Henry Blodget is the co-founder, CEO, and Editorial Director of Insider, Inc, an American online media company known for publishing the financial news website Business Insider and other news and media websites.
Early life and education
Henry McKelvey Blodget was born in 1966 and grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Blodget attended Phillips Exeter Academy and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Yale University, where he was a member of Bacchus and The Society of Orpheus. Blodget taught English in Japan after college and then moved to San Francisco to try to be a writer while supporting himself by providing tennis lessons. Blodget was also a freelance journalist and a proofreader for Harper’s Magazine.
Early career
In 1994, Blodget entered the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities and moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research after two years. In October 1998, Blodget predicted that Amazon, then trading at $240, would surpass $400 in trading within a year. The thought was very doubtful by many traders at the time; however, three weeks later, Amazon’s stock exceeded that mark with a 128% gain.
This call gained significant media attention. Blodget accepted a position at Merrill Lynch two months later and regularly appeared on CNBC and other similar programs. In early 2000, Blodget personally invested in tech stocks for $ 700,000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, only to lose most of it in the years that followed. In 2001, Blodget left Merrill Lynch after accepted a buyout offer from the firm.
In August 2003, Blodget served as CEO of Cherry Hill Research, a research and consulting firm, and contributed to Slate, The New York Times, Newsweek International, Forbes Online, Fortune, Business 2.0, Euromoney, Financial Times, New York, The and other publications. In June 2007, Blodget left the company.
Business Insider
In 2007, Henry Blodget launched Business Insider as CEO, along with DoubleClick’s former CEO Kevin P. Ryan and Dwight Merriman. Business Insider is the publication is a brand of Silicon Alley Insider that began on May 16, 2007, and Clusterstock started on March 20, 2008. Business Insider runs international editions in Australia, China, Germany, France, South Africa, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Northern Europe, Poland, Singapore, Spain, and the UK. Many International editions are published in local languages: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Polish.
In addition to producing and analyzing business news, the site aggregates news stories on different subjects from around the web. In the 4th quarter of 2010, Business Insider recorded a profit for the first time and had 5.4 million visitors in June 2012. Axel Springer SE acquired 88% of Business Insider’s stake for $343 million in 2015.
Business Insider also hosted in industry conferences, such as IGNITION, which searches the emerging business models of digital media. In January 2015, Business Insider launched a subscription-based research service called BI Intelligence that offers data and analysis on the mobile, eCommerce, payments, and social and digital media industries. The site publishes various annual editorial franchises, such as the “Digital 100: The World’s Most Valuable Private Tech Companies.”
In July 2015, Business Insider launched Tech Insider, with 40 staff working primarily from the company’s existing New York headquarters, but initially separated from the main Business Insider newsroom. However, Tech Insider was eventually closed into the Business Insider website. In January 2017, Business Insider announced a partnership with Ringier Africa Digital Publishing to start a new Sub-Saharan site.
Funding rounds
In July 2008, Business Insider raised $900,000 in a seed funding at $6 million post-money valuation from investors, including Allen Morgan, Roger Ehrenberg, and Kohlberg Ventures. In May 2009, Business Insider raised $2.7 million in a Series B round from investors Matthew Luckett, Marc Andreessen, and Allen & Company.
In July 2010, Business Insider raised $3 million in a Series D round from Kohlberg Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Allen & Company, RRE Ventures, Pilot Group, and Matthew Luckett. In September 2011, Business Insider secured $7 million in a venture round, led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), with the participation from existing investors, such as RRE Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Allen & Company. New investor HuffPost also joined the round.
In April 2013, Business Insider raised $5 million in another venture round, led by Bezos Expeditions, with the participation from RRE Ventures and IVP. In March 2014, Business Insider raised $12 million from existing investors, such as RRE Ventures, Jeff Bezos, and IVP. New Investor Gordon Crovitz has also joined this round. In January 2015, Business Insider raised $25 million from its lead investor Axel Springer Digital Ventures, with the participation from Jeff Bezos and Employee Stock Option Fund (ESO Fund).
Business Insider has raised a total of $55.6 million in its seven rounds of funding and backed by 15 investors. Business Insider has $18.1 million in estimated revenue annually. Business Insider competes with Mashable, TechCrunch, and BuzzFeed.
Reception
In January 2009, the Silicon Alley Insider section was listed as “Our Favorite Blogs 2009” in PC Magazine and the Clusterstock section appeared as “Best 25 Financial Blogs,” in Time. Business Insider’s selection was recognized for Best Business Blog as an official Webby honoree in 2009 and to the Inc. 500 in 2012.
In 2013, the publication was nominated again in the Blog-Business category at the Webby Awards. In January 2014, The New York Times reported that Business Insider’s web traffic was similar to that of The Wall Street Journal. In 2017, Digiday included imprint Insider as a nominee in two separate categories–”Best Use of Instagram” and “Best New Vertical” at their annual Publishing Awards.