Skyrider Extends Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Leadership Role With Search Marketing Platform and Series C Round of Funding

October 24, 2006; 02:36 AM
Skyrider, developer of a new peer-to-peer (P2P) networking platform, today announced continued market momentum with their P2P search marketing platform and a Series C round of funding. The new search marketing product is one of the first innovative P2P services based on Skyrider’s robust P2P networking platform designed to help bring web-like search marketing to P2P networks. The company also announced that it has secured $12 million in a Series C round of funding led by ComVentures. Previous investors Sequoia Capital and Charles River Venture Partners also participated in the current round, bringing the total amount of funding raised to $20 million. The new funding will allow Skyrider to continue to deliver on its vision of helping businesses reach their customers in a highly effective way, and providing consumers with the ability to publish, find, and share information.

“The newest round of funding is further testament to Skyrider’s value proposition: providing a sophisticated P2P infrastructure through which businesses and consumers can capitalize on the immense opportunity these networks offer. Our search marketing product is the first of many valuable services we plan to offer to help these communities,” said Skyrider Chief Executive Officer Ed Kozel. “P2P networks encounter as many searches per day as Google or Yahoo; and there’s a huge potential for advertisers to reach consumers on these networks. With our infrastructure and innovations like our search marketing product, we can help businesses connect with consumers by harnessing the power of online advertising and grow their businesses within a new untapped market.”

According to CacheLogic more than 60 percent of backbone Internet traffic and up to 90 percent of upstream traffic from users is now consumed by P2P applications. Skyrider’s new search marketing product can help businesses capitalize on this opportunity by placing targeted advertisements within P2P search results. Additionally, it gives users new access to reliable and exact search results.

“Skyrider's product is providing an efficient and relevant brand promotion on P2P networks, ensuring high visibility and an ability to creatively reach some of our artists' most dedicated listeners," said Brent Muhle, General Manager, Nettwerk. "Not only can we target specifically within these searches to deliver music, but we can also offer other incentives and opportunities for our artists to connect to their fans.”

The strengths of the new search marketing product and future services lie in Skyrider’s infrastructure. The company’s systems are based on proprietary high performance network stacks backed by a large-scale distributed architecture for control and transaction processing, which enables Skyrider to embed its systems within the global fabric of P2P networks. The advantage of this architecture is that every node shares in the burden of storage and distribution of information, allowing millions of network nodes to interact and handle trillions of daily network-level transactions.

“Skyrider’s unique approach to P2P networking, extensive expertise in building complex IT architectures, and ability to roll-out innovative tools like the new search marketing product have us convinced that this company will be widely embraced both within the P2P community and by businesses seeking to reach that community,” said David Britts, Partner, ComVentures. “Skyrider’s vision and execution is much more scalable and cost-effective than the old client-server environments, and is ideally suited for supporting the sharing and distributing of vast numbers of large files such as commercial and user-generated audio and video content. This also makes it ideal to layer value-added products like search marketing to the networks. As such, Skyrider is providing an invaluable service to consumers and businesses leveraging P2P networks to connect with appropriate audiences and share relevant information.”

The Skyrider search marketing platform is available today. For additional information on Skyrider visit www.skyrider.com.

About Skyrider

Skyrider is creating a peer-to-peer (P2P) networking platform to support the search, control and monetization of content on P2P (peer-to-peer) networks. Skyrider’s focus is to utilize the power of P2P networks for businesses and consumers. The company’s unique platform enables businesses to promote commercialization of P2P networks through cost-effective and advertising supported content distribution, and targeted marketing. Skyrider (www.skyrider.com) is located in Mountain View. The company was founded in 2003 and is funded by Com Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Charles River Ventures.

About ComVentures

ComVentures (www.comventures.com) is a leading venture capital firm that invests in mobile, Internet and enterprise applications and the underlying communication infrastructure. With $1.5 billion under management, ComVentures' partners have invested in more than 100 companies. Select current investments include: Adinfuse, Fabrik, MarketTools, Zantaz, Azul Systems, FyreStorm, OpSource, and Vyatta. Prior investments include: SiteSmith (acquired by MFN), Broadcom (NASDAQ:BRCM), Arbinet (NASDAQ:ARBX), Chromatis (acquired by Lucent Technologies), Digital Island (NASDAQ:ISLD), P-Cube (acquired by Cisco Systems), Intruvert Networks (acquired by McAfee), Kagoor Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks) and Monterey (acquired by Cisco Systems).