Puck

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA·FOUNDED 2021·puck.news

Puck is a subscription-based digital media company covering the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, media, sports and fashion, giving its journalists equity stakes in the company.

AS OF AUG. 26, 2026: PUCK IN ADVANCED TALKS FOR $250M REDBIRD CAPITAL INVESTMENT — SEE HISTORY

Overview

Puck is a subscription-based digital media company, legally organized as Heat Media, Inc., covering the "inside conversation" at the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, media, sports and fashion. Its business model gives journalists equity stakes in the company and a share of the subscription revenue their individual newsletters and franchises generate, tying the platform's value closely to specific writers and their paying audiences.

History

Puck was founded in 2021 by Jon Kelly, a former co-founder and editor of Vanity Fair's political, business and technology site The Hive, along with Joe Purzycki and Max Tcheyan; Liz Gough, a Condé Nast veteran, joined shortly after as co-founder and chief operating officer. The company emerged from stealth mode in August 2021 with a slate of founding-partner journalist hires, including former Hollywood Reporter editorial director Matthew Belloni and NBC News' Dylan Byers, Julia Ioffe and Peter Hamby, before launching in full in September 2021. Puck raised $7 million in a 2021 Series A round led by 40 North Media, an investment affiliate of Standard Industries, and TPG Growth.

Co-founder Joe Purzycki stepped down as CEO in May 2023. Sarah Personette, Twitter's former chief customer officer and head of ad sales, was named Puck's CEO on January 5, 2024, starting January 7 and joining the company's board alongside Kelly; at the time, Puck reported roughly 40,000 paying subscribers and more than $10 million in 2023 revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2025, Puck acquired Air Mail, the digital magazine founded by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $16 million; the transaction brought RedBird Capital Partners in as a Puck investor. As of August 26, 2026, Puck confirmed it was in advanced talks for a further investment from RedBird Capital Partners that would value the company at approximately $250 million and make RedBird its leading institutional investor, according to Reuters; the potential all-cash deal would let Puck's existing institutional investors—including TPG's growth arm, Standard Investments and J. Rothschild Capital Management—sell their stakes to RedBird, without affecting shares held by Puck's founders or journalists. As of that report, Puck had approximately 50,000 paying subscribers.

Notable works

• 2021–presentFounding partner Matthew Belloni's twice-weekly Hollywood newsletter, "What I'm Hearing," and his podcast "The Town," produced with Bill Simmons' The Ringer and distributed on Spotify, have made him enough of an entertainment-industry fixture that Apple TV+'s Hollywood satire "The Studio" wrote him into the show as a recurring on-screen character whom fictional studio executives fear will learn their secrets.

• 2021–presentPuck's franchise model has drawn veteran reporters from major outlets to build individually branded, subscriber-supported newsletters under the Puck platform, including Dylan Byers (media, formerly of NBC News), Julia Ioffe and Peter Hamby (politics), and Teddy Schleifer (Silicon Valley and philanthropy, formerly of Recode).

• 2025Puck's acquisition of Air Mail brought the Graydon Carter-founded luxury and travel digital magazine under its ownership in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $16 million, and served as the transaction through which RedBird Capital Partners first became a Puck investor.

• 2026Puck's subscriber base and revenue growth supported advanced talks, confirmed by the company in August 2026, for a RedBird Capital Partners investment valuing Puck at roughly $250 million—up from an estimated $75 million valuation three years earlier, according to industry analysis of the Reuters-reported terms.

Key personnel

• Chief Executive OfficerSarah Personette

• Editor-in-Chief & Co-FounderJon Kelly

• Co-Founder & COOLiz Gough

• Co-FounderMax Tcheyan

Audience

Puck serves an audience of paying subscribers, primarily executives and industry insiders in media, entertainment, finance, politics and technology. Readers are drawn to specific journalists' individually branded newsletters—such as Belloni's Hollywood coverage or Byers' media reporting—as much as to the overall Puck brand. As of August 2026, Puck reported approximately 50,000 paying subscribers, up from roughly 40,000 in early 2024.

Location and contact info

Legal NameHeat Media, Inc.

HeadquartersNew York, New York

Websitehttps://puck.news