Fon
Funding: $35 million from Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital (Around 10% of the value of NASDAQ is made up of firms funded by Sequoia), Skype, BB Excite, Digital Garage, Tsukum, and British Telecom
Fon is essentially a worldwide Wi-Fi community where members of the community - Foneros - gets free internet access at community Fon Spots around the world. While companies like T-Mobile have hotspots where people pay for WiFi, Fon enables people to do the same thing and earn money. People can buy a $30 router from Fon, share their broadband with other Foneros for free while charging outsiders $2-$3, which Fon takes a cut of. Also if you're a Foneros, you get free internet access at all Fon Spots. If you visit Fon.com, you can see where the nearest Fon Spot location is to you.
FON has had great success overseas, getting 80 percent coverage or better in cities like Tokyo, Berlin, and Leipzig, Germany.
PowerReviews / Buzzillions.com
Funding: $21.25 million from Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Draper Richards
Consumer reviews are undoubtedly an important feature for e-commerce sites. Numerous studies have shown that not only do the majority of people read consumer reviews, a Deloitte study showed that over 82% of review readers' make their purchasing decisions are influenced by consumer reviews.
PowerReviews tapped into this market by offering free review technology and services for online retailers. They now power the review system for over 200 retailers including Staples, REI, RadioShack, Overstock.com, amongst many others. In exchange for the free licensing, PowerReviews aggregates this review data from their client retailers, and publishes the reviews on their own consumer site Buzzillions.com. Buzzillions receives a commission from their retail clients on a CPC or CPA basis, so they make money sending traffic back to their clients using the clients' reviews.
PowerReviews has collected more than 1 million consumer written reviews, all published on Buzzillions.com.
VideoEgg
Funding: $34 million from Maveron, August Capital, and First Round Capital
VideoEgg, which started out as a video publishing platform has since leveraged the growing popularity of social networks, powering video for 14 of the major 20 networks while monetizing and sharing revenue.
They then took advantage of the explosion of Facebook applications, creating a Facebook Ad network called the EggNetwork, and now has expanded to other sites like Meebo and Flixter. VideoEgg charges a fee of $0.50 to $1.00 every time a user either clicks on a flash ad or hovers over it for one to two seconds. This way, the advertiser is paying for verified user engagement with the ad, instead of their previous $10 per CPM model.
The Eggnetwork is composed of more than 200 top video and gaming sites, social networks and applications.
Blip.tv
Business Model: Licensing and Advertising
Investors: Ron Conway (Google, PayPal, Ask Jeeves), Mark Gerson, Ken Lerer, Peter Theil (Co-founder & CEO PayPal, Facebook, Slide, LinkedIn, Friendster, IronPort)
Blip.tv enables syndication for online shows, and provides producers with everything from free hosting, ads, and distribution to websites and blogs. A partnership with Akimbo now allows top shows to be available on television through internet video on demand. Blip works with video ad networks and helps seek sponsorships for popular shows, and shares the revenue 50/50 with the publisher.
Blip.tv has well over 45,000 content creators including key licensors CNN and Oxygen TV. They also work with major advertisers like Dove and Paltalk.
