# John Battelle

> John Battelle is a seed investor at Columbia University backing Analytics and Publishing. See 7 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Columbia University](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/columbia-university-in-the-city-of-new-york-512e)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 7
- Last investment: Jul 2021
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbattelle
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/johnbattelle
- Website: https://x.com/johnbattelle

John Battelle is a seed investor at Columbia University in San Francisco focused on Analytics and Publishing. John Battelle is co-founder, executive chair at Recount Media.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Analytics | 3 | 43% |
| Publishing | 2 | 29% |
| Advertising | 2 | 29% |
| Digital Media | 2 | 29% |
| Advertising Platforms | 2 | 29% |

24 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 4 | 57% |
| Series A | 1 | 14% |
| Funding Round | 1 | 14% |
| Venture - Series Unknown | 1 | 14% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Flymachine | Flymachine is an entertainment industry that organizes lives events digitally. | $21M | Venture - Series Unknown | Jul 14, 2021 |  |
| The Hustle | The Hustle is the most trusted source for business news. We use our no nonsense voice to explain the latest in business, startups, tech, and whatever else is happening in this outlandish world of ours. | $1M | Seed | Mar 13, 2017 |  |
| NewCo | NewCo is an organizer of forums and conferences used to connect people with businesses on a mission. Its events are city-specific festivals and create unique partnerships to offer a cross-platform publication that enables clients to connect to its audiences with their stories and shape business, politics, and culture. |  | Seed | Mar 09, 2016 |  |
| Sovrn | Sovrn offers products and services to tens of thousands of online publishers that help them grow, operate their business, understand their readership, and manage consumer data. Sovrn is dedicated to helping content creators do more of what they love, and less of what they don’t.The company is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado with offices in SanFrancisco, New York, and London. |  |  | Aug 19, 2015 |  |
| Atlas Obscura | Atlas Obscura is an online magazine and travel company that catalogs unusual and obscure travel destinations via user-generated content. The editorial articles comprise a mixture of features and news articles on topics including history, science, and food, in addition to travel and exploration, as well as hosting a collaborative, definitive guideto the world's most obscure places.Author Joshua Foer and documentary filmmaker and author Dylan Thuras founded it in 2009 and is based in Brooklyn, New York. | $2M | Seed | Feb 24, 2015 |  |
| AdStage | From paid search and web analytics, to social media and emerging new tech, AdStage unleashes the power of data to help marketers make decisions that drive business growth. Today, paid marketers at leading agencies and companies in almost every industry depend on our platform as their trusted source of truth. | $1.4M | Seed | Mar 01, 2013 |  |
| Singly | Today's best apps connect with other apps for + Sharing (virality) + Friending (engagement)+ Data (intelligent user experiences)+ much more...Whether you're an independent developer, a startup on AngelList, an agency that builds apps for clients or a publisher who is doing more with mobile, Singly's SDKs and productsare a solution for you.No more writing custom code for authentication, setting up user tables, syncing and storing data, tackling normalization and search/filtering. Your team gets accelerated time to market, increased focus on product, lowered infrastructure costs, and no more maintenance distractions and overhead. Singly was founded in 2010 and is based in San Francisco. Connect with Singly at www.singly.com and @singly. |  | Series A | Apr 23, 2012 |  |

7 of 7 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Transmedia Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/transmedia-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [AlleyCorp](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alleycorp) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Another Planet Entertainment](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/another-planet-entertainment) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [1745 Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bertelsmann-digital-media-investments) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Bill Silva Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bill-silva-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Bloomberg Beta](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bloomberg-beta) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Columbia University

VC Fund · New York, United States

Columbia University is one of the world's most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. Columbia University is an ivy league school. The University recognizes the importance of its location in NewYork City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the University to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.

5 contacts available at Columbia University.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Avi Fogel | Startup Mentor and Advisor | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/avi-fogel |
| Chris Saridakis | Lecturer | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/chris-saridakis |
| Dave Lerner | Adjunct Professor Entrepreneurship | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/dave-lerner |
| Ioannis Kymissis | Kenneth Brayer Professor of Electrical Engineering | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ioannis-john-kymissis |
| Jennifer Lee | Media Innovation Fellow | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jennifer-8-lee |

## Similar investors

### Similar industry
- [RRE Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rre-ventures) — VC Fund
- [Accel](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/accel) — VC Fund
- [1745 Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bertelsmann-digital-media-investments) — VC Fund

### Similar stage
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## Featured in investor lists
- [Publishing Angel Investors](https://shizune.co/investors/publishing-angel-investors)

## FAQ

### What does John Battelle invest in?

John Battelle invests primarily in Analytics, Publishing and Advertising startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 7 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did John Battelle last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for John Battelle closed in Jul 2021. Shizune tracks 7 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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