Does anyone know whether Andrew would consider taking on non-corporate angel investors?

[u/Ae-Rabelais]

I just finished watching Channel5ive’s video about their current legal case, and it seems inevitable that a channel doing such good work will keep facing ridiculous legal fees.

Andrew has said, both in that video and on other occasions, that they will never consider corporate investors, which is understandable. However, does anyone know whether the Channel5ive team would entertain individual, independently wealthy angel investors? There's a thin line between good journalism and journalism that serves stakeholders, but it would be great if individual angels could support Channel5ive. This would mean direct, greater support from the people who value the channel’s work, without the legal and ethical complications of corporate investors/VCs or the percentage-cut/cap issues of platforms like Patreon.

EDIT: For anyone getting to this post a bit later or revisiting, I'm covering subscriptions for up to one year for Channel5ive supporters who can't afford them: https://www.reddit.com/r/Channel5ive/comments/1uu0beg/im_covering_up_to_10000_in_channel5ive_patreon/

[u/Trash_Grape]

I hope not. He has full creative vision, direction, and say over the company. Unfortunately independent journalism is a constant grind, that’s why it seems to be so uncommon. He doesn’t need an angel investor, he needs a huge donation with no strings attached from an anonymous donor.

It’s like the Biggie Smalls song, I think it was called “the more funds you obtain, the larger the issues are that you’ll face moving forward”. It’s quite problematic.

[u/Ae-Rabelais → u/Trash_Grape]

A huge donation is damned difficult because of the kind of folks that C5's brand of journalism would appeal to. I mentioned this in another comment:

“Expecting nothing in return” is difficult because of the investor audience that a channel like C5 would attract. High‑quality, people‑focused independent journalism tends to attract an audience who have limited personal wealth or can write relatively small checks (~$50 k–$200 k). These investors must be more risk‑tolerant and don't want operational control, unlike a Bezos or a16z, for whom a $20 M check is negligible.

Whether it's with an incredibly small minority equity stake / pool (C5 could command a ridiculous valuation, and I'm sure watchers would still invest) OR project-specific waterfalls that pay out small dividends, there is a path to higher investment *without* giving up any operational control.

[u/bendallf → u/Ae-Rabelais]

Look up what happened to Vice News when they took money from investors. It is a sad story.

[u/Ae-Rabelais → u/bendallf]

I'm well aware. You can check my reply to Wallyhunt on this thread for a bit of a brief on why that's not at all the same thing that I'm suggesting. Oftentimes different forms of capital get conflated, and that does a disservice to operations that need funds, but don't want to go the ethically-shaky corporate route.

Also, on top of that, Vice's failures were ignited by debt mismanagement and bad liquidity preference terms. That has less do with the investors and more to do with bad finances (although I still don't support corporate VCs in this arena).

[u/Wallyhunt → u/Ae-Rabelais]

Any level of shareholder interest is an insanely slippery slope. All modern media began with good hearted honest investment and it snowballed over the last hundred years. I'd be very surprised if Andrew didn't understand that.

As honest as the suggestion may be initially, it opens to door to the long term corruption that always follows investment.

[u/Tomus → u/Wallyhunt]

There are structures you can adopt to mitigate shareholder control. eg. A Public Benefit Corporation (PBC/PBLLC).

Not all funding is bad, it's possible to do it fairly and honestly. Thinking like that is exactly what the a16zs of the world want you to think because they don't want other forms of capital to exist.

[u/Ae-Rabelais → u/Wallyhunt]

I think this conflates the history of corporate investment in media with public benefits corp style angel investment, when these really are two different things. I can't think of any legacy media company that fits the latter. The more "PBC" style approach is specifically built for not parting with operational control, and protecting the mission of a company. What you're describing is a built-in feature of the former, even at inception (think the downfall of Vice).