After tweeting the official news of her departure this morning, Huffington had kind words for those at her namesake company. “It is important to know when one door closes and another opens and I felt that moment had arrived”, she said, according to the report. Her book, The Sleep Revolution, preaches the importance of getting enough shut-eye.
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The funding was led by Advancit Capital, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s founder Jack Ma’s investment firm Blue Pool Capital, Greycroft Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, a venture capital fund of Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer, along with entrepreneur Sean Parker.
Huffington stayed on after the Verizon-AOL deal closed, but signs that she was restless and ready for new ventures emerged in recent years.
“I’ve become more and more passionate – okay, obsessed – with burnout and stress and how we can reduce their impact on our lives”, Huffington wrote in a memo to staff.
Huffington will focus on a new health and wellness startup called Thrive Global.
The Huffington Post is owned by AOL.
She echoed that message in a goodbye note to Huffington Post staffers.
After 11 years as editor-in-chief, Arianna Huffington is leaving The Huffington Post.
According to Thrive Global, $300 billion (267 billion euros) is spent each year in the United States alone due to stress and burnout in the workplace.
Saying on Twitter she thought “HuffPost would be my last act”, Huffington, 66, said she would instead focus on new venture, Thrive Global, a yet-to-launch start-up focused on “ending the collective delusion that burnout is a necessary price for success”.
“Arianna is a visionary who built The Huffington Post into a truly transformative news platform”, Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, said in a statement.
Huffington said the new health and wellness company she is launching, Thrive Global, demands her full-time attention.
Despite boasting over 100m unique users and a revenue of $146m in 2015, Huffington Post has historically failed to return a yearly profit. In the release, Huffington suggested the irony that leading the two companies would have caused her to burn out.
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“I step down as editorinchief filled with gratitude for our wonderful HuffPost team and for what we’ve built together”, she said in the statement.
