“This company is a true Internet success story. This started as an offline community, a cocktail party, that turned into this Web site that actually makes money."

-- Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby, who, after 10 years or so of running her online literary/media community and tons of classes and parties, sold the business to JupiterMedia for $23MM.

(Via NY Times)

Susan sez: This one is about having the dedication to hang in there and find ways to offer services to a specific community that no one else can exactly replicate-in this case, journalists and writers. Congrats, L.

Update: Rafat says: "This comes close to what the company hoped for ($25 million or so) when it started the M&A process in early 2006, though one would have expected the valuation to go up in the almost two years since then."