Comcast Ventures Explained

Comcast Ventures
Type:Private
Defunct:n/a
Location City:New York, New York
Location Country:U.S.
Industry:Private equity
Parent:Comcast

Comcast Ventures is a corporate venture capital firm headquartered in New York, NY.

History

In early 2011, Comcast and NBCUniversal combined their two venture arms, Comcast Interactive Capital founded in 1999 and the Peacock Fund, to form Comcast Ventures. [1]

In 2012, Comcast Ventures set up the Catalyst Fund with $20 million under management to invest in underrepresented entrepreneurs.[2] In January 2020, NBA Champion Andre Iguodala joined the Catalyst Fund as a Venture Partner.[3]

In November 2020, Comcast announced its venture arm would be folded into the corporate business division led by Sam Schwartz.[4] Between 2011 and 2020, Amy Banse was the Managing Director and Head of Funds.[5] The firm’s partners also included Gil Beyda, Andrew Cleland, Sam Landman, Dinesh Moorjani, Rick Prostko, Dave Zilberman, Daniel Gulati, and Kim Armor.[6]

In November 2021, Allison Goldberg joined Comcast Ventures as Managing Partner. Allison previously served as Group Managing Director & Senior Vice President of Time Warner Investments, where she ran the group focused on investing up to $25MM in private companies to generate both strategic value and financial returns for Time Warner Inc.

As of December 2023, the group's partners include Allison Goldberg, Marc Silberman, and Michelle Chang.

Investments

Comcast has been ranked the 4th Corporate Startup Investor in the World. In the past six years up to 2017, the corporation had invested in 105 early-stage companies.[7] These companies include Away (luggage),[8] CloudPassage,[9] Dandelion Energy[10] FanDuel,[11] Quantifind,[12] Slack Technologies,[13] Vox Media,[14] Yieldmo,[15] and ZeroFox.[16]

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: Comcast Has A Huge New Venture Fund, And This Woman Is Running It . Business Insider . Matt Rosoff . December 12, 2011 . December 2, 2018 .
  2. News: Diversity is a massive problem in Silicon Valley — meet the fund backing minority entrepreneurs . Business Insider . Shona Ghosh . October 7, 2017 . December 2, 2018 .
  3. News: NBA champ and tech investor Andre Iguodala counts Zoom's triple since IPO as best investment . CNBC . Kevin Stankiewicz . February 14, 2020 . March 6, 2020 .
  4. News: Comcast to fold Comcast Ventures into corporate business division, focus on strategic investment . CNBC . Alex Sherman . November 13, 2020 . June 23, 2021 .
  5. News: Comcast Has A Huge New Venture Fund, And This Woman Is Running It . Business Insider . Matt Rosoff . December 12, 2011 . December 2, 2018 .
  6. News: Diversity is a massive problem in Silicon Valley — meet the fund backing underrepresented entrepreneurs . Business Insider . Shona Ghosh . October 7, 2017 . December 2, 2018 .
  7. Web site: Comcast Ranked 4th Top Corporate Startup Investor in the World. Weiss. Haley. 2017-06-19. Philadelphia Magazine. en-US. 2019-11-15.
  8. News: Luggage Startup Away Raises $50M In Series C And Hits Profitability Within Two Years . Forbes . Tanya Klich . June 28, 2018 . December 2, 2018 .
  9. Web site: Most Active VC's in the XR Space. en-US. 2019-11-22.
  10. Web site: Dandelion Energy Closes $16 Million Series A Round To Expand Geothermal Energy. 2019-02-15. CleanTechnica. en-US. 2019-04-26.
  11. News: Fantasy Sports Service, FanDuel, Secures $11 Million Investment; Includes Money From Comcast Ventures . Forbes . Darren Heitner . January 30, 2013 . February 16, 2014 .
  12. News: Marketing insight platform Quantifind raises $30M and will double Menlo Park staff. Gina Hall. February 24, 2016. December 2, 2018. Silicon Valley Business Journal.
  13. News: Slack is work chat's runaway train, raises $200M at $3.8B . Tech Crunch . Katie Roof, Josh Constine . 2015 . December 2, 2018 .
  14. Web site: Comcast Ventures-backed Vox Media Raises $34 Million. staff. October 15, 2013. CityBizList Philadelphia. https://web.archive.org/web/20140222164617/http://philadelphia.citybizlist.com/article/comcast-ventures-backed-vox-media-raises-34-million. February 22, 2014. dead. December 2, 2018.
  15. Web site: Gil Beyda - Comcast Ventures Managing Partner Signal. Signal: where top founders find and get introduced to the right VCs. 2019-11-27.
  16. News: ZeroFOX Secures $11M Series A Led by NEA to Combat Social Cyber Attacks. 2014-04-30. Wall Street Journal. 2019-11-29. en-US. 0099-9660.

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