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Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up construction to managing residential, commercial and retail properties. But unlike his parents, Mor also had a passion for technology. His interest in tech was reinforced […]
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A new sculpture going live on Wednesday in the Flatiron South Public Plaza in New York is not your typical artwork. It combines technology, sociology, anthropology and art to let people interact with one another in real time in two places. In this case, it’s between New York City and Dublin. The Portal itself is […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Flipping houses is not for the faint of heart, no matter how fun or easy HGTV might make it seem.
One startup wants to make the process less complicated by offering a different way to borrow money to fund such a purchase. Founded in late 2020, Backflip offers a service to real estate investors for securing short-term loans. Beyond helping users secure financing, Backflip’s tech also helps investors source, track, comp and evaluate potential investments. Think of it as a cross between Zillow and Shopify.
Backflip originates loans through its subsidiary, Double Backflip, LLC. Interestingly, among its processing team are former employees of Better.com, a digital mortgage lender that has had its shares of ups and downs mostly related to its management and market conditions, but was lauded for its technology.
“We help investors source properties and curate their pipeline, analyze the deals that they might want to invest in, and hopefully make lower risk, better buying decisions,” CEO and co-founder Josh Ernst told TechCrunch in an interview.
Backflip launched a stealth private beta in 2021 that ran through the first half of 2022. Entering the market at a time when interest rates began to surge was challenging, said Ernst, who is a former investment banker and venture capitalist (he’s backed the likes of Polychain Capital). Yet the company managed to grow its revenue nearly 5x in 2023 and reach an annualized revenue of $10 million. It also claims to be “near profitability.”
And today, the company is announcing it has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by FirstMark Capital, a firm which invested early in the likes of Airbnb, Shopify and Pinterest, it has told TechCrunch exclusively.
Existing backers Vertical Venture Partners, LiveOak Venture Partners, Revel Partners, ECMC and the real estate company Crow Holdings also participated in the round, as did angel investors. In total, Backflip has raised $28 million in equity — and $67 million in debt financing.
To give some context on how much business has been conducted on the Backflip platform thus far, Ernst said that users analyze an average of $5 billion in properties each month on the platform and that the startup has funded more than 900 homes since its mid-2022 launch. Users have realized an average gross profit of $82,000 per property on the platform, and typically repay their loans in six months.
Most of Backflip’s loans are for 12 months (called a bridge loan) but are provided at a 2% to 4% higher interest rate than a typical residential loan, according to Ernst.
Investors can either sell the property and pay back Backflip or refinance and move into a longer-term loan through another lender.
“Our interest rates are higher than a retail bank, so our customer pays more for our loans than a bank,” Ernst said. “But what we’re doing is giving them money, underwriting the asset, underwriting the business plan and underwriting the person.”
The conventional (and cheaper) loan process, he said, is slower. And with Backflip, customers don’t need a W-2 to qualify for a loan. Plus, the company bundles in the rehab and construction loan so it’s easier and faster for an investor to move quickly through all these transactions.
“We underwrite business plans, assets and people, not just W-2 income… and we provide capital for home renovation and give credit for post-repair valuation,” Ernst said.
The company does not currently charge subscription fees. Its business model is to serve as a marketplace for the financial products. It makes money via take rate on the loans on the lending origination business, which it operates by partnering with capital providers.
“We’re helping to underwrite the properties and all the while, we’re getting more and more data that can then be used to make a quick and accurate underwriting decision on a specific loan product, which our members use to buy the property and renovate the property,” Ernst said.
So the investors get the money from Backflip, which originates the loans and then in turn sells the loans.
Adam Nelson, managing director at FirstMark, told TechCrunch that the opportunity for flipping is enormous. In the U.S., more than 50% of homes are over 40 years old, according to 2023 research from the National Association of Home Builders and “not up to the standard of new homeowners and institutional single-family residential buyers,” he said.
“The entrepreneurs in the ‘fix and flip’ industry provide an important service to bring the existing housing stock up to spec and put their own capital and sweat equity on the line to do it in both bull/bear housing markets,” he said.
Nelson has been impressed by the company’s ability to grow nearly 5x year over year “with an efficient <1x burn multiple,” he added.
”We view Backflip as the operating system for this $100 billion+ annual transaction market, with the potential to add value and monetize multiple different parts of the fix and flip transaction and ultimately institutionalize the asset class,” Nelson added.
Presently, the startup has 47 employees with headquarters in Dallas and Denver.
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“When an investor passes on you, they will not tell you the real reason,” said Tom Blomfield, group partner at Y Combinator. “At seed stage, frankly, no one knows what’s going to fucking happen. The future is so uncertain. All they’re judging is the perceived quality of the founder. When they pass, what they’re thinking in their head is that this person is not impressive enough. Not formidable. Not smart enough. Not hardworking enough. Whatever it is, ‘I am not convinced this person is a winner.’ And they will never say that to you, because you would get upset. And then you would never want to pitch them again.”
Blomfield should know – he was the founder of Monzo Bank, one of the brightest-shining stars in the UK startup sky. For the past three years or so, he’s been a partner at Y Combinator. He joined me on stage at TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston on Thursday, in a session titled “How to Raise Money and Come Out Alive.” There were no minced words or pulled punches: only real talk and the occasional F-bomb flowed.
At the heart of the venture capital model lies the Power Law of Returns, a concept that every founder must grasp to navigate the fundraising landscape effectively. In summary: a small number of highly successful investments will generate the majority of a VC firm’s returns, offsetting the losses from the many investments that fail to take off.
For VCs, this means a relentless focus on identifying and backing those rare startups with the potential for 100x to 1000x returns. As a founder, your challenge is to convince investors that your startup has the potential to be one of those outliers, even if the probability of achieving such massive success seems as low as 1%.
Demonstrating this outsized potential requires a compelling vision, a deep understanding of your market, and a clear path to rapid growth. Founders must paint a picture of a future where their startup has captured a significant portion of a large and growing market, with a business model that can scale efficiently and profitably.
“Every VC, when they’re looking at your company, is not asking, ‘oh, this founder’s asked me to invest at $5 million. Will it get to $10 million or $20 million?’ For a VC, that’s as good as failure,” said Blomfield. “Batting singles is literally identical to zeros for them. It does not move the needle in any way. The only thing that moves the needle for VC returns is home runs, is the 100x return, the 1,000x return.”
VCs are looking for founders who can back up their claims with data, traction, and a deep understanding of their industry. This means clearly grasping your key metrics, such as customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and growth rates, and articulating how these metrics will evolve as you scale.
One proxy for power law, is the size of your addressable market: It’s crucial to have a clear understanding of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and to be able to articulate this to investors in a compelling way. Your TAM represents the total revenue opportunity available to your startup if you were to capture 100% of your target market. It’s a theoretical ceiling on your potential growth, and it’s a key metric that VCs use to evaluate the potential scale of your business.
When presenting your TAM to investors, be realistic and to back up your estimates with data and research. VCs are highly skilled at evaluating market potential, and they’ll quickly see through any attempts to inflate or exaggerate your market size. Instead, focus on presenting a clear and compelling case for why your market is attractive, how you plan to capture a significant share of it, and what unique advantages your startup brings to the table.
Raising venture capital is not just about pitching your startup to investors and hoping for the best. It’s a strategic process that involves creating leverage and competition among investors to secure the best possible terms for your company.
“YC is very, very good at [generating leverage. We basically collect a bunch of the best companies in the world, we put them through a program, and at the end, we have a demo day where the world’s best investors basically run an auction process to try and invest in the companies,” Blomfield summarized. “And whether or not you’re doing an accelerator, trying to create that kind of pressured situation, that kind of high leverage situation where you have multiple investors bidding for your company. It’s really the only way you get great investment outcomes. YC just manufactures that for you. It’s very, very useful.”
Even if you’re not part of an accelerator program, there are still ways to create competition and leverage among investors. One strategy is to run a tight fundraising process, setting a clear timeline for when you’ll be making a decision and communicating this to investors upfront. This creates a sense of urgency and scarcity, as investors know they have a limited offer window.
Another tactic is to be strategic about the order in which you meet with investors. Start with investors who are likely to be more skeptical or have a longer decision-making process, and then move on to those who are more likely to move quickly. This allows you to build momentum and create a sense of inevitability around your fundraise.
Blomfield also discussed how angel investors often have different motivations and rubrics for investing than professional investors: they usually invest at a higher rate than VCs, particularly for early-stage deals. This is because angels typically invest their own money and are more likely to be swayed by a compelling founder or vision, even if the business is still in its early stages.
Another key advantage of working with angel investors is that they can often provide introductions to other investors and help you build momentum in your fundraising efforts. Many successful fundraising rounds start with a few key angel investors coming on board, which then helps attract the interest of larger VCs.
Blomfield shared the example of a round that came together slowly; over 180 meetings and 4.5 months worth of hard slog.
“This is actually the reality of most rounds that are done today: You read about the blockbuster round in TechCrunch. You know, ‘I raised $100 million from Sequoia kind of rounds’. But honestly, TechCrunch doesn’t write so much about the ‘I ground it out for 4 and 1/2 months and finally closed my round after meeting 190 investors,’” Blomfield said. “Actually, this is how most rounds get done. And a lot of it depends on angel investors.”
One of the most challenging aspects of the fundraising process for founders is navigating the feedback they receive from investors. While it’s natural to seek out and carefully consider any advice or criticism from potential backers, it’s crucial to recognize that investor feedback can often be misleading or counterproductive.
Blomfield explains that investors will often pass on a deal for reasons they don’t fully disclose to the founder. They may cite concerns about the market, the product, or the team, but these are often just superficial justifications for a more fundamental lack of conviction or fit with their investment thesis.
“The takeaway from this is when an investor gives you a bunch of feedback on your seed stage pitch, some founders are like, ‘oh my god, they said my go-to-market isn’t developed enough. Better go and do that.’ But it leads people astray, because the reasons are mostly bullshit,” says Blomfield. “You might end up pivoting your whole company strategy based on some random feedback that an investor gave you, when actually they’re thinking, ‘I don’t think the founders are good enough,’ which is a tough truth they’ll never tell you.”
Investors are not always right. Just because an investor has passed on your deal doesn’t necessarily mean that your startup is flawed or lacking in potential. Many of the most successful companies in history have been passed over by countless investors before finding the right fit.
The investors you bring on board will not only provide the capital you need to grow but will also serve as key partners and advisors as you navigate the challenges of scaling your business. Choosing the wrong investors can lead to misaligned incentives, conflicts, and even the failure of your company. A lot of that is avoidable by doing thorough due diligence on potential investors before signing any deals. This means looking beyond just the size of their fund or the names in their portfolio and really digging into their reputation, track record, and approach to working with founders.
“80-odd percent of investors give you money. The money is the same. And you get back to running your business. And you have to figure it out. I think, unfortunately, there are about 15 percent to 20 percent of investors who are actively destructive,” Blomfield said. “They give you money, and then they try to help out, and they fuck shit up. They are super demanding, or push you to pivot the business in a crazy direction, or push you to spend the money they’ve just given you to hire faster.”
One key piece advice from Blomfield is to speak with founders of companies that have not performed well within an investor’s portfolio. While it’s natural for investors to tout their successful investments, you can often learn more by examining how they behave when things aren’t going according to plan.
“The successful founders are going to say nice things. But the middling, the singles, and the strikeouts, the failures, go and talk to those people. And don’t get an introduction from the investor. Go and do your own research. Find those founders and ask, how did these investors act when times got tough,” Blomfield advised.
Digital twin platform Matterport has agreed to be acquired by one of its customers, Costar, in a cash-and-stock deal of $5.50 per share that gives it an enterprise valuation of about $1.6 billion. Matterport’s tech helps companies create digital replicas of physical spaces.
Costar’s offer represents a premium of a whopping 212% over Matterport’s last closing share price before the deal was announced on April 22.
The deal looks like a fortunate turn of events for Matterport, whose shares had been trading below the $5 mark since August 2022 as the company struggled to meet investors’ expectations for subscriber growth amid a sluggish real estate market and a wider macroeconomic slowdown. Matterport’s stock was trading below $2 per share before the transaction was disclosed.
The company has been trying to improve its profitability over the past year, too, according to its 2023 financial statements. However, investors haven’t been happy with the company, whose shares have been struggling since it went public via a SPAC deal in 2021, which Bloomberg reported valued Matterport at around $2.9 billion.
Matterport’s shares were trading at $4.76 before the bell on Tuesday — slightly below the $5.50 deal price, which indicates investors may be wary of the deal getting blocked by regulators, or they may be hedging their bets to account for a possible decline in Costar’s stock, since the deal has a share-based component, too. Costar’s shares, however, are up slightly since the announcement, indicating that its investors are happy with the potential benefits of the deal.
Matterport quickly rose to prominence from its start in 2011, making 3D imaging cameras, spawning out of the Microsoft Kinect hacker scene and going on to join Y Combinator’s Winter 2012 batch. Its services gained significant traction in the real estate space despite competition from alternatives such as Cupix, Giraffe360 and Zillow 3D Home.
Digital twin technology has applications in construction tech and insurtech, but demand from real estate players is particularly salient, as the pandemic accelerated the switch from in-person viewings to virtual tours, both for commercial and for residential properties.
Early-mover advantage aside, the company’s later decisions likely played an equally important role as the market evolved. It diversified into helping clients create virtual tours even with smartphones. And the addition of AI with its in-house solution, Cortex, added more differentiation to its offering, leveraging its data to generate 3D digital twins supporting additional labels such as property dimensions.
Matterport’s leadership changed over the years. Its current CEO, former eBay chief product officer RJ Pittman, took the reins in 2018 — but its fundraising trajectory was fairly smooth. Over its first decade, it raised successive rounds of funding for a total of $409 million, followed by its public debut in 2021.
“Costar Group and Matterport have nearly identical mission statements of digitizing the world’s real estate,” Costar’s founder and CEO, Andy Florance, said in a statement.
CoStar, which has a market cap of $34.84 billion, is a real estate heavyweight that operates marketplaces such as Apartments.com, Homes.com and LoopNet (for commercial real estate). This gives it direct insights into the value that Matterport can add for its end users.
In March 2024, Costar wrote in a press release, “there were over 7.4 million views of Matterport 3D Tours on Apartments.com, with consumers spending 20% more time viewing an apartment listing when Matterports were available.” The company now plans to incorporate Matterport’s virtual tours (“Matterports”) on Homes.com.
Taking to the stage at a real estate event shortly after the announcement, Florance reportedly said that allowing home buyers to view properties with their own furniture, for instance, will allow agents to provide more value and promote their brands.
It will be worth tracking what happens to Matterport’s activities beyond real estate, such as its partnership with Facebook to help researchers train robots in virtual environments.
The deal is subject to regulatory approvals, but this is more than an asterisk: In 2020, Costar’s attempt to acquire RentPath was derailed by an FTC antitrust lawsuit, and RentPath was instead bought by Redfin in 2021.
If you’ve been feeling lonely over the past few years, you’re not alone. According to a 2023 report from the U.S. surgeon general, about half of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. The report warns that loneliness and isolation can lead to physical consequences, such as a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
A new app called Buffet is aiming to address the loneliness epidemic by helping users meet new people by quickly matching them with a person and a place to meet up (think Tinder + OpenTable). The app is designed to remove the barriers and hassles that come with meeting new people and then trying to find a place to hang out. Buffet aims to help users meet likeminded individuals, whether they’re looking for a new friend, romantic partner or gym buddy.
At launch, Buffet is available in Los Angeles, with expansions planned for additional cities later this year, starting with New York City.
The app is the brainchild of Buffet CEO Rich Hacking and COO Sean Emery. The pair worked as financial analysts before starting Buffet and came up with the idea for the app while they were on a business trip in Dubai.
“We started throwing this idea around, and thought, hey, there’s something there,” Hacking told TechCrunch. “We saw the loneliness epidemic and saw that the market was in need of something new. The massive incumbents have lacked innovation in the last decade. There was an obvious key opportunity for disruption. So we put one foot in front of the other and started building Buffet.”
To get started with Buffet, users enter five of their interests, such as motorcycles, horseback riding or reading. The app then asks a series of five questions to get a better understanding of their personality and what kinds of places and people they would be interested in.
Image Credits: Buffet
Buffet’s algorithm then pairs users. If interested, they can send an invite to the person they’re matched with; the matched pair can then message each other via the app to decide on a time and date to meet. Buffet is designed to allow people to do most of the talking and getting-to-know-each-other in-person. Buffet encourages people to go beyond a chatbox and digital communication and actually meet up in the real world.
If there’s a match with someone, but the app-suggested meeting place isn’t a good match, users can choose from a list of other places that might be more interesting. And if users aren’t interested in their match partners, they can refresh and get matched with someone else.
Buffet’s target demographic is people who have been affected by the loneliness epidemic the most: 18- to 25-year-olds. The app also wants to target young professionals in the late to early 30s. Hacking believes that if Buffet can win over the average 25-year-old female professional, it can win over anyone.
“The app will be free to use for the foreseeable future,” Hacking said. “We want to win over users. We want to build trust and right now, when you read the market, people are frustrated with all of the paywalls.”
In terms of the app’s business model, Buffet will leverage advertising. The company plans to build up an in-app community forum where local businesses would be able to advertise directly to users and promote happy hours and other discounts.
The app is currently only available on iOS, but the company plans to launch an Android app in the future.
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has published new guidance which has major implications for adtech giants like Meta and other large platforms.
The guidance, which was confirmed incoming Wednesday as we reported earlier, will steer how privacy regulators interpret the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in a critical area. The full opinion of the EDPB on so-called “consent or pay” runs to 42-pages.
Other large ad-funded platforms should also take note of the granular guidance. But Meta looks first in line to feel any resultant regulatory chill falling on its surveillance-based business model.
This is because — since November 2023 — the owner of Facebook and Instagram has forced users in the European Union to agree to being tracked and profiled for its ad targeting business or else they must pay it a monthly subscription to access ad-free versions of the services. However a market leader imposing that kind of binary choice looks unviable, per the EDPB, an expert body made up of representatives of data protection authorities from around the EU.
“The EDPB notes that negative consequences are likely to occur when large online platforms use a ‘consent or pay’ model to obtain consent for the processing,” the Board opines, underscoring the risk of “an imbalance of power” between the individual and the data controller, such as in cases where “an individual relies on the service and the main audience of the service”.
In a press release accompanying publication of the opinion, the Board’s chair, Anu Talu, also emphasized the need for platforms to provide users with a “real choice” over their privacy.
“Online platforms should give users a real choice when employing ‘consent or pay’ models,” Talu wrote. “The models we have today usually require individuals to either give away all their data or to pay. As a result most users consent to the processing in order to use a service, and they do not understand the full implications of their choices.”
“Controllers should take care at all times to avoid transforming the fundamental right to data protection into a feature that individuals have to pay to enjoy. Individuals should be made fully aware of the value and the consequences of their choices,” she added.
In a summary of its opinion, the EDPB writes in the press release that “in most cases” it will “not be possible” for “large online platforms” that implement consent or pay models to comply with the GDPR’s requirement for “valid consent” — if they “confront users only with a choice between consenting to processing of personal data for behavioural advertising purposes and paying a fee” (i.e. as Meta currently is).
The opinion defines large platforms, non-exhaustively, as entities designated as very large online platforms under the EU’s Digital Services Act or gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — again, as Meta is (Facebook and Instagram are regulated under both laws).
“The EDPB considers that offering only a paid alternative to services which involve the processing of personal data for behavioural advertising purposes should not be the default way forward for controllers,” the Board goes on. “When developing alternatives, large online platforms should consider providing individuals with an ‘equivalent alternative’ that does not entail the payment of a fee.
“If controllers do opt to charge a fee for access to the ‘equivalent alternative’, they should give significant consideration to offering an additional alternative. This free alternative should be without behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving the processing of less or no personal data. This is a particularly important factor in the assessment of valid consent under the GDPR.”
The EDPB takes care to stress that other core principles of the GDPR — such as purpose limitation, data minimisation and fairness — continue to apply around consent mechanisms, adding: “In addition, large online platforms should also consider compliance with the principles of necessity and proportionality, and they are responsible for demonstrating that their processing is generally in line with the GDPR.”
Given the detail of the EDPB’s opinion on this contentious and knotty topic — and the suggestion that lots of case-by-case analysis will be needed to make compliance assessments — Meta may feel confident nothing will change in the short term. Clearly it will take time for EU regulators to analyze, ingest and act on the Board’s advice.
Contacted for comment, Meta spokesman Matthew Pollard emailed a brief statement playing down the guidance: “Last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union [CJEU] ruled that the subscriptions model is a legally valid way for companies to seek people’s consent for personalised advertising. Today’s EDPB Opinion does not alter that judgment and Subscription for no ads complies with EU laws.”
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which oversees Meta’s GDPR compliance and has been reviewing its consent model since last year, declined to comment on whether it will be taking any action in light of the EDPB guidance as it said the case is ongoing.
Ever since Meta launched the “subscription for no-ads” offer last year it has continued to claim it complies with all relevant EU regulations — seizing on a line in the July 2023 ruling by the EU’s top court in which judges did not explicitly rule out the possibility of charging for a non-tracking alternative but instead stipulated that any such payment must be “necessary” and “appropriate”.
Commenting on this aspect of the CJEU’s decision in its opinion, the Board notes — in stark contrast to Meta’s repeat assertions the CJEU essentially sanctioned its subscription model in advance — that this was “not central to the Court’s determination”.
“The EDPB considers that certain circumstances should be present for a fee to be imposed, taking into account both possible alternatives to behavioural advertising that entail the processing of less personal data and the data subjects’ position,” it goes on with emphasis. “This is suggested by the words ‘necessary’ and ‘appropriate’, which should, however, not be read as requiring the imposition of a fee to be ‘necessary’ in the meaning of Article 52(1) of the Charter and EU data protection law.”
At the same time, the Board’s opinion does not entirely deny large platforms the possibility of charging for a non-tracking alternative — so Meta and its tracking-ad-funded ilk may feel confident they’ll be able to find some succour in 42-pages of granular discussion of the intersecting demands of data protection law. (Or, at least, that this intervention will keep regulators busy trying to wrap their heads about case-by-case complexities.)
However the guidance does — notably — encourage platforms towards offering free alternatives to tracking ads, including privacy-safe(r) ad-supported offerings.
The EDPB gives examples of contextual, “general advertising” or “advertising based on topics the data subject selected from a list of topics of interests”. (And it’s also worth noting the European Commission has also suggested Meta could be using contextual ads instead of forcing users to consent to to tracking ads as part of its oversight of the tech giant’s compliance with the DMA.)
“While there is no obligation for large online platforms to always offer services free of charge, making this further alternative available to the data subjects enhances their freedom of choice,” the Board goes on, adding: “This makes it easier for controllers to demonstrate that consent is freely given.”
While there’s rather more discursive nuance to what the Board has published today than instant clarity served up on a pivotal topic, the intervention is important and does look set to make it harder for mainstream adtech giants like Meta to frame and operate under false binary privacy-hostile choices over the long run.
Armed with this guidance, EU data protection regulators should be asking why such platforms aren’t offering far less privacy-hostile alternatives — and asking that question, if not literally today, then very, very soon.
For a tech giant as dominant and well resourced as Meta it’s hard to see how it can dodge answering that ask for long. Although it will surely stick to its usual GDPR playbook of spinning things out for as long as it possibly can and appealing every final decision it can.
Privacy rights nonprofit noyb, which has been at the forefront of fighting the creep of consent or pay tactics in the region in recent years, argues the EDPB opinion makes it clear Meta cannot rely on the “pay or okay” trick any more. However its founder and chairman Max Schrems told TechCrunch he’s concerned the Board hasn’t gone far enough in skewering this divisive forced consent mechanism.
“The EDPB recalls all the relevant elements, but does not unequivocally state the obvious consequence, which is that ‘pay or okay’ is not legal,” he told us. “It names all the elements why it’s illegal for Meta, but there is thousands of other pages where there is no answer yet.”
As if 42-pages of guidance on this knotty topic wasn’t enough already, the Board has more in the works, too: Talus says it intends to develop guidelines on consent or pay models “with a broader scope”, adding that it will “engage with stakeholders on these upcoming guidelines”.
European news publishers were the earliest adopters of the controversial consent tactic so the forthcoming “broader” EDPB opinion is likely to be keenly watched by players in the media industry.
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