outbrain

Say it OutLoud!

We all know the feeling. You’re sitting at your desk when suddenly Google Alerts hits and you see it! Someone has written a fantastic piece about your product! Or picked up on a post you just wrote and reblogged it with great commentary! You jump up and down, do a little dance, show it off to your friends or boss, and then someone says (always the spoiler): “Great….But how many people will read this?” 

That’s when you need OutLoud. 

Newly launched, OutLoud amplifies great press coverage, blog posts, reviews, or press releases that you want to make sure get read. With OutLoud, anyone can submit interesting articles (and interesting is key!) to Outbrain and we will recommend them on relevant pages across the thousands of sites using our content recommendation engine, from USA Today, Slate, Fox and Tribune to Golf.com, and the SportingNews. And it’s only $10-per-month for each article you choose to amplify (that’s not a typo).

OutLoud is a great fit for just about anyone that wants to promote themself:

• The excited marketer wanting to drive word-of-mouth by amplifying positive reviews and articles about their company
• The proud blogger who wants their most brilliant posts to reach a larger audience
• The innovative PR professional trying to find new ways to distribute press releases and earned media
• The social media director, trying to build community by exposing larger audiences to a company blog, or to conversations happening on other sites about their products
• The passionate blog reader who fell in love with an article which perfectly expresses her point-of-view and who wants to make sure others are exposed to it too  

And at $10, OutLoud is really a no-brainer. If you analyze the opportunity for more than a few minutes, you’ve already spent more than you would by just trying it. Imagine, thousands of people exposed to your chosen content for less than the cost of a beet salad. 

How much did it cost you to write that great article? Or to develop that product, so good someone else took the time to write about it? Or to seed your talking points so effectively in the market that now others are repeating them for you like a trained parrot? After all that effort, spending another $10 to make sure a lot of people read what you’ve produced just makes sense. 

OutLoud targets your articles by relevancy and audience engagement—when we think someone will be interested in your content (because they are reading something similar), we show your links. Articles that people seem to enjoy more get an audience lift. Because of this focus on reader interest, there are no traffic guarantees with OutLoud, but there also isn’t a limit to how much exposure you could receive. The more interesting the article, the more successful it is in drawing a large audience. An average article will drive 50 to 100 readers a month, and we frequently see articles that drive hundreds or even thousands of interested readers.

Here's one way your OutLoud links might show up (the top link, disclosed as 'Selected for you by a sponsor'):

We have some other cool features for the program too …online access to real-time reporting and an embedded way for people to share your articles over Facebook or Twitter after they read them. You can add, replace or remove articles at any time. And with our self service interface, you can manage your articles directly. 

So OutLoud, and Get Read!

(more details here)

Coverage of OutLoud on VC Cafe, Jay Meydad's blog, Yaron's blog and 140.co.il. Thanks all!

outbrain @ MPA's Innovation Summit, then off to Blogworld

The booth is back out and ready to roll again.  This week you can't miss outbrain as we are exhibiting at the Magazine Publisher's Association's Innovation Summit at the Grand Hyatt here in New York City tomorrow and Thursday.  This promises to be an awesome event given the recent news in the magazine sector on shuttered print titles and the need for establishing additional revenue streams.  We are committed to helping publishers of all sizes, including magazines enhance their web assets by serving readers great content.  For magazines this translates into happier online readers, significant traffic and a new, sustainable stream of revenue. 

Then it's off to Blogworld in Las Vegas for our third year.  Come say hello to Kate and I as we will have the latest in how we are helping some of the largest publishers and smallest bloggers all delight their readers with relevant content.  This year we add revenue to the mix and in classic outbrain fashion, it's not what you expect.  You won't see ugly, irrelevant banners or images of teeth or midsections within our widget.  What you will see is a reader friendly ad unit that is actually useful to the reader.  Think about how google ads are relevant when searching and apply this same concept to content.  Come check us at booth #413.

Lijit & outbrain stand for reader goodness

The Internet can be a big, overwhelming place.  There's a lot of information out there - some would say too much information.  Here at outbrain, we try to help readers discover content that they might not have been looking for, but find incredibly interesting.  But we know that sometimes readers know what their looking for and the question then becomes one of searching from a trustworthy source.  Google, Bing, Ask, etc. these tools are great if you want to search everything, but sometimes the more information you have to access, the harder it is to find the best result.

Enter Lijit.  The good folks at Lijit are doing their part to help searchers find what they are looking for by making the searchable network a little bit smaller and a little more personal.  When you install Lijit's search wijit, you can set up your own list of sites to include in the search index & corresponding results.  Think your "own network" of trusted sources.  This focus on relevancy is why we here at outbrain recommend to our bloggers that adding Lijit to their blogs is a good idea.  Lijit's reader focused approach is similar to our lighthouse here, which is serving readers "the most interesting" content.

In addition to returning interesting search results, Lijit also provides bloggers with a top notch reporting system that surfaces detailed statistics about what readers are searching for.  This is highly valuable information for better understanding what you audience is quering on your blog.

The folks at Lijit are great and just so happens they make some great tools for your blog.  Give their widgets a shot and take one step further in serving your readers well.

follow Lijit on Twitter, check their blog for cool updates, and if you're in Boulder give em' a shout!

Reader Trust First, Revenue Second

These days revenue is the top priority for most publishers and by many accounts rightly so.  But for long term growth, revenue is what comes as a follow up to a good reader experience.  If a publisher is moving the needle on reader metrics like return visits, time spent, engagement actions (ratings, recommends, comments) then revenue producing programs have a much stronger base to work from.  It's no secret that we here at outbrain are building an alternative solution for publishers to earn revenue.  We don't believe the internet needs another revenue solution that attempts to interrupt a reader from reading about a subject their interested in to a commercial display type of ad.  Instead we are looking to build trust with our publishers' readers via the links we serve them as recommended reading.  As a company, reader trust is a lighthouse across our business and one that we measure and track as a KPI.  When a publisher places a third party application on their site, what is the effect on reader trust?  If an application generates some revenue, but lowers reader trust, is it worth it?  Some have called this outlook ideological, especially in these tough times as publishers are working hard to right their ships.  But we stand by the premise that readers don't want to be interrupted and that earning reader trust is key to being successful when you're in the business of serving an audience online.  So we will lead with reader trust, and generate revenue from readers trusting and clicking on outbrain generated links.  Sure we could make more money upfront by jamming interruptive ads into our real estate, but in the long term, we know that building reader trust is one of the cornerstones of what lies ahead for successful companies serving audiences online. If you are interested to learn more about how we earn reader trust drop us a line.

Publishers Can Get More From Archived Content

More and more we are hearing that publishers are looking to lift page views by getting visitors coming from search engines to click deeper into their sites.  These visitors, called "deep linkers", come to the publisher pages from a search query on a specific topic.  The issue is that many of these visitors are arriving at archived pages on the publisher site.  The problem is these "deep linkers" are arriving at content pages that are simply out of date with little to no updated content.  So the "deep linker" arrives at the archived page and bounces off.  The opportunity here is to get these "deep linkers" beyond the initial page they land on from the search engine.  Enter outbrain.  When publishers install outbrain, our java-script running at the footer of each post will automatically show the "deep linker" the most relevant and fresh set of links, even on posts that are deep within an archive.  This means that "deep linkers" looking at content pages that may be months or even years old can also see links to interesting links that are up to date or "just breaking."  Do the math.  Look at how many visitors you may be getting from the search engines, Facebook or Twitter on pages  that are not current.  If that traffic amount is significant, calculate the lift in pageviews that may result if you can get some of them to click another link.  We have seen some numbers and it can be quite staggering.  If you want to learn more ping john (at) outbrain (dot) com. So yes the conversation is all about revenue these days, but traffic acquisition will always be a key component for a publisher.  Addressing large swaths of traffic opportunities is always a good idea to win the short term battle and also the long term war.

"Chicago Blogger" TweetUp tonight @ Clark St Ale House

Tonight at 5:30 in Chicago come down and join the founder of outbrain and other fellow outbrainers at the Clark Street Ale House for a cold beer.  Choosing which beer to enjoy sounds like the hard part as they have some 30 on tap and another 70 ready to go.  Keep your eyes out for some folks from the Chicago Tribune and bloggers from www.ChicagosBestBlogs.com. 

Clark Street Ale House
Neighborhoods: Near North Side, River North
742 N Clark Street
(between Chicago Ave & Superior St)
Chicago, IL 60610

(312) 642-9253

To ReTweet you can grab this "pre-packaged" tweet;

outbrain's "Chicago Bloggers" TweetUp is tonight at the Clark Street Ale House at 5:30; http://bit.ly/Y2cOa outbrainers are wearing stars

The hash tag for the event will be:

#ChicagoBlog

Enjoy!

Tribune gets local with area bloggers and outbrain

People care about what's happening around them.  This is a simple premise but one that is actually underserved in today's media landscape.  Do you know what one of the leading reasons why cable subscribers keep their service?  Because subscribers like the hyper local 24/7 news channels like NY1.  Why?  Because local matters! 

The good folks over at ChicagoTribune know this and wanted to enhance their local online coverage of Chicago.  To do this, they wanted to aggregate content from Chicago's most interesting bloggers.  So Tribune reached out to local bloggers who cover everything Chicago from the Cubs to deep dish pizza. The idea was simple, create a site, ChicagosBestBlogs that would include links from the Trib and Chicago area bloggers.  Think Drudge Report but Chicago focused.  The conduit here is outbrain as Tribune is using our widget as the connection between itself and the bloggers.  By asking the local Chicago bloggers to install outbrain, Tribune created a "smart" link to these great content sources and vice versa. Once installed the outbrain recommendation engine then displays links to interesting posts that are targeted to each reader both on the Trib site and the bloggers site.  outbrain is only displaying links to content, and not the content itself, so all readers who click on recommended links wind up on the hosting blog or site.  So yes this is like a link share agreement, but outbrain also allows a publisher or blogger to include links from other blogs or sites that do not have outbrain installed.  This gives the publisher the freedom to display links to any source or blog they want. Since outbrain is free to any publisher or blogger this a win / win for both Tribune and the local bloggers. Both The Trib and the local bloggers each benefit from getting more exposure in areas that are beneficial.  Bloggers want more reach and Tribune wants to be involved with the long tail.  Smiles all around!

In this era of shrinking publishers, Tribune is bucking the trend and beefing up their local coverage by leveraging our free recommendation engine to serve readers more great content on all things Chicago.  If you have ever been to Chicago, you know it's a great town with plenty to blog about so the more coverage the better. Kudos to the team at the Trib and the local Chicago bloggers who made this happen.  Chicago's hometown newspaper and local blogging community have come together to simply serve Chicagoans some great content from a great town.  We're all for that!

Outbrain Inside TypePad - "Link Out" & Prosper

Outbrain is now inside TypePad as a "feature" for TypePad bloggers to add content recommendations to their blogs.  We have been working with Six Apart on this integration for some time and are happy to make this available to the TypePad community. Why add recommendations to your blog?  We'll it's all about your readers and enhancing the precious time they choose to spend on your blog by offering relevant links to additional content they might be interested in.  By installing outbrain on your blog, your readers will see relevant links that are actually targeted to them as an individual.  But the fun just begins because you have control over what type of recommendations to serve your readers.  The recommended setting is to elect "Best Recommendations" in your outbrain settings.  "Best Recommendations" will present your readers with 2 kinds of links; 1.) links from your own blog and 2.) links from other great TypePad blogs.  Now you might say why would I want to have links to other TypePad blogs for my readers to click and leave my site?  Good question and logical thinking.  However smart "linking out" can actually drive more traffic to your blog and outbrain will do just that.  By serving your readers links to other great content within TypePad, in return, your links are also eligible to be shown on other TypePad blogs that elect to show their readers "Best Recommendations."  Every time a reader on another blog clicks one of your links served as "recommended reading" you get more traffic back to your blog and hopefully they will convert to new subscribers.  So "Link Out" & prosper!

Additionally anytime one of your readers clicks on a link pointing to another site, a new window will appear.  Once the reader finishes with the new window, it's easy to close it and return to your blog that remains open as the hosting site.  This is a key element as often times "linking out" can increase overall time spent on a site as readers link out via windows and return to the original site.  You know it's hard to find any large publisher these days who does not link out to other sites.  New York Times, WashingtonPost, ChicagoTribune and almost all others know that readers will leave their sites to find content they are interested in, so why not serve that content while you have the reader on your site.  This same principle applies to publishers of all sizes, regardless of audience or depth of content.

Should you not want to "link out" and prosper, you can set the recommendations you wish to serve your readers to "Limited Recommendations" which will limit the links to your content only. You will still prosper as clicks on your links will increase page views and drive your readers deeper into your own content so if "linking out" isn't for you, "Limited" is the best way to go.

Regardless of which option you choose, all the traffic that outbrain generates from your own blog or from the TypePad network can be easily tracked by accessing your blog's report. 

Adding the recommendations to your blog is simple.  When logged into your TypePad dashboard, click the DESIGN tab and under CATEGORIES choose "Widgets", then under MODULES choose "Featured Outbrain" then under DETAILS click the link "Get It Now" as shown below. 

From the "Get It Now" link follow the simple installation steps and remember to register so you can see reports.  Then sit back, concentrate on blogging and enjoy the traffic you'll get, increased expsosure from having your links show on other great TypePad blogs and the satisfaction that your readers will have a better experience finding great content next time they come for a visit.

Sponsored, But Good

How about an advertising program that brings benefit to the reader, the publisher and the advertiser!  Our new program called Sponsored, But Good is designed to do exactly this.  If you’re like most people, you’d probably agree that you rarely find ads you see online interesting. Unlike ads on search engines which appear in response to your search query, ads on content pages tend to be unappealing and intrusive.  Since we’ve based our entire company on bringing  readers of content useful links to other recommended content, we thought: why can’t ads be just as interesting and engaging?

Our thinking goes like this: readers come to your blog or site to read. They are looking for other great stories to read, which is why the engagement rates on the recommendations we provide today are so high. So through Sponsored, But Good, advertisers can now participate in bringing your readers interesting content by sponsoring the distribution of great, interesting stories about their brands. There are millions (well, at least many thousands!) of wonderful articles and blog posts that have positive, authentic things to say about specific brands and products. These authentic endorsements are often written simply because the author loved some aspect of the product or service. Sponsored, But Good allows advertisers to promote great, authentic endorsements of their product or service to readers who may be interested in the message.

Today we are launching  the beta version of the program and you will see advertisers starting to populate the system over the next few months.

What will the sponsored recommendations look like on my blog?
Advertisers will pay for the recommendations to be distributed, and not for the content itself.  These sponsored recommendations are clearly marked with an icon as shown below.  Upon mousing over the "i" icon, the color changes to indicate it's clickable and when clicked, a bubble appears informing the reader that the distribution of the link is sponsored and not the content itself. 

(this is a ficticious example as GM is not yet a client)

Upon clicking the above link the reader will go to this public page on CNBC's site.  As you can see the author, Phil LeBeau is speaking favorable about his test ride in the Volt;

From an advertiser's perspective, having the ability to expose readers who may be interested in green automobiles to this kind of authentic endorsement is very compelling.

So a few answers to questions we know you'll have:

Can I control what sponsored recommendations show on my blog?
Yes you have full control.  Larger publishers have full control over what sponsored recommendations will show on your site and all bloggers have use of  the "Link Zapper" to zap any link, sponsored or organic that doesn't quite fit.

How do I earn a portion of the proceeds myself?
If your site, or a collection of sites you own, is editorially approved by outbrain and has 100,000 US pageviews a month or more, you’re eligible for direct compensation from the program and should contact us. If not, we still want the passion you put into your blog to be rewarded as you can choose a charity from your Outbrain dashboard and we’ll donate a meaningful portion of the proceeds generated on your site to it at year’s end.

How Many Sponsored Recommendations Will Show?  We will not show more than 1 sponsored recommendation in our widget at a time.  In many cases we won't show any sponsored recommendations - we always want to make sure your readers get interesting and timely reading recommendations.  When we don't have a great sponsored recommendation to show, we will continue showing recommendations, including links to your own content.

Do I Have To Participate?
No. You can opt out of the program (and opt back in) at any time through your outbrain dashboard.  You can also set your charity preferences there:

• Go to http://www.outbrain.com/ln/ManageBlogs
• Select “Settings” for the blog of your choice
• Select your charity or opt out of the program in the “Sponsored Recommendation” section

If you are currently registered and showing external recommendations (in your dashboard this is shown as "Best Recommendations") you will be enrolled in the program by default.

If you are registered and don’t choose a charity, proceeds from your site will be donated to the International Red Cross. 

If you are not currently set to show external recommendations, you will not be enrolled in the program     automatically and you’ll need to enroll by following these easy steps;   

• Go to http://www.outbrain.com/ln/ManageBlogs
• Select “Settings” for the blog of your choice and choose "Best Recommendations"
• Select your charity or if you have over 100K page views a month contact us.

With our new program, Sponsored, But Good, everyone wins;

Readers: Who are our highest priority, continue to discover great new content through our recommendations, whether sponsored or organic.

Bloggers/Publishers:  Can make money from the program if they are editorially approved and meet certain traffic requirements. Those bloggers with more passion for writing than traffic will be able to choose a charity which will receive donations at year end from Outbrain.

Advertisers:  Finally have a scalable method to amplify some of the great things their peers and  customers are saying about their products and services.  We will help advertisers surface the right conversation to the right people through our reader focused approach that aims to cut the unnecessary waste out of online advertising.

Yes we are doing something quite different with this program, but our true guiding light is to do right by you and your readers. Participating in this program helps us keep our lights on, earns you or a charitable cause you care deeply about some money and above all helps your readers discover new and interesting content. Our goal is to find an advertising medium that distributes the benefits equally between the reader, publisher and advertiser.  In our opinion this perfect balance hasn’t been found yet. We hope you’ll join us in working towards this goal. 

Update - LouisGray, Mashable, CenterNetworks and VentureBeat covered the release.

Announcing outbrain's second round of financing

Today we’re announcing the completion of a $12M B-round investment in outbrain led by Carmel Ventures. Shlomo Dovrat is joining our board.

The full press release is below. Allen Stern broke the story on CenterNetworks. More coverage on VentureBeat, TechAviv, Louis Gray, Ouriel Ohayon's blog and VC Cafe. Hebrew coverage on TheMarker and Globes.

Since our early days, outbrain has been focused on providing readers of blogs and articles with great personalized reading recommendations. Every day there are wonderful nuggets of reading content being published, but the growing amount of noise makes it nearly impossible to find them. Our mission is to help readers uncover those nuggets easily in the places where they are already used to consuming content. Our recommendation algorithms constantly improve as more blogs install our widgets and more readers interact with them. This investment will enable us to significantly increase our market share, and thus continue to improve our recommended links on blogs and publishers using our service.

We are thrilled to have Carmel Ventures, Rhodium and Zohar Gilon join the company. They, along with Lightspeed, Gemini and GlenRock, have shown true thought leadership in making this investment at times like this.

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Outbrain Secures $12M Second Round led by Carmel Ventures

NEW YORK, NY – February 11, 2009 – Outbrain Inc. today announced the completion of a $12M Series-B investment led by Carmel Ventures (www.carmelventures.com). Outbrain's previous backers - Gemini Israel Funds (www.gemini.co.il),  Lightspeed Venture Partners (www.lightspeedvp.com) and GlenRock Israel (www.grg.co.il) - all participated in the round. Zohar Gilon and Rhodium have also joined the round. Following the investment, Shlomo Dovrat, co-founder and general partner of Carmel Ventures will be joining Outbrain's board of directors.

Outbrain is a platform for delivering personalized recommendations of blog and publisher content to readers. Bloggers and publishers can use Outbrain's free widget or API to provide their readers with rating functionality and personalized reading recommendations. The widget can be installed with one click on most leading blog platforms -- Blogger.com, TypePad, WordPress.org, Drupal, FeedFlare, MoveableType, etc. -- and also easily integrates with all major content-management-systems (CMS). Thousands of blogs and publishers have installed the Outbrain widget, including Chicago Tribune, VentureBeat, Discovery Channel and Sports Illustrated's Golf.com. Outbrain serves millions of content recommendations daily.

Outbrain was founded by Yaron Galai, Co-Founder of Quigo which was acquired by AOL last year, and Ori Lahav who previously headed R&D teams at Shopping.com. Outbrain is headquartered in New York City, with its R&D based in Israel. 

From the Outbrain blog (http://blog.outbrain.com) – "Since our early days, Outbrain has been focused on providing readers of blogs and articles with great personalized reading recommendations. Every day there are wonderful nuggets of reading content being published, but the growing amount of noise makes it nearly impossible to find them. Our mission is to help readers uncover those nuggets easily in the places where they are already used to consuming content. Our recommendation algorithms constantly improve as more blogs install our widgets and more readers interact with them. This investment will enable us to significantly increase our market share, and thus continue to improve our recommended links on blogs and publishers using our service.

We are thrilled to have Carmel Ventures, Rhodium and Zohar Gilon join the company. They, along with Lightspeed, Gemini and GlenRock, have shown true thought leadership in making this investment at times like this.”

“The amount of content published online is exploding. Finding great content is getting both more difficult and more important. Outbrain provides web publishers with a turn-key, intelligent recommendation service that drives back significant traffic. Outbrain’s personalized recommended links offer great value to readers by combining their collective wisdom and using unique algorithms. We're excited to partner with Outbrain’s experienced founding team and help them build a great company", said Mr. Shlomo Dovrat of Carmel Ventures

To get the Outbrain widget on your site, go to www.outbrain.com/get/

Screenshots, logos and other materials you can use are available here - http://www.outbrain.com/new/pages/writeaboutus.html 
 

Follow Outbrain on Twitter: www.twitter.com/outbrain

About Carmel Ventures
With over $600 million currently under management, several successful exits, and a growing portfolio of promising start-ups, Carmel is among Israel’s top-tier venture capital funds. Carmel’s investments are focused primarily on early stage companies in the fields of Software, Communications, Internet, Media, Semiconductors, and Consumer Electronics. Founded in 2000 by pioneers and leaders of the Israeli high tech industry, Carmel provides significant capital and active, hands-on support through the growth cycle of its portfolio companies and is recognized as a true company building fund in Israel. Carmel, headquartered in Herzliya, Israel enjoys a worldwide network of industry, strategic and investment resources.
Carmel is an affiliate of the Viola Partners Group, a leading innovative private equity investment group with over $1.8B under management focused on technology-based investment opportunities in Israel. For more information, please visit
www.carmelventures.com

About Gemini
A pioneer in Israel's venture capital industry, Gemini Israel Funds has grown to be the leading Israeli seed and early stage fund in the Information Technology arena. The firm, founded in 1993, manages more than $700 million in five funds. Investments are focused on the areas of Communications and Wireless Technologies, Enterprise Software, Internet, Consumer Electronics and Semiconductors, and more recently in Greentech. Through offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, Gemini offers portfolio companies access to top-tier U.S. based investors and a global network of corporate partners. As investment professionals, Gemini's key contributions include an ability to make daring investment decisions and the capability to utilize past operational experience in assisting portfolio companies. Past successes include: Allot, Mellanox, Saifun, Precise, Traiana, Butterfly, Commtouch, Ornet, Verisity, Jacada, Ceragon, Riverhead, nLayers, Itemfield and others.
www.gemini.co.il

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital firm with over $2 billion of committed capital under management.  Lightspeed’s investment professionals and advisors are located in Silicon Valley, China, India and Israel.  Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed more than 150 companies, many of which have become leaders in their respective markets, including Blue Nile, Brocade, Calista, Ciena, DoubleClick, eHealth Insurance, Galileo Technology, Growth Networks, Informatica, Kiva Software, LightLogic, Maker Communications, Metasolv, Phone.com, Quantum Effect Devices, Riverbed, Sirocco, Virsa Systems and Waveset. 

www.lightspeedvp.com
 

About GlenRock
Founded by Leon Recanati in 2003, the GlenRock Group leverages a unique combination of private equity, multidisciplinary in-house expertise, unmatched access to quality dealflow, and a focused but flexible investment strategy to achieve maximum returns. With a global presence and ready access to the most prominent names in Israeli business, academia, and science, GlenRock is experienced at identifying advanced technology and Life Sciences opportunities - and leading them to realization of their true market potential. GlenRock takes an active and long-term role in the development and growth of portfolio companies – ensuring that extraordinary ideas evolve into business success stories.
www.grg.co.il
 

About Rhodium

Rhodium is a private investment firm, based in Israel with an office in the U.S. and a broad network of international affiliates. Rhodium focuses on high growth, cutting-edge opportunities in the fields of internet, new-media, mobile, and new technologies in general. Rhodium supports entrepreneurs and strengthens their ventures with its resources; funding, broad management expertise and an extensive valuable network of business contacts around the globe. Rhodium looks to take an active role in most of its portfolio companies. Rhodium strategically invests in a handful of promising companies each year in order to be actively involved in creating the optimal environment for these companies to successfully transform into world-class business ventures.