FCC & settop box vc opportunities
Hi Brad - I'm in the telecom industry and there has been a lot of news about the opening up of stbs by the FCC. It looks like a dog fight between Google and the cable industry but I was wondering whether VCs would see this as an opportunity for new providers of stbs and/or content providers?
In short, yes. I think this is a huge opportunity that will play out over the next 5-10 years. I met with a company attempting to create a new residential broadband provider by leveraging commodity hardware (like Raspberry Pi). I think the days of Comcast Triple Play (bundling phone, broadband and cable) are numbered and the cable providers are come under increasing pressure from all sides but especially on the content side from “cord-cutting” There are so many places to get create content. Our two biggest exits to date are from opposite ends of the content spectrum. Legendary Pictures makes big budget fanboy movies like Dark Knight and Maker Studios was one of the first MCN to help YouTubers succeed. Disney bought Maker for $500M+ and Dalian Wanda bought Legendary for $3.5B. So we are very bullish on content creation and distribution channels via unbundling.