Progressive blogging site Huffington Post, valued at $100 million when it last raised venture capital in 2008, is getting sued by two consultants who say it was their idea and they went to Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer with a plan and had a handshake agreement to work together, according to a lawsuit to be filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
But Peter Daou and James Boyce were then boxed out, they contend, and Huffington tells a different tale about the origins of the site.
As the motive for what became Huffington Post, "Democrats need “to develop a dominant position within the Internet,” Daou said during an early meeting about the site, according to the complaint. “It is a system [for] pushing the message, not just for fundraising.”"
“We have now officially entered into Bizzaro World. James Boyce and Peter Daou, two political operatives who we rejected going into business with or hiring 6 years ago, and who had absolutely nothing to do with creating, running, financing, or building the Huffington Post, now concoct some scheme saying they own part of the company,” Huffington and Lerer responded.
