10 Questions with Rafat Ali

Issue 100

Rafat Ali was the founder, publisher and editor of ContentNext, the parent company of his blog, paidContent. In 2008, he sold the business to Guardian News & Media for £4m.

Rafat was the Knight Found-ation Fellow at Indiana University, his alma mater, where he completed his Masters in Journalism (1999-2000). ounder of paidContent and parent company ContentNext, a media company covering digital media, entertainment and the information industries, Rafat was previously the  Managing Editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter.
He started paidContent as a blog in 2002, and later added three other sites: paidContent.uk, mocoNews and contentSutra, before the business was purchased in 2008 in a deal worth £4 million by Guardian News & Media (GNM), the news media division of UK-headquartered Guardian Media Group.  
He expanded the company to 23 members of staff, with offices in Santa Monica and New York City, and took investment from the venture capital firm Greycroft Partners before the sale to GNM. He continued to run the company as a stand-alone business under GNM until June 2010, when he left to go on a sabbatical. 

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