William Randolph Hearst III, Adobe Ventures and other investors have agreed to a $4 million venture capital funding for FORA.tv. According to Beet.TV , FORA.tv that is an online distributor of intellectual videos has been able to close this venture capital funding via a Series A round. Its online videos include numerous public speeches and delivers highly intellectual content through partnerships with Aspen Institute, the Commonwealth Club, the Council on Foreign Relations and many more prestigious institutions.

In October 2007, FORA.tv had been able to close a $2 million venture capital funding deal from interested investors such as William Hearst and Adobe. FORA.tv is a San Francisco based company that specializes in display of online video content from highly respectable think tanks, universities and well-known speakers. These videos are assorted categorically and are easily available as they are arranged topic wise. The site also offers tools for personalization for user choices. As William Randolph Hearst III, who is a private investor said, "FORA’s financing is a vote of confidence for the company. It will make it possible to aggregate much more public commentary from all points of the spectrum. FORA’s new 2.0 release software adds features that let sponsors add their own searchable content to the video archive. It’s very cool."

According to FORA.tv CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Brian Guber, the capital received from the venture capital funding would be diverted towards the expansion of website’s content and audience variables. As of now FORA’s website traffic statistics cannot be downgraded nor can they be termed as highly impressive. However, the growing popularity of the site and the fact that most of its audience is from the intellectual community, compels major companies to get in sponsorship contracts with FORA.tv, in an effort to enhance their visibility. At present, FORA’s sponsors include Pfizer and Chevron.

Some of the current big names in the intellectual online video distribution market are TED Talks, BigThink which is a recent addition to this community is still showing a lot of prospect for growth.

However, with the acquisition of such an impressive funding, all eyes for the time being are on FORA.tv and everyone is anxious to see what new additions does FORA make to its website and to its content.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 8:14 am and is filed under Venture Capital News Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.