Laurene Powell Jobs, Larry Sonsini, other Valley titans back media startup

www.ozy.com

A look at Ozy Media, which launches in September.

There's a new media startup in Mountain View, and it has basically lined up a murderer's row of venture backers.

Ozy Media, the brainchild of former MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson, is backed by a who's who of Silicon Valley bigwigs ? Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs; Larry Sonsini, a name partner at the Valley legal powerhouse Wilson Sonsini; mega-angel Ron Conway; Chegg's Dan Rosensweig; and Google General Counsel David Drummond.

Aside from the name and the backers, not a whole lot is known about Ozy, which launches in September. According to an article in Fortune, Ozy plans to highlight a few in-depth stories a day, focused on the needs and interests of the "change generation."

If you're like me, "change generation" sounds like a meaningless buzz phrase, a bit like "Pepsi generation,"and is probably not proscriptive enough to actually tell you anything about the organization, what it will cover and how it will cover it.

I will say that Ozy is taking great pains to appear hip, with a landing page featuring a tattooed 20-something with dyed red hair making what can only be described as an "OMG" face. There's also the marketing spiel in the email they send out when you sign up for their mailing list, which reads a little like something written by a man in his 40s trying to seem like a rad dude to kids in their teens.

It said: "We called, you came. And now? The party begins in earnest. Please confirm your cool kid status."

In my head, I read it in the voice of Poochy from the Simpsons.

If Ozy wants to seem like the hip new pub for the kids who sit at the cool table, the name is a little weird. It's short for Ozymandius, which is either a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley or a character from the comic Watchmen, depending on how familiar you are with the romance poets of the 19th century.

Jon Xavier is Web Producer at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1826.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bizj_sanjose/~3/zY5ncvw1NdQ/laurene-powell-jobs-other-valley.html

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