Penn-Olson officially announced that they are now funded by East Ventures.
The news didn’t come as a surprise for me, because I can say I’ve seen it coming since Jakarta Ventures Night on March 21, 2011.
Along with time, I’ve discussed it with Rama and Aulia, and even though we had no solid evidence at that moment but everyone agreed that East Venture’s (EV) process in funding Penn-Olson.com can be seen from days away.
Finally the news of Penn-Olson being funded by EV appeared few days ago, but still not official. Willis Wee, founder and CEO of Penn-Olson wrote a little disclosure in their article on Tokopedia, and today official release was sent through email to Daily Social, confirming that east Ventures has invested in Penn-Olson.com, and the amount of funding is not disclosed.
The blog started as a hobby had experienced several course changes, including strategy change they had several months ago when they are starting to cover and report articles on startup, especially the ones in Indonesia. Willis also explained through his official statement that as a startup, Penn-Olson pivoted several times before they become what they are now. Now they have writers in China, Indonesia, India, Japan, and Singapore and will add several other writers from other countries in the near future.
For Indonesia, as far as I know, Penn-Olson is quite aggressive in finding their writers for the blog. In Jakarta there are at least two writers and a writer from Bandung just joined them.
East Ventures itself previously announced their investment on TeknoUp and NightSpade and appear to be about to exit their aqcuisition over Disdus which happened early this April.
Let’s see what other strategy East Ventures will do this time, especially after having ventures night in two different cities a while ago. After this time they put their fund in a blog from Singapore, maybe next time other news on additional portfolio will come, perhaps it will be from Indonesia. One thing for sure, I will keep my eyes open. 😉
Translated by Nita Sellya.
Interesting news in the Asia tech media space!