Yesterday (March 12, 2007) was our last day as Publisher for RealClearPolitics. As was reported in PaidContent a month ago, the investor group I led sold our stake in RealClearPolitics back to the founders earlier this year…and stepping down as Publisher is a natural consequence of that transaction. It was a great investment for us; and we are confident that RealClearPolitics has a very bright future ahead going into the 2008 Presidential Election.

John McIntyre and Tom Bevan have done a fantastic job building up RealClearPolitics, and we’re proud to have been a part of the success in the past year. Since we became involved in September of 2005:
– we launched a new, “micro-chunked” site built on Movable Type (Fred Wilson talked about it here)
– we executed distribution deals with Yahoo!, OpinionJournal, Forbes, FoxNews, and Time Inc.
– we developed key new technologies used by RealClearPolitics including BuzzTracker, ReaderArticles, and a myriad of Polling tools
– Page views and unique visitors more than doubled
– we signed up additional web sites to be repped by RealClearPolitics
– Revenue quintupled

(all posts on RealClearPolitics)

RealClearPolitics is well positioned as the leading independent political web site heading into what is certain to be a historic 18 months. The technology base and business model is in great shape, and I am looking forward to seeing the evolution of the site and the can’t-be-beat election coverage.

We wish John and Tom the best of luck moving forward — and we’ll still be powering the FoxNews/RealClearPolitics Buzztracker!