Michael Moritz did billions with Google and Paypal. Now, it’s betting on news
Many Silicon Valley billionaires have recently released a critical look. Michael Moritz, the risk capitalist who made billions when betting early on companies like Google and Paypal, is adopting the opposite approach.
Moritz said in an interview over the weekend that, a local news company he co -founded, was buying Charter, a digital publication focused on the future of the work, to expand his focus. Kevin Delaney, one of Charter’s founders, will be the chief editor of both publications.
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Moritz, 70, who has been a resident of San Francisco for four decades, said he decided to start Standard because “he could no longer find out what was happening in San Francisco” due to the “erosion of all local news vehicles.”
“I think news and information in any city is as vital as water, electricity and gas,” said Moritz, former boss of Time’s São Francisco office covering Silicon Valley.
The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The San Francisco Standard may seem an unlikely suitor for Charter, who has a global focus. But Delaney said in an interview that the two companies will seek to collaborate on major reports, such as the explosion of artificial intelligence, their impact on technology industry, and changes in the way state -of -the -art companies are managed – stories that have roots in San Francisco.
“California is the fourth largest economy in the world itself,” said Delaney. “Having a deep and ambitious journalistic agenda and a strong writing is really interesting and significant.”
It was an almost fatal car collision that united the two companies. Griffin Gaffney, CEO and co-founder of The San Francisco Standard, had been looking for a chief editor for months when he was run over by a car while riding a bike. He fractured the skull and lost several teeth. This almost fatal experience, he said, boosted him to renew the search more intensely.
“When I was still in the hospital, I spoke to them all again and said, ‘I almost died. So if you want this job, now it’s time to tell me,’” said Gaffney. He quickly focused on Delaney, the most promising candidate.
After Moritz and Gaffney met with Delaney at the Union Square Cafe in New York this spring, the conversations turned to the acquisition of Charter. The startup, which has about 10 employees, raised $ 4 million investors including FT Ventures, Bloomberg Beta and Lessin Media.
Since it started in 2021, it has been impacted by a competitive local news environment. He has played exclusively with the much larger, which this year was a finalist of two Pulitzer awards, and SF Gate, which attracts about 27 million readers per month. Unlike its competitors, Standard is not yet profitable. But the company is private, and Moritz and Gaffney refused to detail their finances.
Standard has invested heavily to impact. The company has about 60 employees, said Gaffney. Some are very sought after local journalists who charge a high value for their work, such as Tim Kawakami, who previously worked on covering Bay Area sports. (The Athletic is the property of The New York Times.)
Standard journalists published investigations into the administration of London Breed, former mayor of the city, and caused repercussion with spicy stories, such as one that documented the prevalence of sex in autonomous taxis.
Like other silicon Valley publications, Standard operates in a frequently critical environment to traditional news media. Moritz said that the demonization of journalism by politicians and his technology billionaires was “poisonous” and called their tendency automatically disregarding reliable news of “autocratic” and “corrosive.”
“Every fiber of my being is totally against these things,” said Moritz.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
