Internet TV company Joost has raised $45 million in a whopper round of venture financing, giving it a significant war-chest to spend just as its product hits the market.
Lead investors were Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. CBS Corporation, Viacom and the foundation of Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing also participated, according to the company, in a statement to VentureBeat Wednesday evening.
Despite being relatively untested, Joost has gained publicity because it was started by Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström. It has signed deals with several companies, including Viacom, CBS and Time Warner, to carry their content. Some reviewers have been less that excited about the product, however. VentureBeat has received an invitation to review the product, which is still in testing mode, but we have not yet tried it.
It is the first reported round of outside funding for the company.
Index also backed Skype, which used a peer-to-peer technology for phones that Joost is now using for TV. The question now is whether Joost can use its publicity momentum — and now, impressive funding — to take on folks like BitTorrent, which has been playing with peer-to-peer video for sometime, and numerous other Internet TV start-ups. Some competitors, such as Akimbo, are struggling, pitching things like set-top products that are more expensive than the near-free peer-to-peer technology offered by Joost.
Roelof Botha, general partner at Sequoia Capital, led the firm’s investment in Joost. He was also the lead investor in YouTube, a short-length video site — different from Joost, which wants to show full-length video.
5 Comments
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Gal Josefsberg said:
I’ve been playing with the Joost beta for two weeks now. So far, I’m not impressed. The interface is awful and the quality seems to be rather poor. I’ll try again when they go GA, but right now, I’m sticking to BitTorrent and iTunes for my TV needs.
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Vinay said:
My first impression on Joost was GREAT but the recent version are creating a doubt in my mind. I reviewed joost on my blog recently. Basically discussing what they are loosing on and what they should do.
http://voipguides.blogspot.com/2007/05/voip-guide-joost-iptv-invite.html
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bry said:
Sounds like a massive profit!!! Wow. If you’re looking for free tv then http://www.fantasy-tv.com is cool!
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Marco Feindler said:
Hey! perfect!
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internet calls said:
a good topic to talk, because internet tv just increasingly popular and there are many people who seek information on this subject
8 Trackbacks
12:12 pm
Joost's thoughts on big money and the future « PodTech Network said:
[...] “The question now is whether Joost can use its publicity momentum — and now, impressive funding — to take on folks like Bit Torrent, which has been playing with peer-to-peer video for sometime, and numerous other Internet TV start-ups,” Matt Marshal writes at VentureBeat. [...]
2:22 am
Alan Cheslow’s Digital Home News » links for 2007-05-11 said:
[...] VentureBeat » Internet TV company, Joost, raises $45M It has signed deals with several companies, including Viacom, CBS and Time Warner, to carry their content. (tags: joost online video investment) [...]
8:21 pm
Internetová televize Joost navýšila 45 milionů dolarů at BuzzMag said:
[...] VentureBeat 13. 5. [...]
4:43 pm
VentureBeat » Veoh, the high-quality video sharing site, raises $26M said:
[...] it is not alone in using such technology. Joost, an IPTV company using P2P, recently raised $45 million in venture backing. And there’s a new player, Babelgum, launched by Fastweb founder Silvio Scaglia with $13.2 [...]
8:50 pm
Internetová TV Joost navýšila 45 milionů dolarů said:
[...] ale obsah má nasmlouvaný s několika společnostma včetně Viacomu, CBS a Time Warneru. Zdroj: VentureBeat Tagy: CBS Corporation, Index Ventures, Internet TV, Janus Friis, Joost, Kapitál, Li Ka shing, [...]
8:49 am
VentureBeat » Facebook gets $60M from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing said:
[...] Li Ka-shing (a good name, and no pun) is the chairman of Cheung Kong Holdings Limited and Hutchison Whampoa Limited, a large conglomerate with 250,000 employees. He is especially active in Hong Kong, where he has investments in telecommunications, real estate, electricity, retail, shipping and the nternet. Recently, he’s started investing in Silicon Valley companies, backing the P2P internet television company, Joost, for example. [...]
1:49 pm
The wolves are circling Joost — how should it respond? » VentureBeat said:
[...] more engineers. Joost has had an interesting, if not enviable, run since its much-hyped launch and $45 million fund-raise last year. The company, which wants to stream high-quality video over a distributed peer-to-peer [...]
11:22 am
Joost (the desktop client) is toast » VentureBeat said:
[...] which was started by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (two of the men behind Skype), raised $45 million in funding back in May of 2007. The lead investors were Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. CBS Corporation, Viacom and the [...]