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Ashton Kutcher Promotes His Tech Investments on TV show Two and a Half Men
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Ashton Kutcher is leveraging his new gig on Two and a Half Men to provide exposure for some of his most prominent startup investments — via the back of his laptop.
Kutcher, who replaced Charlie Sheen after Sheen’s public meltdown, plays a heartbroken Internet billionaire named Walden Schmidt. So far, viewers have been receptive to the switch: Kutcher’s debut episode last week drew an astounding 28.7 million viewers, while this week’s show still attracted more than 20 million viewers.
Now Kutcher is using his TV exposure to give some tech startups the spotlight. During Monday’s episode of Two and a Half Men, several scenes depicted Kutcher with his laptop, which is plastered with stickers from startups such as Foursquare, GroupMe (recently acquired by Skype), Hipmunk, Chegg and Flipboard.
Those companies also happen to be some of Kutcher’s highest-profile angel investments. Kutcher, a prolific angel investor in recent years, is also an investor in Milk, TinyChat, Fab.com, Path, Airbnb, Optimizely and Blekko, among others.
This is the kind of mainstream exposure that Kutcher’s investments were likely banking on when they took his money. Indeed, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley posted a screengrab of Kutcher on his laptop to Instagram.
Update: According to Kutcher, CBS didn’t like him promoting companies that didn’t pay for promotion. They let it go for the first episode — but will obscure the stickers on the laptop in any future appearances.
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