Peer-to-peer file sharing technology developer Pando Networks announced today that it has raised $4 million from private equity investors BRM Capital and Wheatley Partners. Pando, which is registered in Delaware, is developing an Internet distribution platform to facilitate the sharing of digital video images.
Pando stated that it will use its first financing round to develop next-generation Internet infrastructure and applications.
"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."
Pando's co-founder and VP of product management is Yaron Samid, who previously served as president of DeskSite, VP of marketing at Zend Technologies, and director of product management at BackWeb Technologies. BackWeb was founded in 1995 by BRM, Lior Hass, and Iftah Sneh.
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. 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.
Pando’s other co-founder and CTO is Laird Popkin. Prior to joining, Popkin was the director of digital technology for Warner Music Group. Popkin also chairs the information and content exchange (ICE) authoring group, an association founded by Sun, Microsoft and Adobe to establish open standards for online content exchange.
The management team also includes lead architect Julian Cain, a former lead Macintosh programmer at Sharman Networks, parent company of the file-sharing network KaZaA. Cain also developed Macintosh's peer-to-peer application XFactor.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on Monday, December 06, 2004