Marc Andreessen’s Burgeoning Blogging Empire: Invests In Talking Points Memo

by editor on Jul.06, 2009, under TechCrunch

More news about Marc Andreessen making venture investments this morning after the launch of his new $300 million fund, Andreessen Horowitz: he is leading a round of financing for TPM Media, better known as the TalkingPointsMemo blog.

TPM founder Josh Marshall confirmed the pending investment today by phone. The round is small, between $500k and $1 million. Andreessen is leading the round and a number of other angel investors are participating as well.

This comes just a little over a month after Andreessen invested in another blog network, Alley Insider. He clearly likes the format. Both the Alley Insider and Talking Points Memo investments are being done personally by Andreessen, not through the new venture fund.

This is the first outside funding for TPM, which was founded by Marshall in 2000 after the presidential election recounts. In the past Marshall has funded TPM via advertising and three reader fundraising events, each of which raised “tens of thousands of dollars,” he says. The company is profitable and has 11 full time employees.

The TPM network of blogs has 1.5 million unique monthly visitors and 15 million page views according to Google Analytics, says Marshall.

The site has been highly praised, particularly for their 2007 coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys. That coverage got TPM a George Polk Award for excellent journalism.

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