VentureBeat

I’m pleased to announce our esteemed panel of experts for MobileBeat.

They’ll listen to the pitches from the MobileBeat presenting companies, and select the winners in various categories. We introduced the MobileBeat Tesla Award yesterday and explained the competition categories.

The panelists are as follows:

John Smelzer, FOX Interactive Media, SVP & General Manager — John Smelzer is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile for Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a role in which he is charged with overseeing the mobile extensions of FIM’s online assets, including FOXSports.com, IGN.com, MySpace.com, MyFOX.com and others. His group, which was formed in March 2006, manages diverse FIM-branded mobile product offerings on a global basis, spanning the wireless product spectrum from WAP to video. Smelzer joined FOXSports.com as Director, Business Development in August 2001. Promoted to Vice President in 2003, he pioneered Fox Sports’ mobile business, including the top-ranked FOX Sports mobile video offering, available on all major carriers and aggregators. Smelzer also led negotiations with Microsoft for the exclusive distribution of FOXSports.com on MSN.

Sandi Isaacs, Paramount Digital Entertainment, SVP, Interactive & Mobile — Sandi Isaacs has been with Viacom since 2000, and currently serves as Vice President, Interactive and Wireless representing Paramount Pictures. In this role, she is responsible for identifying, negotiating and securing business and licensing partnerships to develop video game franchises and wireless applications based on Paramount Pictures intellectual properties. Isaacs has more than a decade of interactive entertainment industry experience and an extensive background in licensing and business development.

Jeff Brody, Redpoint Ventures, early mobile investor, on boards of Danger, MobiTV, WebTV — Jeff Brody is a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures. Jeff is focused on investments in new technology companies spanning both enterprise and consumer customers, and has led his firm’s mobile investments. He currently serves on the board of directors of Danger (one of the largest exits for a mobile company to date, acquired by Microsoft), Fraud Sciences (acquired by eBay), HomeAway, JumpTap, Kodiak, LifeSize, Loopnet (LOOP), Mobilygen, MobiTV and ZING Systems (acquired by Dell). Jeff was an early investor and director of Concur Technologies (CNQR), GetThere (GTHR), mySimon (acquired by CNET), NextCard (NXCD), Onebox (acquired by OpenWave), ViaVideo (acquired by Polycom), and Web TV (acquired by Microsoft). Previously, he worked at venture firms Brentwood, Comdisco Ventures and Crosspoint Venture Partners.

Ross Levinsohn, Velocity Interactive Group, Partner — In 2004, he was tapped by News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch to devise the digital strategy for the company. In executing that plan, he made various decisions on investments, including the acquisitions of Myspace and IGN.com. He also oversaw the acquisitions of Askmen.com, Scout.com, Newroo, KSolo, amongst others. As President of Fox Interactive Media, Ross managed all day-to-day operations for the company from its inception until December 2006. Under his leadership, the FOX Network of sites became one of the largest on the Internet with more than 140 million monthly users. He also oversaw a partnership with Google, which will yield the company nearly $1 billion in advertising from the search and monetization leader. Previously, Ross served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Fox Sports Interactive Media, and held positions with AltaVista Network, CBS Sportsline and Saatchi and Saatchi. Ross currently serves on the board of Napster.com, storage and media management company Fabrik, Inc., Virtual World innovator VSIDE, and Indian Internet holding company, Fuse+Media.

Stephen Saltzman, Intel Capital, Head of mobile investment — Stephen is a Director of Strategic Investments for Intel Capital, focused on Intel’s investments in wireless networking. Prior to joining Intel Capital in 2002, Saltzman was the general manager of Intel’s Wireless LAN Operation, where he led its growth as an emerging leader in the wireless Ethernet market.

Steve Hegenderfer, Microsoft, Group Manager, Windows Mobile (no photo) — Steve Hegenderfer is Group Manager of Windows Mobile Solutions Delivery at Microsoft, responsible for conducting and analyzing market research that helps Microsoft deliver effective mobility solutions for medium and large businesses and partnering with these businesses to deploy Microsoft’s full range of mobility products. Steve is an industry veteran with over 15 years experience in architecting software and managing sales life cycles, business processes, and organizational development. Prior to his current role, Steve, who joined Microsoft in 2005, was a technology evangelist responsible for broadening Microsoft’s partnerships with the mobile technology industry.

Lars Kamp, Accenture, Head of wireless strategy — At Accenture, Lars Kamp has led the firm’s wireless strategy pratice. He has developed numerous relationships with carriers, having worked for Accenture’s offices in Vienna (2001-2002), Rome (2003-2005) and San Francisco (2006 – current) where he developed and implemented strategies for blue chip clients in the Communications & High Tech Industry in Europe, Asia and the U.S.

Sales of MobileBeat 2008 tickets are moving quickly, so go here to get yours. It’s a week away on July 24.

Finally, thanks to our sponsors, Blackberry Partners Fund, Forum Nokia, Sun Microsoystems, Norwest Venture Partners, Amiando, Zanox, mTouch and Mippin for making this possible. If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, please contact Jacob Mullins.

Next New Networks, the company that publishes thematic channels of video online, including Barely Political (which features Obama-cheering Obama Girl), has raised more capital to keep expanding.

It has taken $15 million more from Velocity Interactive and Goldman Sachs, we’ve just learned. This adds to the $8 million it raised a year ago (see our coverage).

The company now has 12 main channels in its network, with 33 million video views in February, a pace that suggests strong growth from last year, when the site had more than 100 million video views.

We reached a company representative, and she would not comment on how the company’s revenue is coming along. Getting advertisers to pay good money for online video has proven tougher than some have expected, in part because advertisements are disruptive, regardless where they’re placed within a video. However, Next New is pursuing a strategy of distributing its videos as extensively as possible, for example today officially announcing a deal to place its video channels in sidebars along AOL-owned sites. Next New did say it has signed some ad deals in the fourth quarter last year, specifically around its car channel.

Velocity, the new firm formed by former AOL CEO Jon Miller and former News Corp. executive Ross Levinsohn, has focused heavily on video investments. Velocity has backed Motricity (see our coverage), which distributes mobile applications. The firm has also invested in Generate (our coverage) and BroadBand Enterprises (our coverage).

Joining Goldman and Velocity in the round are previous Next New Network investors Bob Pittman, Saban Media Group and Spark Capital.

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.

updated

We’re hearing Ross Levinsohn, the former News Corp. dealmaker considered responsible for the decision by that company to acquire MySpace in its relatively early days, may team up with ComVentures, a somewhat controversial Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to help invest in early stage investments.

Levinsohn made news recently when he launched Velocity Investment Group, together with Jonathan Miller, a former exec at AOL. (See our coverage) The two want to use the firm to start “rolling up” the multitude of Internet media companies that have sprouted in recent years, companies enabled by an explosion of online advertising. By consolidating these companies into larger brands, the idea is that the fusions will have greater value.

According to two sources, Levinsohn’s relationship, if a deal is reached, with ComVentures on the early-stage side will be akin to the relationship he has with General Atlantic for later stage investments. He helped ComVentures with its $11.5 million investment in Fuse+Media in India, announced in March. Levinsohn is based in Los Angeles, but ComVentures gives him a platform in Silicon Valley, and just as importantly, gives ComVentures contacts to Hollywood and other media industry executives. Levinsohn already sites on the board of file storage company Fabrik, a company backed ComVentures, and is likely to join the boards of two other ComVentures companies. ComVentures drew on the help of Levinsohn for one of its music-oriented virtual world companies, Doppelganger, for introductions to Hollywood agents for musicians and bands.

We’re told by well-placed sources that ComVentures will try to formalize the agreement sometime over the next couple of weeks, around the time it holds a partnership meeting with its investors. ComVentures said it didn’t want to comment at this time. Levinsohn, however, seemed more distanced when we reached him for comment. He said he helped ComVentures make investments over the last ten months while he was setting up his own firm, but said there isn’t any formal tie with ComVentures in the works. He added that he has relationships with multiple valley venture capital firms. Others, meanwhile, have told us he is reluctant to jump the gun on a formal announcement. Could it be that Levinsohn is wary of being too closely associated with the fund, where partner Roland Van Der Meer has been a bit of a bull in a china shop lately (see Sequoia standoff here, and Filmloop/other issues here)?

Ross Levinsohn (left), the former News Corp. exec who masterminded the early acquisition of popular social networking company MySpace, has formed a new firm that will invest in Internet businesses.

Levinsohn is reportedly being joined by Jonathan Miller (below), former chief executive of America Online.

It is called Velocity Investment Group, according to the WSJ, and sounds very much like the plan Levinsohn was rumored to be making last November. According to that rumor, he was caught raising an Internet “roll-up” fund while still employed at News Corp., and was forced to leave. Levinsohn has never commented on those reports

A roll-up fund is one that “rolls up” multiple properties in a single industry to make a more efficient behemoth. Velocity will purchase start-ups in related content areas and boost their online ad revenue by selling across multiple properties, according to the WSJ report. Velocity is also considering buying out companies that broker ads for other Web sites. It is being advised by the investment bank Allen & Co.

Both men have also become advisers to a large private equity firm, General Atlantic, and will work with that firm’s investments in media and consumer companies. GA issued a press release today about their role, but it’s expected that GA is backing Velocity in some way.

GA has invested $1.3 billion in more than 20 companies in the digital media and consumer sector since 1995, including AKQA, Dice, Network Solutions and NDTV.

Fabrik, a company that offer online storage and easy sharing of big files, has just closed a $24.9 million deal and added Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive Media, to the board.

Its financing came primarily from 3i, with a small chunk from ComVentures.

As noted before, Fabrik competes in an increasingly crowded market, though their website reveals an effort to create a youthful brand (compare their site, for example, to YouSendIt, Box.net, and Omnidrive). Fabrik is now going after the consumer market, even as players like YouSendIt are going the other way, targeting professionals. Other related players include SoonR, Avvenu (see coverage here), and still more are listed here in Terence Pua’s piece about why storage will never quite be free.

Levinsohn, you’ll recall, spearheaded News Corporation’s plunge into the online world, overseeing, among other things, the development of Fox.com and the acquisition of MySpace, and his joining the board is indicative of Fabrik’s intention to push past the small business market and target consumers.

Also, unlike these other companies, Fabrik has expanded into hardware. Last February, they dropped $43M to buy SimpleTech, a major provider of external storage devices, (hard-drives, USB flash drives, etc). Until then, it had partnered with Seagate (makers of Maxtor). With hardware, it has also added Western Digital to its competition. Fabrik’s intention is to be the self-described “Apple of storage,” offering a line of hardware and software products whose components work best when used together.

Fabrik’s CEO Mike Cordano tells us his company was profitable before the infusion, but that it will allow them to expand their international efforts and diversify their offerings. What types of offerings these would be remains a secret for now.

The company told us late last year it had already raised $12 million in financing, and close to 90 percent of that is still in the bank, much of it coming from ComVentures. It has now raised a significant $36.9 million.

So you thought Ross Levinsohn, the News Corp exec who saw his stature grow after masterminding the acquisition of MySpace, left voluntarily?

So did we.

AlwaysOn’s Tony Perkins, however, provides the real scoop (click on image).

According to Perkins, Levinsohn (pictured left) was forced out when News Corp discovered that Levinsohn was raising money to start his own venture fund. VentureBeat confirmed this Thursday with someone who had talked with Levinsohn.

Here’s what Perkins tells the D7TV interviewer: “He got raising money for another deal. So the chief operating officer Peter Chernin, who works for Rupert as his right hand man—when his kids aren’t running the place, called Ross into his office and said, ‘Is this true, that you’re raising this half a billion dollar roll-up fund?…And he [Chernin] goes, ‘Are you either in or your out?’ And he [Levinsohn] said, ‘Well, I guess I’m out.”

(Via Dealbreaker.)

The round-up of crucial stuff in Silicon Valley:

Did MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson get shortchanged? — VentureBeat has heard that MySpace, the biggest success of the Web 2.0 wave so far, in terms of users, wasn’t such a great a hit for the co-founders. Word is, Chris DeWolfe ended up with a mere $5 million, even though the company was sold as part of Intermix for $580 million. We haven’t been able to confirm this (MySpace declined comment), but that’s a pittance, if true. The founders were watered down considerably by investors.

The Mercury News has an interview with Ross Levinsohn (pictured above), who runs News Corp’s Fox Interactive division — and who was behind the purchase of MySpace — and asks him whether the co-founders are unhappy. He responds: “There’s no indication to me that they’re unhappy.”

Levinsohn spoke at the Web 2.0 conference today, and addressed a different thorn — Brad Greenspan, the former chief executive of Myspace, who keeps suing the company on allegations it lied to its investors about its value. Levinsohn said:

He’s lost every single motion he’s charged against us. It’s like when Mike Tyson kept trying to win this fight, and the guy kept getting up …It’s kinda sad…two years before we bought the company, they kicked him out. For a guy who got $40 or 50 million from the sale, I mean…life’s too short.

(via Valleywag)

Yahoo’s acquisition binge at screeching halt? — Yahoo’s stock is in the toilet, and maybe that’s why its lost is appetite to buy companies. Check out this chart of acquisitions by the big three over the past years. Google and Microsoft are munching companies as eagerly as ever (18 between them), whereas Yahoo has acquired just one (Jumpcut), according to this chart at least.

Timebridge raises $6 million for… yet another calendar-scheduling company? — The San Francisco start-up, founded in March of last year that, lets you schedule meetings easily within your calendar. It has launched a private testing version. Chief executive Yori Nelken showed VentureBeat a demo Monday, and it has some cool features to save time organizing meetings among two or more people — like letting users block out possible meeting times, and letting their friends or contacts see the times through a central “meeting space.” When the friend selects a time, the slot is automatically booked for both people. So why all the dough? The company has invested resources into integrating various clients — it has a plugin for Outlook, for a Web version, for Blackberry/Treo, Apple, Thunderbird, Notes, etc — that it can work on whatever calendar you have. Timebridge wants to serve the busy professional, and is letting Google conquer the consumer market.

Mayfield and Norwest are the backers. More details at the site’s tour; see top-right). The basic service will be free, but revenue will could from a subscription for added security, archiving and admin features. Nelken thinks the market would accept a range of $30 to a $100 per user per year. It might also get referral fees from companies like Open Table.

Mashery lets you outsource your development — It handles the open API process for companies.

FON now the largest WiFi access network — VentureBeat caught up with Neil Rimer Wednesday, investor in FON, a company that lets people share each other’s WiFi routers. He says the service is doing well in Europe, particularly in Spain, and now has more access points globally than than any other WiFi access point network, including Boingo and T-Mobile. It was also a good move to hire Joanna Rees Gallanter for U.S. operatons, because she can apparently “talk a dog off a meat wagon,” a different skill than running a venture firm. The Madrid company also bought the popular Firefox extension, GSpace, for an undisclosed amount, GigaOm first reported. The FireFox extension allows users to treat their GMail accounts as an online file storage locker — to be launched in Feb 2007, it is essentially a FON router that will have a USB 2.0 port.

Workday’s missed opportunity — Dave Duffield, the founder of PeopleSoft may be back with new start-up Workday, but critique Jeff Nolan says it missed the opportunity to say something new. In other words, it got great media coverage because of Duffield, but it was ho-hum in the details.

Will Flock’s new chief executive turn things around? — From the beginning, Flock, which was supposed to be a social browser, failed to meet hyped expectations. It had potential, but never executed. A new chief exec, Shawn Hardin, has taken over the Mountain View company. He’s a media veteran, having worked at Yahoo, AOL Broadband and NBC. We’ve just had a sneak peak at Flock’s 1.0 browser, and it’s got some promising features — question is, can Flock convince people to make their browser their central work place or not.

Charles River Ventures STIRRs — Fresh from announcing its new attractive seed investment strategy (where it gives out $250,000 checks to promising ideas, Silicon Valley venture firm Charles River is getting submerged by entrepreneurs eager to pitch. It’s also been invited to mix with the masses — at the Nov. 15 STIRR event, a gig usually reserved for start-ups to give one-minute pitches. The Charles River gang — George Zachary, Bill Tai, and Susan Wu — will get 60 seconds to pitch the crowd. We bumped into Susan Wu today at the Web 2.0 conference; she said she was overwhelmed with dealflow.

Lightspeed Venture Partners keeps adding — Silicon Valley venture firm Lightspeed just named three new associates, Patrick Chiang, Andrew Chung and John Vrionis (as you’ll see on this page of blue shirts). This is the firm that recently saw a split, with several partners leaving to form Opus. We won’t call the Opus guys renegades, because they also like blue shirts ;)