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Corporation
summitmedia.com.ph

Investments

6

Portfolio Exits

1

Partners & Customers

5

About Summit Media

Summit Media is the leading magazine publisher and one of the biggest digital publishers in the Philippines.

Headquarters Location

6F & 7F Robinsons Cybergate Center Tower 3 Pioneer Street

Mandaluyong City, 1550,

Philippines

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Latest Summit Media News

Refections on Web Summit: Out of the frying pan, and out of the fire?

Nov 26, 2023

“What controversy?” said the journalist from a global mainstream television outlet to me at the Web Summit Media Dinner, earlier this month in Lisbon. For all the heat and light, the gnashing of teeth, the tearing of clothes and the clutching of pearls, the big technology conference had seemingly managed to pull itself out of the fire. After the deeply divisive public statements against Israel made by founder Paddy Cosgrave led to several boycotts from tech figures large and small, and Cosgrave stepping down as chairman and CEO (while cannily retaining a controlling financial stake), the event soldiered on . Something of a late-stage startup itself, Web Summit appeared to have staved-off its catastrophic down-round at the last minute. The Summit, which this year attracted more than 70,000 visitors, programs hundreds of speakers and designates a “Forum” for the latter group to schmooze in, creating a kind of networking event within the event in itself. The consensus amongst those I spoke to while walking this vast, speakers-only space indicated an approving thumbs-up for Katherine Maher, the new CEO , who gave a speech on the opening night full of high-minded phrases about Web Summit’s role being “more urgent now than ever,” to rapturous applause. Just as well. “We worked VERY hard on that speech…” whispered a Web Summit source to me, afterwards. Maher had previously been chair of the board at Signal Foundation and the former CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation — two credentials that make for excellent optics, especially in 2023s divisive political atmosphere. “She appears to have been grown in a lab for this job,” one attendee quipped to me, rather cheekily. Whatever her appearances, she clearly brings a wealth of experience dealing inside the crucible of contentious issues. But outside the “inside baseball” chatter and gossip among the speakers, founders and investors, the fireball that blew up in Cosgrave’s face went largely unnoticed by the attendees. With the vast majority of visitors coming from small, early-stage startups — or even more unformed than that: individuals that fancy themselves founders but are still getting ideas and more off the ground — most were far more focused on hunting down investors and their first, elusive angel rounds, than talking politics. As the years have passed, Web Summit has become rather like the “ Borg Cube ” of Star Trek. You can fire a few photon torpedos at it, but the missiles largely bounce off and the vessel itself seems to gain more energy as a result. Indeed, Cosgrave is no stranger to controversial topics, and he has sometimes been accused of engineering some of those torpedos in the first place. It was only a year ago that he’d tried to invite both the Ukraine-sceptical Grayzone publication AND Zelensky’s wife to the same event. Needless to say, Olena won that battle and the Grayzone was hastily uninvited. In fact, controversy has been par for the course for the event since its earliest days, when it was a much smaller event in Dublin and got called out for clogging up Dublin’s roads while booking out the luxury Shelbourne Hotel. Warming to the Irish angle on Paddy’s Israel/Palestine twee/Xs, my Dublin-based contacts provided extra context, over G&Ts, at the so-called ‘secret party’ for speakers set in a David-Lynchian setting for an ‘intimate’ 300 guest list. Cosgrave, they reminded me, had become so obsessed with Ireland’s internecine political wars over the last couple of years that he even went to the lengths of co-founding and funding “The Ditch”, https://www.ontheditch.com/ an investigative journalism unit almost purpose-built to shine light on the underbelly of Irish politics. “Israel? !” spluttered the long-time Irish founder, to me. “Paddy probably thought he just was tweeting to about 200 people that obsessively follow Irish politics!” Of course, whatever was going through Cosgrave’s mind or his ultimate intentions, in signalling to his Irish audience his views about Israel, Cosgrave had signalled his views to the entire world. Was it really just a little idle chatter to a small group of people that went out of control? Was it to spin up some controversy for the event that spectacularly backfired? Was it a reflection of his actual political views? Or perhaps his future political ambitions? Could it — some wags have implied — have been related to Cosgrave’s planning of an upcoming tech conference in Qatar? Whichever of these it was (or wasn’t), it’s clear that Web Summit now stands in a different place. Now under new leadership, the event may be tempted to eschew controversy in favour of more vanilla topics to suit corporate sponsors. That might be better for its bank account, but it would definitely move it even further from the edgier aspects of startup culture. If the event’s organizers have enthusiastically boasted that the week was just as strong as ever, those attending did admit it was quieter, but in an oddly positive way. “With less celebs and VCs around, I actually had more time to walk the halls and actually talk to startups,” one high-level networker said to me in the Forum. No doubt Maher hopes Web Summit won’t lose its edge. But where Cosgrave would, in the old days, have plied the bars of his aforementioned secret party, Maher was conspicuously absent. Perhaps it was a blessing. In an echo of the brief stumbling into the world’s spotlight that was Cosgrave’s tweets, everyone at Web Summit thought they *might* have to have an opinion about *that* controversial subject. In the end, most of the opinions were about the event itself, and what the Chattering Digerati got out of it. That was a pity. The advocates of Israel who’d publicly announced their non-participation were no longer there to state their case in public. There were no obvious public outcries on stage, as there was over Trump’s election, a few years ago. Instead the conversations were more conventional. Did you meet some amazing people? Were there quality startups? How was *your* side-event/dinner/secret party? Darling, mine was fabulous! So in the end, the dying embers of the fire lit on social media were consumed by only the most mundane of subjects.

Summit Media Investments

6 Investments

Summit Media has made 6 investments. Their latest investment was in Vietcetera as part of their Seed VC - II on August 8, 2021.

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Summit Media Investments Activity

investments chart

Date

Round

Company

Amount

New?

Co-Investors

Sources

8/30/2021

Seed VC - II

Vietcetera

$2.7M

Yes

9

3/22/2021

Series B

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$99M

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10

4/13/2020

Series A

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$99M

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10

12/6/2018

Seed VC

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$99M

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10

4/26/2018

Series C

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$99M

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10

Date

8/30/2021

3/22/2021

4/13/2020

12/6/2018

4/26/2018

Round

Seed VC - II

Series B

Series A

Seed VC

Series C

Company

Vietcetera

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Amount

$2.7M

$99M

$99M

$99M

$99M

New?

Yes

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Co-Investors

Sources

9

10

10

10

10

Summit Media Portfolio Exits

1 Portfolio Exit

Summit Media has 1 portfolio exit. Their latest portfolio exit was POPxo on August 06, 2020.

Date

Exit

Companies

Valuation
Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.

Acquirer

Sources

8/6/2020

Acquired

$99M

11

Date

8/6/2020

Exit

Acquired

Companies

Valuation

$99M

Acquirer

Sources

11

Summit Media Partners & Customers

5 Partners and customers

Summit Media has 5 strategic partners and customers. Summit Media recently partnered with Bent Pixels Asia on August 8, 2022.

Date

Type

Business Partner

Country

News Snippet

Sources

8/11/2022

Partner

Summit Media Expands its YouTube Advertising Solutions through Partnership with Bent Pixels Asia ASTIG.PH

The partnership ushers Summit Media 's foray into growing its YouTube channels as their new digital direction .

3

4/26/2021

Vendor

India

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10

5/5/2015

Licensor

United States

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10

3/24/2014

Partner

Canada

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10

8/19/2010

Partner

Switzerland

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10

Date

8/11/2022

4/26/2021

5/5/2015

3/24/2014

8/19/2010

Type

Partner

Vendor

Licensor

Partner

Partner

Business Partner

Country

India

United States

Canada

Switzerland

News Snippet

Summit Media Expands its YouTube Advertising Solutions through Partnership with Bent Pixels Asia ASTIG.PH

The partnership ushers Summit Media 's foray into growing its YouTube channels as their new digital direction .

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Sources

3

10

10

10

10

Summit Media Team

3 Team Members

Summit Media has 3 team members, including current Chief Financial Officer, Lorie Paz Chavez.

Name

Work History

Title

Status

Lorie Paz Chavez

Universal Robina Corp

Chief Financial Officer

Current

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Name

Lorie Paz Chavez

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Work History

Universal Robina Corp

Title

Chief Financial Officer

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Status

Current

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