Mashable Business Success Story

Founded in 2005, Mashable is a news and entertainment website. But the company has struggled with a financial predicament, a lack of editorial focus, and a unique identity. It also hasn’t been able to diversify its revenue away from the ad market.

Pete Cashmore spent 20 hours per day writing articles to keep up his pace

Founder of Mashable, a social-networking news site, Pete Cashmore was an unknown blogger in a rural Scottish town, but his career path would change dramatically. In just two years, Cashmore would become one of the richest online entrepreneurs in the world. He is currently worth $95 million. His company has been ranked as one of the top influential media publications by the White House.

Cashmore is a self-described Millennial entrepreneur. He grew up in Scotland and did not attend college. He was inspired by the internet to start a blog. He started writing about social media sites and technology. He also started raising money to build freshwater wells in Africa. But he never told his parents about his blog. He used an alias to submit writing to publications.

Lack of editorial focus and unique identity

Founded by 19-year-old Scot Pete Cashmore in 2005, Mashable was an online blog dedicated to tech and social media. The site gained a following over time. The site was not meant to become a media empire.

Mashable was a scrappy startup. It was all but dependent on advertising revenue. Although the company has since grown into a profitable enterprise, it had to deal with the downsides of scale. One problem was that Mashable didn’t have enough financial controls. Luckily, Facebook offered the company some help. By the end of the year, Mashable had grown its revenue by 36 percent to $42 million.

Although Mashable did a lot of things well, it didn’t do them all. The most important attribution went to Mashable’s CEO, Scot Cashmore, who was not as open about his company’s financials as other digital media CEOs.

Financial predicament

Earlier this year, Mashable was sold to Ziff Davis for $50 million. Ziff Davis executives hope to increase search traffic by writing longer stories and improving page-level authority. They also plan to integrate Mashable employees into other teams.

Mashable grew revenue by 36 percent to $42 million last year. However, it lost $1 million in August and $1 million in September. Mashable’s rent is high in New York and Singapore. Despite that, Mashable’s management believes that the sale of the company was a good financial decision. The sale price was below the one-time value that CNN offered in 2012.

Mashable lost its unique identity when it shifted its editorial focus away from news to social media and internet memes. The company had three groups that produced videos. But its videos weren’t very audience-friendly. They mainly competed with other videos for attention in Facebook’s newsfeed.