Jeff Lawson, the recently deceased co-founder and CEO of enterprise infrastructure software company Twilio, is the proud new owner of an online satirical journal. The onion.
“Alright, the news is in – yes, I bought The onion” Lawson wrote in a LinkedIn post earlier today, after his first appearance on The New York Times yesterday.
The onionconsidered by many to be “America’s Best News Source,” is a digital media institution that has been spoon-feeding satire for more than three decades — first as a weekly print edition beginning in 1988, then in online media form from 1996 with physical publication. ceased in 2013. His fake stories were often mistaken for real news, but The onion has become a staple of the digital media landscape for its “alternative” take on some of the world’s biggest events – some real, others completely made up – spawning memes such as “Area Man” while mimicking the reporting style of more traditional media. .
Our stupid century
The onion has had several owners over the years (Elon Musk was apparently interested at one point), including Spanish-language television network Univision which acquired a majority stake in 2016, before selling it alongside Gizmodo to the private equity firm. Great Hill Partners investment in 2019, which created a new company. media holding company called G/O Media Inc.
NOW, The onion has landed in the hands of a new Chicago-based company called Global tetrahedronwhich is actually a reference to a fictional company that appears in a satirical book published by The onion personal in 1999, entitled Our Dumb Century.
The brains behind the new The global tetrahedron is Jeff Lawson, who co-founded Twilio in 2008 with the goal of helping businesses easily integrate communications features, such as texting and calling, into their apps through an application programming interface (API). The company went public in 2016 with a valuation of more than $1 billion, before reaching nearly $70 billion during the pandemic – before settling at between $10 billion and $15 billion over the past two years.
Lawson announced in January that he was leaving Twilio, and has since pursued a “pursuit of personal goals” as part of a career break, according to his LinkedIn profile.
But why would Lawson choose to buy The onion? Well, because he likes it and he can afford it.
“The onion is an institution, a national treasure, and we need it,” Lawson said in his announcement message. “But its success is based on something different than that of most media companies. The onion has been stifled, like most of the Internet, by byzantine cookie dialogs, paywalls, bizarre belly fat ads, and clickbait content. And we have had enough. The Internet sucks, and it’s time to improve it. It’s time to focus again on the customers, the end users.
Lawson assures us that more things will come in the future – new products, new media – but for now, he’s asking everyone to chip in a little money for the cause. At the time of writing, The onion‘s home page is filled with “breaking news” and “trending” articles that relate entirely to this acquisition, where Lawson asks those who share his mission to donate exactly $1. For nothing in return.
“If you care The onionif The onion never made you laugh – give us some money,” Lawson writes. “For that dollar, you get…absolutely nothing.” Just a smug feeling that you once again spent less The onion what it’s worth in your life.
techcrunch
