Fanhattan
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Fanhattan was a San Mateo, California-based startup founded by Gilles BianRosa and Olivier Chalouhi (spun out of Vuze, the maker of the popular BitTorrent client). It built cloud-based media discovery products under the Fan TV brand: a unified search experience that combined live TV, video-on-demand, and over-the-top streaming into one elegant interface, available via web, iOS, and the Fan TV connected-TV device with a touch remote. On November 3, 2014, Rovi Corporation acquired Fanhattan in an all-cash transaction (reported at about $12 million) to power its next-generation content discovery products.
02 / Fanhattan FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors
Fanhattan/Fan TV's Time Warner Cable set-top rollout booked only about $7,000 revenue in the first three quarters of 2014 with few dozen boxes sold versus thousands expected, forcing a $1.1 million inventory write-down; that, plus prior difficulty raising new capital, contributed to mounting financial issues before the October 2014 Rovi sale.
only ~$7,000 revenue and a few dozen Fan TV boxes sold in early TWC months versus thousands expected.
company already had a hard time raising new money amid mounting financial issues.
forced $1.1 million write-down for unsold inventory.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Acquisition
framed the Oct 2014 Rovi acquisition of Fan TV/Fanhattan as following mounting financial issues and difficulty raising; price $12 million after an estimated $40 million raised. Rovi's 8-K (filed Dec 2014) confirms completion on 31 Oct 2014 for $12.0 million cash for Fanhattan, Inc.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.