Betfair.com co-founder Josh Hannah joins Matrix Partnrs
Matrix Partners just added entrepreneur and investor Josh Hannah as a general partner based out of the venture firm’s Menlo Park, Calif. office. Hannah is probably best-known for co-founding online gambling site Betfair.com (previously Flutter.com), which now says it manages more than $50 billion in transactions every year. He also purchased how-to site eHow in 2004, restructured it around user-generated content, increased traffic and revenue by 30 times, and sold the site to Demand Media.
Since the eHow acquisition in 2006, Hannah has been working as an angel investor and startup adviser - he has a seat on the boards of Friendster, Minted.com, uShip, and Betfair. Given all the doom-and-gloom about the economy and last year’s venture returns, this may seem like an odd time to be getting into the business. But it really isn’t, Hannah says, since he plans to stick around for a long time, and any early-stage investments made now won’t feel any pressure to get acquired or go public for years. The fact that the economic climate means startups are more inclined to give favorable terms to VCs is an obvious plus, too.
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