Joost gets US$ 45 million in venture capital

Internet television service Joost might still be undergoing beta testing, it still has managed to attract decent financing. The developers have raised US$ 45 million in venture capital for their Joost service.

Some of the investors in the company include venture capital companies such as Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Index Venture has incidentally already worked with Joost founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström on their Skype project which is now owned by eBay.

Sequoia Capital is another high profile investing firm with previous investments made in Yahoo!, YouTube and Google.

Roelof Botha, general partner with Sequoia Capital spoke on this new development: “Feature-length video on the internet has been long on promise and short on delivery for some time. Full-screen commercial content delivered online has simply not been compelling for the viewer and has been far too costly for the content owners.”

Botha added: “Joost allows content owners to reach audiences of any size at any time where the viewer can ‘lean back’ to enjoy an immersive yet interactive video experience. At the same time, Joost enables brand marketers to efficiently deliver precisely targeted and measurable advertisements. This ability poises the company to expand the video distribution business and capture an enormous market opportunity.”

Some other investors include content providing partners like CBS and Viacom.