Capital Chaos

 Howcast (New York, NY) which was founded by some ex-Googlers/YouTubers, launched with some significant funding led by Tudor Investment Corp.  The company which aims to be the YouTube for instructional videos faces some pretty significant competition in the space.  We had profiled 5Min which is similar and also raised a few pennies as well.

One of the distinguishing differences with Howcast is the professional quality video and “how to”.  Unlike 5Min where users can randomly post videos, Howcast operates off of a template and then must be approved by the company before it goes live.  The site does encourage the users of Howcast to vote on what they think is the best solution for the question so that conceivably the best answer will show up first in a search. 

The company was started by Jason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Raman who all know a thing or two about search and the viral marketability of user created videos.

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 Tudor Investment Corporation (Greenwich, CT) is a diversified management company of which Tudor Ventures is their venture group that focuses on mid and late-stage technology and growth companies. The parent co. has over $15B under management and has made some very substantial investments in over 75 companies throughout the years.

Typically, they invest $7 to $15 million in each of their portfolio companies and most often act as a lead investor.  Because they are part of the Tudor Group, they also have access to greater capital for bigger transactions as well.

Since the vast majority of investments are made at later stages, the type of investment that Tudor is mostly interested in has many of the following characteristics:

While their process is somewhat uniform to the industry, if you make it past the first look, Tudor will spend four to six weeks evaluating the company, meeting often with management, interviewing current and prospective customers and partners, and conducting in-depth technical, industry, financial and legal due diligence.
What is cool about these guys is even given their size, you can contact them directly without an intro from someone else which is very helpful.

Areas of focus include:

Communications, Internet Infrastructure and Semiconductors
Enterprise Applications and Information Technology Services
Financial and Business Services
Media / Retail/Consumer

Contact:
1275 King Street
Greenwich, CT 06831
Telephone: (203) 863-6700