Wow!, you know times suck when
MocoNews and several other trade blogs picked up a story about how venerable veteran publisher Airborne Mobile received $500k from private investor
Skuli Mogensen (never heard of him) in exchange for seat on the Canadian company's board of directors. I'm not sure why the company is telegraphing this information...because to me it reeks of desperation and seems a sad turn for a former North American personalization powerhouse, legendary for it's
irreverent style and outlandish parties (as well as outlandish style and
irreverent parties). The company, founded during the mobile content paleolithic (1999), was built upon a slew of high profile (expensive) licenses like Family Guy, Maxim, NHL, etc., as, well as solid carrier distribution. Peak revenue was probably in the $30mil range. In 2005 founders Andy
Nulman & Garner
Bornstein sold to Japanese hotshot
du jour Cybird Holdings for ~$90mil...in an era where Japanese firms (like Index &
ForSide) were snapping up Euro/US publishers willy-
nilly, ultimately with
disastrous results (but that's a whole
separate story).
Nulman/
Bornstein, who continued to run the company during the unremarkable
Cybird era, bought it back last summer (for a song, I'm sure) and raised $2mil in January from
iNovia Capital...to fund the elusive "next big mobile product." The ultimate plan, presumably, is to package Airborne up for sale 2.0...a non-trivial task now that all the dumb money has dried up and in light of the decreasing relevance/value of their existing products and relationships. But, I get ahead of myself...based on today's news I think their short term goal must be to keep the lights on at their Montreal offices.
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