Roundup: YouTube making money now? Managers leaving Bebo, and more
As YouTube grows, some estimate it’s making up to $200 million this year — The revenue number comes from a couple estimates reviewed by Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch, where he looks at how the site’s increasing dominance (see comScore graphs, below) may translate to money. Schonfeld calculates that YouTube is making at least $80 million revenue (not profit) based on some of its more prominent pieces ad inventory; the $200 million number comes from Forbes. I haven’t heard of a big video site anywhere in the world that’s profitable. Shoot me an email at eric (at) venturebeat (dot) com if you have.
Are managers leaving Bebo — Now that the stocks have been vesting in all or in part from the social network purchased in March by AOL for $850 million, people are heading for the door. The founders have already cashed out completely and are leaving. Angel Gambino, head of the company’s efforts to attract musicians and record labels is also leaving, reports CNET.
VC’s face longest IPO drought in five years – This is the second month in a row where no venture-backed private company has become public. More on VentureWire (subscription required).
Another streaming music promotion — Rock band Radiohead is streaming a 30-song greatest hits album Radiohead: The Best Of, and the band’s entire music video collection before the physical copies go on sale. Radiohead has been experimenting with offering its music for free on the web, Imeem is one of the more popular music sites for bands to do it. Streaming isn’t completely free, though, as you have to buy a song in order to get a copy you can play in iTunes or other music players.
Printed travel guides, by David Sifry — The Technorati founder and current chairman of its board of directors has been working on a new startup. Basically, the site lets you print out a travel guide for a particular area, customized to your interests — your interests being how you answer a set of questions you have to answer upon signing up. Huh. Scoble takes it for a test run, here.
Not one Y Combinator company has been backed by a Massachusetts investor — Harvard company Facebook rather famously moved out West, and took funding from Silicon Valley investors over Boston ones. That was a few years ago, but the trend continues with small startups at seed-stage fund Y Combinator, which incubates companies in Cambridge, Mass. and Silicon Valley. “There have been three cases where a Boston VC was talking to one of our companies, and they had the sandwich ripped right out of their hands” Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham tells The Boston Globe. “The Boston VCs were so slow and timid.”
Retiro Venture Partners: Two classic venture capitalists are apparently back in the business — Mohr Davidow Ventures co-founder Larry Mohr and Western Technology Investment’s Sal Gutierrez have saddled up and are riding again with $18.2 million so far, according to a filing discovered by PEHub.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
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