Brajeshwar

Image from Velocity IG

Velocity Interactive GroupComventures merges with Velocity to form the Velocity Interactive Group

Ross Levinsohn and Jonathan Miller launched Velocity Investment Group earlier this year with the goal of acquiring and investing in digital and communication media startups. Today, they announced their merger with ComVentures to form their new Velocity Interactive Group. Ross is former President of Fox Interactive and Jonathan, former Chairman and CEO of America Online.

However, two major ComVentures partners, Michael Rolnick and Jeb Miller, will be pursing other interests. So, if I can assume correctly, Keyur Patel will be one of the major partner with Velocity IG. To support this assumption, here are few of my personal analysis;

• Velocity IG’s fund is investing in NDTV Networks, IndiaTV, Fabrik, Doppelganger and Mixercast.
• Velocity IG’s primary areas are digital media and communications of which Media is something Keyur Patel is pursuing rigorously. He started FUSE+Media which targets primarily the Media and Entertainment Industry in India.
• Velocity IG’s footprints are in Palo Alto, Los Angeles, New York, China and India. Well, their listed address for India is the hometown of Keyur Patel. He was also extremely successful in China and knows that country very well. He was responsible for turning around Maxtor into a Profit company with the “One-Touch-Backup” button idea and of course, their units are mass-produced in China.

Here my personal wishes to Keyur Patel and the new Velocity IG for a prospective future. Velocity IG is investing out of its current fund and has over $1.5B in assets under management. The fund will be invested in digital media companies exclusively.

On one of the merger news, from Om Malik, few phrases that caught my stark attention was;

The private equity styled investments don’t exactly make sense in pre-revenue pre-profit start-ups, Velocity was trying to acquire. In other words, the deals were too complex for Silicon Valley.

Is this something that Startup Entrepreneurs should take notice of a noticeable trends that might happen with initial investments from VCs. Or this is just my personal acknowledgement of learning something new today!

References

• TechCrunch – ComVentures Merges With Velocity, Gets A Much Needed Fresh Start
• Gigaom – ComVentures, Velocity Play Let’s Make A Deal
• ComVentures – Velocity Merger Press Release (PDF)

Disclaimer: I’m related to Mixercast, funded by ComVentures, as one of the founder team member. And was involved in helping initially with the Flash Widgets of Fabrik.

SideNote: Btw, if you feel Michael Arrington’s article sounded chuckle-ish with Michael Rolnick being “booted”; well, I heard the Michael of Techcrunch was not so happy with an incident involving the Micheal of ComVentures.