Heavy.com raises yet another round

Heavy.com is easily most mature online video site in terms of venture capital funding. According to PE Hub, the company has just raised its fifth round.

The round, which came out through one of PE Week’s signature habit of rifling through regulatory files, is valued at at least $12.8 million, from backers including Polaris Venture Partners and Jacobson investments. New York City-based Heavy, founded in 1999, had previously raised $10 million in a round led by Polaris announced in January of this year.

To be fair, we think the company’s total funding prior to this year had amounted to about $5 million, which isn’t exorbitant. The founders had told us in the past that their company has been profitable for most of its existence. Still, $23 million in one year is most definitely not small change!

Heavy.com’s angle (if you can call it that!) is a young, male audience, and a 50-50 mix of user-generated and internally produced content. The site has been accused of padding its traffic with pop-ups, resulting in a 35 percent drop after Nielsen/NetRatings started excluding pop-ups from traffic tallies in October.