Mode Media

Founded in 2003 as Project Y, Inc. by a team including Samir Arora, the company initially launched as Glam Media with a focus on fashion and beauty content. Arora, who had a background at Apple and had previously founded the web design company NetObjects, Inc., served as CEO for most of the company's tenure. The business was built on the principle of a distributed media model, creating a vertical network of thousands of publisher websites and blogs rather than relying solely on its own content generation.

The company's primary business was aggregating these lifestyle sites and selling advertising across the network, sharing revenue with the content creators. This strategy allowed it to scale rapidly, attracting significant venture capital—approximately $225 million in total—from firms like Accel and DFJ, as well as investors such as Burda Media. The platform functioned as a curator, using its technology to coordinate and distribute ad campaigns across its vast network, which spanned lifestyle categories from fashion (Glam.com) and men's interests (Brash.com) to health and food. At its peak, Mode Media, as it was renamed in 2014, was a major digital publisher in the United States, reaching over 150 million unique users a month and attaining a private valuation of around $1 billion ahead of a planned but never realized IPO.

Despite substantial revenue, reported to be nearly $90 million in its later years, the company faced high expenses. After a series of pivots and the departure of key figures like CEO Samir Arora and board member Marc Andreessen, Mode Media abruptly ceased operations in September 2016. The closure left many of its blogger partners with unpaid invoices. Following the shutdown, its social platform asset, Ning, was transferred to Cyndx, and some of its flagship domains like Glam.com and Foodie.com were acquired and later relaunched by Static Media in 2022. Keywords: Glam Media, Samir Arora, digital media network, content curation platform, online advertising, lifestyle content, vertical media, publisher network, native advertising, branded video, Glam.com, Ning, digital publishing, media aggregation, blog network, content monetization, fashion media, beauty content, ad network, Silicon Valley startup, venture capital, digital lifestyle media, Project Y, Mode Media shutdown