Following Allison Goldberg’s nomination and subsequent promotion to the top job last year, it is the turn of another managing director at Time Warner Investments, the corporate venture capital (CVC) unit of the US-based publisher, to put on the rising star cap.
Since her nomination last year, Goldberg was promoted to senior vice-president following Rachel Lam’s departure – giving way for Scott Levine to step up.
Levine’s role in the CVC unit’s development has been perhaps just as central as Goldberg’s. Having joined the company in 2011, the managing director is in charge of sourcing, evaluating and executing venture investments in early-stage media and technology companies focusing in areas strategic to the Time Warner and its subsidiaries, including TV network HBO.
These areas include for instance advertising technology, online video, mobile, gaming, and cross-platform content distribution.
In 2017, Time Warner closed two investments as lead investor: one was a $27m series-B round for augmented reality technology developer 8i, and the other a $6m series-A round for Vemba – a player-agnostic video distribution platform.
The unit also took parts in several rounds as non-lead investor, including a $12m series-D round for Bustle Digital Group, a $21m series-C round for Mic Network, a $40m round for over-the-top (OTT) video analytics group Conviva (in which Levine was involved), and a series-B $30m round for Samba TV.
Aside from his contribution to the Conviva round, Levine led Time Warner’s investment in data management platform Krux, recently sold to Salesforce for $800m. He also took part in the NextVR and Mindshow deals, and in the investment in over-the-top (OTT) video services You.iTV.
Levine also contributed to Time’s involvement in social media ad buying platform Adaptly, and in the YouTube multi-channel network Maker Studios, sold to Disney for $675m.
Prior to joining Time Warner, Levine was a senior vice-president for business development at social network company MyYearbook.com. Before that, he served as a senior vice-president for corporate development at Sony Music for two years, and was also vice-president at US-based private equity firm General Atlantic.
A graduate of Stanford University, where he completed a PhD in electrical engineering, Levine later on went on to do an MBA at Columbia University’s Business School.