Unorthodox

My Last Week at Tsavo

It is my last week at Tsavo Media in Santa Monica. From the beginning, my plan was to create a publishing team and set of key products and then resume life in Northern California once some key goals were met. In my ten months with Tsavo we created a dream team of product, content and design all stars. Over the past 3.5 intense months, our efforts have resulted in going from zero to nearly 3 million visitors per month (based on 5.15.09 to 6.15.09) within a profitable business.

When we launched the network, we had a site for guys called Manolith, one for women called Twirlit and another for Parents called Kidglue. We also had the beginning stages of our network portal called Daymix. Not long after we acquired a site called opensourcefood and renamed it Nibbledish. Our new little publishing network started on the foundation of universality – topics that had mass appeal. Within these broad categories lived a world where we could experiment with different types of content to see what kind of audiences would emerge and then continue to feed them heavy doses of what they love. While the network is still young, it has generated significant traction in a short time frame.

I’ll obviously miss working alongside the team in Santa Monica and know they’ll continue to kick ass. I’ll now be focusing my sights back on product innovation and user experience design for a few interesting companies in the short term. Although moving to LA didn’t happen while at Tsavo, the idea is still alive, so let me know if you need a house sitter for the summer!

OpenSourceFood to Nibbledish

Recently I spoke with Robert Richman about some branding conundrums at Tsavo.  Here’s a brief version of our chat about rebranding opensourcefood to Nibbledish.

(via brandbucket) 

Media Rollup Firm Tsavo Acquiring Some Assets Of MoxyMedia; Both Backed By American Capital

(via paidcontent)

Rafat Ali
paidContent.org
Wednesday, September 10, 2008; 12:07 AM

Tsavo Media, the online media rollup just started by former Userplane CEO Mike Jones with backing from private equity fund American Capital, is acquiring select assets MoxyMedia, the Canada-based online media firm with a portfolio of about 300 different online publishing sites. The MoxyMedia model is somewhat similar to, say, Demand Media; Moxy has sites such as Kidica.com, Thinkfashion.com and Tastelife.com, all with a layer of content and then monetized by contextual ads from Yahoo Search in this case.

Moxy has an interesting background: it was spun off late last year from Geosign, also backed by American Capital to the tune of $160 million. Geosign went sour quickly after its funding in 2007, laid off a big chunk of its employees and split into two, one of which was MoxyMedia. With the split, American Capital apparently got a chunk of its cash back from Geosign, which may be what they’re using to back Tsavo and its takeover of Moxy.

The affable Jones left Santa Monica-based Userplane last month but remains a part-time adviser to parent AOL ( NYSE: TWX). Tsavo, also based in Santa Monica, has hired Nate Thelen, co-founder of Userplane, as CTO, and Mike Macadaan, former AOL’s VP of design, as VP of product. Tsavo likely will make some more related acquisitions in the consumer media space. In a recent interview with Social Networking Watch, Jones described the mission in vague terms: “Our current focus is on a wide-reaching publishing network with niche vertical focus. Overall we are viewing it from the standpoint that Tsavo will be a multi URL network across a whole series of verticals.”