Matt Marshall, former staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal and venture capital beat reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, has landed $320K in seed funding from angel investors including early Google employee George Harik. (Harik is investing in several new media ventures including a recent investment in Vator.tv.)
Matt launched VentureBeat back in 2006, bootstrapping it himself and gradually adding contributors. Combining journalistic skills and deep contacts in the Silicon Valley venture capital world, he has built a must visit blog for news about venture funding.
Matt says he’s been in the black since the beginning. And, it looks like he has a good partner in Federated Media, which is selling advertising for the site.
Apparently, journalism runs in the family. His father Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter recently retired from the Los Angeles Times.
Matt worked for the Journal in Europe covering monetary policy and the European central banks. He’s the author of the Bank, a chronicle of the emergence of the European Central Bank.
With mainstream media in transition, it’s great to see seasoned journalists like Om Malik, Rafat Ali, Peter Rojas and Matt making successful independent media concerns.
— Andy Plesser
