Israel-based “How to” video site 5min.com has announced a second round of financing of $7.5 million. The round was led by Globespan Capital Partners, a new investor in the company. Spark Capital, 5min’s previous investor, joined the round.
5min was started in 2007 by Ran Harnevo (CEO), Tal Simantov (CMO) and Hanan Laschover (CTO). With 2 million unique users worldwide (800K in the US according to comscore), 5min.com evolved from a pure How To video aggregator to 5min Solutions, a syndication platform for instructional, knowledge and lifestyle video that provides rich, segmented content to web publishers. 5min also begun offering its own video monetization through pre-roll, post-roll, overlay and sponsorships as well as contextual advertising on the video player.
To date, this round brings 5min to $12.8 million invested to date. The road to funding was not easy – 5min’s founder have experienced a very diluting angel round of $300K from Israeli media veterans, including: Nechama Karpul, Ofer Lazobski, basketball coach Oded Katash and Grey Interactive.
More DIY videos at 5min.com
This is Spark’s third investment in Israel following Boxee and Adap.tv. Globespan has also previously invested in two: Dotomi and SundaySky.
He is a former General Partner at Google Ventures (GV) in Europe, former head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe, and founding head of Campus London, Google's first startup hub. Eze writes on Israeli tech, venture capital, artificial intelligence, and founder strategy.
He is also the founder of Techbikers, a nonprofit that brings together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read.
