News

Ricall secures multi-million pound financing from Benchmark Capital

Ricall, the world’s leading music research and licensing market, today announced that it has raised its first round of institutional funding from Benchmark Capital Europe. The money raised will be used to expand Ricall’s commercial music user network, market the brand and develop the company’s proprietary technology.  Benchmark Capital, a top-tier venture capital firm, has previously backed significant technology success stories such as eBay, Red Hat and Handspring.

Ricall brings together professional buyers and sellers of music via its website to facilitate the licensing of music for any business use. At any one time, there are more than £1 million worth of active quote requests on ricall.com to use music in advertisements, films, TV programmes, promos, video games and corporate productions.

'This is a huge vote of confidence in Ricall’s business by one of the most successful venture capital companies in the world,' said Richard Corbett, Chief Executive Officer of Ricall. 'The funding enables us to take the company to the next stage. We look forward to working with Benchmark to develop our offering significantly and further consolidate our leading position in the market.'

Ynon Kreiz, general partner at Benchmark Capital Europe, and founder of Fox Kids Europe, who has joined Ricall’s board said: 'Ricall has a highly experienced management team and has created a market-leading online service that has proven its value to an impressive and growing client base. Ricall is poised for rapid expansion and we are delighted to be able to play a meaningful part in that.'

More than 3,500 record companies, 22,000 music publishers use and tens of thousands of professional music buyers use ricall.com to access, research and licence music from the world’s most comprehensive music archive totalling more than 3 million tracks and which encompasses every hit to have charted in the UK since 1952, and the US Hot 100 since 1954.

Ricall’s board now is comprised of some of the most successful and experienced professionals across the domains of media, technology and finance including:

- Richard Corbett (formerly with Famous Music Publishing and MCG Consulting before founding Ricall)
- Ynon Kreiz (board member of ProSieben Sat.1, NASN, Setanta and Codemasters)
- Mark Schneider (founder and CEO of UPC, Europe’s largest cable company, sold to Liberty Media International)
- Roger Ames (former worldwide Chairman & CEO of Warner Music Group and former CEO London Records sold to AOL Time Warner)
- Tracy Bennett (former Managing Director of London Records sold to AOL Time Warner and MD of Buddhist Punk Records)
- Eric Wright (founder & CEO of EJW Associates, sold to WWP Group)
- Neil Hadfield (CFO & CTO of Western Pacific Data Systems, sold to Spirent Plc)
- Colin McGill (CEO of Fox-Pitt Kelton, sold to Swiss Reinsurance)

About Ricall
Founded in 1998, Ricall operates the world’s leading music research and licensing market. The website, www.ricall.com, brings together professional buyers and sellers of music to facilitate the licensing of music for any business use. The physical music archive that drives the website encompasses more than 2.5 million records, including every hit to have charted in the UK since 1952, and the US Hot 100 since 1954. Since commercial launch, over $21 million worth of synch licences have been transacted via the website. For more information visit www.ricall.com.

About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs build great technology companies focused on long-term growth. With offices in Europe, US (Silicon Valley) and Israel, Benchmark’s partners take an intensive, hands-on, team-oriented, approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm’s portfolio companies. Benchmark’s portfolio includes franchise companies such as Alphyra, the leading pan European electronic payments provider, Betfair (the world’s largest online betting company), eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR), MySQL (the leading open source database business), Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) and Setanta, the leading sports pay-tv broadcaster.

Managing more than $3 billion in committed venture capital, Benchmark focuses on investing in entrepreneurs with original ideas. Benchmark arrived in Europe in May 2000 since when it has made over 40 investments across a variety of market sectors and geographies. The $375m currently being invested by Benchmark in Europe follows Benchmark’s first European fund of $500m. For more information on Benchmark, visit its website at www.benchmark.com