The Athletic keeps growing .......

My bet is no one. Not at that kind of valuation. A Series D raise of that magnitude is great for them, but it's more of a sign of how much cheap money is still sloshing around burning a hole in peoples's pockets. ... and I believe the valuation is going to ultimately prove to be ridiculous.

That has nothing to do with the viability of the company or if it can be a profitable venture moving forward. It does have to do with how much this last group of investors paid for a stake (it included Matthew McConaughey).

At best, the current equity bubble stays intact long enough for them to take the company public. But before the Fed's reflation of the stock market since September by expanding its balance sheet again, the public markets were starting to more rigorously scrutinize companies that had raised a lot of private equity / venture capital money and were looking to cash in. So even if they manage to do an IPO in time, this still may be the high point on valuation. We'll see. It's difficult to know because they don't have to make an income statement and balance sheet publicly available, so for all any of us know, they could be on the verge of profitability and ready to explode in income growth. But from the stories around this capital raise, it read a bit like they hadn't reached the million subscribers by the end of 2019 the way Hansmann had thrown out earlier in the year. It does, however, sound like they are getting a decent percentage of subscribers re-upping, which is a positive sign. The questions are: 1) Are they charging enough per subscription for it to be profitable, and 2) Can they keep growing, and not just growing. ... they now need to show explosive growth.

If they had grown slowly, trying to get bigger in a controlled way and paying for it with the cash the business is generating, they could have taken their time. But they have taken a lot of money from people who are now going to want a relatively quick return on their investments. And worse, the latest investments were made at very high valuations. So that puts a lot of pressure on them to now grow (it sounds like growing internationally, is the plan) and to show growing profits.