With a blinding spotlight on Snap’s IPO, viral powerhouse BuzzFeed is quietly making preparations to go public in 2018, industry sources tell me. OMG!

The widely (and poorly) copied BuzzFeed, which began as a “great cat site” and now has foreign correspondents and a massive BuzzFeed Motion Pictures studio in L.A., mastered the art of sharable content and became a defining brand of the Internet age.