\n<\/p>\n
Jeff Lawson, the co-founder and recently departed CEO of enterprise infrastructure software company Twilio, is the proud new owner of satirical online newspaper The Onion.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlright, the news is out \u2014 yes, I bought The Onion,\u201d Lawson wrote in a LinkedIn post<\/a> late Thursday, after it first emerged<\/a> in The New York Times Thursday.<\/p>\n Terms of the deal were not disclosed.<\/p>\n The Onion, regarded by many as \u201cAmerica\u2019s finest news source,\u201d is a digital media institution, serving satire by the spoonful for more than three decades, first as a weekly print edition starting in 1988, then as an online outlet from 1996 with the physical publication ceasing in 2013. Its spoof stories<\/a> have often been conflated with real news<\/a>, but The Onion has become a staple part of the digital media landscape for its \u201calternative\u201d take on some of the world\u2019s biggest events \u2014 some real, others completely made up<\/a> \u2014 spawning memes such as \u201cArea Man<\/a>\u201d while aping the reporting style of more traditional news outlets.<\/p>\n The Onion has counted several owners through the years (Elon Musk was apparently interested at one point<\/a>), including Spanish-language broadcaster Univision, which procured a controlling stake in 2016<\/a>. It then sold it alongside Gizmodo to private equity firm Great Hill Partners in 2019<\/a>, which created a new media holding company called G\/O Media Inc<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, The Onion has landed in the hands of a new Chicago-based firm called Global Tetrahedron, which is in fact a reference to a fictional firm that appears in a satirical book published by The Onion staff in 1999, called \u201cOur Dumb Century<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The brains behind the new Global Tetrahedron is\u00a0<\/em>Jeff Lawson, who\u00a0co-founded Twilio way back in 2008<\/a> as a way to help businesses easily embed communication features, such as SMS and calls, into their apps through an application programming interface (API). The company went public in 2016<\/a> at a valuation of more than $1 billion, going on to reach nearly $70 billion during the pandemic \u2014 before settling at the $10 billion to $15 billion mark these past couple of years.<\/p>\n Lawson announced back in January<\/a> that he was stepping down from Twilio, and he has been on a \u201cpersonal goal pursuit\u201d as part of a career break since, according to his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n But why would Lawson want to buy The Onion? Well, because he likes it and he has the means to buy it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Onion is an institution, a national treasure, and we need it,\u201d Lawson said in his announcement post. \u201cBut its success is based on something different than most media companies. The Onion has been stifled, along with most of the Internet, by byzantine cookie dialogs, paywalls, bizarro belly fat ads, and clickbait content. And we\u2019ve had enough. The Internet sucks, and it\u2019s time we made it better. It\u2019s time to focus on customers \u2014 end users \u2014 again.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawson assures us that more will be coming in the future \u2014 new products, new mediums \u2014 but for now he\u2019s asking everyone to pony up some cash for the cause. At the time of writing, The Onion\u2019s homepage<\/a> is plastered with \u201cbreaking news\u201d and \u201ctrending\u201d stories that are entirely about this acquisition, where Lawson is asking those who share his mission to donate exactly $1. For nothing in return.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you care about The Onion, if The Onion ever made you laugh \u2014 give us a buck,\u201d Lawson wrote. \u201cFor that dollar, you get \u2026 absolutely nothing. Just a smug sense that you\u2019ve once again spent less on The Onion than it\u2019s worth in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\u201cOur Dumb Century\u201d<\/h2>\n