VentureBeat blog raises money, hires veteran reporter

VentureBeat provides ongoing coverage of the venture capital community and venture-backed startups. Last week, founder Matt Marshall announced a new hire:

I’m delighted to report that Dean Takahashi, a veteran tech writer from the San Jose Mercury News, is joining VentureBeat.

Dean is one of the most prolific writers I know. He has written about chips, servers, computers, gadgets and particularly, games, which is his real passion.

Paul Boutin at Valleywag reported yesterday that VentureBeat matched Takahashi's previous salary. (I'm betting there was some upside too, whether equity or bonus potential.)

So, how can a blog afford that? VentureBeat reports:

VentureBeat has grown steadily since launching more than a year ago. We’ve been hiring writers and we have record traffic. I’ve bootstrapped the company thus far, and while it’s been rewarding, there’s just so much more we’d like to do. We’ve been pretty much in the black since I launched, and I’ve hired writers as cash afforded. Now that we’ve got our feet on the ground, its time to get to the next phase.

We’ve raised $320,000 cash from a number of angel investors, including Georges Harik, a very early employee at Google and manager of several of its early products; Aydin Senkut, another early Google employee who is now running a small angel fund called Felicis Ventures; Mike Brown, an investor at Foundation Capital, but who invested on his own accord; Philippe Cases, an investor specialized in open source; MHS Capital; Amidzad; and Elliott Donnelly’s White Sand Group among others.