Comments on: Podtech takes on more debt — but must decide whether fish or fowl

By: High flying Podtech.net sells out on the cheap |

High flying Podtech.net sells out on the cheap | — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:44:29 +0000

[...] raised $5.5 million in a venture round of funding from US Venture Partners and Venrock that year, then raised another $2 million from the same investors in [...]

By: PodTech purchased by ViewPartner for less than half a million, ending a bloody story » VentureBeat

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:46:02 +0000

[...] raised $5.5 million in a venture round of funding from US Venture Partners and Venrock that year, then raised another $2 million from the same investors in [...]

By: VentureBeat » Investors still backing video and music creators — looks like a bubble

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:25:39 +0000

[...] venture firm US Venture Partners’ backing of companies like Podtech and National Banana (here and here) — both content creation sites struggling for distinction. National Banana, a comedy [...]

By: James Harris

James Harris — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 22:41:16 +0000

Great coverage. Your added insight into the relationship of USVP and Podtech content partners is great.

All the best

By: Michael O'Leary

Michael O'Leary — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:41:39 +0000

You sound like you are basing this story on a Tech crunch article. Shame on you. I’ve been following this story and it’s not as you report. You reference Tech cruch article and the same post is referenced twice about the troubles of this company. What kind of reporting is this? I know of many companies that keep information private because they are private companies.

How can you know about a company’s future when you seem like you don’t even know what they are working on. PodTech seems to be doing really good on revenues and from what I can tell technology they are developing. No wonder they are not telling the world what they are doing. My guess is that they are on to something. Are you an analyst or a reporter? As a reader I need to know because the content is looking like a tech crunch clone yet trying to be like you’re still at the merc.

By: Jay Parkhill

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:52:44 +0000

Podtech had great content until they got funded. Then it seemed hell-bent on increasing eyeball/eardrum stats at the expense of quality and focus. I stopped subscribing when I had to delete 90% of the downloaded clips just for the handful that interested me. So sad.

By: Christoph Jaggi

Christoph Jaggi — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:21:08 +0000

“The whole point about the new Web is that it is so cheap. You don’t need millions to produce content, or to distribute it”. That seems to be rather a trailing assumption than a fact, especially when you deal with video. Just looking at YouTube one can see how wrong the assumption is: A lot of the content was cheap for YouTube because the larger part consisted of (user-uploaded) pirated content and the other part was user-generated. Despite those very low content costs, distribution was not cheap as the bandwidth costs were quite dramatic, resulting in YouTube needing and getting millions.
Content is cheap when it is unpaid for and distribution is cheap if you don’t take into consideration bandwidth bills.
Developing, marketing and distributing professional quality content will always cost money and this is the I in ROI.

By: A. Smith

A. Smith — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:32:58 +0000

Matt,

Nice objectivity towards the VC community for a change. I was starting to wonder if you were catering a bit to their needs, but obviously not.

I know personally that Palladium was a dog. I didn’t work there, but I did work in the gaming industry for many years and know several people who did work at Palladium. Nice folks, tough market niche, bad investment. :-/