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<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><a href="http://www.duncanwolfe.com/">Duncan Wolfe</a>Jake Horowitz (L) and Chris Altchek (R) co-founded <keyword id="1767624" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="PolicyMic">PolicyMic</keyword>.</div></div>In 2011, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-altchek-policymic-2011-8">Chris Altchek left his job at Goldman Sachs</a>. He created <a href="http://www.policymic.com">PolicyMic</a>, a site that used Bleacher Report's model of hiring mostly-free contributors to produce content and applied it to politics. 
Since then, Altchek and his co-founder Jake Horowitz have raised a small family-and-friends round followed by $1.5 million from investors such as politician Condoleezza Rice and Silicon Valley big-wig Mary Meeker.
The team recently grew to 16 people but Altchek says his team reached 6 million monthly uniques with just 12 people prior to the mini hiring spree. Part of the <keyword id="6361065" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="traffic">traffic</keyword> growth came from obvious tweaks, like adding more apparent share tools to the site and expanding into other verticals, such as news and entertainment. There's also an <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/policymic.com">obvious traffic spike in March 2013</a>, when PolicyMic closed its financing round. Other less obvious factors contributed to the company's growth as well.
We asked Altchek which moves he's made over the past few years that helped his site grow the most.
"PolicyMic focused on a very specific demographic – millennials – and a specific type of content – high-quality analysis," Altchek says. "We've been able to grow traffic to over 6 million monthly uniques, which is now 1/3 social, 1/3 search, and 1/3 direct, by doing three things really well."
Here are those three things, according to Altchek:
<ol>
<li>Smart social – we've narrowed in on smart content that people still want to share. We hired a behavioral scientist from London School of Economics, <a href="mailto:liz@policymic.com">Liz Plank</a>, who's job is to study viral trends on smart topics. We track social sharing on all the top publishers on the web and draw trends that allow us to produce viral stories on important topics. A few examples include <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/48717/13-shocking-photos-of-brazilian-military-police-brutalizing-protesters-in-s-o-paulo" target="_blank">this story</a> on the protests in Turkey which has 97,341 shares, or <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/42731/10-life-lessons-from-calvin-hobbes" target="_blank">this story</a>on Calvin &amp; Hobbes with 50,011 shares, <a>this story</a> on Brazil which 71,570 shares, or <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/30626/7-reasons-this-muffin-mix-can-save-america" target="_blank">this story</a> on the American economy with 47,176 shares.</li>
<li>Mobilizing millennials – we have built our editorial team around our millennial contributors – who are the leading 20-something in their fields. Instead of writing multiple stories per day, our 12-person editorial team is focused on training writers, editing, fact-checking, and recruiting millennials with deep topic expertise. By sourcing these high quality millennial contributors, we have built out a network that produces, consumes, and distributes to have an impact on PolicyMic and across various social networks. Our contributor model has allowed to us to scale to publishing over 90 high-quality articles per day.<div class="image-container" style="width:800px"><div class="image">PolicyMic</div></div></li>
<li>Viral Engagement – while building a high-quality publishing system, we've built a community of millennials that want to have intellectual discussions on big ideas. Because of the authentic discussion happening on our platform, thought leaders have begun holding Q&amp;A by publishing on the site and responding to comments. Here are a few recent thought leaders we've hosted:<div class="image-container" style="width:800px"><div class="image">PolicyMic</div></div></li>
</ol>
Future improvements Altchek is planning to make include a site redesign, and the expansion into even more verticals this fall. 
To see how he got started, here's a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-altchek-policymic-2011-8">Q&amp;A with Altcheck shortly after he left Goldman Sachs.</a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-should-fear-28-year-old-alexa-von-tobel-2012-9"></a>

How PolicyMic, A Startup With A Handful Of Employees, Gets 6 Million People To Read It Every Month

The Learn for Life Foundation, an Australian organization, put out a shocking <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHpMUYeznQ">new ad</a> three days ago to encourage kids to stay in school.
Created by filmmakers Henry Inglis and Aaron McCann, the spot depicts four kids sneaking out of school and onto an empty beach where they have a couple beers and swim in the ocean.
Abruptly, the entire spot changes course. I don't want to ruin it so watch it for yourself:
Warning: This piece is very graphic. It is not for the faint of heart. 

Holy cow, right?
Inglis told the <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/perth-advertising-agency-henry-and-aaron-produce-awesome-weird-ad-for-staying-in-school/story-fni0xqrb-1226814102384">Herald Sun</a> that "People seem to really like it. It has that WTF factor. People online are saying things like 'What did I just watch?'"
The ad is not meant for TV.
"It's playing on those idealised commercials of people breaking free from their confines. We complete reverse that," he added.
(h/t <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/80685/this-viral-stay-in-school-ad-will-leave-you-speechless-the-creators-say-that-s-the-point">PolicyMic</a>)

This Is The Most Intense 'Stay In School' Ad You Will Ever See

Say what?
When asked about the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oxfam-report-on-85-richest-people-2014-1">recent Oxfam study</a> that revealed the world's 85 richest people have equal wealth to the 3.5 billion poorest people, Canadian businessman and Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary said "it's fantastic."
"It inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the 1% and say, 'I want to become one of those people, I'm going to fight hard to get up to the top,'" O'Leary said on Monday's episode of his business show. "This is fantastic news and of course I applaud it. What can be wrong with this?"
O'Leary left his co-anchor Amanda Lang dumbfounded. "Really?" she said after a long pause.
O'Leary essentially plays the Simon Cowell on Shark Tank, ABC's venture capital reality show. He regularly berates guests (and his co-sharks) and freely cites his wealth and business acumen. But this one still stunned us.
The video - which we first saw <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/79805/this-millionaire-investor-finds-poverty-fantastic">on PolicyMic</a> - is flat out ridiculous.

Shark Tank' Millionaire Kevin O'Leary Says Global Inequality Is 'Fantastic

<keyword id="105511" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jon-Stewart">Jon Stewart</keyword> recently interviewed Missy Cummings about the Lockheed Martin-funded PBS Nova documentary about <keyword id="94769" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="drones">drones</keyword>, and he totally whiffed.
From a PolicyMic <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/24241/drones-in-america-jon-stewart-fails-to-question-drone-expert-on-the-daily-show">post by</a> Tim McKay:
Unfortunately, the entire segment focused mainly on the non-combat and non-assassination use of drones, including theoretical commercial applications, rather than a discussion of the ethical quandaries posed by their use in warfare and targeted killings. Throughout the program, both host and guest vaguely joked about the dystopian nature of drone strikes and surveillance but failed to critique it as such.
Cummings, who actually says drones are "more accurate" without humans, is a former fighter pilot and works with MIT's Humans and Automation lab.
The documentary, recently referred to as a drone "<a href="http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/24/rise-of-the-drones-is-mostly-a-pbs-infomercial-for-the-military-defense-industry/">infomercial</a>," comes '<a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/danger-close">dangerously close</a>' to the realm of advocacy. 
<div style="padding: 4px;">

 
SEE ALSO: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-too-much-for-human-physiology-2013-1">The fighter that may be too much for US pilots to handle &gt;</a>
SEE ALSO: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/bidefense">The Military &amp; Defense Facebook page for updates &gt;</a>
</div>

Jon Stewart Bombed A Big Interview On Unmanned Drones

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Business Insider/Mike Nudelman</div></div></div>
<keyword id="1293367" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="meth">Meth</keyword> is a big problem in the <keyword id="1434112" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Midwest">Midwest</keyword>.
As PolicyMic <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-close-do-you-live-to-a-meth-lab-2013-9">points out</a>, meth really isn't a big-city problem. Most of the labs are concentrated in small cities and rural areas.
This map, created using <a href="http://www.justice.gov/dea/resource-center/meth-lab-maps.shtml">data from the Drug Enforcement Administration</a>, shows that most of America's meth lab incidents are concentrated in the Midwest and the South.
This is especially striking considering the states with the highest population in 2012 - California, Texas, and New York - had a relatively low number of meth lab incidents compared to states with fewer people.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><a href="Upon Request">Public Forum</a>Crystal meth</div></div><keyword id="6576196" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Missouri">Missouri</keyword> had the highest number of incidents in 2012 at 1,825. Tennessee came in close second with 1,585. These two states <a href="http://www.justice.gov/dea/resource-center/meth-lab-maps.shtml">have ranked in the top tw since 2008</a>, according to the DEA. Indiana has also ranked high for several years.
A <a href="http://articles.ky3.com/2013-02-11/drug-task-force_37045235">lack of funding</a> for battling drugs might make middle America's meth problem even more difficult to eradicate. Al Jazeera America notes that <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/9/25/as-meth-incidentsdeclinemissourimaintainsdubioushonor.html">funding for Missouri's regional drug task force hit an all-time low</a> this year.
Meth has been a problem in the Midwest since the '90s. In 1997, Minnesota Public Radio <a href="http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199711/03_gundersond_meth-m/">offered a hint</a> at why the drug has become so popular in the Midwest - people can set up meth labs in secluded, abandoned buildings <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jun/27/nation/na-meth27">such as farmhouses</a> and operate undetected.
To see if there are any contaminated meth sites near your home, <a href="http://www.justice.gov/dea/clan-lab/clan-lab.shtml">check out the DEA's national meth lab registry</a>, which lists addresses of locations where police have found "chemicals or other items that indicated the presence of either clandestine drug laboratories or dumpsites."

MAP: Here's Where Most Of America's Meth Labs Are Found

Three major companies asked to distance themselves from the <keyword id="21192" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Gay-marriage">gay marriage</keyword> campaign. 
While <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/major-brands-that-support-gay-marriage-photos-2013-3">many brands have publicized marriage equality movement</a>, a <a href="http://brandequality.tumblr.com/">Tumblr called Brand Equality</a>" has added various company logos to the Human Rights Campaign's viral red "equals sign" symbol.
Knowing that brands and their social media managers would take notice, Brand Equality notes that "Brands can choose to request [the image] removed, implying they do not support [gay marriage] Boo!"
Or, as <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/03/28/tumblr-brands-marriage-equality/">Mashable calls it, "public shaming for brands."</a>
Three brands have been asked to be removed. Some are surprising, others expected. In the brands' defense, it is possible that they don't allow for their logos to be reproduced for legal, trademark or intellectual property reasons.
*Correction: This item originally said, incorrectly, that Urban Outfitters does not support gay marriage. In fact, the company does support gay marriage. The incorrect information came from the Brand Equality Tumblr. Apologies.
1. Exxon
<a href="http://www.dallasvoice.com/exxon-mobil-hits-lgbt-1096894.html">Exxon is the first company to ever receive a negative score</a> on Human Rights Campaign's corporate equality index. <a href="http://preview.hrc.org/issues/workplace/exxon-mobil-corporation.htm">According to HRC</a>, it is "the only U.S. employer that has ever rescinded both a non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation and domestic partner benefits, and is the only Fortune 10 company that does not have a non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation.”
<table class="image-container click-to-enlarge" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><a title_source="Brand Equality" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5154a7d1ecad04c02e000006-960/screen shot 2013-03-28 at 4.22.47 pm.png"></a></div><a href="http://brandequality.tumblr.com/">Brand Equality</a></td></tr></table>
 
2. Walmart
Although <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/28/news/companies/pluggedin_gunther_gayWalMart.fortune/">Walmart partnered with gay and lesbian groups in 2006</a>, it <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/22/magazines/fortune/pluggedin_gunther_walmart.fortune/">changed its tune the next year.</a> While individual stores were allowed to donate to gay groups, SVP of corporate communications Mona Williams said, "We are not currently planning corporate-level contributions to GLBT groups."
<a href="http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/10810/chick-fil-a-and-the-anti-gay-companies-you-would-never-believe-you-support-with-your-money">According to Policymic</a>, Jim Walton, the grandson of Walmart cofounder Sam Walton, donated $75,000 to the Family Council Action Committee's 2008 push to ban adoption for gay couples.
<table class="image-container click-to-enlarge" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><a title_source="Brand Equality" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5154a7d0eab8eac57800000f-960/screen shot 2013-03-28 at 4.23.28 pm.png"></a></div><a href="http://brandequality.tumblr.com/">Brand Equality</a></td></tr></table>
3. Chick-fil-A
Perhaps the least surprising company to find on this list, Chick-fil-A went through a huge PR nightmare when president and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chick-fil-a-admits-its-against-gay-marriage-2012-7">COO Dan Cathy came out as vehemently against gay marriage</a> this summer.
"I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about," he told "The Ken Coleman Show."
<table class="image-container click-to-enlarge" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><a title_source="Brand Equality" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5154a7d0eab8ea747b00000c-960/screen shot 2013-03-28 at 4.23.51 pm.png"></a></div><a href="http://brandequality.tumblr.com/">Brand Equality</a></td></tr></table>

These Major Brands DON'T Want To Be Associated With The Gay Marriage Movement

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Mic </div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Millennial media darling Mic was sold for a fraction of its onetime presumed value.</li><li>The company's cofounder Chris Altchek blamed Facebook for its failure to continue as a business to his staff.</li><li>But Mic's leadership team built the company on an unwavering faith in Facebook that investors funded again and again. </li></ul>On November 29, an emotional Chris Altchek stood before the 100-plus person staff of Mic.Altchek, CEO and cofounder of the millennial news site, said Facebook had <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-publisher-mic-was-a-victim-of-facebook-canceling-its-news-show-and-more-shows-could-be-next-2018-11">canceled a lucrative video agreement</a>.The 7-year-old company, which had raised $60 million and was once rumored to have been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-twitter-facebook-the-future-of-news-2015-5">courted by Twitter for $90 million, </a>was going to be sold to Bustle Digital Group, which had been buying media companies at bargain-basement prices. The price: a scant ~$5 million.Pausing to gain his composure, Altchek told the staff assembled that Mic was laying off nearly all its employees.Facebook has become the favorite whipping boy of many publishers. First, it provided a welcome firehose of cheap traffic, and publishers eagerly drank from it. Without Facebook, some wouldn't even have come into being.As early as 2015, Facebook throttled the traffic it sent publishers, making them pay more to reach its audience while encouraging them to spin up videos for its platform, revenue TBD.After a series of quiet cutbacks in traffic, Facebook dropped a bombshell in January 2018, <a href="https://digiday.com/media/losing-hope-facebook-tells-publishers-big-change-coming-news-feed/">telling publishers outright it would cut their content in the news feed</a> in favor of friends and families' posts. It's changed its video strategy multiple times and hasn't delivered meaningful video revenue to publishers.But the demise of Mic is not Facebook's fault.Business Insider spoke to multiple former executives and employees at the company and those close to the operation. They described a more complicated story of poor leadership decisions that seemed to stem from an unblinking faith in just that one platform, Facebook, and just one product, video, while the once-booming media market turned sour. This Facebook-heavy vision was enabled by growth-thirsty investors.When you're a business that is solely reliant on another business to survive, things don't usually end well.<h2>Enduring faith in Facebook</h2>Altchek and Mic cofounder Jake Horowitz were prep school buddies who started the company in 2011 at age 24.Mic (then PolicyMic) was part of a wave of upstart news sites formed on the belief that millennials are interested in the news, but they want it presented from their own point of view in grabby, digestible formats. (Early Mic posts included "An Open Letter to Vladimir Putin: You Suck," and "16 Incredible Facts Will Change the Way You Think About Africa.")It found an audience on Facebook, with its huge distribution power, and grew to publish 75 articles a day, mostly tailored to the platform.Mic eventually dropped the "Policy" from its name and expanded into social justice and lifestyle coverage. Bolstered by Facebook, three years in, the site had around 45 full-time employees and 19 million monthly uniques. The site scored tons of press and even landed an interview with then-President Obama.Marketers like GE and Walmart spent money with the site, hungry to win the loyalty of coming-of-age consumers.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/digital-media-startup-mic-wants-to-set-the-record-straight-2018-3">Mic says it's doing just fine, despite talk of an industry Armageddon</a>When Facebook signaled it wanted short newsfeed videos, Mic delivered, churning out videos with text overlaid in the style of NowThis, another investor-backed digital publisher. When Facebook decided to test live video in 2016, Mic delivered again. Facebook decided it wanted longer, stickier videos, and Mic, with $17 million in fresh Series B funding closed in 2015, pushed into more highly produced video.By September 2017, Mic had done 3.5 billion video views on Facebook, from under 1 million the year before. Most of those views were the short kind that Facebook didn't allow ads to run in. But Altchek, who ran Mic day to day while Horowitz took a lower-profile newsroom role as editor at large, believed having that big Facebook audience would still pay off. Facebook's massive platform could be a profitable way to distribute branded content Mic made for advertisers."That was absolutely a prevailing thought: 'Facebook will figure this out because there's too many publishers making too much of this to not make it worth something,'" said a former employee."For Chris, there was rarely a moment of doubt," a former senior editorial employee said. "There were meetings where he was not that positive about the written side. He would talk a lot about the promise of video. But he was never anything but bullish about the future of Mic."<h2>Investors were supportive</h2>Altchek wasn't operating on his own. He held his cards close to his chest and was headstrong in his interactions with Mic staff, according to people around him, but he was a talented salesman. He courted the press in Mic's early days and insisted the company was on solid ground, calling talk of a shutdown "categorically false" just weeks before it materialized. People with direct knowledge of the situation said there was every indication that the investors who sat on Mic's board agreed with Altchek's assumptions about Facebook and plan to grow the company. In email updates Altchek sent to management, the message was, "The board really loves us; they're really impressed with everything," a former executive said.One of Mic's first and biggest investors was Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, who gained fame as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-lightspeeds-jeremy-liew-became-snapchats-first-investor-2017-2">Snap's first investor</a> and has invested in other media companies like Cheddar and RockYou. He also backed LittleThings, another media company that went all in on Facebook and cratered after Facebook's big 2018 algorithm change."That audience reach, combined with its credibility, positions Mic to win on tvOS, just as it has on social," Liew said in a statement <a href="https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/mic-raises-21-million-time-warner-others-1202026139/">announcing the 2015 funding round</a>. "We're excited to double down on this investment."Mic's other investors include Time Warner Investments and former AOL and News Corp exec Jon Miller of Advancit, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mic-founding-story-valuation-revenue-growth-2015-8">who said in 2015</a> that Mic's growth is "really about having a distinctive point of view and having a quantity of quality content." Other investors have included Lerer Ventures, which also backed BuzzFeed; and Business Insider parent Axel Springer.Backed by wealthy investors who wanted the company to go big, Mic stayed relatively aggressive on spending, especially against video, despite uncertainty in the business model, said someone with knowledge of the investors' thinking.The approach of these VCs was typical of those that funded media upstarts during that time, said another former startup operator. The backers place multiple bets on different types of companies, and urge the operators to lean hard into the growth opportunity, which in this case was Facebook."You're supposed to spend as fast as you can because that will lead you to the next round and valuation," this person said. "That helps the VCs raise their next round. The key is, you can never stop your growth."Mic's big bets on Facebook video coincided with Mic's big 2015 and 2017 infusions. By 2015, a former exec recalled, social video on Facebook was blowing up, and Altchek had told managers that this growth was instrumental in closing the $17 million in June that year, led by Lightspeed. "It was because we had such a massive growth story," one former executive said.In April 2017, Mic raised $21 million in another Lightspeed-led funding round.<h2>Mic's website audience dwindled</h2>In early 2017, the company made yet another video bet, forming a five-person team called Mic Productions to spin up ideas based on its journalism that it could sell to streaming video platforms like Hulu and Netflix. Altchek was directly involved as one of the team members.Mic Productions sold a news show to Facebook Watch, Mic Dispatch. Hulu picked up a documentary on the disastrous Fyre Festival, with Mic as a co-producer. But documentaries typically have razor-thin margins and Facebook owned the news shows it funded, which limits the amount of money the publisher can make off such content.Meanwhile, Mic's website traffic was dwindling. In the summer of 2017, it laid off 25 people to accelerate its shift into video. A search team, led by Mike Cahill from another millennial success story, Bleacher Report, that had been set up to mine Google for traffic, was laid off.Mic's traffic plunged to 5 million uniques earlier this year, a fraction of its 19 million peak. That direct traffic is used as a site's barometer of health by advertisers, and falling direct traffic is a reason to knock a site like Mic off the consideration list for big branded content deals. Those big branded deals accounted for two-thirds of Mic's revenue. So when the big video dollars didn't materialize, Mic didn't have much web traffic to monetize either.Timing also didn't work in Mic's favor. In the polarized Trump era, advertisers have gotten increasingly sensitive about having their ads appear near hard news. Mic already was at a disadvantage with its small audience and lack of differentiation in a sea of similar competitors. But the political climate made Mic, with its left-leaning brand of journalism, an even harder sell. (One day after Donald Trump was elected president, Altchek wrote an opinion column, <a href="https://mic.com/articles/158999/how-to-protest-donald-trump-not-our-america#.GSBrcezMd">"This is not our America. Here's how we'll fight to fix it."</a>) A few days after the 25 staff were laid off as part of the focus on video, Mic threw a day-long, companywide event at its headquarters that it called "The Future of Mic." A meditation guru kicked off the day. The rapper Common made an appearance. Altchek and his publisher, Cory Haik, who oversaw the newsroom, tried to sell the staff on the gospel of video. A massive shift to video consumption was coming, and when the <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> would follow, Mic would be ready to capitalize on it, they said.But those in attendance, still raw over their colleagues being laid off just days before, felt the executives sidestepped questions about the company's dwindling web traffic.<h2>The money was running out</h2>By this year, the company was running out of money. Mic was on track to generate $14 million in revenue this year, but it was on track to burn between $5 million and $10 million. Mic had to pay salaries for more than 100 people and had leased the 82nd floor of the Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan, which proved expensive.Mic was scrambling to raise money and look for a buyer. There were whispers that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Viacom each took a look this fall. The Facebook show, Mic Dispatch, was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-publisher-mic-was-a-victim-of-facebook-canceling-its-news-show-and-more-shows-could-be-next-2018-11">getting an uneven audience</a>, and Facebook had been favoring more entertainment-style shows as a way to get users to stick around anyway. Some lucrative branded content deals Mic had been counting on to stay afloat that year also fell through, someone with direct knowledge of the situation said.When Facebook called just before Thanksgiving and said it would cancel Mic's $5 million in funding for Mic Dispatch, Mic's most visible manifestation of its push into high quality video journalism video, investor and buyer interest evaporated, Altchek has said.The morning Facebook pulled the plug, Altchek, groggy from just getting off a redeye, assembled the board by phone to talk through alternatives to save the company. There were none.It was then that some staff realized just how the company's fate was tied to not just Facebook, but that one video series. "I don't think most of us realized how much the rest of the company was reliant on just this show," the former editorial employee said.Altchek called his friend and advisor, Bustle CEO Bryan Goldberg, who cut short a visit home to California and flew back to New York to sell the deal to more than 20 investors, top lieutenants and lawyers in just 48 hours. The timing was critical; the Bustle sale had to be done before Mic ran out of money it would need to pay severance. The deal was completed over Thanksgiving weekend.It's not uncommon for venture-backed startups to fail, and the media industry is struggling across the board to forge a sustainable business model.But that is likely to be cold comfort to the casualties of the flawed $60 million bet on Facebook and video. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-scientists-oumuamua-interstellar-object-alien-spacecraft-solar-sail-2018-11">Why Harvard scientists think this interstellar object might be an alien spacecraft</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

How Mic, a digital media darling that raised $60 million, wound up firing all its staff and selling for $5 million

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Kevin Smith/Business Insider" title_caption="The Elite Daily founders are all under 30." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/51b77f82eab8eaf60c000013-960/elite%20daily%20team.jpg"><a href="http://www.elitedaily.com"></a>Kevin Smith/Business InsiderThe Elite Daily founders are all under 30.</a></div></div></div>Elite Daily, a news website with 55 employees and 40 million monthly uniques, just raised a $1.5 million convertible note (a type of debt) from Greycroft, Vast Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, and angel investors.
The funding is the first outside capital the startup has ever raised. Three founders, who are all younger than 30, built a media property that rivals traffic of sites such as Upworthy, Wall Street Journal and even Business Insider in just two years on a bootstrapped budget. 
While undergrads at Pace University, David Arabov, 25, and Jonathan Francis, 28, pooled together $60,000 with another friend, Gerard Adams. None of them had media or technology experience, but they had a lofty ambition to create The Huffington Post for millennials. 
"We were supposed to go to law school, we took the LSATS and everything," CEO David Arabov told Business Insider in an interview. "But we didn't think traditional media had done a great job of creating content online, and newer publications were pretty niche."
They launched Elite Daily as a Wordpress blog in early 2012 and nine months later, they had their first month with one million unique visitors. 
Last December, Elite Daily's traffic soared to 41 million monthly unique visitors and the company finished the year with $400,000 in profit. 
Elite Daily is one of a few new media companies that has risen from obscurity to tens of millions of readers in a short period of time. Upworthy grew from no readers to 8.7 million in eight months; it has raised $12 million. ViralNova, a one-man blog, grew from launch to 100 million readers in seven months without any funding. PolicyMic, an Elite Daily competitor, has tens of millions of monthly unique visitors and it has raised $15 million.
Arabov says his site's fast growth is the product of trial and error, Facebook traffic surges, having a strong advisory team, and hiring a CTO who custom-built powerful analytics tools. Strategic advisors include the first investor in Tumblr and one of Bleacher Reports founders.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Kevin Smith/Business Insider" title_caption="An Elite Daily employee at work. The average age of employees there is 23." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/51b78ffb6bb3f76a40000011-960/elite daily pic.jpg"></a>Kevin Smith/Business InsiderAn Elite Daily employee at work. The average age of employees there is 23.</div></div></div>The first article Elite Daily wrote that exploded was in May 2013. One of its writers read an interview with the CEO of Abercrombie &amp; Fitch on Business Insider and pulled out a post that attracted more than 1 million readers titled, "<a href="http://elitedaily.com/news/world/abercrombie-fitch-ceo-explains-why-he-hates-fat-chicks/">Abercrombie &amp; Fitch CEO Explains Why He Hates Fat Chicks</a>." Around that same time, Elite Daily recruited a CTO from ad tech company AppNexus who built the company a more robust CMS with more ways to measure successful posts and to surface potentially-successful story topics.
By the fall, Elite Daily was drawing in 7 million monthly unique visitors. By December, the site exceeded that monthly traffic when a video of a family singing in Christmas pajamas went truly viral and raked in 12 million uniques in a single day.
Arabov remembers putting the Christmas pajama post on Elite Daily's Facebook page around midnight following a company holiday party. When he woke up, there were 50,000 people on Elite Daily's website. A few hours later, 80,000 readers were on the site at once.
Elite Daily also takes advantage of a contributor model, which was made popular by The Huffington Post. It accepts articles from people all over the world who are willing to write for Elite Daily for free. Two contributors editors manage the free content and make sure the quality is high enough to publish. 
Some of Elite Daily's impressive traffic is paid for, although the company says most of it is organic. "We only boost some view articles that we know are about to go viral and we give them a boost," says Chief Strategy Officer Miguel Burger-Calderon. Many sites, including BuzzFeed and ViralNova, pay to boost posts on Facebook too.
For the past five months, Elite Daily's traffic has leveled off at about 35 million uniques although June is trending toward its highest month yet. The site is seeing a healthy mix of direct traffic (20%), SEO (20%) and social (60%) of which 50-55% comes from Facebook.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Business Insider" title_caption="Elite Daily's unique visitors traffic goal for the end of 2015 is an ambitious 150 million." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/539b6b5f6bb3f7c033b68714-960/elite-daily.jpg"></a>Business InsiderElite Daily's unique visitors traffic goal for the end of 2015 is an ambitious 150 million.</div></div></div>
Fueled with millions of dollars for the first time ever, Elite Daily is hoping to keep its already-high traffic surging.
When leaving the interview at Elite Daily's Park Avenue office, I noticed a small poster that hung on the startup's wall.
"150,000,000 12/1/15," it read. 
When asked what it meant, Abarov laughed. "Oh that? We want to be at 150 million uniques by 2015."
Although he said it with a smile, Arabov was serious. After all, his team has a knack for achieving lofty goals, even though the average employee is only 23 years old.
"Last September, we were telling people we wanted to be at 20 million uniques," he said. "We've definitely had a number of moments where we've looked at each and said, 'Is this real?'"

How 3 Friends Pooled Together $60,000 And Built Elite Daily, A Website With 40 Million Readers

<table class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><a title_source="Official PSY" title_caption="Psy's " Gentleman="" M="" V.="" class="zoomin" href="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/516adb1eeab8ea3f5300000f-960/psy-gentleman-mv-video-5.png"></a></div>Official PSYPsy's "Gentleman M/V."</td></tr></table>By now you've enjoyed <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/psy-gentleman-mv-video-hits-youtube-2013-4">"Gentleman M/V," Psy's followup</a> to his massive hit, "<keyword id="1376462" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Gangnam-Style">Gangnam Style</keyword>."
And you've probably also been completely baffled by the video and the lyrics (if you don't speak Korean). The video appears to show <keyword id="1637961" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Psy">Psy</keyword> playing tricks on women he's dating, until he meets a woman who is as tricky as he is.
Except, that's not what the song is about.
Here, <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/34701/psy-gentleman-lyrics-translation-full-english-translation-for-psy-s-new-hit">courtesy of PolicyMic</a>, are the lyrics in phonetic Korean and, below that, in English. The good news is, what sounds like Psy repeatedly singing a curse word is, in fact, something else entirely.
First, the video, then the words:

Original Lyrics:
Alagamun-lan, weh, wakun, heya, hanun, gon ?Alagamun-lan, weh, makun, heya, hanun, gon? Alagamun-lan, ari, gari, hanon, kari, he? Alagamun-lan, we-like, we like party, hey? Ichiba, varriya, is hara moru, mashi sondori, yama, varriya? Yougun, pegi, tur, equa, machen, varriya? Noga, onku, pega, haga, kunge, nande, varriya? Damn girl, you’re so freakin sexy I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman Alagamun-lan, weh, mikuneya, hana, gon? Alagamun-lan. weh, sikuneya, hana, gon? Alagamun-lan, pali, pali, wasa, nelly, neh? Alagamun-lan, nali, nali, nasa, pali, hee? Ichiba, varaniya, nori, moli, holy, daddy, chunga, ri? Varriya, get feeling, feeling good, brutake? Varriya, gachu, gunya, sorinage, sorinage? Varriya, damn girl, I’mma party, morphine I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman Gonna make you sweat? Gonna make you wet? You know who I am, west side? Gonna make you sweat? Gonna make you wet? You know who I am, west side I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman I-I-I I’m a, I-I-I I’m a? I-I-I I’m a, mother-father-gentleman Full Translation: I don't know if you know why it needs to be hot? I don't know if you know why it needs to be clean? I don't know if you know, it'll be a problem if you're confused? I don't know if you know but we like, we we we like to party Hey there? If I'm going to introduce myself? I'm a cool guy with courage, spirit and craziness? What you wanna hear, what you wanna do is me? Damn! Girl! You so freakin sexy! Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a mother father gentleman Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a mother father gentleman I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman? I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman? I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman? I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman I don't know if you know why it needs to be smooth? I don't know if you know why it needs to be sexy? I don't know if you know darling, hurry and come be crazy? I don't know if you know, it's crazy, crazy, hurry up Hey there? Your head, waist, legs, calves? Good! Feeling feeling? Good! It's soft? I'll make you gasp and I'll make you scream? Damn! Girl! I'm a party mafia! Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a mother father gentleman Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...? Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a mother father gentleman I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman? I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman Gonna make you sweat.? Gonna make you wet? You know who I am Wet PSY Gonna make you sweat.? Gonna make you wet.? You know who I am? Wet PSY! Wet PSY! Wet PSY! Wet PSY! PSY! PSY! PSY!? Ah I'm a mother father gentleman I'm a, ah I'm a? I'm a mother father gentleman? I'm a, ah I'm a, I'm a mother father gentleman Mother father gentleman Mother father gentleman

Here's What The Lyrics To Psy's 'Gentleman M/V' Actually Mean In English

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<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image">Lightspeed<keyword id="1967685" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jeremy-Liew">Jeremy Liew</keyword> is a partner at <keyword id="455799" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Lightspeed-Venture-Partners">Lightspeed Venture Partners</keyword> who found hot startups like <keyword id="6358096" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Snapchat">Snapchat</keyword> and <keyword id="1424233" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Whisper">Whisper</keyword> before everyone else.</div></div></div>It's a good thing Jeremy Liew met Barack Obama.
In March 2012, Liew's Facebook profile picture was of himself and the President. He didn't know it at the time, but that picture would help him land a crucial early stage investment.
Liew is a partner at <a href="http://lsvp.com/">Lightspeed Venture Partners</a>, a firm with $2 billion under management. There are nine partners who lead startup deals in the United States. Only Liew and one other partner, Justin Caldbeck, hunt for startups in the crowded consumer technology space. And in March 2012, Liew had his eye on an app called Snapchat. 
When Liew first found Snapchat, the disappearing photo app had fewer than 100,000 installs. Liew's partner had seen it on his teenage daughter's phone. She told her father there were only three apps high school kids were using: Angry Birds, Instagram, and Snapchat. Liew was familiar with the first two. But he had never heard of Snapchat.
The comment was enough to pique Liew's curiosity. He made it his mission to find out who was behind the mysterious app.
Liew did a Google search and came up dry. No articles had been written about Snapchat. There was no contact information on the startup's website except for a generic email address. Liew messaged it and heard nothing back. Liew looked up the company on LinkedIn and sent a message. Again, there was no response. 
Determined, Liew did a WhoIs lookup on the domain name, Snapchat.com. It had been registered by Toyopa Group, the former parent company of Snapchat. Spiegel had named it after the street his father lived on, Toyopa Drive.
Liew did a Google search for Toyopa Group and found Evan Spiegel's name. He was a student at Stanford, where Liew had also gone to school. Liew was able to message him on Facebook through the Stanford alumni network.
When Liew sent the Facebook message, Spiegel finally replied. He wasn't looking to raise a round of financing; Liew was fine with that. Liew invited Spiegel to meet him at his office on the most famous street in the entrepreneurial world, Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. A few feet to the left sits Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. To the right sits Khosla Ventures.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image">Business Insider/Alyson ShontellLightspeed's office is located on 2200 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California.</div></div></div>During the meeting, Spiegel shared his vision for Snapchat. Facebook was a place where you could share superficial feelings with the world. It was built for sharing times when you're happy, confident, and enjoying life. But what about all the other times when you're sad, feeling crazy or even depressed?
Spiegel felt there should be a place where intimate feelings could be shared privately via fleeting messages. After all, true friendships are formed when people share both positive and negative experiences. And negative experiences can't be housed on a public, identifying platform like Facebook.
Spiegel's app hadn't been downloaded many times, but engagement metrics were strong. "People were using it like crazy and staying for a really long time," Liew recalls.
Eventually, Spiegel let Lightspeed invest in his company. It was the only investor in a $485,000 seed round, which Spiegel raised in May 2012. He was still three classes shy of graduating. Snapchat has since raised more than $120 million and it turned down a multi-billion-dollar acquisition offer from Facebook.
Liew later asked Spiegel why he returned the Facebook request and none of his other messages.
"It was because you had President Obama in your profile picture," Spiegel said. 
"There's serendipity involved in all this stuff," Liew said, recalling that conversation.
But Liew's investments are based on much more skill than luck. His name is frequently mentioned in the Los Angeles startup scene, where a number of his early investments are panning out.
Whisper is another social app Liew found before other <keyword id="6359051" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="investors">investors</keyword>. Based in Santa Monica, Whisper lets users anonymously share secrets in a safe, supportive environment, like an open-source diary. Liew saw Whisper trending in the App Store and it fit his firm's investment thesis.
Liew emailed its founder, 26-year-old Michael Heyward, on a Monday. He said he'd be in town for a board meeting that Tuesday. By Wednesday, Liew convinced Heyward to meet with his partner. On Friday, Liew sent Heyward - who hadn't been interested in raising a round of financing - a term sheet. On Saturday, Liew flew back to Santa Monica and finalize the investment in Whisper. Lightspeed led its $3 million Series A round of financing. 
Whisper now has millions of registered users. It has 80-times more content than there are Wikipedia pages. It has raised $25 million.
Liew also found ShoeDazzle, a once-buzzy startup run by Kim Kardashian and Brian Lee, early. Like Spiegel, Lee wasn't interested in meeting him. Lee told Liew that ShoeDazzle was profitable, so it didn't need venture capital. 
"Eventually, I flew [uninvited] to LA and said, 'Hey, I'm here,'" Liew says.
Lee agreed to meet Liew for coffee. After months of leaning in, Lee let Lightspeed invest in ShoeDazzle.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image">Jeremy Liew/FacebookLiew's Facebook profile picture from March 2012, which attracted Snapchat's Evan Spiegel</div></div></div>Liew's partner, Justin Caldbeck, is equally persistent. Caldbeck recently invested in a consumer startup that ignored his initial emails. Instead of taking "no" for an answer, Caldbeck showed up on the startup's doorstep with a plate full of cupcakes.
In addition to being persistent, Caldbeck and Liew are observant. If his partner hadn't been an engaged father, Liew might have missed Snapchat. With ShoeDazzle, Liew noticed a friend collecting pink boxes of shoes. He asked her what all the boxes were about; she told him they were Kim Kardashian's shoe-of-the-month club.
Liew and Caldbeck try to think differently about their investments. So while other VCs are looking right, they turn their heads a little to the left. 
"When everyone is saying, 'We don't invest in this,' that's sometimes a good time to invest," says Liew. "You have to find a reason the conventional wisdom no longer applies."
Liew used the recent craze around e-commerce startups and the rise of Facebook's platform as an example.
"E-commerce startups shouldn't work," Liew says. "They don't have brand-names and they don't have scale, so their cost to acquire customers should be much higher and their lifetime value much lower than incumbents. The only time it makes sense to invest in e-commerce startups is when there's a new customer acquisition channel that's scalable. Startups are nimble enough to take advantage of the opportunity and grow to scale before the incumbents even notice. The first time that happened since Google paid search was when Facebook opened up its right rail to e-commerce companies and advertisers."
Startups like Gilt Groupe, LivingSocial, ShoeDazzle, Groupon, and Ruelala were able to scale their customer bases quickly and cheaply on the coattails of Facebook before larger brands caught on. Now that the Facebook channel is saturated with brands like Nordstrom and JC Penney, e-commerce startups can't rely on it for growth.
"Before Zulily, there hadn't been a $1 billion exit in e-commerce in 10-12 years," says Liew. "[Investors] who were saying, 'We don't invest in e-commerce startups' didn't realize something (Facebook's emergence as a cheap customer acquisition channel) had changed."
Snapchat and Whisper seem like obvious investments now. But when Lightspeed invested, most people assumed social startups had peaked. Facebook won the space, especially after it purchased Instagram. Instead of writing off social startups altogether, Liew's team tried to find entrepreneurs who were innovating in places where Facebook couldn't follow.
Facebook, Liew determined, is the journal of record for our real lives. By its nature, it needs to tie users to their real identities. It also aspires to host everything its users publish forever. That creates an opportunity for startups to host temporary content or to thrive on anonymity.
"If you flip Facebook's need for real IDs to anonymous accounts, then you get an app like Whisper," Liew says. "If you flip Facebook's need for permanence to impermanence, you get Snapchat."

Liew is constantly on the hunt for under-the-radar trends like that. One of his favorite resources is <a href="http://www.pagedatapro.com/">PageData</a>. PageData shows which pages are trending on Facebook. While some trend because they're newsworthy (like Paul Walker's page following his sudden death), others hint at investment opportunities. 
Last year, Liew noticed pages with memes, or text-and-picture content, were trending. When he saw Whisper and Snapchat, he realized those housed the same type of content. Sites like LOLCats and PerezHilton had been creating that type of content for years; Snapchat and Whisper were bringing the experience to mobile devices.
Now Liew is noticing publications like Viral Nova and Upworthy, which are driving rapid growth through social sharing. PolicyMic, a media startup that has quickly grown to 8 million monthly readers, is one of Liew's investments.
Liew is also interested in Bitcoin startups, as well as startups that are applying big data to financial services. 
While Liew has invested in all kinds of consumer startups and entrepreneurs, there's something they have in common. 
"We believed in the vision of each team, as well as the teams themselves," Liew says of his investments. "We were able to reach out to startups like Snapchat and Whisper and get to them quickly. Also, they were outside of the typical investment cycle."

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