The lights are on, but is anybody left at Veoh Networks?
We’re seeing multiple accounts of sweeping layoffs at Veoh, the San Diego-based Internet TV service, with several citing a report by Media Memo’s Peter Kafka, who says a Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation is expected soon.
I sent a quick e-mail to Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro, asking if he could discuss reports of Veoh’s bankruptcy filing. He replied: “Not yet… stay tuned.”
Veoh’s website is still accessible, but the venture was pronounced dead in a tweet today by Veoh board member Todd Dagres of Spark Capital, a Boston VC firm that invested in Veoh Networks. Dagres tweeted, “Veoh is dead. Universal Music lawsuit was the main killer. Veoh won resoundingly but was mortally wounded by the senseless suit. Next.”
Dagres was referring to a copyright suit filed that Universal Music Group filed against Veoh, arguing that Veoh didn’t work hard enough to keep Universal’s copyrighted material from being uploaded illegally to Veoh’s website. A federal judge ruled last September that Veoh was protected from Universal’s infringement claims.
Veoh had raised more than $67 million in venture funding from backers that included Spark, Shelter Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs, Adobe Systems, Intel Capital, and Time Warner Investments.
As Shapiro says, stay tuned…
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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