Money Blogs

Paul Edmondson, 33, landed $2 million for his company after responding to a blog post by Will Price, a managing director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Edmondson, the CEO and co-founder of Hubpages, an ad-optimization and online publishing company,  learned through Price’s blog that Hummer Winblad targets early stage software companies in its region. Since that description fit San Francisco-based Hubpages, Edmondson shot Price a quick e-mail, introducing himself and asking if Price might be willing to hear a pitch.

"Will wrote back to me in seconds," says Edmondson. "You always hear you need an introduction, but you don’t." Within 10 days of that initial e-mail, executives at Hubpages met with Price, then with Hummer Winblad’s full team, and signed a funding deal. Hubpages projects 2008 sales of more than $1 million.

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Early stage funders are more active bloggers than later-stage funders, says Price, as early funders need to search widely to find promising emerging companies. "We want to see as many ideas as we can," he says.

Sometimes, a VC discovers a company via the company’s blog, rather than the other way around. Case in point: Brad Feld, a blogger and managing director of Mobius Venture in Boulder, Colorado, tried out a tool from online-feed manager FeedBurner on his blog, Feld Thoughts, after a fellow VC blogger recommended the service. Feld liked FeedBurner’s offering and contacted the company with feedback. Then he asked to meet the team, says FeedBurner’s co-founder and former CEO, Dick Costolo, 44. Mobius ended up leading a $7 million funding round for FeedBurner in 2005. That funding helped FeedBurner grow until it was acquired by Google last May for an undisclosed sum.