John Steinberg left BuzzFeed to start Cheddar, a financial news video platform. He raised $30 million, predicted a $200-300 million acquisition, and sold to an Australian cable company for roughly $250 million after three years. Then he disappeared from public view.
John Steinberg was the COO of BuzzFeed, and he started this thing years ago called Cheddar. I hang out with him. Nice guy, incredibly aggressive. Basically told me, he goes, what's going to happen is I'm going to raise a little bit of money, $30 million. It's going to do pretty good. And then a big cable company is going to buy us and they're going to buy us for like $200 or $300 million. And I remember thinking like, this guy's crazy. This is not going to work. This is a bad business, is a bad company. In year 3, I think he sold the business for $250 million to like an Australian cable company that I never heard of. And he sold it and he He totally pulled it off and he completely disappeared. He fell off the map. Before, he was like speaking at all these conferences, but he called his shot and he nailed it 100%.
