Reblogging Bijan’s post about our latest investment in Eqal.  As Bijan said, this has been in the works a long time, and Todd and I discussed the concept of a new genre of entertainment during my interview with Spark.

Many people who remember the Lonely Girl craze will be amazed to know that it was not some chance occurance, but a plan that Miles and Greg methodically executed on.  They took a similar formula to the UK and in a partnership with Bebo, had a big success with Kate Modern.  Both of these shows have recently been nominated for Webby Awards (along with Threadbanger and Fastlane Daily from our portfolio company Next New Networks). 

The EQAL team that is wildly creative and has a chance to establish an entirely new category of entertainment where audience participation is core to the experience and the lines between the online world and offline world continue to blur.  We’re very excited about this investment, and hopefully I’ll get a cameo appearance in their next show 🙂

bijan:

Even before we started Spark, my partner Todd was always talking about a world where fictional, episodic shows would be created, built around communities and made for the internet. And it would be paid for by advertisers upfront. Before Spark, he invested as an angel in a successful product placement company and saw the power of product placement. (He has also produced a number of films.)

This was the thesis that led to our recently announced investment in Eqal. Eqal was founded by Miles Beckett & Greg Goodfried. They created LonelyGirl15 and Kate Modern. Both are highly successful shows, created around communities, episodic, fiction and paid for by sponsors upfront. We believe in that recipe and love the shows. And we believe in Miles & Greg’s vision.

We are thrilled to invest in Eqal and are joined by a great group of investors including Conrad Riggs, Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen.