Ozy Media has changed course and will not shut down, founder Carlos Watson said Monday, a recent twist of social media that has collapsed rapidly. revealed for deceiving Goldman Sachs into making money.
“This is our time for Lazarus,” Watson told a Today show Monday morning, a few days after the announcement. Watson said discussions with advertisers and investors over the weekend encouraged Ozy to run.
“I think Ozy is a part of this moment,” he said.
Ozy’s fall has shocked entertainment companies and the media last week as it revealed the willingness of Silicon Valley marketers to pour money into online entertainment without supporting their claims.
Watson said the former went too far and refused to be compared to the founders of Theranos Elizabeth Holmes, who is currently accused of embezzling money from illicit drug dealers and patients by making false claims about their blood test and budget comparison.
“When you see people start putting my name on it with Elizabeth Holmes, who didn’t get anything real, they made billions of dollars,” Watson said. “We have five letters that go to millions of people, 12 TV shows including the Emmy winner. This is not a house of cards.”
Watson launched Ozy in 2013 as a digital startup for young people, such as Vice and BuzzFeed, that would disrupt the journalism business. He raised more than $ 80m from investors, including billionaire donor Laurene Powell Jobs, German publishing house Axel Springer and Marc Lasry, hedge fund manager and one of the Milwaukee Bucks members.
Watson attracted the attention of investors, after going to Harvard and Stanford, worked for McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, and formed a black media group that could disrupt the business.
However, a New York Times report last week revealed that co-founder Ozy Samir Rao had turned YouTube into a bid to secure $ 40m from Goldman Sachs. The newspaper also raised questions about the number of listeners in the company. Ozy in 2019 said it reached 50m users per month, but more from Comscore, which tries to engage with the internet, showed statistics on those segments.
A few days later, savers, advertisers and board members fled, wanting to separate themselves from the degrading race. The board Friday night said Ozy closed.
Former BBC journalist Katty Kay resigned from the talks, which she described as “difficult and dangerous”. Lasry came down He left the board just three weeks after taking office, although he said on Thursday he remained the company’s salesman.
Before Ozy announced his closure on Friday, Axel Springer said he had not been in office since 2019 but that the company’s CEO, Jens Müffelmann, had attended the meetings carefully.
“In view of what has happened and the accusations against Ozy, [Müffelmann] has decided and informed the CEO of Ozy yesterday that [is stepping] down to the job, ”the company said.
Another early fundraiser, Laurene Powell Jobs of Emerson Collective, also wanted to secede from the company. “Emerson has not participated in Ozy’s recent fundraising and has not served his committee since 2019,” the company said last week.
Ozy has two remaining members: Watson and Michael Moe, a sales capitalist.