Kontiki Spins Away from VeriSign

Kontiki, an early commercial peer-to-peer platform provider, is off to the next stop in its life. It has been purchased from VeriSign by its former investor MK Capital, as has been reported elsewhere. The company had been acquired only a year and a half ago by VeriSign for $62 million — not a great exit considering it had raised $41 million in venture capital prior to that.

Kontiki had been on the block for a while now, as VeriSign looked to focus on its core Internet infrastructure business, but there weren’t any obvious buyers. No purchase price for the most recent transaction was announced, but Dan Rayburn had said earlier this month that the company would be sold for around $40 million, or 3x revenue. So it seems the company’s value continues to go down as it ages. Update: According to a regulatory filing, the price was $1 million plus a stake in Kontiki. (paidContent)

Meanwhile, Kontiki’s customer list doesn’t seem to have changed for years now, but it saw its BBC iPlayer project finally come to fruition when it launched last year.

Kontiki, though it has never really lived up to its potential, has a special place in this reporter’s heart, as it was probably the very first online video company I covered. At the beginning of 2005, I interviewed Kontiki founder and beloved Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike Homer in his Atherton home for a feature on content delivery for Red Herring magazine.

Though Homer is no longer involved, Kontiki will be retaining Eric Armstrong and Todd Johnson as president and chairman, respectively. We hope to speak with Armstrong later today and will post an update.