Brad Greenspan

Brad Greenspan is an internet entrepreneur who has been involved in the founding and proliferation of various web properties including MySpace. Greenspan founded eUniverse Inc. in 1998, which went public in 1999. The company survived the .com-bust of 2001 and was the incubator that launched MySpace.com in 2003.

Prior to the launch of Myspace, Greenspan grew eUniverse into one of the largest Entertainment networks on the internet. According to Comscore Netscore, the eUniverse Network was the ninth largest internet property for the month of October 2001.[1]

Greenspan resigned from eUniverse in late October 2003 as CEO and as a Director in December 2003, stating that he felt that other "directors have breached their fiduciary duties to the Company and its stockholders."[2] The company was sold to News Corp in 2005, which Greenspan opposed, and has been fighting News Corp both legally and publicly since.

Angel Investing

Websites launched by Greenspan and eUniverse included:

Flowgo.com launched in late 2000 focused on viral entertainment including flash cartoons and greeting cards. By June 2001, Flowgo.com had become the #1 entertainment website on the internet with 12,980,000 unique monthly visitors according to Nielsen NetRatings.

Madblast.com launched in 2001 became a leader in online flash games.

CupidJunction.com launched in 2001 was eUniverse's dating website.

Justsaywow.com launched in 2000 was a leader in flash entertainment and boasted a daily email newsletter with over 50 million subscribers.

Skilljam.com a skilled online gaming property was launched by eUniverse in 2002. In March 2003, Skilljam announced it had struck an exclusive multi-year partnership to run skilled pay-per-play gaming for Microsoft’s MSN property. Forbes described the partnership in a March 18, 2003 article titled “Win Bill Gates’ Money”.[3]

Greenspan has invested in several other businesses as an angel investor, e.g. Gametize.com a fast growing Singapore online gaming company, Shoppinglifestyle.com a fast growing portal focused on a young female demographic, Broadwebasia (an Asian internet company, out of business), Borba (a health product-line, not available any more), and LiveUniverse (a social network focused internet company, out of business). LiveVideo, Inc. and its livevideo.com (now defunct) social network launched in 2008 were one of the first live streaming platforms.

Greenspan invested in the first outside round of BigFishGames, Inc. in 2006 and in 2008 when BigFishGames raised $83 million from venture capital funds, Greenspan sold his stake for over a 1000% profit.[4]

Greenspan was also an early investor in mobile entertainment startup New Motion, Inc. in 2006 and owned approximately 6% of the company when it went public in 2008, selling his stake for an over 2000% profit.[5]

Greenspan invested in China based Hupo.TV, an online video site, in 2006, which grew to over 30 million unique monthly users by December 2007.[6] Greenspan's BroadwebAsia partnered with Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) in 2008 to launch MLB.com's first Chinese website MLB.cn.[7]

Dow Jones

In mid-2007, Brad Greenspan presented a takeover bid for Dow Jones' The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) against News Corp.[8] Greenspan was unsuccessful in his bid against News Corp.[9]

History

Brad Greenspan attended UCLA, where he launched his first company, Palisades Capital, from his dormitory room.

MySpace

The MySpace service was founded in August 2003 as a new initiative and 100% owned division of publicly traded internet company eUniverse (which later in mid-2004 changed its name to Intermix). eUniverse created and marketed the Myspace website, providing the division with a complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity right out of the gate so the MySpace team wasn’t distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), with Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's former CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's former president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.

Brad Greenspan / The MySpace Report

In October 2006, Brad Greenspan launched a website, called freemyspace.com, and published reports that called for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to investigate News Corp's acquisition of MySpace as "one of the largest merger and acquisition scandals in U.S. history."[10] The report's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued MySpace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had, in effect, defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process.[11] The report received a mixed response from financial commentators in the press.[12] A lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.[13] Greenspan's claims were validated when in June 2010 Judge George H. King ruled in favor of shareholders in a summary judgment decision. According to Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times, "Viewed as a whole, Judge King wrote, the evidence indicates that “there are at least triable issues of fact” about whether Mr. Rosenblatt acted in good faith or tilted the auction in favor of the News Corporation “for a purpose other than maximizing shareholder value.”

A trial might also determine if the rest of the Intermix board improperly put Mr. Rosenblatt in charge of the auction process and then turned a blind eye to his actions, the judge concluded." Further, the Judge refused to dismiss the damage report finding "shareholders suffered economic damages in the News Corporation bid of $506 million to $667 million" [14]

References
  1. http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1707590/top-online-properties-october-2001
  2. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1088244/000119312503096563/dex991.htm
  3. https://www.forbes.com/2003/03/18/cx_aw_0318games.html
  4. http://www.prweb.com/releases/big_fish/fish_games/prweb1324694.htm
  5. http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/spos/filing.ashx?filingid=5043690
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2015-07-22.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "Greenspan's BroadWebAsia Gets MLB Rights in China". CBS News. 2008-03-31. Retrieved 2008-03-31.
  8. Greenspan outlines alternate plan for Dow Jones - MarketWatch
  9. Peers, Martin (2007-08-02). "Murdoch's Next Focus: Business-News Battle". The Wall Street Journal.
  10. "Myspace.com Founder Issues Report Finding News Corp.'s Myspace Acquisition Defrauded Shareholders of More Than $20 Billion". ecoustics.com. 2006-10-09. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  11. Chmielewski, Dawn C. (2006-10-08). "MySpace Founder Seeks Inquiry". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  12. "Was MySpace Sold on the Cheap?". Business Week. 2006-10-06. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  13. "Suit over sale of MySpace dismissed". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 2006-10-10. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  14. "Bidder Beware". The New York Times. 2010-07-03. Retrieved 2010-07-04.
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