
We Sold Pando - rmason
https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold-pando/
======
smm2000
Pando failed as publication with last article from June and before that for a
year or so all articles were written by Sarah so no money for journalists.
It's not so much selling publication as selling web site with residual google
traffic.

I am sad - I was subscriber at one time and attended a few events. Lots of
good content a few years ago. Good journalism is expensive and Sarah failed to
make finances at Pando viable. Now competition for subscriber dollars is
intense with theinformation, business insider, digiday, etc and ad dollar will
never support niche publication with no unique audience like Pando.

~~~
teh_klev
> Lots of good content a few years ago

I'd dispute that. I followed for a few months but the incessant valley navel
gazing dried up my interest pretty quickly. It wasn't a great publisher in the
great scheme of things even with Lacey's TechCrunch credentials. And to be
honest I'd also stopped reading TechCrunch et-al back around 2012/13 even
before she left. Maybe at the age of 52 I've outgrown this kind of tech
"journalism".

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thomasmarriott
"An acquisition is always a failure" — Pando, 2013

"An acquisition, or an aqui-hire, is always a failure. Either the founders
failed to achieve their goal, or – far likelier – they failed to dream big
enough. The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the
ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable,
independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders."

[https://pando.com/2013/04/02/an-acquisition-is-always-a-
fail...](https://pando.com/2013/04/02/an-acquisition-is-always-a-failure/)

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
By a random columnist (Jake Lodwick) at Pando, not Sarah Lacy herself.

~~~
jccalhoun
I didn't know what Pando was so I went to the about us page and saw this:

[https://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-
pandodaily/](https://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/)

"As a founder, I have a personal goal that's just as important and just as
core to our culture: I do not want to sell this company. [....] So let me put
it this way: Selling is not success to me. If I wind up selling, I've failed
in some way. We didn't get as big as we should, we didn't execute on the
opportunity or I didn't hire the right team and got too burned out."

~~~
Dangeranger
Sarah Lacy made it quite clear in the post that her heart was not in the game
anymore, and that she had become as cynical as other bygone journalists. She
isn't selling for money, she's selling because she doesn't want to do the work
anymore. You can call that failure, but I would call it resignation.

~~~
daveFNbuck
She listed not wanting to do it anymore as one of the three ways she could
fail.

------
angf
> It’s a place where I’ve been sexually harassed more times than I can
> remember. It’s a place where I’ve been lied about, where VCs have arm-
> twisted editors to fire me, where billionaires have threatened those doing
> business with me to cut all ties. It’s a place where I’ve had people turn on
> me again and again and again simply for doing my job. It’s a place I’ve been
> betrayed by people I trusted. It’s a place where one-time friends threatened
> my children because I wrote about things they did.

Wow. I hope she writes a memoir of her time as a journalist. We need to hear
what she has to say because this is a side that I have not yet experienced,
and hopefully never will.

~~~
paul7986
You sound surprised the rich and powerful are buddies who gang up on anyone
who threatens their position!?

Harvey Weinstein and the tricks with his money and network he pulled is a
current good example of this. But, it's been going on forever in every
sector(tech to entertainment to etc) yet sometimes karma comes around and
bites them accordingly.

~~~
travisporter
I agree with OP, surprised Silicon Valley has such people

------
Andrew_nenakhov
I briefly tried following PandoDaily after Sara's public exit from Techcrunch,
but it quickly got kinda... boring and pointless. Also, I recall there were
way too many posts about themselves and their feuds and quarrels with people
(It was years before Uber affair).

------
timoth3y
I'm sad to see them go.

I think Pando really demonstrates how hard it is to make money in contrarian
journalism. Not just investigative journalism, which is expensive, but it
shows us the danger of going to market with a contrary voice.

The real money is media made amplifying corporate press releases and telling
people that what they believe is basically correct. I miss the days when
alcoholic, misanthropic reporters were the mainstay of newsrooms. They may
have been SOBs, but we still need them.

We all say that we like to have our assumptions challenged, and many actually
do, but it seems too few are willing to actually pay for it.

~~~
throwGuardian
In what way is Pando remotely contrarian

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bruceb
Pando failed cause it was a tad to much outrage spewing instead of more
informative tone (though not like super outrage machines Buzzfeed or
Breitbart)

Paul Carr was so incredibly negative it was just hard to read. There is a
difference between being skeptical and calling out BS, and just being pure
negativity 24/7.

This being said, its very hard do quality journalism and make money. I am glad
they tried, there was some decent quality stuff.

------
doctorpangloss
> Thank you in particular to our amazing first amendment attorney, Roger Myers
> of Bryan Cave.

This is actually the most surprising tidbit to me. How in the world was Bryan
Cave representing them without any conflicts of interest? They're huge!

------
tedunangst
For someone unfamiliar with Pando, what were their big scoops that brought
such heat?

------
samirillian
I wanted to check out BuySellAds but Ublock wouldn't let me.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Interesting parting shot:
[https://www.chairmanmom.com/about](https://www.chairmanmom.com/about)

------
rchaud
So what happens when the time comes to call it quits on a "news website"
business? How does the new owner drive traffic to a site when the articles are
all old and out of date?

It's not like a web app of some kind that does a recurring business function
(e.g. email subscriber management) so novelty doesn't matter, and new features
are not needed every single day.

------
stefan_
Haha, yeah, no shit she is quitting journalism. You come away from this
article thinking they just sold the next Google, but as a simple look at the
front page reveals, it's simply a failed media startup that was likely sold
for no more than the domain name is worth.

~~~
dmix
I think most people were aware of Pando's failure going into this article...
which I believe she assumed or didn't bother rehashing.

------
rdlecler1
How much did it self for? Did investors make money? Strange that this wasn’t
commented on.

~~~
AznHisoka
If you sell your company to another company named BuySellAds, you can be
pretty sure the investors didn’t make any money. it sounded like a firesale.

~~~
newen
Don't they park domain names? I remember trying to buy a domain name and
coming across that name a couple of times.

~~~
manigandham
No, BuySellAds is an independant ad network. They focus on helping publishers
sell campaigns direct to advertisers with their platform and own a few
different brands like Carbon Ads.

------
newen
Only reason I remember Pando was from the War Nerd moving to that site. Though
they hid everything behind a paywall, so I didn't stay for long.

~~~
dmix
Same, I was introduced to War Nerds through them and it was before I was used
to paying for journalism. I wouldn't have thought twice about it now.

~~~
scottlocklin
I always thought of it as the Ames/War nerd thing; everything else attached to
it was pretty worthless. I don't recall them ever breaking a story, or
publishing anything of note and won't miss them at all, as long as Ames
republishes his work somewhere else.

~~~
selimthegrim
I remember cancelling my subscription when he moved on and getting a “No,
seriously. Fuck you.” departure page.

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say_it_as_it_is
Not the startup income pooling company for baseball players..

------
lostgame
Never heard of Pando, wondering why I should care, if anyone could give brief
insight into why it's significant?

~~~
wj
"wondering why I should care" is at least passively a toxic comment. At least
take the time to click on the link before making a comment like that. Or just
ignore the article.

~~~
andrewflnr
It's an abrasive phrasing of a legitimate and, if you zoom out, apparently
sincere question. "Toxic" is an overstatement.

~~~
wj
The sentence works without asking "why I should care?":

"Never heard of Pando, wondering if anyone could give brief insight into why
it's significant?"

Including the abrasive phrasing when it is not needed is toxic and not helpful
for polite discourse.

~~~
andrewflnr
Assuming bad faith is more damaging to discussion than dismissiveness. Your
using the word "toxic" to describe the comment is more toxic than the comment
itself.

Ed: if you had led off with

> The sentence works without asking "why I should care?"

then no one would be quibbling with you.

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cagenut
Seems better to read the source blog post than BI's clickbait aggregation of
it: [https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold-
pando/](https://pando.com/2019/10/23/we-sold-pando/)

~~~
lonelappde
It's not clickbait aggregation, it's a coherent summary of a long rant. At
worst, it could be challenged as copyright infringement or plagiarism.

~~~
catalogia
The link has been changed. Here is said coherent summary of the long rant:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/sarah-lacy-is-selling-
pando-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/sarah-lacy-is-selling-pando-and-
quitting-journalism-2019-10)

------
armitron
Ah who can forget Paul 'Genius Journalist' Carr that when the Snowden story
was breaking was making fun of Ed and doing his best to downplay/bury the
biggest story in years with an avalanche of bullshit. I also see that he wrote
a book titled "Bringing nothing to the party: Confessions of a new media
whore". That's one thing you got right, Paul.

Not surprising "pando" got sold to ad peddlers given the caliber of their
editorial staff.

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ykevinator
I read one of her books, it was bad.

