This week, AwesomenessTV, a media company that operates a YouTube channel with programming closed a $3.5 million Series A investment round led by MK Capital. Greycroft Ventures Partners, New World Ventures, Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise, UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer and MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan are among the other investors.
The company’s YouTube channel, which launched in June, boasts more than 75,000 subscribers.
“It’s been a great five weeks. We went from 0 views to 12 million in 5 weeks and from no subscribers to closing in on 100,000 in five weeks,” founder Brian Robbins, a veteran Hollywood producer and director, told TheWrap.
The official site of the company is YouTube.com/user/AwesomenessTV
AWESOMENESS.TV was registered in April 2012 under privacy at Godaddy.com
AWESOMENESSTV.COM was registered in 2010 also under privacy.
Both domain names are going to a Godaddy Placeholder
The .com since April has been getting traffic and it looks like traffic to the .com is on the move up.
I reached out to the company this week to see if they owned the domain names but didn’t get a response.
So the company either just raised $3.5 Million without their own domain name or they aren’t using them.
Interesting.
Wow! I trust they wont’t have to use the greater chunk of that 3.5m buying their brand.
What makes them an “internet company”?
Why aren’t they a media company?
The company is basically being propelled by Google on the back of a Youtube initiative so they are inextricably linked to YouTube. Even if they owned their own domain it would likely be redirected to YouTube so why bother?
Best to drive the revenue to a better “studio” brand than the dumb awesomeness name.
WSJ.com did a piece on them and some others we covered it last week
http://www.hybriddomainer.com/2012/08/vc-tunes-into-you-tube-channels.html
in the future all stupid people will be rich.
The future of the internet? Online content without a domain… proudly sponsored by Facebook or Youtube or an IPad app…
If they don’t have a domain name now, they will eventually want one if they keep growing the business.
http://YouTube.com/user/AwesomenessTV – Doesn’t really pass the radio test nor is it easily memorable. And as popular as it is, not everyone uses YouTube.
Why on earth build your brand on someone else’s business (Google’s YouTube) – and, forever have your future business dependent upon them, and, at their mercy?
THAT strikes me as stooopid.
GOOD EVENING MICHAEL.
AS YOU KNOW THE FUTURE IS ALL ABOUT VIRTUAL BUSINESS FOUNDATIONS AND THE MARKETING SYNERGIES THAT THEY CAN SYNERGISTICLY DELIVER STRATEGICALLY AND POWERFULLY AND GREATLY FOR THE BENEFIT OF BUSINESS AND STRATEGIC INTERNET ECOMMERCE ENTERPRISE!
WE HAVE UNDERTAKEN A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS AND DETERMINED THAT THE VALUE OF THIS WITHOUT A DOMAIN NAME IS ABOUT $3.50, WHILE WITH THE DOMAIN NAME IT’S OVER 9000 MILLION DOLLARS.
BEST WISHES, L
(Mental Illness) (Lunacy)
@Voltaire
Because it gets you $3.5 million of investment that you otherwise wouldn’t get?
I agree with “Leonard Britt” comment posted above.
Great. Now they are gonna have to spend that $3.5 million (or more!) buying themselves a good .com, no?
Notice that I specifically said “.COM” boys and girls. Any other tld is a waste of time. The gtlds are a joke.
How ‘memorable’ for advertising, marketing and branding is no domain name??
Interested how this might work for marketing a new business or product.
This will fail. Not because they don’t have a domain but because their videos suck. There is nothing noteworthy about their content at all. This is like demand media except even less compelling content. I have no idea how they convinced someone to fund 3.5 million.
This is exactly like building a business/brand on a Facebook page. What if YouTube decides to close their account?
so, YouTube ads (finally) make profits … for the YT users and (mainly) … for Google
@ Voltaire -“Why on earth build your brand on someone else’s business?
That should be the other way round they’re building their business on someone elses brand.
—–
How can this company be contacted…email? Tell me they’re not using gmail too??
unknown
What makes them an Internet company rather than a media company in my book is that their only business is producing videos that appear on the Internet.
There are LOTS of folks producing YouTube videos who have thousands of subscribers. 75,000 subs isn’t bad, but that’s nothing to really boast about.
Are they even YouTube partners? Who invests in someone making YouTube videos unless they can be heavily marketed another way (like that annoying “It’s Fred” character who has movies based on his persona). YouTube celebs have millions of subs… not 75k. $3.5 mil for what exactly? Crummy YouTube content? You can get that for free.
Seems like VC capital is just flying around these days. It’s the old dot com days. VCs want in on the hot, new trends, but they can’t figure out what will stay hot because no one knows. Tech is changing so fast, no one knows what the future olds. As a result VC capital is being thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Pets.com anyone?