ComVentures merges with Velocity to form 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.
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!