Mark Little to earn €5m as Murdoch buys Storyful

Former RTÉ broadcaster Mark Little, who left the station in 2010 to set up technology company Storyful, will earn about €5 million after selling the firm yesterday to News Corp, the global media corporation chaired by Rupert Murdoch.

News Corp will pay €18 million for Storyful, which supplies multimedia content gleaned from social networks to large media clients such as Yahoo.

Mr Little, who remains as chief executive but will now run Storyful from New York, is understood to have had a stake of between 25 and 30 per cent.

Other staff at the company, which has 32 employees at its Dublin headquarters, will share about €4 million from the deal.

SOS Ventures, the investment company founded by Dragon's Den star Sean O'Sullivan, which invested about €1 million in the venture, will receive about €3.5 million.

Investor
A similar sum will go to Ray Nolan, a serial technology investor, who also sold the company behind Hostelworld.com in 2009 for more than €200 million.

It is understood Mr Murdoch took a keen interest in Storyful as the transaction was negotiated over several months between News Corp and Investec Corporate Finance, Storyful's Dublin-based advisers.

Mr Murdoch tweeted yesterday: “Much excitement about @Storyful. Wonderful company doing big things in digital content and video, will be a great asset to @newscorp.”

Mr Little said News Corp was a “dream partner” for Storyful, which he said would hire up to 10 new technology staff in Dublin next year.