At the F.ounders conference, Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer announced that the JackThreads iPhone application is responsible for about 45% of their overall revenue. Lerer revealed this number to indicate that companies must adapt to a mobile-centric world. The company switched over to a mobile-first strategy in the past few months.
Lerer Ventures is a seed stage venture capital company that is based in New York City. The company is raising a $30 million fund according to a Form D. This is the third fun in the venture capital firm’s history. This fund is higher than Lerer’s second $25 million fund, which they raised in May 2011.
GeekChicDaily is an e-mail newsletter that is aimed at people interested in movies and action figures. GeekChicDaily has raised $1.5 million in funding from Joe Roth, Mike Slade, Mark Surfas, Kathy Vrabeck, Allen DeBevoise, Bob Pittman, and Andrew Russell. Ben Lerer, the CEO and co-founder of Thrillist is also joining the board of directors at GeekChicDaily. GeekChicDaily was co-founded by Peter Y. Levin and Gareb Shamus in October 2009. GeekChicDaily is sending out about 1 million e-mails per week.
4chan founder Christopher Poole (known as Moot) is joining Lerer Ventures, a New York City seed funding company started by Ken Lerer and Ben Lerer. He is not a formal partner, but he was be instrumental in greenlighting certain deals. Other advisors include Eric Hippeau (Huffington Post CEO) and Jonah Peretti (Buzzfeed CEO).
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Thrillist.com is a website that recommends local events and restaurants through an e-mail list for big cities. The editions of the newsletters includes cities such as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and the rest of the nation.
Thrillist has built up such a premium brand name that they are now selling CPM ads at a rate of about $275. Their newsletters reach about 1 million people. The advertisements are videos through a partnership with Goodmail.
Above is a screenshot of their first advertisement with that rate. Canon is ponying up the $275 CPM rate and Thrillist is expecting to make about $5-$10 million this year in revenue. Anyone that thinks there isn’t a huge market in making money from blogging stands corrected. Thrillist was founded by Ben Lerer.
[via BusinessInsider]
