Investor Profile: North Base Media — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

Founders seeking North Base Media funding are pitching journalists who became investors. Founded in 2013 by Marcus Brauchli — former top editor of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post — and Sasa Vucinic — former founding CEO of the Media Development Loan Fund — North Base Media is a boutique firm built on a single conviction: the rapid evolution of media from print and broadcast to digital and mobile creates new opportunities to reach new audiences and serve existing customers in new ways.

Thesis and focus: how to get funding from North Base Media

The firm invests in digital and mobile media, media technology (publishing tech, podcasting, video, adtech, events tech) and news and information services. Its geography is genuinely global — portfolio companies and advisory work span Latin America, Asia, Europe and the US. Stages, fund size and cheque size are not publicly disclosed.

Notable portfolio

Verified portfolio companies include Minute Media, Rappler, Atlas Obscura, Kaleidoscope, Pocket Aces (India), Piano, Kiswe, OpenSlate, IDN Media, Zaiko, Gushcloud and TNL Mediagene. Recent portfolio news includes Minute Media's Sports Illustrated publishing deal.

Partners

Marcus Brauchli (Managing Partner and Co-Founder) leads strategy, advisory and fundraising; Sasa Vucinic (Managing Partner and Co-Founder) chairs the investment committee. Few VC partnerships combine this much newsroom and media-investment operating experience.

How to apply for funding

There is no pitch portal. Contact is [email protected] (2 Wisconsin Circle, 7th Floor, Chevy Chase, MD 20815). Media and media-tech founders — especially in emerging markets, where the partners have deep roots — should lead with audience and revenue-model clarity, the two things journalist-investors interrogate first.

The partners' backgrounds explain the firm's edge. Marcus Brauchli ran two of the world's most important newsrooms — The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post — while Sasa Vucinic built the Media Development Loan Fund into a pioneering media investor across emerging markets. That combination of editorial judgment and emerging-market investing experience is why the portfolio stretches from Rappler in the Philippines to Pocket Aces in India and TNL Mediagene in Asia. For media founders, diligence from this team is itself a signal to the market.