MeeVee in Play: Startup Exploring Sale

MeeVee is considering selling itself, NewTeeVee has learned. The web-based TV guide startup is working with the bankers at Pagemill Partners to arrange meetings with potential acquirers in the media space. We haven’t heard yet about the identity of potential buyers or an acquisition price.

When contacted for comment, MeeVee CEO Michael Raneri did not deny that his company was contemplating sales talks. He wrote in an email,

We are exploring, but it would not be accurate to say we are selling ourselves. If it is the right buyer, and the right home for the company we would consider it.

MeeVee has popped up on our radar recently for a number of reasons that, when taken together, don’t point to a clear strategy: It laid off 20 percent off its staff over the summer, took $3.5 million in Series D funding in September, then announced it had bought aggregation startup Top 10 Sources. Last month, the company — which indexes both network TV shows and web clips, but not web-only shows — updated its service with community features, automated TV news and gossip aggregation, streamed video content, and widgets.

MeeVee sees between roughly 250,000 and 400,000 monthly uniques, according to Quantcast and Compete. BuddyTV, another TV companion site with traffic of about the same magnitude, was reportedly bought by Comcast earlier this year. A source close to the deal confirmed for us that it was worth in the single-digit millions, but BuddyTV still has yet to publicly acknowledge a sale.