New York based media company BuzzFeed is planning to become a pubic entity now. Yes you heard it right. Following the footsteps of Snap, the social media company too is making preparations for an initial public offering for 2018, confirm reports from Axios and The Wall Street Journal.
The company was founded in 2006 and until now, has raised hundreds of millions from various VC firms and NBCUniversal. And as the tradition goes, once a company has earned enough of money after making substantial growth in the market, it either gets itself acquired, or goes public, and in this case, BuzzFeed has decided to choose the second option.
BuzzFeed’s initial public offering will follow the recent public debut of Snapchat’s parent company Snap which is famous with the millennial and Gen Z set. Though The Wall Street welcomed Snap with open arms and the stock rose at an unexpected rate initially, but after some time the rates fell significantly.
The company initially gained popularity by publishing viral stories on its platform. The initial fan base of the website was attracted to its GIF listicles and quizzes.
It utilized this patronage for investing in other undertakings like a big team of journalists working on its BuzzFeed News. In collaboration with Tasty, BuzzFeed is making entry the field of cooking, and apart from that, it has made some heavy investments in the field of video streaming.
NBCUniversal, which recently invested another another $200 million in the company, is BuzzFeed’s biggest investor by far. NBCUniversal is also an investor for Vox (The Verge, Recode, Racked, Polygon, etc.).
Considering BuzzFeed’s great success until now, it will be interesting to see its performance after it becomes a long-term public media company. These plans are subject to a lot of change though as are all plans for IPO and as such, should be taken with a pinch of salt.
