BECHTEL VENTURES

• Portfolio and Projects since 1992.

  Portfolio and Projects since 1992.
  • Over the last two decades, Robin Bechtel's pioneering ideas & projects have been featured in:  The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, USA Today, Tech Crunch, Mashable, Time, CNN, People, Extra, The Insider, Entertainment Weekly & US Weekly. Robin Bechtel's career has been profiled in two New York Times Bestsellers:  The Long Tail by Wired Editor Chris Anderson, and Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper.

    
    

    San Jose Mercury News | Robin Bechtel & client Britney Spears:   How Hollywood stars are partnering with Silicon Valley.  

    "Bechtel makes regular pilgrimages to Silicon Valley, introducing Hollywood movers & shakers such as Britney Spears manager, to entreprenuers like Dave Morin for potential partnerships." link

    
    

    In Style Magazine |  All of our startups - Path, Everlane, Beautylish, Viddy & Spreecast featured in Best of the Web 2012.

    
    

    Extra | TV promotion of  Spreecast / Extra Partnership with X-Factor link 

    
    

    Lucky |  Startups Beautylish & Everlane feature link

    
    

    Extra & People |  Beautylish & Britney Spears feature  link

    
    

    CNBC |  Britney Spears "Backstage at Ellen" Spreecast  link

    
    

    MTV.com Buzzworthy | Features Britney Spears iPhone App developed by Robin Bechtel | Link

    
    

    Time Magazine | Britney Spears tweets with Mars Curiosity |  Link

    
    

    Bloomberg TV | Britney Spears partnership with startup Beautylish |  Link

    
    

    The Insider on CBS | Profiles startups Viddy & Uber during Britney Spears X Factor segment.

    
    

    Perez Hilton | Jason Trawick uses startup Viddy to send X Factor message to Britney Spears  |  Link

    
    

    E! Online | Britney Spears takes UBER to X-Factor rehearsals | Link

    
    

    Took Britney Spears to Silicon Valley, first celebrity to partner with mobile startup Path.    
    Tech Crunch Link 
    Business Insider Link

    Path Link

    
    

    People.com | Partnered Britney Spears with Startup Beautylish | "Why Was Britney Spears at SF Startup Beautylish?"  Link
    
    People.com | Britney Spears partners with Facebook and uses Timeline to confirm engagement. | Link

    
    

    The Atlantic | Partnered Britney Spears with launch of Google + surpasses Mark Zuckerberg to reach #1.   "Britney Spears is the best thing to Happy to Google +" | Link

    
    Britney Spears is Twitter's #3 Trending Topic of 2011 | Link

    
    

    Wall St. Journal | Partnered Britney Spears with Spotify for launch announcement | Link

    
    

    MTV.com | Created Twitter campaign that got Britney Spears an episode on Glee | Link
    
    

    Mashable.com | Ran #1 Twitter account for Britney Spears - surpassed Ashton Kutcher to reach #1. | Link
    
    

    2009. LA Times | Partnered Britney Spears with Facebook as first celebrity to sell virtual goods.  “First celebrity gifts on Facebook & who is at the forefront of this e-commerce revolution?  Britney of course.” |  Link
    

    
    

    2009.  Robin Bechtel’s career was profiled in Appetite for Self Destruction, Rise & Fall of the Music Business in the Digital Age.  Bechtel “had a knack for experimenting with radical ideas first”. | Link

    
    2008. Worked with Tom Petty during his superbowl performance as one of the first artists to ever tweet.   | Link 
    
    2008.  Produced Tom Petty.com - nominated for a Webby. |  Link
    
    2007.  Grammy nomination for creating USB Drives for White Stripes.  First of a kind music product. |  Link
    
    2006.  Started music industry's first merchandising division at Warner Bros. Records.  Signed Madonna, Josh Groban & Michael Buble.  
    
    2006.  Robin Bechtel’s career was profiled in NY Times Bestseller:  The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. |  Link
    
    2000-2007.  Worked with Madonna to design and produce Madonna.com - profiled in Taschen book of Best Websites.  Ran Madonna’s digital for 7 years overseeing her websites, merchandise, marketing, iTunes and mobile strategies. Was part of iTunes release where Steve Jobs called Madonna live from the stage.  
    
    2006. Tech Crunch | Partnered Paris Hilton with YouTube to create YouTube’s first “channel”.  | Link

    
    2006.  New York Times | Discovered YouTube & brokered the first entertainment deal.
    “deal marks the first time a major record company has licensed content to YouTube” - | Link
    
    2004 .  Wall St. Journal | Discovered MySpace and put up the site's first music stream (for band REM) 
    
    2004.  Entertainment Weekly | Created first of its kind product with Green Day- CDR’s
    “in an industry fighting illegal downloading and CD burning is offering blank discs as good as aiding and abetting the enemy”  
    | Link
    
    2003.  Worked closely with Apple to lead the iTunes movement starting with convincing artists to go digital when it launched.  
    
    2003.  Entertainment Weekly | Sold the music industry's first MP3 with Madonna which was extremely controversial at the time.  This proved selling MP3's would succeed. 
    “see how Madonna made music history - she’s the first to make singles chart strictly with Internet sales”.  | Link
    
    2001.  Started mobile division at Warner Bros. Records.  
    
    2000.   Streamed first album online with Radiohead.  Controversial at the time, as labels would only stream :30 second clips. Album debuted at #1 - “viral and word of mouth” became a term and Internet takes the credit by a landslide.  
    
    2000.  Entertainment Weekly | Created a chatting IM bot with Radiohead, The Googly Minotaur.   | Link
    
    

    1998.  Robin Bechtel named Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Entertainment by Hollywood Reporter.
    
    

    1997.  Worked with Mark Cuban / AudioNet to license Capitol Records music for his site.  This was before he went public and sold his company to Yahoo.
    
    1997.  Wall St. Journal | Sold the first digital single on the Internet for band Duran Duran.  “first major label to sell a music single online and signals a turning point for the music industry” | Link 
    
    1994.  USA Today | Created first website for a band:  Megadeth, Arizona.  Won design awards and garnered global PR as the Internet’s First Band website.   | Link
    
    1993.  NME London | Created first music screensaver for The Beastie Boys.  Some of the first PR ever written about digital.  | Link
    
    1990.  Created first technology games for Bonnie Raitt and Frank Sinatra.  Won New Media Invision Award.   These projects garnered the first PR ever written for digital in music.  
    
    

    
    
• Bio.

  Bio.
  • ABOUT ROBIN SLOAN BECHTEL.

    
    

    Robin Sloan Bechtel is a Grammy-nominated new media pioneer best known for “introducing the music industry to the Internet” in the early ‘90s. Robin is widely recognized as a matchmaker of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. She’s credited for discovering, what were then, unknown startups like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and MySpace and being the first to partner them with entertainment. For the past two decades, Robin’s built unprecedented strategic partnerships between the entertainment world and startups, fueling growth and mainstream success for tech companies.

    Starting the first new media division in the entertainment industry in 1992, Robin’s projects laid the foundation for the way music is marketed today. She created the first website for a band, which garnered global press coverage and won design awards. In 1997, she sold the music industry’s first digital single, which the Wall Street Journal called “a turning point for an industry.” Her digital strategy for Radiohead included streaming an album online for the first time. Global media coverage credited this as the reason that the band’s album debuted at number one, which helped shift the industry’s fear of sharing music online. At Warner Bros. Records, Robin built the music industry’s first mobile, digital music and merchandising divisions, which created hundreds of millions in revenue to the label. She worked with Apple to launch iTunes and discovered and partnered with YouTube, marking the entertainment industry’s first partnership with the online video platform.

    Over the last few years, Robin created Britney Spears’ innovation brand by partnering Britney with prominent startups, which garnered extensive business, tech and mainstream press for both the startups and Britney. Robin grew Britney's online platform to over 50 million in audience, as well as reaching #1 on Twitter and Google+.

    Robin has worked with the biggest names in entertainment and her projects have been featured in The Wall St. Journal, New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, Time, Los Angeles Times, Tech Crunch, Mashable, People and US Weekly.  Her career has been profiled in two New York Times Bestsellers: The Long Tail and Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Crash Of The Record Industry.  She was also named one of the Most Powerful Women in Entertainment by the Hollywood Reporter and one of Music's Top 100 Most Influential People.

    Robin is also an investor in Uber, Path, Everlane, Beautylish and Spreecast.

    
    

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