ROBERT LEVITAN, IVILLAGE CO-FOUNDER,ENTERS DIGITAL MEDIA SHARING MARKET
NEW YORK, Dec. 6, 2004 – Pando Networks Inc. announced today that it has raised $4 million from private equity investors BRM Capital and Wheatley Partners. Pando will use its first financing round to develop next-generation Internet infrastructure and applications that leverage consumers’ brisk adoption of broadband connections and personal digital media.
“We’ve been following the digital media file sharing market for a while and are convinced that this technology is ready for primetime,” noted Eli Barkat, BRM Capital’s Managing Director. “In Pando, we were impressed by the wealth of experience in the team and the way they’ve designed the most elegant solution to a complex technological problem.”
Robert Levitan will serve as the new company’s CEO. Levitan co-founded iVillage Inc. The iVillage Network currently ranks 30th among the top 100 Web sites and is the number one women’s community site (comScore Media Metrix). Levitan was also a co-founder and the CEO of Flooz.com, which developed an e-payment system for online consumer gift-giving. Most recently, Levitan was a strategic marketing advisor for Oddpost, the Web-mail service company recently acquired by Yahoo. “It’s exciting to see how broadband will increase the usefulness and entertainment potential of the Web,” comments Levitan. “Consumers are ready to see what’s next. I’m thrilled to be working with such a talented team to bring it to them.”
Overseeing Pando’s technology development is CTO and Co-Founder Laird Popkin. Prior to joining, Popkin was the director of digital technology for Warner Music Group. Popkin also chairs the Information & Content Exchange (ICE) Authoring Group, an association founded by Sun, Microsoft and Adobe to establish open standards for online content exchange.
Also on the management team:
– Lead Architect Julian Cain, former lead Macintosh programmer at Sharman Networks, parent company of the file-sharing network KaZaA. Cain also developed the popular Macintosh peer-to-peer application XFactor.
– Co-Founder and VP of Product Management Yaron Samid, who brings a decade of experience in rich media and distributed computing from his pioneering work as president of DeskSite, VP of marketing at Zend Technologies and director of product management at BackWeb Technologies.
About BRM Capital
With offices in both the US and Israel, BRM Capital invests in emerging companies with market-leading technological innovation in software and communications.
About Wheatley Partners
Wheatley Partners is a New York-based private equity firm focused primarily on technology related investments. Since its inception in 1992, Wheatley has invested in over 150 private companies.
SOURCE: Pando Networks, Inc.
12/06/2004
CONTACT: Yaron Samid of Pando Networks Inc. 1-212-404-2892
yaron@pando.com