Ernesto Schmitt

Ernesto Gottfried Schmitt (born August 1971) is an American-born entrepreneur and investor. A founder of PeopleSound, Beamly and DriveTribe, he also founded venture capital fund The Craftory, with a $600m first fund for consumer goods challenger brands.

Ernesto Schmitt
Ernesto Schmitt in 2018
BornAugust 1971 (age 52)
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
NationalityGerman, Uruguayan
CitizenshipAmerican, German
Alma materChurchill College, Cambridge (MEng)
INSEAD (MBA)
Occupation(s)Investor
Entrepreneur
Known forThe Craftory, Beamly
DriveTribe, Fabula AI, Silverscreen, Peoplesound
Children2
Relativessee relatives

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a German father and Uruguayan mother, Schmitt was raised in Brussels and Mexico. He attended Churchill College, Cambridge, where he received an MA in manufacturing engineering, later attaining an MBA from INSEAD. During the dot-com boom, Schmitt founded PeopleSound, the first platform for digital music streaming, which was backed pre-IPO by Bernard Arnault. Seen as one of the highest profile new-age internet startups, it was exited to Vitaminic in 2001 and listed.

Schmitt also founded Beamly, which pioneered social television, and was backed by HBO and Comcast before being acquired by S&P 500 component Coty, Inc., as well as social media platform DriveTribe alongside Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson. Other notable involvements include co-founding deep-learning company Fabula AI, acquired by Twitter in June 2019.

Early life and education

Schmitt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio where his father, Gottfried E. Schmitt, worked for Procter and Gamble. He grew up in Brussels and Mexico.[1] Schmitt's grandparents through his mother, Maria del Carmen Vieytes, are the Uruguayan actress Nelly Weissel and artist Juan Fernando Vieytes Pérez.[2]

After attending high school in Brussels, Schmitt was educated at the University of Cambridge, studying engineering, where he graduated top of class. After a year consulting for Boston Consulting Group, Schmitt received his MBA with distinction from INSEAD in Fontainbleau, France.[3]

Business ventures

Peoplesound and dot-com bubble

In 1999, Schmitt founded PeopleSound. Going live in October 1999, it was the first European music streaming platform and the most visited. At peak, it was amongst the top ten most visited entertainment websites in Europe, with millions of registered users, and one of the highest profile new-age internet startups.

PeopleSound offered customers two free songs from every band as a taster and then invited customers to create their own compilations in CD Realaudio or MP3 format. It famously offered artists £100 for each submitted song. A darling of the dot-com boom, and receiving significant coverage, PeopleSound raised money based on a valuation of around £70m (in 1999), from Bernard Arnault's Europe@Web, investors including Finnish wireless communications operator Sonera Corporation and venture capital firm Zouk Ventures. Schmitt experienced significant media coverage at the time as an key example of the dot-com boom, including in the BBC documentary "Inside Dot Com". Being ranked in the top ten most popular entertainment sites and as one of the highest-profile tech startups in the UK; Les Echos named Schmitt "one of the elite figures of the London Net-economy", while ZDNet declared him "one of the UK's better known Web entrepreneurs".[4][5][6][7][8]

In 2001, Vitaminic, the Italian-owned rival music website bought PeopleSound and merged services. The combined entity was listed on the stock exchange in Italy.[9][10][11] By August 2001, and following the internet bubble boom of mid-2000, Schmitt quit to take up a senior role for EMI in New York.[12][13]

Silverscreen

In 2003, Schmitt founded Silverscreen alongside Sebastian James.[9] Starting from an initial six stores in 2003, Silverscreen was the United Kingdom's first specialist DVD high street retailer offering an extensive selection of chart and non-chart products. The chain was credited with pioneering the implementation of editorial-led catalogue recommendation in mainstream retail, bringing alive deep archive titles in entertaining hotspots such as "before they were famous", "so bad, they're good", or "the greatest car chases on film".

Apax backed the original launch of Silverscreen in 2003 with £3.5m of funding and followed it up with a secondary fundraising of £20m in 2004 to help finance the company's ambitious plans to open 160 stores. The company received ~£33M total in funding and turnover in excess of £85 million. [9][10]

Beamly & Social Television

In April 2011 Schmitt founded Beamly alongside Anthony Rose.[14][15] Originally called tBone, then Zeebox, Beamly was marketed as a social discovery and engagement platform with 2nd-screen TV, creating the concept of social television.[16][17]

Beamly, then called Zeebox, aimed to provide the optimal platform for connected television, making it a social and interactive viewing experience rather than the standard television viewing format. The platform allowed users to follow and interact with their favourite TV shows, as well as play games and take part in polls. It expanded to the US in September 2012 and into Australia in November. Beamly took on funding from BSkyb, Comcast, NBCUniversal, Viacom and HBO. Its first round valued it at above US$150M. It was sold to the New York Stock Exchange listed S&P 500 component Coty, Inc. in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.[18]

Drivetribe

DriveTribe is an automotive online community platform founded by Schmitt, alongside The Grand Tour presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. The platform features different automotive-themed 'tribes' which people can join, post to, live chat with members of and share content on[19] The website launched in November 2016 with a few selected tribe members.[20] Financing for DriveTribe came from, among others 21st Century Fox and Breyer Capital, who have invested respectively $6.5 and $5.5 million in the platform.[21][22]

The Craftory

Schmitt co-founded The Craftory with Elio Leoni Sceti as an alternative to traditional venture capital.[23][24] it focuses on cause-driven investment in the consumer goods sector, investing in companies that positively impact the categories they serve. As of 2022, The Craftory has more than $600 million in permanent, early stage and growth capital (Series A, Series B etc.) to back 'challenger brands'.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]

Other Positions

Schmitt previously worked for EMI Music[9][10][14] as President of EMI Music's catalogue division and President of Global Marketing. In 2018, Schmitt Co-Founded Fabula AI, which aimed to solve the problem of online disinformation, or 'Fake News' by looking at how it spreads on social networks[32][33][34][35][36] Twitter announced its acquisition of Fabula AI for an undisclosed sum on 3 June 2019.[37][38][39][40][41][42]

Personal life

He has two children.[43]

References
  1. Levy, Katherine (28 June 2012). "Zeebox on a mission to revolutionise TV viewing". Campaign. Retrieved 30 December 2015. Background: Half-German, half-Uruguayan, born in the US, grew up in Belgium and Mexico.
  2. Tagliabue, John (5 May 2000). "Sprechen Sie Technology?; Europeans Try to Relax Borders for Skilled Workers". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  3. "Ernesto Schmitt, CEO & co-founder, Zeebox" (Changing Media Summit: Speakers 2012). The Guardian. 5 December 2011. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  4. Shannon, Victoria (19 September 2000). "MP3.com Says It Is Looking to Europe for Expansion". International Herald Tribune. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 14 September 2022 – via The New York Times. 'PeopleSound.com Ltd. now leads Europe-based Internet sites for downloadable music. Based in Britain, it has German, French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian versions, and it emphasizes its local content.' 'In July, MP3.com and PeopleSound.com were the seventh and 10th most popular entertainment sites, respectively, among European Web surfers, according to MMXI Europe BV, a site-ranking firm.'
  5. Robert, Virginie (11 June 2001). "L'italien Vitaminic s'empare de Peoplesound". Les Echos (in French). Retrieved 14 September 2022. 'one of the elite figures of the London Net-economy'
  6. Wearden, Graeme (8 June 2001). "Empire-building Vitaminic swallows Peoplesound". ZDNET. Retrieved 14 September 2022. 'one of the UK's better known Web entrepreneurs'
  7. Snoddy, Julia; Cassy, John (1 June 2001). "Peoplesound in takeover talks". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 September 2022. Peoplesound.com, one of the UK's highest profile remaining internet start-ups
  8. White, Paul (July 2000). "PEOPLESOUND.COM: Behind The Scenes". www.soundonsound.com. Retrieved 14 September 2022. Peoplesound.com is built on three principles: the principle that through clever technology, you can help consumers discover music, that an entire new generation of artists need to be distributed, but can't be distributed through the traditional channels, and that the music industry can benefit enormously from learning what works where and from interpreting the data that companies such as Peoplesound.com generate.
  9. "Ernesto Schmitt, CEO & co-founder, Zeebox" (Changing Media Summit: Speakers 2012). The Guardian. 5 December 2011. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  10. "EMI Music Appoints Ernesto Schmitt as President, Catalogue" (Press release). 6 November 2008. appointed Ernesto Schmitt as president of its catalogue business, reporting to Elio Leoni-Sceti, EMI Music's chief executive. He will join EMI next month. … DSG International, … group development director. From 2006 to 2008, he worked at Tesco as group ordering director, … Prior to that he was joint chief executive and founder of Silverscreen, … From 2001 to 2002 Schmitt was EMI Group's senior vice president of strategy and business development. Prior to that he founded peoplesound.com, … began his career at Boston Consulting Group … for four years.
  11. Tagliabue, John (5 May 2000). "Sprechen Sie Technology?; Europeans Try to Relax Borders for Skilled Workers". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  12. Gibson, Owen (23 August 2001). "Schmitt quits Peoplesound". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 September 2022. His departure came as Vitaminic completed its £20.9m acquisition of Peoplesound, giving the company a combined catalogue of more than 329,000 tracks and agreements with over 1,200 record labels
  13. Simmons, Lisa (26 August 2001). "New Media: Online office footie fans get shown the red card". The Independent. Retrieved 14 September 2022. First out the door and on to the first plane to New York was the chief executive of Peoplesound, Ernesto Schmitt, star of many a dot.com documentary. Schmitt has landed himself a plum role at EMI Group stateside, where he will fill a newly created position of senior vice-president of strategy and business development across the group's recorded music and music publishing divisions.
  14. Kiss, Jemima (3 February 2013). "Zeebox founder and former iPlayer boss Anthony Rose on the future of TV". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  15. "BBC iPlayer's Rose returns with social TV app Zeebox" (Blog). Financial Times. 31 October 2011. Retrieved 30 December 2015. Mr Rose co-founded Zeebox in April with Schmitt. The company initially raised £5m in venture funding from undisclosed angel investors.
  16. Robert Andrews. "Revealed: How Anthony Rose Plans To Revolutionise TV".
  17. John Moulding. "Anthony Rose reveals some details of his new project tBone".
  18. "Coty Acquires Content Agency Beamly As It Gears Up for P&G Deal". Retrieved 26 March 2018.
  19. Fane Saunders, Tristram. "What is DriveTribe? All you need to know about Jeremy Clarkson's 'YouPorn for cars'". the Telegraph. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
  20. Davis, Ben (30 November 2016). "We take a spin through Clarkson, May & Hammond's DriveTribe network". Econsultancy. Econsultancy media. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
  21. Lee, Kristen (6 September 2016). "DriveTribe Just Got $6.5 Million From Fox And We Don't Know For What". jalopnik. Gawker Media. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  22. "Drivetribe raises $12m Series A from Breyer Capital and Fox". Tech City News. 6 September 2016. Archived from the original on 28 March 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
  23. Roderick, Emma (19 June 2018). "The Platform Wars are Over: Now Comes the Battle of the Brands". lafosse. Retrieved 23 August 2018. Ernesto's latest venture is 'The Craftory,' an investment vehicle aimed at backing the world's boldest challenger brands in the consumer goods space. The Craftory is self-consciously not a fund – rather, it is an 'investment company,' which Ernesto describes as 'anti-corporate' and 'anti-VC.' Whatever you may wish to call it, the Craftory has $300 million in its back pocket, and is set to make waves across the FMCG market..
  24. Coyne, Andy (14 May 2018). "Investment newcomer The Craftory to focus on challenger brands". Just-Food. Retrieved 22 August 2018. Craftory was founded by technology entrepreneurs and investors Elio Leoni-Sceti and Ernesto Schmitt.
  25. Alves, Jose Luis (11 May 2018). "GP Investments investe US$60 mi em empresa de marcas de consumo". Exame/Reuters. Retrieved 23 August 2018. São Paulo – O grupo de private equity GP Investments anunciou nesta sexta-feira que sua subsidiária Spice Private Equity assinou um contrato para investir até 60 milhões de dólares na empresa de bens de consumo The Craftory.
  26. Farman, Madeleine (15 May 2018). "Spice commits $60m to new consumer goods platform The Craftory". Realdeals. Retrieved 22 August 2018. Spice commits $60M to The Craftory.
  27. Wastell, Kenny (14 May 2018). "Spice PE in $300m deal for The Craftory". Unquote. Retrieved 22 August 2018. Spice Private Equity has agreed to invest up to $300m in The Craftory, a newly-formed UK-based investment group focusing on consumer goods, alongside other investors.
  28. Boscolo, Rodrigo (11 May 2018). "GP Investments announces the launching of The Craftory". GP. Retrieved 22 August 2018. The Craftory is a revolutionary concept: a new investment company dedicated entirely to backing disruptive new challengers in the consumer goods space.
  29. Daneshkhu, Scheherazade (14 May 2018). "The Craftory looks to back upstarts in fight against consumer giants". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 August 2018. Now, an investment group launching this week aims to nurture more of what it calls these " disruptive challengers toppling lumbering giants " by pumping $300m of private capital into the growth and development of upstart consumer goods companies.
  30. Daneshkhu, Scheherazade (19 June 2018). "How millennials' taste for 'authenticity' is disrupting powerful food brands". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 August 2018. He co-founded The Craftory, an investment group launched last month to help challenger companies grow.
  31. Daneshkhu, Scheherazade (12 July 2018). "The Craftory aiuta le start up nella lotta ai colossi dei beni di consumo". Il Sole 24 Ore. Retrieved 22 August 2018. Molti grandi consumer group negli ultimi anni hanno costituito propri fondi capitale come mezzi per individuare e investire in nuovi trend: tra questi vi sono le aziende alimentari Mars, Kellogg's, Danone, la distilleria Diageo e Unilever, la società di prodotti alimentari e per la cura della persona. Ma The Craftory – il cui logo è una lupa che cerca con lo sguardo e con occhi simili a laser i suoi «cuccioli investimenti» – si considera essa stessa un gruppo di concorrenti, tanto quanto le aziende nelle quali spera di investire. «Si pensi al numero incalcolabile di fondi di investimento, con personale e uffici prontamente rimpiazzabili. Ecco, noi cerchiamo di proposito di essere diversi», ha aggiunto Schmitt.
  32. Spangler, Todd (3 June 2019). "Twitter Buys Artificial-Intelligence Startup to Help Fight Spam, Fake News and Other Abuse". Variety. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  33. "Twitter Buys London Start-Up Fabula AI". Silicon UK. 3 June 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  34. "Twitter's new 'Fabula' fake news finder hints at more anti-conservative bias". Washington Times. 3 June 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  35. Lomas, Natasha (6 February 2019). "Fabula AI is using social spread to spot 'fake news'". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  36. Puckett, Lily (3 June 2019). "Twitter buys tech start-up that claims to quickly spot fake news". The Independent. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  37. Waters, Robin (7 June 2018). "These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week". tech.eu. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  38. "Twitter (TWTR) Acquires Fabula AI". Streetinsidert. 3 June 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  39. Cohen, David (3 June 2019). "Twitter Acquired Fabula AI to Continue Its Push Toward Platform Health". Adweek. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  40. Dingan, Larry (3 June 2019). "Twitter acquires Fabula AI, aims to 'improve health of the conversation'". ZDnet. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  41. Lomas, Natasha (3 June 2019). "Twitter bags deep learning talent behind London startup, Fabula AI". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  42. "Twitter acquires British AI startup to address fake news". Irish News. 3 June 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  43. Levy, Katherine (13 February 2017). "Zeebox on a mission to revolutionise TV viewing". Campaign. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
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