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A Massive $75 Million Round Streams Into Ustream.

30 points by aresant 17y ago

aresant 17y ago
Most interesting part of this article is that the money is raised mostly by Japanese banks, earmarked for Japanese / Asian scaling. Interesting to me because $75m+ buy you a lot of technical talent overseas to build your own - what is it about ustream that makes it so compelling as an investment target vs. a new start-up buildout?
- vaksel 17y ago
  Ustream is a top 600 site. If you started from scratch, not only is there no guarantee that you'd even reach that level(market now is saturated) but even if you did, it'd take you 3-4 years to get there.
- patio11 17y ago
  Japanese VC is a little quirky. Imagine companies with great big piles of money and no effective pipeline to get it to twenty somethings. I worked at a technology incubator and essentially the only option for startups was friends & family, government microcapital programs, and (for the very lucky) angel funding from local entrepreneurs. This funding environment turns out very, veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery different companies than Silicon Valley does. Things are probably different in Tokyo, which is essentially a whole 'nother country which shares a long border and some people with Japan. (I'm only half joking.)
  - prakash 17y ago
    what's the startup/tech/funding scene like in Tokyo?
paraschopra 17y ago
First it was Zynga and now it is Ustream. Who said raising funds is difficult? No seriously, I have difficulty understanding how can such exorbitant amount of funding is justified during a VC round.
- coffeemug 17y ago
  It's really not that much money if you consider the cost of running a dedicated data center.
timr 17y ago
They raised $20M, not $75M: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/020210-softbank-pays-us20-million-for.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/020210-softbank-pays-u...
ajkirwin 17y ago
I really don't care about Ustream anymore. Not since, like so many places, they went 'super kid friendly'. I used to love the service as I could watch artist friends create works in real time and watching an artist draw/paint is just.. wonderful. Except, occasionally, they'd draw or paint tits. And get banned extremely fast. So, fuck ustream.

30 points by aresant 17y ago

Most interesting part of this article is that the money is raised mostly by Japanese banks, earmarked for Japanese / Asian scaling. Interesting to me because $75m+ buy you a lot of technical talent overseas to build your own - what is it about ustream that makes it so compelling as an investment target vs. a new start-up buildout?

vaksel 17y ago
Ustream is a top 600 site. If you started from scratch, not only is there no guarantee that you'd even reach that level(market now is saturated) but even if you did, it'd take you 3-4 years to get there.
patio11 17y ago
Japanese VC is a little quirky. Imagine companies with great big piles of money and no effective pipeline to get it to twenty somethings. I worked at a technology incubator and essentially the only option for startups was friends & family, government microcapital programs, and (for the very lucky) angel funding from local entrepreneurs. This funding environment turns out very, veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery different companies than Silicon Valley does. Things are probably different in Tokyo, which is essentially a whole 'nother country which shares a long border and some people with Japan. (I'm only half joking.)
- prakash 17y ago
  what's the startup/tech/funding scene like in Tokyo?

paraschopra 17y ago

First it was Zynga and now it is Ustream. Who said raising funds is difficult? No seriously, I have difficulty understanding how can such exorbitant amount of funding is justified during a VC round.

coffeemug 17y ago
It's really not that much money if you consider the cost of running a dedicated data center.

timr 17y ago

They raised $20M, not $75M: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/020210-softbank-pays-us20-million-for.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/020210-softbank-pays-u...

ajkirwin 17y ago

I really don't care about Ustream anymore. Not since, like so many places, they went 'super kid friendly'. I used to love the service as I could watch artist friends create works in real time and watching an artist draw/paint is just.. wonderful. Except, occasionally, they'd draw or paint tits. And get banned extremely fast. So, fuck ustream.