8020 Media hoped to revolutionize the magazine business. Instead, it has circled down the drain, ending up in the hands of shadowy investors after a new CEO with a Condé Nast résumé looted the startup.
Street fashion always gets a nod in mainstream style magazines. But can it fill up an entire issue, month after month after month — and deliver the kind of returns venture capitalists expect? That's an experiment underway at 8020 Publishing, a San Francisco-based startup which publishes print magazines based on the contributions of Internet users. 8020's creative director, Mimi Dutta, recently sent around a note advertising jobs at the new fashion magazine. The company is backed by CNET founder Halsey Minor, but has struggled to expand from its original JPG title, a photography magazine created by the husband-and-wife team of Derek Powazek and Heather Champ and bought by 8020. In August, Everywhere, 8020's travel title, folded after only four issues. Travel seemed like a natural category to attract advertisers, and some involved with the project wondered whether it was given enough time to succeed. Adding to the project's costs, Everywhere's website was built with different technology than JPG's. And then there's 8020's management uproar.Paul Cloutier, the company's former CEO, has also left the company. Minor is famously erratic and distracted by his art collection and real-estate holdings. And 8020's current CEO, ex-Condé Nast executive Mitch Fox, commutes to the job from Long Island, despite telling the New York Post in March he'd be relocating immediately. For anyone brave enough to walk into the middle of this, here's Dutta's note about the jobs:
Remember the ihate.vc website created by Jason DeFillippo, CTO at magazine startup 8020 Publishing? The site, until this morning, displayed a big middle finger directed at venture capitalists, an ill-advised gesture for an executive at a capital-starved startup. DeFillippo has now redirected ihate.vc to a definition for "sense of humor." We assume he was hoping to have his boss, Paul Cloutier, 8020's controlling and devious CEO, look the term up. Good luck with that, Jason.
Venture capitalists are always running around prattling about how they "love entrepreneurs." Alas, lovelorn moneybags, it seems the feeling is not requited. Jason DeFillippo, the CTO of 8020 Publishing, a user-generated magazine publishing startup, has registered the domain name "ihate.vc" and posted the above mash note to investors. I can't imagine this bodes well for 8020's future fundraising efforts. (Screenshot from ihate.vc)
