• Ellation

  Led · Equity · Nov 2015

  Ellation is the parent company of anime-focused video service Crunchyroll, which was founded in 2006. Crunchyroll offers licensed anime including Naruto Shippuden and Sailor Moon and reports 20 million registered users. The company expects to reach 750,000 paying subscribers by the end of this year and users watch 1.5 billion minutes of anime each month. About 80 percent of subscribers come from the English-speaking world. Ellation says it will use the new $22 million investment from Otter Media to expand product and engineering capabilities and to grow original content initiatives, including a partnership with Sumitomo. Although the Chernin Group acquired a majority stake in Crunchyroll two years ago, Ellation maintains a separate capital structure from Otter Media.

• AirMedia

  Led · Seed · Oct 2014

  AirMedia operates a syndication network and recommendation engine built specifically for premium video publishers, aiming to provide distribution beyond publishers' own sites. The platform surfaces high-quality video recommendations on third-party publisher pages and enables video owners to handle their own promotion and ad sales. AirMedia also runs a portal that features partner videos, with the long-term hope of providing an alternative to YouTube for premium publishers. The team behind AirMedia includes former RealGravity executives Luke McDonough and Doug Neiman and former Nexon/Backtick CTO Lynn Gabbay, and the product was developed over roughly 10 months. Early commercial traction includes partnerships with sports publishers such as NBC Universal Sports and Cinesport. Financially, AirMedia has secured seed funding to support growth and platform rollout.

No current team members are available.