YouTube clone shuns VC and gets investment from ProSiebenSat1

Ever since they turned down the VC's, the market was wondering who was funding myVideo.  It turns out the German YouTube clone has taken an equity injection from ProSiebenSat1 against 30% of the equity with an option on 100%.

The company was set up by the highly successful Samwer brothers (Alando, Jamba) together with some of the management teams they backed in the past, in particular Christian Vollman from iLove.de.

ProSiebenSat.1-Gruppe erwirbt Beteiligung an Deutschlands größter Video-Community "MyVideo"

The press release proudly states that they are now the first German video community.  That's great, but I am not sure what this means since Germany has lagged other countries in this regard and not developed a meaningful local player yet. The press release says the site has up to 2M views a day, which ain't bad and is likely to grow fast if they are hitting virality.

   Das Video-Portal MyVideo.de wächst dynamisch. Pro Woche werden die rund 70.000 Videos, die derzeit bei MyVideo eingestellt sind, ungefähr 12 Millionen Mal abgerufen, pro Tag sind es bis zu zwei Millionen Abrufe. Das Spektrum reicht vom Urlaubsvideo, über selbst gedrehte Musik-Clips bis hin zu eigenproduzierten Kurzfilmen. Jeden Tag kommen etwa 1.800 neue Filme dazu. Die täglichen Zugriffszahlen (Page Impressions) sind von April 2006 bis August 2006 um 560 Prozent gestiegen. Wöchentlich zählt das Netzwerk rund 27 Millionen Seitenzugriffe.

In my book, this is a smart deal for MyVideo for the following reasons:

• your next round is in the bag since Pro7 is unlikely to let you go bust
• nice quick flip strategy with big media
  
• you probably get some "free" TV airtime to build the audience
• you probably get great media agency support and access to advertisers
  

I find the site quite lively but not differentiated in any way.  Chart of the Month includes a bunch of "fun" animation including this top Adolf video (Ich hock in meinem Bonker...).  I guess I am not the target audience...

technorati tags:myvideo.de, prosieben, samwer, christianvollman

Comments

[nick gogerty]

I met the brothers when they were at Jamba and I was sourcing mobile content. These guys are smart and very technically savvy. Seriel entrepreneurs of their caliber are rare in Europe. They may not be innovators but they know how to execute and scale. They get my bet. Probably end up being a pricey acquisition for someone. These guys also know a lot about getting into other foreign markets.