Venture money continues to flow into video and music content creators, at prolific rates.
More may be on the way. We’re hearing Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley venture firm, is raising a media fund, to be based in Los Angeles, though we’re not certain what sort of deals the firm is focused on. Partner Raj Atluru declined to comment.
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VentureBeat recently ran pieces about Silicon Valley 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 site, is still a young company. It is led in part by Hollywood producer Jerry Zucker, known for older satirical movies such “Airplane.” Why invest in Zucker, who came into his prime during a different age and medium?
Yesterday we caught up with investor USVP’s Steve Krausz, who led the investment in National Banana. His thesis, in short: Last year, we saw the rise of user-generated production of online video. This year, we’re seeing a move by professionals to the online world. VentureBeat’s conversation with Krausz is in the audio file below. Near the end, we ask him about Funny or Die, another comedy site, backed by Sequoia Capital. Unfortunately, the recording cuts off after 8 minutes, around the time we were asking Krausz about lessons learned a decade ago when he backed Palladium, another content creation company which didn’t make any money. Now, like then, the market can quickly fill with competitors, he said — which is the main risk. But the bet is that the skill needed to create compelling comedy is still scarce enough that a company like National Banana has a chance to succeed.
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