Genesis Investments invests $150k in American tech media, Hacker Noon
Genesis Investments, a Ukrainian venture capital firm, has invested $150,000 in Hacker Noon, an American media website, focusing on technologies, startups, and artificial intelligence. The news was reported to AIN.UA by the Genesis Investments team.
It is the first investment of the firm in an American company.
About HackerNoon
HackerNoon is an American technology publishing website that focuses on reporting the latest news related to technologies, startups, artificial intelligence, software development, and blockchain technology.
The media audience is mainly readers from the USA, India, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany. The media is based on user-generated content: any user can register on the website and offer an article for publication.
Business model and potential
HackerNoon started in 2016, and by 2020 reached 4 million visits per month without paid promotion methods. The team developed CMS (a content management system that runs HackerNoon.com) and user voting software solution (which runs Noonies.Tech award-winning platform). The company also has a podcast and platform for publishing job openings from technology companies in the U.S. Hacker Noon earns from advertising on the websites.
Hacker Noon has a focus on the English-speaking technology community. In 2019, the USA had more than 12 million technical employees and 550+ thousand tech companies. In the United Kingdom, the number of technicians is 1.6 million, and in India, there are 4.4 million tech professionals. In Q2 2020, the website published up to 30 articles per day. The team plans to reach 50 publications per day by the end of 2020.
Investments
In May 2020, Hacker Noon raised $1 million from Coil, a San Francisco-based startup designed to help creators monetize content. This investment was followed by another $350,000 from the Greater Colorado Venture Fund. During the Seed round, the company was valued at $11.5 million.
“We are pleased to join the funding round with Coil and believe that this deal is strategic for both Genesis Investments and Hacker Noon. We believe that our expertise in media, digital marketing, and monetization can drive even faster growth for Hacker Noon. If needed, we will be happy to assist Hacker Noon with the opening of an R&D center in Ukraine in the future. Hacker Noon is a technological media of a new generation, which may become one of the most important in the next five years, and we want to be a part of this story,” says Elena Mazhuha, Investment Manager at Genesis Investments.
The company plans to spend money on the implementation of a new monetization strategy for content creators, team scaling, and development of additional revenue streams.