Pond Venture Partners Makes First-Ever IPTV Startup Investment

October 22, 2007

Source: TIOTI

TIOTI Illustrates Strategic Funding Strategy for IPTV and Web-based Companies in Pond Portfolio

Pond Venture Partners, Europe’s largest early-stage technology venture capital fund with more than $200 million under management, today announced it has successfully led and closed a significant Series A investment round in TIOTI, Inc. (Seattle and London). TIOTI www.TIOTI.com is 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, noted that “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.”

About Pond Venture Partners

Pond Venture Partners www.pondventures.com is Europe’s largest early-stage technology venture capital fund, founded in 1997 and with more than $200 million under management. Pond operates as a cohesive team based in London and Silicon Valley, with strong connections in Asia.

Pond works closely with its worldwide portfolio of companies to help build their technology innovations into successful global businesses – as well as providing introductions to new customers, management resources and quality co-investors. Pond’s venture team includes
acclaimed entrepreneurs, business leaders and technology visionaries, all with an international focus and a focus on partnering with their portfolio companies for success. Pond is regulated by the FSA.

About TIOTI

TIOTI is a social media aggregator for television. We pull together information sources about TV shows from all over the web, connect that information with the full spectrum of download sources on the Internet and filter everything so that you and your friends can get hold of your favorites as seamlessly as possible.

TIOTI also uses your favourite TV shows as a starting point to make recommendations for new (and old) shows you might like. Each show and episode can also be recommended to people, rated, discussed with others, and you can see what shows other people like too.

TIOTI is based in Seattle and London. The company was founded in 2005 by Paul Cleghorn and Marc Colando.

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