Has Scots web t ycoon sold site for £38m in ‘fire sale’?
THREE years ago, he was being tipped as a billionaire-in-waiting.
But now it seems one of Scotland’s greatest tech success stories will have to make do with being a mere multi-millionaire.
As a teenager, Pete Cashmore founded the Mashable blog in his Aberdeenshire bedroom in 2005, going on to become one of the most influential figures on the web.
In 2014 – as US news giant CNN was rumoured to be considering a takeover bid of $200million (£120million) – Mr Cashmore was given the nod by Forbes magazine on its hotlist of young media ‘billionaires-to-be’.
Described as the ‘planet’s sexiest geek’, playboy Cashmore split his time between New York and his family home in Banchory, where his site was founded.
In January, he announced his engagement to girlfriend Kimmy Huynh on a yacht off the Florida Keys and at the height of its success Mr Cashmore’s site had more than 20 million readers every month.
But in recent years there have been rumours of tumult inside Mashable, with an exodus of top executives and a layoff of 30 employees.
Only last year Mashable was valued at $250million (£189million) even as it suffered a $10million (£7.5million) net loss.
But earlier this year the company was reported to be hoping to raise additional funding as it apparently ran low on cash.
Now the firm is said to have been sold for the relatively bargain basement price of $50million
‘My replacement education’
(£38million) – 20 per cent of the company’s valuation last year.
The sum is not to be sniffed at, but experts have described the price of the digital news site once ranked among Facebook, Google and Twitter as a ‘huge discount’ and a ‘fire sale price’.
According to the Wall Street Journal a deal has been sealed to sell Mashable to tech, gaming and healthcare publisher Ziff Davis, which already owns media brands PCMag, IGN and Computer Shopper.
The push to sell Mashable has come after the firm changed its focus from written articles to video content in search of higher advertising revenue.
The move, popularly described as a ‘pivot to video’ by business insiders, has been a popular one among similar news sites.
But as Google, YouTube and Facebook absorb most advertising revenue many companies have struggled to make the pivot to video completely successful.
At the same time investors are pressuring businesses for the huge payouts promised.
Describing his path to success in a 2012 interview Mr Cashmore said: ‘When I was 13 I had an appendectomy and for whatever reason it didn’t go too well and I didn’t really recover.
‘So I was out for quite a few years trying to rest up, get better. And I missed school a lot, so I was kind of out of sync with my friends.
‘So I started going my own way, using computers. Blogs were springing up so I subscribed to as many blogs as I could, read everything I could and it kind of became my replacement education in a way.’
Mashable did not respond to a requests for comment last night.
A spokesman for j2 Global, which owns Ziff Davis, said: ‘We do not comment on mergers and acquisition rumours or speculation in the market.’