Startups For Journalists

Lisa Williams
Lisa WilliamsDirector of Revenue at Investigative News Network
Screenshot of Placeblogger




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Lisa on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/lisawilliams
      Lisa on Twitter:
       @lisawilliams



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Startups for Journalists

                    Lisa Williams
               Placeblogger.com

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But wait, I don’t want to be part
           of a startup




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Journalism will survive the death
        of its institutions




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Keep Calm & Don’t Panic




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Get Excited & Make Things




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Journalism is becoming a
   high-tech industry




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What this means for journalists




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Shorter job tenures
 Projects, not companies
Careers aren’t hierarchical
         anymore



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What it means for journalism




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Our problems are distributed
        and global

Our media is consolidated and
            local



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Penguins




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Veterans battlefield injuries




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Turn stories into signals




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Apple’s stock price




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Thinking like a startup




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How do I know if it’s a good
           idea?




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You don’t.




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What can you do
without anyone’s permission?
without anyone’s assistance?




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Learn to pitch




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Don’t do anything for free that
  you wouldn’t do for free
         indefinitely.




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Before there are companies
    there are projects




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But wait, how do they make
          money?




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They don’t.

Many venture backed companies
      are “built to flip.”


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You don’t need a lot of money

   And VC/grant money does not
      make your idea better
     or more likely to succeed

                         placeblogger
Site        Startup   Tech at     Phase 2     Phase 2       Exit/
               Capital   launch       tech      financing     Uniques
Blogher         >$10k    Movable      Drupal      NBCi,       Acquisition
                          Type                   Venrock         8M
                                                   $5M
Television      >$10k    BBforum,      MT,      Bootstrap,    Acquired by
Without Pity              Plone      Prospero   Advertisers     Bravo
                                                                  1M
TechCrunch      >10k     Wordpress   WPMU        Bootstrap,        ?
                                                    ads,          1.8
                                                conferences



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You don’t need tons of technical
             skill




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But it’s more fun if you’re more
          self-sufficient
    Because begging really sucks



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De-begify yourself
• Post content (>1 day)
   – Open Source CMS (Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla)
• Get a real URL (>1 day)
   – DNS/Domain name assignment
• Put stuff on your server (3 days)
   – FTP/SFTP/SSH
• Know what’s on your server, anyway (3 days)
   – Basic UNIX file management & command line
• Make awesome web stuff (12 weeks)
   – PHP/MySQL/PHPMyAdmin

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You don’t need to do it forever

            All movies end
       All pieces of music end
  This does not make them failures

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“Good tests kill flawed theories;
we remain alive to guess
again.”




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Thanks!

     Lisa Williams
lisa@placeblogger.com


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together we can




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Thank you!
Lisa Williams lisa@placeblogger.com

And thanks to:
Knight Foundation’s 21st Century News Challenge | newschallenge.org
Raincity Studios | raincitystudios.com
Boris Mann Francis Pilon Mark Yuasa Robert Scales Steve Krueger
Audrey Yoo Erik Hermans

Special thanks to:
The Berkman Center for the Internet and Society | Tish Grier | Susan
Mernit | Evan Williams | Andrew de Vigal | Dave Winer | Jay Rosen |
Ellen Hume | Colleen Kaman | David Cohen | Andrew Hyde | Samantha
Murphy | Amy Gahran | Meg Spohn




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