TheStreet

• 1. Introduction

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  TheStreet launched in 1996 at the precise moment the internet was beginning to look like the future of money. Jim Cramer, then a hedge fund manager with a flair for television, and Marty Peretz, his Harvard mentor, decided that financial news did not have to live behind the walls of a newspaper. They would put it online, free and fast, for anyone with a browser.

  What followed was a story of staggering paper wealth, a crash back to earth, a string of acquisitions and sales, and a company that somehow outlasted nearly every rival from its dot-com era class. By the time the dust settled, TheStreet had passed through the hands of a company called Maven, been relaunched under the banner of The Arena Group, and found itself offering stock picks through a subscription service managed by Chris Versace. How does a website born in 1996 survive long enough to collect loans during a pandemic, sell a subsidiary for $87 million, and still be publishing decades later?

• 2. Birth at the Bubble's Peak

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  On the 5th of May, 1999, TheStreet sold shares to the public for the first time, priced at $19 each. By the end of that single trading day, the stock had surged to as high as $73 before settling at $59. The company's market capitalization at the peak of the dot-com bubble reached $1.7 billion. Former CEO Kevin English and former CFO Paul Kothari oversaw that offering.

  The number is worth holding for a moment. $1.7 billion for a financial news website that had been operating for just three years. It reflected something real about the era: the belief that attention, once captured online, would translate into almost limitless value. TheStreet was riding that wave at its exact crest.

  Dave Kansas, who had become editor-in-chief in April 1997, opened a San Francisco bureau and joined the board of directors. His tenure positioned the editorial side of the operation during its most watched years. The IPO money and the billion-dollar valuation arrived while Kansas was building out the newsroom.

• 3. After the Crash

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  When the dot-com bubble burst, the paper wealth evaporated. The company that had been worth $1.7 billion at its peak faced the same reckoning as hundreds of other internet businesses. In July 2001, David J. Morrow, a former reporter for The New York Times, joined as editor-in-chief following Kansas's departure.

  The company did not report its first annual profit until 2005, under the leadership of chairman and CEO Thomas J. Clarke Jr. That nine-year gap between founding and first profit captures how long the road to financial sustainability actually was.

  Jim Cramer returned to the center of the company's story in October 2008, becoming chairman and serving in that role until 2011. The same month he took on the chairmanship, the global financial system was in crisis, making the timing notable for a financial news outlet. Thomas Clarke resigned, and Daryl Otte, a long-time company director and founding partner of a venture capital firm called Montefiore Partners, became CEO in May 2009.

• 4. An Acquisition Spree

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  Between 2007 and 2014, TheStreet went on a buying run that reshaped what the company was. In April 2007, it acquired Stockpickr.com. Four months later, in August 2007, it paid $20.7 million for Corsis, which included a site called Promotions.com. That deal ended badly. Corsis was sold back to management for just $3.1 million in December 2009, and executives were later accused of inflating revenues and paid penalties to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

  In November 2007, the company added BankingMyWay and RateWatch. The following year it took a 13% stake in Geezeo.com, a Boston-based online financial management tool, with an option to buy the whole company.

  September 2012 brought the acquisition of The Deal LLC, a media company covering mergers and acquisitions. April 2013 added financial newsletters The DealFlow Report and The Life Settlements Report, along with the PrivateRaise database. In November 2014, the company bought BoardEx for $22.5 million. By the end of 2018, both The Deal and BoardEx had been sold, with that combined exit fetching $87 million in February 2019.

• 5. Sales, Pivots, and a Pandemic

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  RateWatch, acquired back in 2007, was sold to S&P Global in June 2018 for $33.5 million. The following February, the $87 million sale of The Deal and BoardEx marked the largest single transaction in the company's history. David Callaway, who had joined as CEO in June 2016 after leaving USA Today, departed after that deal closed. Eric Lundberg replaced him.

  In August 2019, a company called Maven acquired TheStreet for $16.5 million. That price, set against the $1.7 billion market cap of 1999, measures the distance between the two eras precisely. Maven also partnered with Sports Illustrated Fantasy to launch a channel called Bull Market Fantasy with Jim Cramer, mixing stock analysis with fantasy sports advice.

  During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, TheStreet received between $5 million and $10 million in federally backed small business loans through JPMorgan Chase Bank as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The company said those funds would allow it to retain 15 jobs. In 2021, Maven rebranded as The Arena Group, giving TheStreet its current corporate parent.

• 6. Global Reach and Its Limits

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  In December 1999, TheStreet reached beyond its American audience by investing $2.25 million in exchange for a 25% stake in TheMarker, a new business news website operating in both Hebrew and English, through an agreement with the Israeli newspaper publisher Haaretz. The arrangement was reciprocal: TheStreet published selected articles about Israeli technology companies from TheMarker, and TheMarker published selected pieces from TheStreet.

  TheStreet also launched a United Kingdom edition, thestreet.co.uk, in February 2000. The UK operation lasted nine months before funding was withdrawn. It closed in November 2000. The investment in TheMarker met a similar fate: when the dot-com bubble burst, that stake was fully written off.

  Both international ventures failed within the same two-year window, suggesting that the company's global ambitions had been sized for the bubble rather than for sustainable international news operations. The domestic operation, by contrast, kept going. Todd Campbell and Daniel Kline were appointed co-Editors in Chief in March 2025, indicating that the editorial structure continues to evolve more than two decades after those overseas closures.