Frequent co-investors Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital are teaming up again to invest a reported $4 million in Boxee, a startup that makes the "Firefox of media center software," as Wilson describes it in a blog post Tuesday morning.
Wilson says he has met with Boxee founder Avner Ronen several times over the last year and has been playing with the Boxee software on the Mac Mini in his family's living room since spring but had declined investing in the company.
"For the first time, we had a single interface built for a family room remote into all of our video, music, and photo libraries and Web services," says Wilson about installing the software in the spring. "My daughter saw it and said 'genius.' That's a big compliment coming from her. But even so, I wasn't sold. Just because our family liked it doesn't mean there's a market for it. So I told Avner no once more."
He changed his mind in September, when Rosen told Wilson that more than 10,000 people had downloaded Boxee for the Mac and that someone in the open-source community had built an Apple TV version.
"That was the market validation we were looking for," says Wilson.
Boxee, which is still in a closed alpha, runs on Linux as well as on the Mac and will soon run on Windows. More than 100,000 people have signed up for it, according to Wilson. For a demo of the software, see video below.
The startup joins a formidable list of competitors that want to control the home entertainment system, including Apple Inc. [APPL], Microsoft Corp. [MSFT] and Sony Corp. [SNE].
Wilson and Spark's Bijan Sabet (whose resume includes stints at Web TV Networks and Moxi Digital) are joining Boxee's board.
Union Square and Spark also co-invested in Bug Labs, Covestor, Tumblr Inc. and Twitter, according to Sabet. -- Mary Kathleen Flynn
See Nov. 18 post on Boxee by Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures blog
See Nov. 18 post on Boxee from Bijan Sabet's blog
See Nov. 17 post by Avner Rosen on Boxee blog
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