Ross Levinsohn, the former News Corp. deal-maker who led the acquisition of MySpace, has merged his firm with a controversial Silicon Valley firm to focus on media investments.
We first reported rumors that Levinsohn would team up with the ComVentures in October, and this evening Levinsohn confirmed that news. The merger will be called Velocity Interactive Group.
Levinsohn left News Corp. earlier this year to launch a new firm, Velocity, and his stated goal at the time was to buy up media properties and merge them together in larger entities that were more competitive.
Levinsohn started Velocity with Jonathan Miller, a former chief executive of AOL. The two will team up with three partners at ComVentures: David Britts, Keyur Patel and Roland Van der Meer. There’s no mention of other ComVenture partners, including David Rolnick. If you’ll recall from our story from October, there was a disagreement between Levinsohn and ComVentures’ Rolnick about the nature of the partnership when we asked them about it. At the time, Levinsohn had downplayed the partnership.
While ComVentures had struggled with some of its investments in communications and other sectors, it has focused more lately on media investments. By joining up with Levinsohn, and having offices beyond Silicon Valley — including in Los Angeles, New York and India — it gets to try out a new start.
In a statement this evening, Levinsohn, Miller and the three from ComVentures said they have worked together on a series of investments. The have backed NDTV Networks, a producer of current affairs and entertainment online and TV content , as well as IndiaTV, a Hindi media company featuring nightly news, current affairs and other content. In the U.S., the two sides have invested in Fabrik, an online digital media storage company, Doppelganger, a virtual world company, and Mixercast, a secretive media distribution company.
It’s not clear how much money the merger has on hand. ComVentures has raised several funds previously, and says it has $1.5 billion in assets, however, most of that money is already invested. The team plans to raise more funds in 2008.
An earlier stated partnership between Velocity and General Atlantic didn’t really go anywhere.
6 Comments
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ValleyGrunt said:
Matt,
Whatever happened to the ComVentures partner Boris Karadogan who also contributed to your site? He is no longer listed on the new firm’s page… -
Rhys Hovey said:
Hi, please help me, I’ve heard about your concerns with net neutrality, I am being automatically censored pretty heavy online, because me and 2 friends of mine have become victims of some sort of organized crime group using bioelectromagnetic (ultrasound) weapons at our homes, and we can prove that the FBI simply will let your children be harassed in hopes that they will kill themselves as well. http://www.youtube.com/rhyspaulhovey you can download a recording of the machine. I have never harmed anyone, I’m just a video games engineer from Canada.
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XYZ said:
Keyur Patel is a fraud. Hes duped many people in India as well. Including the biggies like INOX, Yashraj etc. with false promises.
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Ravi Shukla said:
This is great news for digital media. They have done great in India with investments in NDTV and IndiaTV. Both are very solid brands and now US media moguls will probably help them close good brands there.
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Anil Deorah said:
Keyur is a rock star when it comes to media. His deal NDTV was the start of Media movement in India and setting new standards. With IndiaTV and now this they definately have a great leg ahead.
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Tim Andrews said:
This is actually very well positioned company. I have worked with keyur at inktomi, and let me tell you - this guy can execute with a vision. Congrats, Ross and John are the agents of new media. Well done.
3 Trackbacks
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