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Through SoftBank Capital, where Hippeau is still a partner, he invested $5 million in Huffington Post in 2006. That investment has paid off handsomely as Huffington Post has grown to one of the most trafficked online news destinations, and now Hippeau is in charge of converting those eyeballs to money in the form of sustained profitability.
That'll be a challenge considering the landscape of the economy, but all signs are pointing that Huffington Post is headed in the right direction. Hippeau has 25 years of experience managing media companies, most notably as CEO of Ziff Davis Media as well as from a venture capital perspective at SoftBank. Hippeau heads the company at a time when The Washington Post reports that Huffington Post hasn't tapped the $25 million it raised in December from Oak Investments and had revenue of $8 million in 2008 while traffic skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says Huffington Post had 21.2 million unique readers in May 2009, up 100% from 10.1 million in the same year-ago period -- which also happened to be the height of an election season. As for spending the money on a deal for growth, that could be a possibility. With media valuations falling because of the slowing economy, co-founder Ken Lerer told the Post: "We've kicked the tires of a few places over the last couple of months but haven't seen anything that makes any sense. If a perfect fit came up, we would do it." - Gerald Magpily
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