It’s been a pleasant week for Pluto TV, it would seem. The company just announced it's received $13 million worth of investment in a series A led by U.S. Venture Partners. The Los Angeles-based online video platform intends to spend the cash on growing the company, including hiring more engineers.
Pluto TV acts as a platform for various online TV-type content, which it groups into over 100 channels like Newsy, WWE, Comedy Webseries, Guns and Explosions, and Eversport HD, among others—including various music-oriented channels. A channel called 4:20 even caters to the cannabis connoisseurs and several channels show video game footage. Free, curated content runs online, mobile and connected TVs, and revenue comes in through ads. “We believe that there’s a tremendous amount of video available online but it’s tough to find the good stuff, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for,” says CEO and cofounder Tom Ryan.
The content is organized into a set tv scheduling grid familiar to anyone who’s used Tivo or any television channel guide. “People are using this as we’d expected that they would, which is more like television than web video,” Ryan said. “So they’re coming and tuning in for long periods of time regardless of what platform they’re on.”
The familiarity of the channel guide, plus the parsing of content, seems to give viewers a readily available source for entertainment they can simply scroll through. When they find a channel of interest, they can switch it on and camp there. The entire list of content can be scrolled through in seconds.
At the moment Pluto TV runs on the power of its 30-person team but is looking to hire engineers to facilitate growth, says Ryan. “We’re also looking to stay scrappy and very much a startup.”
Pluto TV – founded last year and launched this past spring – began putting its’ A-round together in late August. Other investors in the round include Sky plc, Chicago Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and Luminari Capital. The company had previously taken about $500,000 worth of capital from Universal Music Group, Terry Semel’s Windsor Media, Pritzker Group and numerous angel investors in the digital media and tech space.
Ryan wouldn’t disclose Pluto TV’s timeline for profitability, nor would he unveil user growth metrics, so it’s difficult to say how profound a trajectory the company is on. Still, Ryan is confident in user engagement and, apparently, so are investors thus far. “We’ve had an incredible amount of momentum.”
