The love fest for Marc Andreessen's new blog has ended. The Netscape co-founder announced that his latest venture, white label social networking startup, Ning, has raised $44 million in a third round of funding led by Legg Mason to mixed reaction. That's different from the raves Andreessen's previous posts have received.
With a reported post-money valuation of $214 million, most of the criticism centers on, well, valuation. Ning's income statement isn't public so it's hard to say how its revenue is growing. The only metric to work off of is the 73,650 social networks Ning users have created. If 3% of the users are actually paying Ning's $30 per month premium rate, then the company is on track to record about $750,000 in subscription revenue this year. If you throw in revenue garnered from very targeted ads on the 2500th ranked site on the web according to Alexa, maybe Ning's revenue comes in at $2 million in 2007.
The company's growth has been impressive since its relaunch earlier this year. For example, its on track to jump from 65,000 to 75,000 networks in five weeks. With experienced management, Ning is targeting the rapidly social networking segment with an online service that can actually make money for its most active participants.
Despite all that, only an investor that doesn't specialize in high-tech investment would have done this deal at the price of $170 million pre-money. It leaves very little room for any missteps by Ning.
For more on Ning's $44 million Series C fundraising, see:
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Tags: bay+partners, facebook, crv, vc, venture+capital
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