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While the timing, abutting yesterday’s Wizard announcements, would seem to be connected, there’s no mention of Gareb Shamus in today’s news of $1.5 million in capital being raised for GeekChicDaily. Shamus launched the daily newsletter last year along with Peter Levin and $1 million in seed money from producer Peter Guber.

Investors include producer Joe Roth, Legendary Pictures (which is developing its own graphic novel line), Allen DeBevoise, CEO of video games animation distributor Machinima.com, and Clear Channel head of media Robert Pittman, who co-founded the online newsletters DailyCandy and Thrillist and former Legendary digital president Kathy Vrabeck.

What are they getting for their money? A petite one-story-a-day newsletter which, to be fair, looks sleek and is usually well-written. But from this base of 150K subscribers they hope to use the money to “launch a marketing campaign, expand ad sales staff and increase video production and mobile applications.” according to the LA Times. They might even roll out regional editions.

“There’s a big desire from our readership to better understand what events are happening locally but still get national content,” he said. Such a move would also position GeekChic to gain new advertisers aiming for a geographically targeted consumer base.


Let’s see, 150,000 subscribers, $1 million investment — that’s $6.66 per subscriber. Good deal…or a GREAT deal?

1 COMMENT

  1. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118030807?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+variety/headlines+(Variety+-+Latest+News)

    Variety reports 1 Million subscribers…

    “Since its bow, GeekChicDaily has attracted close to 1 million weekly subs to its email newsletter. It has also spawned a segment on IFC’s weekly series “The Grid.””

    Also, while searching for info about GOEE and Wizard, I saw a notice that Mr. Shamus is no long on the board of directors for PGM MEDIA LLC, which is the parent company of GCD. Confirmation?

    Given the advertising revenue a site like this can generate, $1.5 Million is a small price to pay.

    Alexa ranks it 158,269 in the U.S.

  2. There’s something I find amusing about the words “chic” and “Shamus” in the same sentence. Now “geek” and “Shamus” go together like peas and carrots.

  3. In Ifanboy’s “Former Wizard Employee Speaks” piece yesterday– (also linked here) the mysterious Mr.X said:

    “we needed to take our editorial blog piemonkey.com offline for a few days because Gareb was supposedly severing his ties with his old web project, GeekChicDaily.”

    Perhaps that’s why there’s no mention of Gareb in the press release?

  4. I recently won a prize package from GeekChicDaily and only received a portion of the listed items. I finally gave up emailing them after repeated promises that the remaining items “were being placed in the mail personally” by the GCD correspondent. Maybe Mr. Shamus can whip GeekChicDaily into shape.

    On the plus side I have a nice free photo of myself and noted industry leader, Rod Blagojevich, from Wizard Chicago.