Online Video Service Joost Gets Whopping $45 Million Funding; Investors Include CBS & Viacom
The much-hyped online video service Joost, which launched in open-beta last week, has raised a big round of funding: $45 million. The round included Sequioa Capital, Index Ventures, Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong tycoon, and CBS...all have taken “small minority” stakes in the start-up, the FT story says. Viacom is also among the investors (gets minority stake), although the nature of its backing has not been disclosed (it did a broad distribution deal with Joost…there could be some contra advertising across Viacom properties, but that’s my guess).
Joost was hatched by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom last year, and seed-funded by the money they got from selling Skype to eBay.
From the release: Joost expects to work with Li and his affiliated companies, to expand its distribution in China and other parts of Asia.
Earlier this year online video rival Brightcove raised $59.5 million in its third round from NYT and others, following a $16 million second round last year.
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Comments (1)
May 10, 2007 3:10 AM
I like Joost. They need the content - it will be interesting to see exactly what content they get from all of these deals.
“Internet TV” content is more about ubiquitous distribution and not about the “Player”. For Internet TV, there are already two very viable options for desktop players - iTunes and the open source competitor Democracy Player. The model is simple: discovery, organization, and community around the media is web-based, and when someone wants to play that media, they can either play it in a web-based player or “subscribe” to that media in their desktop player of choice (or, in the future, XBox, Second Life, mobile phone, Slingbox, etc., etc.).