Fiddler On The eBay Roof

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:20:19 +0000

Ashley D. MacIsaac is taking an unorthodox approach to signing a record deal. The bankrupt 33 year old, Canadian-born, fiddle-playing man has decided to put 50% of his future earnings for sale on eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) at a starting price of $1.5 million Canadian dollars.

MacIsaac danced to Celtic music on Late Night With Conan O’Brien in 1997. On that same taping, MacIsaac exposed himself when kicking up while wearing a kilt. “I’m 33, I have at least a good 40 years of earning power ahead of me and I think it’s (C$1.5 million) a reasonable starting point,” stated MacIsaac during a phone interview with Reuters.

“I’m not David Bowie, I’m not Madonna, I’m not Eminem, I’m Ashley MacIsaac, so to set a price at that (C$1.5 million), I thought, was fair market value,” added MacIsaac. Madonna made a similar deal worth over $100 million when she signed with Live Nation Inc. David Bowie also issued bonds of future royalties for his future hits as well.

The winning bidder will get half of the profits made from the Celtic singers music album sales, movies, DVDs, and other publications until MacIsaac retires. The first 10 albums created by MacIsaac was distributed through Universal Music Group.

Universal Music Group Buys Stake In Loud.com

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:38:05 +0000

Universal Music Group has announced that they bought equity in Loud.com. Loud.com is an urban music social network website which is a subsidiary of Vivendi, is based in Paris, and also works under the name, Battlerap.com. Vivendi also owns 20% of NBC Universal.

Loud.com is a place for upcoming hip-hop artists, freestylers, and producers to upload their samples and could potentially win prizes such as opening for the Wu-Tang Clan in Hawaii.

“Universal’s strategy is to become actively involved in all areas of media where our artists and our music are present,” mentioned the Vice Chairman and CFO of UMG, Nick Henny. “Loud.com has created an incredibly vibrant and growing online hip-hop community that features not only compelling user-generated content, but also the means for users to create their own music and compete for a record deal. Loud.com is quickly emerging as one of the leading new online ventures that successfully reaches the new generation of international and multicultural youth.”

Loud.com sells audio files of hip hop beats for 99 cents. Users can create blogs within the site and can search for profiles and add friends.

“We are delighted that UMG is joining the Loud.com family,” stated the co-founder/CEO of Loud.com, Joseph Safina. “When Steve Rifkind and I started Loud.com, our hope was to create a virtual home for hip-hop fans around the world. To our delight, it has quickly evolved into an online community, competition, A&R site and marketing company all rolled into one. With UMG now on board, we’ll be able to offer even more compelling services to our members.”

The amount UMG invested in Loud.com was undisclosed.

Recent Tech Funding: LiveNation, Wallop, CARTASITE, iUpload, Sportsvite, Games2Win, NaturallyCurly, Zaadz, SearchPhysics, Neosaej, TRACE, Fliptrack, Beyond.com, Payoneer

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 02:52:44 +0000

My apologies for the slight delay in updates. I have been travelling a little bit the last couple days to Chicago and Minneapolis. But here’s a fresh update of tech deals:

Dollar Amount Involved: $114 Million
On Friday, March 30, Academy Music Group Holdings, Ltd. (AMG) confirmed that now a majority of the company is owned by Gaiety Investments [no website available] and Live Nation, Inc. Both Gaiety and Live Nation paid $114 million to purchase 56% of AMG from RJD Partners. AMG owns 12 music venues that host over 2500 events and attracts over 3 million in audience. AMG also owns Carling Academy Brixton and Shepherd’s Empire. Live Nation has the technology needed to stream concerts and events live so through this investment, AMG would constantly provide web content as well.

“AMG has one of the strongest live music venue brands in the UK,” stated Live Nation’s CEO Michael Rapino. “The venues that we are acquiring are among the best in the world. The acquisition of AMG will enable us to grow our UK venue network with a brand that music fans know and love.”

Dollar Amount Involved: $1 Million
Hercules Technology Growth Capital stated on Friday that they would be investing $1 million into Wallop. Wallop was launched on April 25, 2006 by Microsoft Corporation’s Research division and is based in Silicon Valley. The project is led by Karl Jacob and was backed with $13 million from Microsoft’s IP Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners, and Consor Capital.

Dollar Amount Involved: $4.35 Million
CARTASITE is a Denver, Colorado based company that monitors remote assets in real time and uses a Network Operation Center (NOC) to interconnect with wireless carriers. Last year, authorities in Gainesville, FL recovered $1.5 million worth of art from a Budget truck driver that tried to run away and sell its cargo on eBay. However, the GPS system used in the truck was monitored by CARTASITE.”The irony is that Budget didn’t purchase our system as a theft recovery device,” stated David Armitage, the CEO of CARTASITE. “They are utilizing it as an inventory management tool that allows them to have enough vehicles in the right location at the right time. It’s a huge operational benefit for them. The fact that it can also be used to handle rare situations like this is just a bonus.”It is because of this technology that Canterbury Partners and Arcadia Partners invested $4.35 million Series A into CARTASITE.

Dollar Amount Involved: $7 Million
iUpload is a company that develops content manager, community publisher, and personal publisher online applications. The company is based in Burlington, Ontario Canada and serve major customers such as McDonald’s, Kodak, Northwestern Mutual, the New York Times and Newsweek. iUpload was founded in 1998.The Series A funding comes from Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Many customers are currently utilizing iUpload to set-up wikis, blogs, forms, and workflow diagrams.

Dollar Amount Involved: $2 Million
Sportsvite is a New York based company where users can invite each other to participate in various sports events. Sportsvite has roughly 20,000 members. The investor of Sportsvite is Grace Drive Management [no website available]. Although the website was funded last month, the amount was just declared to be $2 million as a first round. Sportsvite was created by 212Media, who also operates 3 other companies: Bodvod, New Play Media, and Conscious Content.

Dollar Amount Involved: $5 Million
Games2Win is a company based in Bombay, Maharashtra India that designs Adobe Flash games with comedic twists. Clearstone Venture Partners partnered with SVB Financial Group and led the $5 million recent investment into Games2Win. Games2Win also plans on launching multiplayer Flash games. Games2Win was founded by Mahesh Khambadkone and Cyrus Oshidar. “Internet users in India are still highly underserved when it comes to online entertainment that’s relevant and compelling. With its unique blend of topical, irreverent and action-packed games we are confident that Games2win will be a dominant player in the rapidly growing online gaming marketplace in India. With Clearstone’s track record of building category leading consumer internet businesses like Paypal, MP3.com and Etoys we look forward to building Games2Win into a globally recognized brand” stated Clearstone Director, Rahul Khanna.

Dollar Amount Involved: $600,000
Austin, TX based company, Naturally Curly (www.naturallycurly.com) has recently announced that they have raised $600,000 from Jim Trebig,, Dr. Philip Sanger, and Tim Wall. The website was founded 9 years ago and has about 10,000 daily visitors.NaturallyCurly.com will use the funding for technical development and marketing. “Companies like NaturallyCurly have been able to see opportunities that have gone unnoticed by high-tech nerds like me,” stated Treybig. “The movement to communities like NaturallyCurly is the foundation for the future of advertising.”The founders of NaturallyCurly are Michelle Breyer and Gretchen Heber, who have also launched CurlyKids.com. NaturallyCurly.com was nominated in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition in Austin.

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
John Mackay, the CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc. financed spiritual social network, Zaadz. Zaadz is based in Los Angeles and Brian Johnson is the founder and CEO. The social network has close to 50,000 users and calls itself a “place of political refuge for MySpace immigrants.”

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Search Physics is a startup that has developed a search engine capable of extracting content from websites, store additional information, classify links, and narrow down search results.Search Physics is based in San Francisco and raised an undisclosed amount of funding. The investors of Search Physics are Stanley Wong and David Shen, both from Yahoo! The founder of Search Physics is Dr. Minh Duong-van, a theory of chaos and quantum theory physicist.

Dollar Amount Involved: $505,000
NeoSaej Corporation is a start-up that is currently in “stealth mode” (quiet about its idea for now). The company is based Burlington, Massachusetts. NeoSaej is looking to address “the severe inefficiencies in current online marketplaces, and greatly improves the e-commerce experience for all participants.”NeoSaej has received $505,000 of a $1 million Series A, led by Stata Venture Partners. The company was founded by Rohit Goyal in August 2006. Goyal is a former network engineer at Enterasys Networks.Another investor in NeoSaej is NeoNet Technologies, LLC.

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
TRACE.TV has recently made a new partner: Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group will be providing TRACE with music and video rights. Universal will also provide TRACE.TV a weekly slot in Universal’s International Music Feed. TRACE was launched in 2003 in Paris, France and started out as True Magazine in London.TRACE is looking to expand to U.S. markets next year. Goldman Sachs is a previous investor.

Dollar Amount Involved: $1.53 Million
Fliptrack is a website where users upload photos and videos and sync it with music provided. To keep the audience captive, the music is mainstream. Fliptrack is based in Mountain View, CA and has raised $1.53 million Series A funding by Mohr, Davidow Ventures, and other angel investors. Fliptrack raised $500,000 in angel funding. Fliptrack was founded by Stewart Putney.

Dollar Amount Involved: $13.5 Million
Safeguard Scientifics has announced that it has provided $13.5 million in funding to Beyond.com. Beyond.com is based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and has more than 15,000 online communities. Beyond.com is aligned with Safeguard’s focus to partner with entrepreneurial technology companies that have a competitive advantage in Software as a Service (SaaS), Technology-Enabled Services and Internet-based businesses, stated Peter J. Boni, the President and CEO of Safeguard Scientifics. We’re executing upon our game plan to deploy capital in innovative and attractive companies to generate increased value for our shareholders. We welcome Beyond.com to the Safeguard team.”

See [Pulse 2.0 - Greylock Partners Leads $4 Million Series A Investment In Payoneer]

[Information Source: Alarm Clock]

Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Universal

Fiddler On The eBay Roof

Universal Music Group Buys Stake In Loud.com

Recent Tech Funding: LiveNation, Wallop, CARTASITE, iUpload, Sportsvite, Games2Win, NaturallyCurly, Zaadz, SearchPhysics, Neosaej, TRACE, Fliptrack, Beyond.com, Payoneer