Company: JibJab Media
Description: Digital comedy network
Competitors: FunnyorDie, My Damn Channel, CollegeHumor.com
Location: Venice, CA
Amount Raised: $3 million
Round: Second
Date Announced: N/A
VC Firms: Polaris Venture Partners
VC Directors: Jon Flint
Quick Take: JibJab's founders and creative minds, the Spiridelli brothers (pictured below with Flint after they finished reading this review), are brilliant. But the laughs they will create in the coming years will exceed the profits. The numbers just don't add up. The company has made a name for itself with short animated comedies that garner a lot of streams but take a long time to produce. Even if JibJab produces four of those shorts per year that garner 60 million streams (the amount the most popular YouTube video has garnered all-time) each, the company will only earn $2.4 million in annual revenue based on a $10 CPM rate. JibJab's plan to lean on its fans for more of the content via the JokeBox and Sendables channels is sound. But it remains to be seen if JibJab's fans can attract as large an audience as its creators. - Joshua Jaffe