Content plays; bad investment?

August 22, 2006 By

Don Dodge doesn’t understand why anyone would invest $5 million in a blogger.

Here’s a question for Don: would you have invested $5 million in Howard Stern? How about Oprah Winfrey? Martha Stewart? Rush Limbaugh? Jon Stewart? Back when those five people were nobodies?

I would have. Oprah alone is worth more than a billion. Not too shabby of a return. Don’t think any bloggers could become worth that much?

Well, I remember when Rush Limbaugh was a ”nobody” only on one radio station in Sacramento, CA.

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  • http://www.dealarchitect.typepad.com vinnie mirchandani

    Robert, not my excuse – what I hear from investors about people/knowledge investments..

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    Vinnie: true, but I know of more investments coming in content networks. It’s one of the things I’ll be judged on (building a network).

  • http://divedi.blogspot.com/ Dimitar Vesselinov

    Huffington Post is the new New York Times and GigaOM is the new CNET News.

  • http://divedi.blogspot.com/ Dimitar Vesselinov

    Huffington Post is the new New York Times and GigaOM is the new CNET News.

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  • LayZ

    Good Grief, Scoble, you are asking people to be clairvoyant. You are citing examples of what are now well known brands. For every one you cite, there are hundreds that would have been failed investements. I mean, by the same token you could ask if people would have invested in Tom Snyder, Dick Cavett, Pat Sajack. At one time the Spice Girls looked like a no brainer investment. And I’m old enough to remember “The Knack” being touted as the next Beatles. That would have been a great investment. Your arguments make no sense as they are all based on 20/20 hindsight.

    BTW, how’s that investment in Amanda Conger working out? Anyone heard from her lately?

  • LayZ

    Good Grief, Scoble, you are asking people to be clairvoyant. You are citing examples of what are now well known brands. For every one you cite, there are hundreds that would have been failed investements. I mean, by the same token you could ask if people would have invested in Tom Snyder, Dick Cavett, Pat Sajack. At one time the Spice Girls looked like a no brainer investment. And I’m old enough to remember “The Knack” being touted as the next Beatles. That would have been a great investment. Your arguments make no sense as they are all based on 20/20 hindsight.

    BTW, how’s that investment in Amanda Conger working out? Anyone heard from her lately?

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    I never invested in Amanda Congdon. I saw her at BlogHer and have heard she’s around working on a new project, but hasn’t surfaced yet.

    As for 20/20 hindsight, well, welcome to investing! Google is a proofcase that investors can make a boatload of money. But none of them can tell you what the next Google is. Heck, even John Doerr, who was the lead investor in Google, asked me to give him a call if I thought I had the next Microsoft.

    All I was doing was showing that there’s proof cases for media developers to make a boatload of money. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    I never invested in Amanda Congdon. I saw her at BlogHer and have heard she’s around working on a new project, but hasn’t surfaced yet.

    As for 20/20 hindsight, well, welcome to investing! Google is a proofcase that investors can make a boatload of money. But none of them can tell you what the next Google is. Heck, even John Doerr, who was the lead investor in Google, asked me to give him a call if I thought I had the next Microsoft.

    All I was doing was showing that there’s proof cases for media developers to make a boatload of money. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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