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Invincea takes deep dive on WTOP hack

2013-05-08 00:00

Invincea Inc. is going to town on this WTOP/Federal News Radio hack. A headache for the region's biggest radio station — and, full disclosure, a Washington Business Journal broadcast partner — has turned into a great opportunity for the Fairfax-based browser-security company to flex its technical chops. Not only does Invincea have a very long, very in-the-weeds blog up today on the hack, it's holding a webinar on Friday to discuss it. To summarize, WTOP.com and its sister site were hit with a cyberattack in which Internet Explorer users were redirected to a malicious site that served up fake antivirus malware. Chrome, Firefox and Safari users were apparently not affected. For now, if you use IE to browse WTOP, you're out of luck. Perhaps use this moment to download a new browser, Mom. In the blog post, Invincea uses its secure, virtualized browser technology to explore and explain the malware, with the glee of a lab scientist who has captured a new form of Ebola in a jar. It also ties the hack to a similar attack against the blog of tech writer John Dvorak. Ominously, Invincea believes "this is likely an indicator of a larger more widespread attack against online media sites." That virtual browser software originated, by the way, as a George Mason University project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

WTOP, Federal News Radio sites hit with cyberattack

2013-05-07 00:00

The Web sites of local radio stations WTOP and Federal News Radio were hacked this week, potentially infecting the computers of people who visited their Web site within the past two days. A statement posted on WTOP’s Web site Tuesday said that users who visited its page using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser may have been affected by the attack. The statement said that visitors using other browsers, including Safari or Firefox, were not affected. “WTOP.com is currently dealing with a malicious cyber attack,” the statement said. “We are working diligently to contain and stop the attack, and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.” John Meyer, director of digital media for both stations, said the virus affected some people who visited the site using Internet Explorer. To prevent the attack from spreading, the radio stations blocked those users from accessing the stations’ Web sites and linked to a statement explaining the attack. WTOP and Federal News radio did not say how many people were affected or when the hack was detected. Eddie Mitchell, a security engineer at the Fairfax-based security company Invincea, said hacks like this one are particularly difficult to detect. Other attacks that might attempt to lure users to fraudulent Web sites can be easily avoided with common security software. But by targeting a site that people trust and visit habitually, he said, hackers have a better chance of getting through those filters. “These attacks are so devastating because the attackers are compromising legitimate Web sites,” said Mitchell, who does not work for the stations. According to Mitchell, the attacks on WTOP and Federal News Radio Web sites installed two types of malware. The first is a fake antivirus software, which identifies false threats and collects users’ credit card information when they try to “subscribe” to a program to clean their computers. The second is a type of software that connects users’ computers to a larger network that hackers can control and use to increase the number of “clicks” on digital advertisements that make them money. WTOP and Federal News radio did not comment on Mitchell’s assessment. Those who think they have been affected by the attack should scan their computers for infections using legitimate anti-virus software, the stations’ statement said. “WTOP is still in the process of performing a thorough analysis to ensure our systems are free of malicious content,” the statement said. Mitchell said the attacks appeared to have been motivated by financial gain, in contrast to recent breaches of other media sites such as the Associated Press, which were aimed at getting publicity for the perpetrators. In that instance, hackers successfully gained access to the news service’s Twitter account to send a false message about a bombing at the White House, which briefly sent the stock market into a free fall.

How the "venture finance hairball" is redefining the Series A

2013-05-02 00:00

The rise of angels and micro-VCs, secondary-market liquidity, crowd funding, and other market forces have created a "venture finance hairball" that calls for new definitions in the world of VC, argues Scott Johnson of Reston- and Cambridge, Mass.-based New Atlantic Ventures. Most importantly, Johnson takes a stab at redefining the Series A, a term that's been turned on its head by the lower cost of entry for startup, the proliferation of seed-stage funding and the earlier expectations of market traction. "So what is Series A today? My working definition is that Series A is a financing round, from any source, that exceeds $3 million in size, and has a post money under $15 million," writes Johnson. "No longer can we point to the firm that led the round or the customer traction or stage of product development to define Series A. Which is fine with me." See Scott's blog here.

The Click Clique: The Ladies Behind Moda Operandi

2013-04-25 00:00

LADIES WHO LAUNCH | From left: Taylor Tomasi Hill, Hayley Bloomingdale, Indre Rockefeller and Lauren Santo Domingo at the Christian Dior suite at New York's St. Regis hotel. THIS SPRING, A MASSIVELY oversize duchesse satin floral opera coat won over a fatigued crowd at French fashion label Rochas's fall/winter 2013 runway presentation with its exaggerated humor. Two days later, it became street-style photography bait when stylist Giovanna Battaglia sashayed into the Dior show wearing it. Any fashion fan longing to copy her style could satisfy the itch in one place: the fashion retail website Moda Operandi, where, for a limited period following the show, the coat was being offered for $12,075. Such purchases were once reserved for hushed boutiques and the upper reaches of department stores, but today, buying a $595 pair of Valentino studded ballerina flats or a $1,510 Peter Pilotto skirt online is fashion's newest frontier. While the reliably robust luxury market is projected to grow 10 percent in 2014, the same market online is slated for a 25-percent growth rate, according to business consulting firm Bain & Company, just one reason why more and more high-end retailers are launching on the Internet. But unlike other premier shopping sites, like Net-a-Porter—an Internet version of Bergdorf Goodman—or discount flash-sale sites, like Gilt Groupe, Moda Operandi is based primarily on the concept of the trunk show, which allows customers to place advance orders for next season's wardrobe. The orders are commissions, helping to secure the production of the clothes presented. The founders of Moda (as it's known), Gilt alum Áslaug Magnúsdóttir, 45, and Vogue contributing editor Lauren Santo Domingo, 36, believed there was a global clientele who would jump at the chance to buy straight off the runway—even if it was at an often staggering retail price—months before the product would be shipped. "I had always heard stories of the annual Oscar de la Renta trunk show that would do millions of dollars in a day," Santo Domingo says. For serious shoppers—which Moda clients are, averaging $1,500 per transaction, with a record single order clocking in at $90,000—the guarantee of getting their hands on an Anndra Neen cage clutch, Kenzo jacket or Giambattista Valli cocktail dress matters. "Our average customer is similar to me," says Santo Domingo. "She's educated, lives in an urban center, 36 years old, travels internationally, loves fashion and culture, speaks multiple languages and has multiple addresses." The Moda client is also a plugged-in fashion fan, likely to watch the live stream of the Marc Jacobs show, read the review on style.com and await Moda's email about the trunk show to ensure that she'll be able to get one of the satin evening pajama tops. Such devotion explains why Moda, though newer and smaller than many of its competitors, is starting to loom large on the retail landscape. Its position has also been helped by savvy marketing moves like signing on as the lead sponsor of the "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" exhibit, which opens this month, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. (Last year, the Costume Institute's lead sponsorship slot was filled by retail behemoth Amazon and the year before that by Alexander McQueen, part of mega-fashion group Kering, formerly known as PPR.) Over the next three months, hundreds of thousands of visitors will see the Moda logo throughout the museum, while countless others will see images online of Santo Domingo standing next to starlet Rooney Mara, Vogue editor Anna Wintour and Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci as they cohost the Costume Institute's star-studded annual gala on May 6. Moda investors like Tony Florence, a general partner of venture-capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and a Moda board member, see great promise—and future profit—in the trunk show model, which limits risk by passing up-front costs on to customers, who pay a 50-percent deposit for their purchases during the trunk show, with the other 50 percent paid at time of delivery. "Most of the services out there for fashion are web 1.0, meaning it's sort of a catalogue online," says Florence of competing sites. "What Moda is doing is disrupting that supply and distribution chain by connecting the designer to the customer." The company, which made its debut during February 2011's fashion week with 30 brands on board, has already seen results, making three times the sales in 2012 as compared with those in its first year of business. Such numbers surely comfort their investors, despite recent Harvard Business School research showing that 75 percent of venture capital–backed businesses won't return their investors' money. Starting this summer, Moda will face its biggest challenge yet: It will be taking on its rivals directly by significantly expanding the in-season offerings at its online boutique, which launched in December 2012. While this means that customers who missed the Rochas coat during the trunk show might be able to find it on the site months later, during the normal fall shopping season, it also means that Moda needs to buy, store and sell a large inventory of clothing, just like a department store or Net-a-Porter. "The beauty of our initial model, and part of the reason that investors loved it so much, was there was no inventory risk and cash up front," says cofounder Magnúsdóttir. Moda is trying to gain a competitive advantage by using the advance information they glean from trunk show sales. "We tweak our buy using that data," says Magnúsdóttir. For example, if customers already bought a particular brown Isabel Marant boot during the trunk show, Moda can plan accordingly as they stock their boutique. This puts the pressure on Moda's artistic director, Taylor Tomasi Hill, and its director of designer ready-to-wear, Indre Rockefeller, who must calibrate the orders during the frenzied selling period immediately following the runway show, while the online trunk shows take place nearly simultaneously. Decisions are often made on the spot, and there is little margin for error. The site's best advertisements are Santo Domingo and the Moda team, who are all young and attractive, with names directly from the social register. "They've got a deep bench over there," says Bob Sauerberg, the president of Condé Nast, who oversaw the two investments that the media company made in Moda. (Part of that deal made Moda the official retail partner for vogue.com, allowing readers to purchase items from the magazine's website through the Moda preorder trunk shows.) Indre Rockefeller, 32, is a former assistant to Anna Wintour and the wife of a Rockefeller heir; the social media manager is Hayley Bloomingdale, 27, the granddaughter of retail heiress Betsy Bloomingdale; and their marketing chief, Ashley Bryan, 40, a former Net-a-Porter executive, is the daughter of Shelby Bryan (Anna Wintour's longtime boyfriend). Taylor Tomasi Hill, who prefers not to disclose her age, is a former Marie Claire style director and something of a fashion celebrity, liable to get mobbed outside shows by fans and street-style photographers. Meanwhile, Lauren Santo Domingo, a Greenwich, Connecticut, native whose wedding to the son of a Colombian billionaire received 10 pages of coverage in Vogue, has been named by the New York press as a contender for late society doyenne Brooke Astor's empty seat. This is society 3.0. The Moda team is parlaying its individual sense of style into big business. Click on Instagram feeds for any of the women, and you'll see a cheery array of photographs from their rounds in Paris and the Middle East. You can also follow them on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook . They introduce themselves, along with the brands they carry, to potential clients at social events like luncheons. This fall, for example, the company is planning a pop-up boutique in Brazil to acquaint their growing clientele there with the London designers that Moda carries. Make a Moda purchase, and the implicit aspiration is that you're buying into an exalted fashion-forward lifestyle—a sorority of good-taste gals. Photography by Maciek Kobielski; Hair by Brian Buenaventura @ Management + Artists. Makeup by Talia Shobrook @ Jed Root. Painting by Bil Donovan THREE AND A HALF YEARS ago Moda was just an idea percolating in Magnúsdóttir's mind. The blonde Icelander, who was then at Gilt Noir, the elite shopping section of Gilt Groupe, had realized that not all the clothing shown during fashion week was available for sale. "Designers were saying to me that they didn't have a place to sell their special pieces from the runway," she says. Retailers are often conservative when they place orders each season, since they must protect their bottom line and guarantee the highest sell-through possible. (Translation: stock their racks with "safe" options like black pencil skirts and bright cocktail dresses, not ankle-length duchesse satin coats.) In order to do so, they rely on so-called "commercial" collections—the more wearable items produced specifically to sell by brands each season—as opposed to the often more high-concept "runway" collections that showcase the designer's individual vision. Certain items that are exhibited during fashion week appear in magazines and fashion blogs but are never produced and sold. "As a customer, I would see pieces that I loved and then find out they weren't being made because no store had ordered them," says Magnúsdóttir, who came to fashion after receiving a Harvard MBA and cofounding TSM Capital, which invested in luxury brands and retailers, before moving on to Gilt. "I realized that the only way to let women buy these pieces was to put things in front of them early enough, when the designer is still in the market." After considering the idea for several months, she asked Santo Domingo to lunch at the Flatiron café Spoon in September 2009 to propose they partner. The two met during Magnúsdóttir's TSM Capital days, when Santo Domingo was brought in to help with marketing and brand assessment. "I was immediately impressed with Lauren's great sense of style and felt that we had very complementary skill sets: mine being on the business side of fashion and hers on the creative side," says Magnúsdóttir. "I immediately thought it was a great idea," says Santo Domingo, who had been toying with the idea of launching her own brick-and-mortar boutique until the recession hit. Santo Domingo called her friend Shirley Cook, the young CEO at Proenza Schouler, to ask her opinion. "When we spoke about her idea for online trunk shows, it made complete sense," says Cook, 33. "Lauren understands the customer, their way of life, their taste level and their needs. Her genius point was that not everyone who wants runway fashion attends fashion shows. Moda Operandi allows you to shop with every privilege industry insiders are afforded." By the summer of 2010, the pair had started to work in earnest on Moda, which was initially simply called The Trunk Show. They raised initial seed money from family and friends—just enough to rent office space. In August of that same year, their first venture round closed after raising $1.5 million—allowing them to hire a chief technology officer and a tech agency. The only problem left was convincing designers to sign on. Like any of the big retail stores, the cofounders knew Moda would live and die by the caliber of brands they carried. "We didn't have anything to show the fashion brands; it was just us talking," says Magnúsdóttir, laughing. "They kept asking, 'Do you have mockups of the site?' And we were like, 'Not really.' " Thirty brands signed up. An Alexander Wang trunk show was the first offering, at 1 p.m. on February 16, 2011: Santo Domingo placed the first order, for a rose satin slip dress, and Magnúsdóttir the second, for a poncho sweater. Then they sat back and waited. Now, $20,000 gowns sell regularly on Moda, largely to their Middle Eastern customers, who represent a fifth of their total business. And thus far, it has attracted $48 million in financing, including a $36 million investment round in June 2012. NEA, which is also a backer of Gilt Groupe, is their largest institutional investor, and LVMH, Condé Nast and IMG are all strategic partners. Moda now has over 300 brands on board for their trunk shows and 70 in their in-season boutique, including big draws like Isabel Marant, Valentino, Rodarte and Giambattista Valli. (The fashion houses that have their own large e-commerce efforts, like Ralph Lauren or Louis Vuitton, do not participate, nor do labels such as Chanel and Céline, which refuse to participate in e-commerce altogether.) They have customers in 70 countries, with New York being the number-one market—where they recently launched same-day delivery for items from their in-season boutique, just like Net-a-Porter does. As Moda heads full steam into their competitor's waters, it remains to be seen how the site's unique position, which until now has been based on a particular alchemy of taste, personal friendships and fashion savvy, will be maintained. Will broadening their in-season offerings in their boutique allow a wider audience to benefit from their long reach into the fashion world? Or will carrying a larger inventory burden the company with more risk than it can handle? They are counting on the former. Besides, says Santo Domingo, "I would never do something almost as good as someone else." 2009 SEPTEMBER | Lauren Santo Domingo and Áslaug Magnúsdóttir hatch the plan to launch Moda Operandi. 2010 AUGUST | Moda closes its first venture-capital round, raising $1.5 million. New Atlantic Ventures (NAV) is the lead investor. 2011 FEBRUARY | The site goes live with an Alexander Wang trunk show following his fall/winter 2011 runway presentation. Santo Domingo and Magnúsdóttir are the site's first customers. JUNE | Moda raises more than $10 million in Series B financing, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). NAV reinvests and media company Condé Nast makes an initial investment. 2012 JUNE | Moda announces $36 million in Series C financing. Fashion behemoth LVMH and the sports and entertainment management company IMG become strategic investors. The same month, Valentino shows its first trunk show on Moda Operandi with its Resort 2013 collection. SEPTEMBER | Moda announces sponsorship of "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, opening May 2013. DECEMBER | Moda launches its in-season boutique. 2013 FEBRUARY | The company moves to a 25,000-square-foot Tribeca office space with two in-house photo studios and an on-site warehouse and shipping facility—offering same-day delivery in New York City. MARCH | Moda launches its first ad campaign with model Karlie Kloss, photographed by Cedric Buchet.

Exclusive: Gray Television First to Launch TVU Grid

2013-04-01 00:00

About a year ago, Jim Ocon, Gray Television’s VP of technology, sat in a room in Shanghai with TVU Networks CEO Paul Shen, drawing on a whiteboard of what a new real-time IP video distribution, switching and routing solution would look like. In the next two months, Gray will be the first station group in the U.S. to launch TVU Grid, a cloud-based solution that will let the group share live content among multiple remote locations. Ocon says TVU Grid will be used to share live feeds among the more than 40 stations Gray owns across 30 markets. “We have 120 TVU Packs deployed across our station group, if we wanted to switch to live feeds before this, we would need 120 receivers at each station,” says Ocon. “This re-does the architecture, so now you may have one or two receivers at a station and source multiple IP signals from those multiple TVU units.” Shen says TVU Grid is the ideal point-to-point or point-to-multipoint live video distribution solution for network affiliates and station groups. He says the technology is the next step in the move to an IP-only broadcast TV station. “We’re bringing down the walls in the TV station,” he says. “You don’t need cable or Ethernet — everything is IP and now I can manage them easily. With TVU Grid, you can manage content from anywhere and share content with anyone.” TVU Grid consists of the TVU Grid Transceiver, TVU Grid Switch Panel, TVU Grid Server and TVU Grid Management Server. The rest of the TVU bonded cellular ecosystem — TVU Pack, TVU Pack Mini and TVU Anywhere — integrate with TVU Grid. Shen says TVU is also working with all of the major switcher vendors to integrate with TVU Grid. Currently, engineers will have to switch between live feeds on-screen with the click of a mouse. There are an unlimited number of video streams that broadcast stations can switch to without the use of a converter, increasing the number of video feeds accessible to a broadcast station. Ocon says any large-scale news event that requires a station to go live to multiple sister stations’ feeds, such as statewide election coverage or a state- or region-wide natural disaster, will be considerably easier with TVU Grid. The user-interface allows a broadcaster to go live with any feed in their cloud at the click of a mouse. It will also make it easier for news networks like CNN to tap into a Gray live news feed. Gray, or any station group, would need to give that news network access to their Grid cloud. TVU Grid’s interface gives operators control over switching and routing of video streams from anywhere on the Grid cloud. “TVU Grid will provide us with another powerful tool to be the first to get important footage to viewers,” says Ocon. In addition to Gray, Shen says TVU has five other major station groups in the U.S. and two international broadcast customers on-board. The company plans to demo TVU Grid at this year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas at booth SU7105 in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

John Backus shares his advice with America's CEO's on CNBC PowerLunch

2013-03-21 00:00

New Atlantic Ventures’ John Backus On Google Glass, The Battle For The Living Room, And Impending Cyberwar

2013-02-24 00:00

John Backus sat down with Jordan Crook of TechCrunch to discuss tech trends including Google Glass and cyber attacks. Watch the video and read her blog post here.

A Front-Row Seat via Video

2013-02-21 00:00

As the Belstaff runway show began in New York City last week, buyers, designers and bloggers crowded into their seats, jotted notes and took smartphone photos as the models strutted by. Enlarge This Image Belstaff live streams its shows, and the online behavior of its Web viewers is used to help predict which of the runway items might be hits. But it was another crowd, outside the tents, that Belstaff executives were particularly interested in this season. For the second time, it was live streaming its fashion show. And the Web viewers were not just potential fans, they were data sources to help Belstaff predict which of the runway items might be hits in stores this summer. “If you can have a bit of information that helps you beat the market and pick more winners,” said Damian Mould, Belstaff’s chief marketing officer, “you’d be stupid not to take it.” Fashion Week, which wrapped up last week in New York and moved on to London and to Milan this week, used to be an insular industry event. Buyers and editors attended and made calls as to what their customers would want months from now. But that has changed. Fashion houses in recent years started to sidestep the middleman by giving the public a front-row seat via webcam video. While that was more of a marketing tool at first, live streaming — and other ways to give consumers digital access to runway fashion — is now being seen as a research opportunity. As more brands offer live videos of the shows, regular viewers see exactly what the buyers and editors are seeing, and influence what will be made by pausing on an outfit or posting Twitter messages about a particular style. On retail fashion Web sites like Lyst and Moda Operandi, designers are allowed to track consumers’ early orders to gauge demand before they make clothes. And a handful of brands, like Burberry, are allowing regular customers to order runway clothes as the shows are live streamed. Increasingly, the public is weighing in on fashion — and designers are listening. “It’s creating a commercial opportunity around an event that was previously an industry event,” said Aslaug Magnusdottir, the chief executive of Moda Operandi. Mass-market apparel has long embraced the Web, but high fashion brands were wary of even having e-commerce sites a few years ago, fearing that would cheapen their brands. Now, the embrace of the Twitter-using public is causing some tension in the high-fashion world, where buyers’ tastes used to reign supreme. “Of course the buyer knows their customer,” said Mortimer Singer, chief executive of the retail consulting firm Marvin Traub Associates, “but I think it’s hard to ignore when someone turns around to you and says, by the way, we got 50 preorders of this style.” Live streams are an important way of measuring customer interest. They became popular a few years ago and are now regularly syndicated on fashion blogs and style sites. “It’s not only what consumers are watching, but the devices they’re on, the geographies that they’re in, the engagement — what part of the video stream was of most interest, where did they abandon the video,” said Jay Fulcher, chief executive of Ooyala, which makes a video player that streamed Fashion Week shows, including those for DKNY, Marc Jacobs, Oscar de la Renta, Belstaff and Tory Burch. According to B Productions, which produced the video for those shows, viewership has grown by about 20 to 40 percent every year for brands that have been streaming for a few years, and the data is becoming more precise. “It’s not just that they stopped watching five minutes in,” said Russell Quy, president of BLive by B Productions, “but we’re able to attach that to an actual outfit.” Belstaff, a British brand known for its outerwear, gathered data via the live stream of its recent women’s show in a few ways. It syndicated the live streams on a number of fashion sites. By looking at Twitter mentions timed to the live stream, the company saw that the first five looks — new twists on classic jackets — drew enthusiastic responses. “I’ve informed the buying team of that interest, so I know they’re going to buy big and deep in that category when the product comes in,” Mr. Mould said. Data from the live stream also helped the company better arrange its e-commerce Web site. Viewers in the United States were clicking through to the site in the early part of the runway show, when Belstaff was showing its cutting edge pieces, while those in Britain and Germany clicked through when more traditional pieces were shown. Now, the company plans to adjust its e-commerce sites accordingly. About 50 percent of people who watched the live stream went to the Belstaff Web site, and sales there were about 50 percent higher than on an average day, though the site was selling last season’s clothes, not this season’s. Mr. Mould said the company was now examining the live stream data as its internal buyers and retailers’ representatives placed orders. “It’s not something overt — we don’t give them a package of information to say what trended well — but they’ll say, this is one we got a lot of heat on,” he said. Many major designers now stream their shows — Ooyala handled 77 live streams for New York Fashion Week — and as style blogs proliferate, the streams are getting more and more views. Other brands that use live stream audiences’ responses include Marc by Marc Jacobs, which saw Twitter conversation spike around its luggage-handle bags during last week’s runway show and alerted its buyers. And Tory Burch studied a live lookbook feature that let people share runway looks via social media. “That allows us to give our clients data on who liked what looks in what country and what regions,” Mr. Quy said. Other brands are looking at different cues to indicate what customers will want months from now. Moda Operandi, an online site, offers collections for sale days after a runway show, though the clothes and accessories are not made and delivered until months later. For customers, who have to pay 50 percent of an item’s price up front, the appeal is making sure they get an item before it sells out, and in case major department stores don’t order it. For the brands, the preorders mean an early read on what is working. “It allows them for the first time to make a very educated decision about how to plan,” Ms. Magnusdottir said. Moda Operandi gives brands information about who is ordering what, so brands can stock their stores accordingly. “We know the age group of the women who are buying, color preferences by region,” Ms. Magnusdottir said. “Many of the designers have started looking to that to make decisions when they have their own stores or own Web sites they sell on, or even feeding that to a retailer.” Lyst, a social-shopping site, allows shoppers to track runway items and alerts them when that product becomes available, right through to the time it goes on sale. Lyst has started feeding that information to brands and retailers, too, after they demanded it. Mr. Morton said he believed that in part, the brands were trying to ward off fast-fashion companies that knock off runway trends and get them into stores just weeks after the fashion shows, by responding more directly to consumers. “With live blogging from the runway, and Style.com and sites like us showing images straightaway, all that is setting expectations,” he said, adding that consumers are asking, “ ‘Why should I have to wait?’ ”

TVU Networks Secures Significant New Round of Investment Funding

2013-02-20 00:00

New Round of Financing from SoftBank Ventures Korea, Altos Ventures, and New Atlantic Ventures Will Drive Innovation in IP-Based Video, Expand Global Market Presence MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2013-- TVU Networks, the global technology leader in mobile live broadcast solutions, announced today that the company has secured a new round of investment funding. SoftBank Ventures Korea (SBVK) has joined TVU’s initial investors Altos Ventures and New Atlantic Ventures in providing a new round of funding that will enable TVU to accelerate its industry-leading innovation in IP-based video transmission, management and distribution solutions; further its market leadership in North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa; and expand its global market presence in Europe and Latin America. “SBVK is always looking to partner with innovative technology companies with demonstrated global reach, solid market momentum in its products, and strong underlying financials. TVU Networks perfectly fits this profile and is an ideal addition to the SBVK portfolio. Specifically, TVU’s innovations in mobile video solutions have made a significant impact on how news is covered by major news organizations and TV stations throughout the world,” said Greg Moon, CEO and president, SBVK. “TVU has demonstrated the ability to achieve its technology leadership position with only a minimal amount of capital due to its in-depth understanding of the broadcast industry and expertise in video compression, Internet, and wireless communication technology. We look forward to partnering with TVU to drive the company’s continued technological innovation and global growth.” “SoftBank is a recognized technology leader in global telecommunications infrastructure, which is a key element in our solutions. Our partnership with SBVK will not only provide financial assets, but will also include access to a deep network of global telecommunications expertise and partnerships. We are thrilled to partner with SBVK to continue to advance TVU’s rapid growth and success, and look forward to a strong continued relationship with Altos Ventures and New Atlantic Ventures,” said Paul Shen, CEO, TVU Networks. “TVU has led the movement to IP-based video in the broadcast industry. We are committed to delivering further innovation for the broadcast industry and to bring our video solutions to industries beyond broadcast such as law enforcement agencies around the globe.” Over the past three years, TVU Networks has been a field-tested leader in the evolution of mobile newsgathering tools. The company introduced the world’s first HD newsgathering backpack, the TVUPack TM8100, in early 2010. The next year, TVU introduced TVU Anywhere, the world’s first fully-integrated newsgathering app for mobile devices. TVU has been at the forefront of developing smaller, ultra-lightweight 3G/4G mobile uplink solutions with the introduction of the TVUPack Mini and the TVUPack Mini SE. The company most recently introduced TVUPack TM8200, the world’s first modular cellular uplink solution, and the smallest, lightest and most powerful uplink backpack available on the market. Already in use by hundreds of leading broadcast organizations around the world, the TVUPack family of products gives broadcasters satellite and microwave TV truck functionality in a lightweight, portable and untethered form. TVUPack is the original one-button-operation newsgathering backpack, is simple to use, and provides broadcasters with a low-latency signal that enables them to broadcast live at any time and from any location. The TVUPack family of products has been used to deliver professional-quality live HD footage of a number of important events on every continent including the London Olympics, U.S. presidential election primaries, the World Cup, Hurricane Sandy, the World Series, and the Super Bowl. For more information about TVUPack and other TVU Networks broadcast solutions, please visit www.tvupack.com.

With $11M From NEA, Comcast & Others, Quad Learning Wants To Create A More Affordable Track To Top-Tier Degrees

2013-02-18 00:00

Higher education in the U.S. is a hot mess. For decades, funding for public universities and colleges has been in steady decline, which, as spending continued, led to rising institutional debt and eventually reductions in faculty, courses, programs — you name it. To make up the difference, institutions have been jacking up tuition rates to the point that the cost of a college degree is now virtually unaffordable. Not surprisingly, national student debt circles $1 trillion like a buzzard, as college graduation and enrollment rates continue to drop. Some have called it a “crisis,” and that would probably be understating it. Quad Learning launched this week on a mission to help ameliorate some of this pressure by helping to create more affordable pathways for students to a college degree. To do that, the Washington D.C.-based startup is partnering with the nation’s community colleges to help it build and scale “American Honors”, a program designed to help students at two-year institutions prepare for, transfer to (and, most importantly, graduate from) top four-year universities. By creating working relationships between community colleges and top public and private universities and providing two-year institutions with a variety of student and technology services, the program aims to help students earn a degree at 35 to 45 percent-lower cost than traditional four-year programs. The Community College of Spokane and Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana are the first two campuses to pilot and launch American Honors programs, and, within the next five years, the startup will look to add an additional 30 to 40 institutions. To fuel its expansion, Quad Learning announced this week that it has raised more than $11 million in seed and series A financing from New Atlantic Ventures, Swan and Legend Fund, NEA, Comcast Ventures and others. With the escalating cost of a college degree, many students are turning to community college as a more affordable way to earn a degree. In 2010/2011, the average tuition for a public two-year college in the U.S. was $2,713, compared to an average in-state tuition of $7,605 at a public four-year university and $27,293 for a four-year private institution. As a result, nearly 45 percent of students who earned a four-year degree in 2010/2011 did so after completing some portion of their degree at a community college. So, rather than start fresh and create a whole new brand of online higher education, as startups like The Minerva Project have set out to do, Quad Learning wants to work within the more affordable higher education system established by two-year institutions, while optimizing it so that students have a better shot at transferring to a university of their choice. Community colleges today have students that want to take higher-level, accelerated classes and a faculty that wants to teach them. But, today, there’s no real standardized plan — the quality of courses and curriculum varies widely, so it’s difficult for four-year universities to know just hor rigorous the classes were and how these students compare to other applicants. Generally speaking, community college students don’t always get the benefit of the doubt — two-year institutions still, by and large, suffer from a less-than-positive stigma. Quad Learning founders Phil Bronner, a former Novak Biddle partner and Chris Romer, a former Colorado state senator, want to help two-year institutions create a same-everywhere standard of selective admissions and a rigorous curriculum that enables those students who qualify to take advantage of an accelerated path and actually have a shot of getting into their four-year college of choice. Through its “American Honors” program, Quad Learning gives two-year institutions the ability to ensure personalized advising and support systems for students by offering access to its own roster of advisors, who can help students plan which courses to take, how best go through the transfer process and apply for financial aid, for example. The startup also offers institutions its own learning management systems and tech platform that allows them to more easily develop and deliver virtual classroom environments (and content). All “American Honors” courses are conducted online, seminar-style and given a user experience and tools they’re already familiar with, Bronner tells us, as students participate in class discussions through an interface that’s much like a Google Hangout. Students can still go on campus for office hours with their professors, to use the library and the gym, but everything else happens online. The honors program will look to target and recruit students who demonstrate high ability and motivation but have been priced out of or overlooked by four-year institutions — and some right out of high school. Bronner tells us that, while community colleges already have great faculty (contrary to popular belief), budgets and endowments across the country are shrinking as student populations grow. Faculties are dealing with more diverse classrooms, with some students looking for 101-level classes, others who need ESL support, while others want to breeze right into Calculus 2. By giving community colleges a program by which they can identify and separate more gifted students, Bronner hopes that the “American Honors” program can help faculties teach at levels that are commensurate with their students’ abilities. And while startups like StraighterLine have focused on allowing students to take courses at two-year institutions online, where credit can transfer to a wide set of universities, no one has yet focused on honors students and helping community college students attain degrees from top-tier, four-year institutions. The American Honors program will charge a premium on top of community college tuition, Bronner says, which will vary by state. Quad Learning will look to establish revenue sharing models with its schools and help students identify and apply for Pell Grants (and other opportunities like it) that will help them cover the extra cost. “We want to stay well under the average in-state tuition for four-year public universities,” the founder says. “We’re focused on not creating more hassles for students, but easing the load and improving the community college education experience for students from a broad set of socioeconomic backgrounds.” By enabling students to save money on tuition during the first half of their degree, prepare for the rigor of a four-year program and potentially still graduate from a top university, he continued, we think we can help make higher education more feasible and affordable for all students.”