Media Capital - Where Consumer Investing Meets Media Innovation | Consumer Brands | Fundraising

ITV is the UK’s 2nd largest TV broadcaster reaching 34.2m viewers a week (that's nearly 56% of all TV viewers). During the pandemic, the group saw an opportunity in backing direct-to-consumer startups and launched ITV AdVentures, a £15m media for equity annual fund.   Sheena Amin joined TV in 2022 as Director of ITV AdVentures bringing a wealth of experience across both investing and TV/media.   She joined us live on Media Capital 🎙️ on Thursday, March 2nd and we talked about:  📍 her journey and how she started in the world of media,
📍 her learnings from setting up and running two of the UK’s largest media for equity funds,
📍 and her perspective on what’s next for the media capital industry.   Enjoy!

DMG Ventures is not your typical consumer VC, nor a traditional “media for equity” fund. Backed by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), dmg ventures invests typically 50% cash / 50% media-for-equity (with more flexibility for follow-ons). Basically making that cash investment work harder 💪🏻 Together with Manuel, the CEO of dmg ventures, we touched on:

📍 the story behind dmg ventures 
📍 how he built the fund inside Daily Mail, 
📍 their investment thesis, and 
📍 their approach to structuring investment deals (balancing 💰 and 🗞️) With over fifteen years of experience across investing, operational management, and the wider Daily Mail group, Manuel launched dmg ventures in 2017. Since then, he has deployed over £200m and overseen exits worth in excess of £1.6bn. Before launching dmg ventures, Manuel was Strategy Director at DMGT, having also worked previously at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Enjoy!

TV might be the most popular medium for equity deals, but outdoor and print media owners have also staked a claim. Joining me next on the Media Capital show are JCDecaux's Nurture team - Joe Hills and Connie (Constanze) Zehentmeier.    Nurture is JCDecaux’s specialised investment programme bridging startups’ advertising and skills gap through match funding and expertise.    We will touch on the following and much more:   📍How did Nurture come about?   📍How does the programme work?   📍What do you look for in a startup?   📍Joe’s and Connie’s views on the venture market and   📍What’s next for Nurture and JCDecaux    Enjoy!

There are two types of media for equity players, one being leading media companies that leverage their own media directly into targeted investments.  The other model is independent media funds such as German Media Pool that aggregate media across a number of media groups and platforms to invest in growth companies.   In this first episode with Niko Marcel Waesche  and Aljoscha Kaplan we covered:

• How German Media Pool came about 
• What do media publishers look for in a GP? 
• How to choose an appropriate fund size and LP composition  
• Structuring a media for equity deal - do’s and don’ts  
• Team selection for media growth funds: Capabilities, skills, and roles  

Previous to co-founding German Media Pool, Niko was an executive in the media industry as well as an early pioneer in European venture capital. In media, he had global and European leadership roles including IBM. He was ITV's first media for the equity fund manager and strategy advisor for RTL. Aljoscha worked in venture capital and as Senior Consultant for Ernst & Young in Washington D.C. and Stuttgart. GMPVC German Media Pool was set up in 2011 pioneering the independent fund model in Germany. Since then they’ve invested in 38 startups, including category leaders such as ABOUT YOU, Momox, Grover, Sanity Group, and CLARK. The fund employs its own media planning manager, who works closely with the companies to define media strategies and plans across the different media types.  Of German Media Pool’s 38 investments, 17 used more than one media type. Three startups used all four types of media, and two further ones combined three types. The most popular combinations of two media types were television with radio (5 companies) and television with out-of-home (5 companies).