Pond Venture Partners Makes IPTV Startup Investment

Pond Venture Partners has announced it has closed a significant Series A investment round in TIOTI, Inc. (Seattle and London).
TIOTIwww.TIOTI.comis a newly-launched social media aggregation site that has quickly become a major destination
portal for TV programming, indexing more than 75,000 television shows and more than 500,000 individual episodes for download.
In addition to indexing TV content available across the entirety of the web, TIOTI adds useful social tools that allow users to recommend shows to friends as well as enabling discussions and shared ‘TV watch lists’.
TIOTI also enables the creation of groups to build communities around TV - it allows users to add, edit and expand the information on cast, crew, critics, fan fiction, gossip and trivia surrounding TV shows.
The service enables web links, photos and videos to be easily integrated from Flickr and YouTube into individual TIOTI groups. The site also includes pertinent links to a wide range of online TV services such as those from Apple, Amazon, AOL and Joost, among others.
Officially launched in October 2007, TIOTI has been acclaimed by a number of leading newspapers and blogs as the ‘go-to site’ of Internet TV - a single source for programming, content and social media around television. Following its successful beta-testing of the service with more than 18,000 users, TIOTI has now opened up its social network
to the world and made its gateway to TV content available to everyone.
“The investment in TIOTI is the culmination of a methodical and carefully implemented Pond strategy to bring IPTV, social networking and Web startups into our portfolio,” said Dr. Michael Gera, General Partner of Pond Venture Partners and a newly-installed Board member of TIOTI.
“As the leader in early-stage investments for Europe, we are renowned for carefully evaluating our investments, looking for the best and the brightest new companies. We are also acknowledged as having very strong company-building skills.
"That strategy has served us well throughout the range of our investments, which include innovators in semiconductors, software, and now IPTV. TIOTI is an exciting company
with a bright future and Pond is very pleased to have led this initial Series A round in the company.”
Marc Colando, TIOTI’s Seattle-based co-founder, said: “Working with Pond Venture Partners has proven to be a wonderful experience – they are smart, savvy investors who have already brought great insight into our market plans and strategies.
"They know the IPTV market opportunities well, are fully-versed in the nuances of our business model and IP portfolio and have already made introductions to more than one potential additional Tioti team member.
"We are looking forward to working with them to grow our company’s marketing and infrasrtructure to a global level.”
(DS)