51 - 150 in alphabetical order of CVC unit: Kenneth Bronfin, senior managing director, Hearst Ventures
Media group Hearst Corporation, founded by fabled businessman William Randolph Hearst in 1887, has been a stalwart of corporate venturing for more than two decades. Hearst Ventures now has more than $1bn in strategic investments in companies operating at the intersection of media and technology.
As an early adopter of corporate venturing, it can lay claim to starting its investment program as one of five corporate investors in Netscape, the US-based search engine widely credited for kicking off the dot-com boom due to the success of its initial public offering in 1995.
Kenneth Bronfin has been the senior managing director of Hearst Ventures since 2013, having previously president and group head of Hearst Interactive Media for more than 10 years. Speaking to GCV in 2016, he said: “We are focused on companies with the potential to change the media landscape.” Increasingly, this has meant looking for deals outside the US, and Hearst Ventures now has offices in London, Tel Aviv and Beijing.
Recent deals include a series B round for Plum Guide, a holiday rental service, and participation in the series D round for business management artificial intelligence (AI) developer Signal AI. Among Hearst Ventures’ exits have been streaming service Roku, which had its IPO in 2017, and online publisher Buzzfeed, which went public in 2021.
Bronfin has been with Hearst since 1996, having previously worked for media giant NBC Universal. He has a degree in engineering from the University of Virginia as well as an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
