(Photo: Crunchbase)

It was a very busy morning for Ben Lerer, the 30-year-old Lerer Ventures scion and CEO of men's lifestyle brand Thrillist. The company announced yesterday that it had closed a $13 million series A, the first outside financing since Thrillist raised a $2 million seed round way back in 2005. Growing Thrillist from a Daily Candy-like daily newsletter to a men's lifestyle empire with little venture capital in just seven years is no small feat.

"That’s the cool thing for me," Mr. Lerer told Betabeat by phone this morning, his voice still colored with the excitement of closing a solid round. "That we were able to legit boostrap a business to 200+ people and $60 million in revenue without the money. It really gives me confidence that we have the right habits and the right discipline so that now that we have this money, we're going to know how to spend it the right way rather than spastically run around spending it."

The new round was led by Oak Investment Partners and included a follow-on investment from Bob Pittman's Pilot Group. ("I have such a close and trusting relationship with Bob and the team over there.") Oak managing partner Fred Harman has known Mr. Lerer for quite some time, so he's not afraid of the new cash infusion crippling the business's ability to stick to its guns. "We have a close relationship through everything he did with my father at HuffPo," said Mr. Lerer. "This isn’t the big bad wolf. This isn’t some scary financial institution. These are people who we trust. I've seen how Fred and Bob work with companies in good times and bad."

Thrillist plans to use the money to build out both its ecommerce platform in JackThreads as well as its media vertical. "I intend to remain profitable," stressed Mr. Lerer. "The strategy here is, 'Let’s continue to invest in really high quality content and consumer facing products that bring people happiness.'" This includes identifying some potential acquisition targets to build out verticals where Thrillist hasn't quite gained traction: travel, gadgets and sports, for example. ("We may be having some conversations, so I can’t spill too much," teased Mr. Lerer)

Thrillist will also continue to build out its private labels. The two in-house brands are the highest sellers on JackThreads, said Mr. Lerer. "We’ll continue to lean into private label. We’re seeing that we’re really good at creating merch and we understand what our guys want. I don’t see any reason why next year we couldn’t have 10 to 20 private label brands that we own and operate in 20 different categories. It differentiates us from other people in the marketplace."

With $13 million in hand, Mr. Lerer said, "I see no reason why we would ever need to go raise again, except in the case where we have extreme success where we invest incredibly hard or if we see an acquisition that we’re really jazzed about." An investor who hates raising? Oh, the irony.

For now, Mr. Lerer is looking forward to executing on his fresh Thrillist strategy and enjoying not worrying about money for a little while. "This is the fun part," he added.

Thrillist founder Ben Lerer. (Photo: Lerer Ventures)

A bit of late-breaking news for your Thursday: All Things D reports that men's lifestyle brand Thrillist has raised a $13 million Series A, led by Oak Investment Partners.

Joining the funding fun were family outfit Lerer Ventures and Bob Pittman's Pilot Group. Pilot was the first firm to put money into Thrillist, helping founder Ben Lerer get off the ground back in 2005 with $2 million in seed money. This is the first outside capital they've raised since.

(Fun fact: Mr. Lerer the elder and Mr. Pittman also own a piece of the Mets together, along with several other investors. Presumably the successful ecommerce company gives them far less heartache.)

According to All Things D:

[Thrillist founder Ben] Lerer plans to plow a bunch of the new money into an M&A plan focused on media sites, so he can build out that part of the business again.

The idea: Find more dude-ish sites that would compliment the food, booze and clothes verticals Thrillist already covers — like gadgets and travel. Cue requisite go-big-or-go-home mission plan: “What we’re looking at is, what does Condé Nast look like if it starts today?

Now that's quite a loaded question, Mr. Lerer.

Mr. Russell, left, and Mr. Keidan (Photo: InsideHook)

In fiction, the experts tell you to write what you know. In founding a company, you're told to fix the problems you find in your own life. So it makes sense, then that Andy Russell--a leading investor behind email newsletters like Daily Candy, Thrillist, Tasting Table, and PureWow--has decided the world needed InsideHook, another free lifestyle newsletter, but this one targeted to his own demographic: "The discerning, urban, established man who lives a fast-paced and rewarding life," as the company describes it.

In a visit to Betabeat's offices last month, Mr. Russell, who helped launch roughly one email property a year for the past eight years as a partner at the powerhouse investment firm Pilot Group, said he recognized the need to cater to the 35-to-55 set by looking at his own life. On date night, he and his wife would end up at the same sushi place around the corner. "My wife looks at me and goes 'Again? Where's the guy who climbed Kilimanjaro on our honeymoon?' Or I used to own a restaurant in the West Village called Moomba. 'Where’s the guy who started the hottest nightclub/restaurant in New York?'" 

(You don't have to take Mr. Russell's word for it. Here's a 1998 article from Ruth Reichl talking about how hard it was to compete with "the Beautiful People" for a reservation.)

Of course, even the Beautiful People get older. Through its newsletter and website, InsideHook will offer "curated experiences" that cater to the male urban-dweller who is aged out of Thrillist, but too damn successful to waste his time researching something fun to do on a Saturday night. Thrillist cofounder Ben Lerer must not mind any overlap--he's an advisor to InsideHook's parent company, Trigger Media.

InsideHook's tagline is "The Life You're Meant to Live," promising, "inspiration for the driven man," in other words hustlers like, say, Mr. Russell or InsideHook's CEO and cofounder Jonathan Keidan, a music industry veteran and former COO of the Jack Welch Management Institute, who represents the bachelor perspective. (Paging, The New York Times!)

In an interview with Betabeat, the New York-based company announced a partnership with Ed Burns, one of the many, many celebrity patrons who frequented Moomba in its hey-day--and a paragon of maturing American masculinity in his own right. Along with the partnership, InsideHook is promoting the nationwide expansion beyond New York City that began back in May. In addition to being an equity participant, Mr Burns is curating "his favorite restaurants, travel destinations, outdoor adventures, cultural activities, style finds and products for men," the company said in a press release. Celebrities who curate in their spare time, now where have we heard that before? Oh, yeah. Categories include recommendations on Food & Drink, Health, Travel, Tech, and Action. Mr. Russell said he knew Mr. Burns through, "Being born and raised in New York City and knowing a ton of people."

InsideHook is the first startup to come out of Trigger Media, a $22 million seed stage fund and incubator for what Mr. Russell calls "subscription curation services." It was launched last fall shortly after Pilot Group cofounder Bob Pittman was named CEO of Clear Channel Communications. (You may also remember Mr. Pittman, who founded MTV, from his stints as CEO of AOL and Time Warner Enterprises.) Mr. Russell came into Pilot Group as the firm's youngest partner, focusing on digital and decided it was time to start something more early-stage outside of Pilot's portfolio of TV and radio stations. His mentor Mr. Pittman is one of Trigger Media's biggest investors, but the rest of the investor table is pretty impressive as well, including Conde Nast/Advance Publications, former MySpace president Jason Hirschhorn, former Daily Candy CEO Pete Sheinbaum, who is also an advisor to InsideHook, as well as Michael Kassan, former president of Initiative Media Worldwise, Ken Fox, cofounder of Internet Capital Group, and OneKingsLane founder Ali Pincus. (Ms. Pincus is the wife of Zynga founder Mark Pincus; Mr. Russel was an original investorin Zynga.)

Mr. Russell told Betabeat there's a "huge void in the digital sphere," for services catering to older men. "Probably one of the reasons it’s a huge void in the daily email publications is because Bob Pittman and I didn’t do it," he said. "I wasn’t exactly this demo/psychographic yet."

But that void might be in part a reflection of how tricky it is to speak to this market. After scrolling around InsideHook, it was hard not to notice the ubiquity of pun-y headlines. There's a round-up of spas that cater to men called "Spa and Order," a survival class on the zombie apocalypse called, "Dead Clan Walking," and luxury outdoor bedroom on a Central Park roof called, "Lady and the Camp."

Unless they're all New York Post loyalists, we're not sure readers will appreciate the humor. Besides, what makes a zombie training class better for a 35-to-55-year-old than Thrillist's younger demographic?

Mr. Keidan, InsideHook's CEO, said the guiding principal is making any free time you might have away from your high-powered job more meaningful. "Some of my best friends for the past five years, what have I done with them?" asked Mr. Russell, seconding the notion. "Well we’ve gone out to a great restaurant, we had drinks and we had funny conversation, but there’s no concrete memory in there."

As for those puns, InsideHook's three editors try to tailor the voice to someone charming and witty who is a "a little goofier with his friends," explained Mr. Keidan, emphasizing the editors have to be uber-connected to the top "mixologists" and "cultural tastemakers." We're definitely the wrong demo to tell if the recommendations are appealing, but the site seems little sparse in terms of regular updates, at least for now.

Nonetheless, Mr. Russell said it's the fastest growing subscription service he's ever been involved in and that's just through word-of-mouth. InsideHook refused to share any numbers, but Mr. Russell did note that they doubled subscriptions last month.

InsideHook plans on making money solely through advertising. We were very surprised to hear that advertisers actually find the rich white men segment under-served. Mr. Russell said that's because trying to reach them online via news or sports channels can cut affluence out of the equation. "We’ve walked into meetings with heads of ad sales at some very big luxury brands and we give them our pitch. One smiled and said we've been looking to spend money in this area, but we haven’t had anyone to spend it with," said Mr. Keidan.

Although the Gilt Groupes and Groupons of the world have made the market much more crowded than when Mr. Russell first entered the game with Daily Candy, he argued that "Guess what? Email is a wonderful way of delivering a great message."

"We did over a year of research into the space," added Mr. Russell. "You can only imagine how many people over 13 years have pitched me this model. And I’ve only done eight of them."

Mr. Russell via Fortune.com

Dan Primack broke the news today that another seed stage fund is poised to enter into the New York's teeming tech scene. The fund, which has reportedly raised around $23 million, is called Trigger Media Group. It will be run by Andy Russell, a co-founding partner of Bob Pittman's VC and PE firm Pilot Group LLC.

Mr. Pittman, of course is the former president of AOL and the founder of MTV. According to Crunchbase, Pilot Group likes "to buy undervalued companies, fix them, and resell them." Pilot Group is an investor in Zynga, betaworks, and our friends over at Silicon Alley Insider.

Trigger will focus on the digital media space, which means it should be wading through plenty of potential local investments.

Thus far, says Mr. Primack, the fund's hires include a handful of McKinsey alumni, including Vanessa Liu and Jonathan Keidan. In researching Conde Nast's iPad woes, Betabeat heard that Mr. Pittman was one of the executives McKinsey leaned on to advise the struggling media giant. Sources told us it was Mr. Pittman, via McKinsey, who suggested that Conde appoint Viacom exec Joe Simon as its first CTO.

According to Mr. Primack, Mr. Russell "seems to maintain some sort of formal affiliation with Pilot Group, where he had worked for over eight years. His portfolio companies included Thrillist, Idealbite, DailyCandy and Zynga."