Bamboom Announces $4.5M Seed Round of Financing to Revolutionize Live TV

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Led by Industry Pioneer Chet Kanojia, Bamboom Launches the Only True Infrastructure Platform Designed to Enable Consumer Access to Live TV Over the Internet

NEW YORK, NY — Bamboom Labs, the leading provider of infrastructure technologies designed to allow consumers access to live TV over the Internet, announced today that it has raised $4.5MM of seed funding led by FirstMark Capital, a New York City-based venture capital firm investing in early stage technology companies. Additional investors in the round included High Line Venture Partners, SV Angel / Ron Conway, First Round Capital, and Highland Capital Partners.

Bamboom Labs was founded by Chaitanya “Chet” Kanojia, a serial entrepreneur who most recently founded and led Navic Networks as CEO through its successful acquisition by Microsoft in 2008. Navic’s ground breaking technology allowed for the real time collection of set top box data at scale and created the first advertising platform that provided “Internet-like” targeting and buying to the traditional television markets. FirstMark Capital, along with several other investors in Bamboom, had backed Navic Networks.

Bamboom Labs has invented advanced technologies to equip customers with the ability to access live free over-the-air broadcast signals securely over the Internet, and direct it to IP-enabled devices on their own terms for the first time. The team includes outstanding veteran engineers from Navic Networks and Microsoft, combined with world class RF and digital engineers from Andrew Corporation, Lucent and others. The result is a unique and powerful team capable of enabling an incredible consumer video experience.

“The opportunity to partner again with Chet and other members of the team was an absolute no brainer,” said Amish Jani, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital. “If you think of the biggest moments on television, they happen live. Bamboom provides consumers the first and only way to bring those moments to you wherever you go in your local market with the latest in web-based technologies powering the experience.” As part of the financing, Amish Jani will join the Company’s Board of Directors.

“When consumers move television into the cloud, they get a powerful set of new features never possible before. Remote DVR functionality, place shifting, seamless integration with social streams, direct access to news and interactive content, and powerful ways to navigate and discover new programming — all these become possible,” said Shana Fisher of High Line Venture Partners.

Bamboom Labs is actively working with early members of a closed Beta. The Company anticipates rolling out additional invitations to select groups over the coming weeks and is accepting email addresses on their waitlist at www.bamboom.com for a broader launch.

“Bamboom Labs is a big, bold idea founded on allowing consumers to control the integration of television and web media across platforms. Our goal is to make consumers king once again and to enable a magical experience,” said CEO Chet Kanojia.