HackerNoon Raises $1M From Coil, Will Stream Micropayments from Readers to Writers via the Browser

EDWARDS CO June 10, 2020 -- HackerNoon, the technology publishing platform serving 4M readers per month, today announced a $1M strategic investment from Coil, the San Francisco-based startup designed to help creators monetize content and provide a premium experience to consumers. Additionally, the companies kicked off a three year partnership focused on Web Monetization for contributing writers. Web Monetization is an open specification that is freely available to any monetization service provider who wants to support sites like HackerNoon. 

“We want to become the best place for tech professionals to read, write and publish,” said HackerNoon CEO David Smooke. “To date, we’ve provided editorial resources, validation, and distribution. Now with this strategic partnership, HackerNoon will experiment with streaming micropayments to writers based on how much time Coil users spend reading their stories.” 

"HackerNoon is home to an incredibly dedicated community of technologists and software developers,” said Jonathan Greenglass, Coil’s Chief Growth Officer.  “We’re thrilled to be working with HackerNoon to provide its community with a simple way for readers and writers to participate in the value exchange between one another."

Starting today, HackerNoon Writers can now add their Web Monetization meta tag to their stories on HackerNoon. Once enabled, Coil automatically streams micropayments to the writer’s wallet based on the amount of time Coil Members spend reading. We will also offer a way for writers to donate their earnings via Coil to charities that are dedicated to making the Internet a better place. 

Last year, HackerNoon launched their own content management system (dubbed HackerNoon 2.0) to serve readers, writers and sponsors on their own terms. The company pivoted from a publishing platform to a software company and a publication, creating 100+ years worth of reading time since July 2019. 

“Props to HackerNoon's editorial teams for editing my piece. Truly amazed at the editing quality and the effort they pour into *every* article that goes through their hands. Excited to see them grow even bigger!” tweeted Human+Business Founder and HackerNoon contributor Andy Chan.

“Congratulations to David Smooke, Linh Dao Smooke, Dane Lyons,  Austin Pocus, and everyone else on the HackerNoon team. The new platform is well-built and progressing fast. Thanks for everything you all are doing for the global developer community,” tweeted FreeCodeCamp Founder Quincy Larson. 

Coil paid $11.35 per share, valuing the company at $11.5M pre-money. In HackerNoon’s previous equity crowdfunding round, the share price was $8.20. The company remains entirely common stock. As part of the partnership, Jonathan Greenglass, Coil’s Chief Growth Officer will be joining David Smooke and Linh Dao Smooke on HackerNoon Board. Previously, he was CFO of Imgur, one of the internet’s largest communities, and a top 30 website in the US. 

“In addition to implementing the Web Monetization standard, we will use this investment to expand the editorial, sales, and most importantly, software teams,” said David Smooke.

About HackerNoon

How hackers start their afternoons. HackerNoon is built for technologists to read, write, and publish. We are an open and international community of 12,000+ contributing writers publishing stories and expertise for 4,000,000+ curious and insightful monthly readers. Founded in 2016, HackerNoon is an independent technology publishing platform run by David Smooke and Linh Smooke. 

About Coil

Coil was founded in 2018 to build a better business model for the web. Coil makes it easy for creators to monetize their content across the internet, and provides an alternative to advertising and site-by-site subscription models. As members enjoy content, Coil uses a proposed open web standard called Web Monetization to stream micropayments to creators in real time. Coil is designed to support a variety of creators, developers and content platforms. In 2019, Coil, in collaboration with Mozilla and Creative Commons, launched the $100 million Grant for the Web to boost open, fair and inclusive standards and innovation in Web Monetization. Coil also invested $20 million in Imgur, the community-powered entertainment platform reaching 300 million people each month. For more information about Coil, please visit coil.com and follow on Twitter (@Coil).