“Let me know if there’s a conversation to be had.” He closed with “Regards, Nick.” It was such stories that had led Thiel, in 2009, to label Valleywag “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda” and to liken its writers to terrorists. Both before and after that, Valleywag and Gawker had continued to ridicule Thiel, his investment decisions, his ideas, and his friends. “Does Nick Denton wish he were Peter Thiel?” a headline on Denton’s own once asked.īut, in 2007, Gawker’s Silicon Valley tributary, Valleywag, had outed Thiel, or at least Thiel thought it had. “Nauseatingly successful” was how Denton once described him. Both were wealthy still in 2014, though as winner of one of Silicon Valley’s greatest daily doubles-he co-founded PayPal and was Facebook’s first big investor-Thiel was exponentially more so, a fact that stuck in the ultra-competitive Denton’s craw. Both have resisted getting old, Denton by attitude, Thiel through human growth hormones. Both are libertarians, and nonconformists, and visionaries, and science-fiction fans, and workaholics, and wonks. Both are gay, and both came out relatively late. Both made their fortunes in the digital world in fact, it had brought them together in San Francisco a dozen or so years earlier. Both graduated from fancy universities-Denton from Oxford and Thiel from Stanford. Both were born in Europe-Denton in England and Thiel in Germany. They are contemporaries: Denton turned 50 this past August, and Thiel 49 two months later. It could easily have been a message to a friend, or at least a kindred spirit, for, as many people who know them both have noted, the two have so much in common. However, as part of that deal, other bidders were given the opportunity to offer a higher price.One day in September 2014 the publisher of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, sent an e-mail to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and billionaire. In June, Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and entered into a purchase agreement with Ziff Davis, a digital media company. In May, billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel - who was publicly outed as gay by a Gawker-owned site in 2007 - admitted to financing the lawsuit, telling The New York Times that his efforts were “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence.” Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, was awarded $140 million in compensatory and punitive damages by a jury that ruled in his favor in March, after the website published a sex tape involving the celebrity in 2012. "Gawker Media Group has agreed this evening to sell our business and popular brands to Univision, one of America’s largest media companies that is rapidly assembling the leading digital media group for millennial and multicultural audiences," Denton said in a statement. Today's announcement comes a day after a number of companies were said to have submitted bids to take over the media company, which has been decimated in the wake of an invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan. The source said that Univision agreed to buy all seven Gawker brands, but did not know if all of those brands would continue to exist under Univision. The deal will need to be finalized by a judge in bankruptcy court on Thursday, a person familiar with the deal told ABC News.Īnother source familiar with the deal told ABC News that Denton will not have a future at Univision. “The price was a direct reflection of the high-quality business that nick and his team built," he said. The price of the sale will be $135 million, according to Mark Patricof who facilitated the negotiations on behalf of Gawker Media. "I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership - disentangled from the legal campaign against the company," Denton said. — - In the wake of a lawsuit, Gawker Media has agreed to sell the company to Univision, according to Nick Denton, Gawker's founder.
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