YouTube, Twitch co-founders invest in Taiwanese news site The News Lens
Earlier this year, The News Lens acquired Taiwan tech site INSIDE and sports site Sports Vision
The News Lens (TNL), an independent Taipei-based Chinese-language news site, announced today it has completed an undisclosed amount in Series C round of funding from high-profile investors, such as YouTube Co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch Co-founder Kevin Lin, and Guitar Hero Co-founder Charles Huang.
In addition, several funds including Dorcas, Hazel Asset Management, Walden International, and existing investor North Base Media, also co-invested.
The company will use a portion of the capital to begin its international expansion, and optimise its current brands strategy and in-house technology initiatives. The international expansion will come through partnerships or acquisition of other Chinese-language content producers.
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TNL has been growing both organically and through acquisitions. Earlier this year, it acquired Taiwan tech site INSIDE, and Taiwan sports site Sports Vision. A key focus now will be to restructure internally into a media group to optimize the traffic and sales potential of each brand.
“Our goal is to gradually build the most effective and biggest digital-media company for global Chinese millennials and become the leading digital media group in Taiwan within this year,” said Co-founder and CEO Joey Chung. “We will use a combination of technology and capital to position TNL as a market leader, both in Taiwan and across Asia. We want to build strong products with a technical edge with significant revenue potential, while maintaining our independent journalistic ideals.”
Mario Yang, TNL’s Co-founder and Chief Content Officer, said that he sees considerable opportunity in developing products that connect with younger, Chinese-speaking audiences across Asia and internationally. “The quality and relevance of our content defines us for our followers and for our commercial partners. We will continue developing new content with that original ideal in the belief that the need for valuable information will never change and hope to soon expand our reach to more international markets.”
The TNL Media Group is based in Taipei and publishes content under four brands — ELD (lifestyle and fashion); INSIDE (for technology news and trends); and SportsVision (for sports news and commentary). It employs a staff of about 80 in Taipei and Hong Kong. Combined, the group has around nine million monthly unique readers.
Early last year, TNL raised Series B funding from a host of investors, including North Base Media (co-founded by Marcus Brauchli, previous Executive Editor of the Washington Post and Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal), WISKEY Capital, Walden International, and Trinity Investment.
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