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Chicago, June 6, 2007 - Hopewell Ventures, a $110 million venture capital fund licensed by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC), announced today that it has completed a $3.5 million venture investment in VHT, Inc., a leading provider of visual marketing production, management and distribution services to the real estate industry.
Headquartered in Des Plaines, Illinois, VHT was founded in 1999 and has experienced significant growth. VHT provides professional production, management and distribution of visual content - including images, video, multimedia tours and Video on Demand TV spots - for over 3,500 companies and 75,000 individuals at leading marketers of real estate, hospitality, and other locations and destinations. VHT's production services include the creation of visual content by VHT's nationwide team of professional photographers and videographers as well as the award-wining editors and Image Specialists at VHT Studios. VHT's Media Gateway and visual asset management services provide for the resizing, reformatting, repurposing, tracking and distribution of visual assets for use in all media. With the rapidly increasing demand for engaging online and off-line visual content from both advertisers and media companies, VHT is now poised to significantly accelerate its national expansion.
VHT maximizes a client/advertiser's return on investment in images and video by integrating and managing all of the production, repurposing and placement services, with a single point of contact. This provides advertisers the most cost effective way to utilize their visual assets across print, TV, wireless, internet and other visual media. For media companies looking to fill broadband internet, video on demand (VOD) and wireless data networks, VHT acts as a valuable source of both clients and visual content.
Brian Balduf, CEO of VHT said: "The entire VHT team is delighted to have Hopewell Ventures as a partner in our effort to expand our services. With the changes in the real estate market and over 10 million homes for sale every year, our services are in demand now more than ever. The additional resources from Hopewell Ventures will enable us to provide even better service to our clients and media partners. Hopewell Ventures also brings significant management experience as we pioneer new areas of digital media."
With the investment, Tom Parkinson and Matt McCue will join the company's board of directors.
www.HopewellVentures.com
www.VHT.com
Hopewell's investment of $3.5 million is part of a $3.8 million Series B round of financing; previous investors also participated. Since its 2004 inception, Hopewell has invested in ten Midwestern companies. Other Hopewell investments include: iTRACS, a leading provider of physical layer network infrastructure management solutions; CSMG, a sports talent, marketing and management firm that represents high-profile athletes such as Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat and Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles; SageQuest, a provider of automatic vehicle location hardware, software and services; National Pasteurized Eggs, the world's largest processor of pasteurized shell eggs; Pioneer Surgical Technologies, a rapidly-growing producer of innovative spinal surgery products; and TLContact, the provider of a private patient Web page service, called CarePages, to the nation's leading healthcare institutions. TLContact was recently acquired by Steve Case's Revolution Health Group.
Latest investment by Midwest-focused venture capital fund will enable VHT to broaden its role in providing visual marketing solutions to leading real estate companies |
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