Mo money, mo journalism

We’ve just announced a $6 million cash injection for Tab Media, the company which publishes The Tab and babe. The New York Times has the story. As they say in today's paper: "Tab Media stakes out ground as a generation-defining brand à la MTV."

The money came from new investors News Corp, as well as some old and very supportive friends, including Balderton Capital, Downing Ventures, Knight Ventures, our longtime comrade Mr Robert Markwick and other angel investors. I want to say a huge thank you to all of them. Tab Media's audience is the generation of people born after 1990, but it’s great to have the support of so many people born before 1960.

I started The Tab in 2009 with my best friends George Marangos-Gilks and Taymoor Atighetchi because the student papers at Cambridge University were dangerously dull. Fifteen like-minded visionaries joined our first Tab team, and out of a pub called The Maypole, we created an institution.

Pretty soon, people from other universities wanted their own Tab. What followed were several years of travelling the UK and US, sleeping on sofas, drinking alcopops in sticky bars, and attending disciplinary meetings. The Tab grew quickly because we cover news our audience really cares about. We broke big, important stories about fascists and sleazy politicians and people pouring bottles of milk over their heads.

In 2015, we landed in the US and opened our Brooklyn bureau. In its first year, The Tab US scaled the heights of American journalism: we pissed off Fox News, and broke a scoop about the President's daughter. Today, we're at 40 universities in the US, and we're recruiting more outspoken, fearless, news-hungry students this year.

Our US team even gave birth to a new company within the company: babe started a year ago and it now has a million Facebook fans, a cult video series, and is on page one of Google if you search the word "fuckboy".

As we grew from a pub-based society to a global business, it became clear that the big news and entertainment companies aren't much better than student papers at understanding what young audiences are interested in. We saw this hole and we took our chance.

A lot of people have been part of our journey so far: writers, editors, former employees. In 2019 we will be ten years old, and – barring a major lawsuit – we will be celebrating la decima with a big party to thank everyone in the Tab and babe family.

There’s a long way to go before we are the big, influential media company we want to be. We have set aside most of the investment money to buy the next Hulk Hogan sex tape, but the remainder will be spent growing our staff.

Currently 42 people work for Tab Media in London and Brooklyn. Our team is one of the most inventive, funny and ambitious in the business. If you want to be part of it, we’re hiring.

Update: the story has also been covered by the Guardian and Business Insider.