Video analytics startup Vidyard could list within two years

December 20, 2013 Leave a comment

Video analytics startup Vidyard could list within two years

3:16pm EST

By Ashutosh Pandey and Sayantani Ghosh

(Reuters) – When InContact Inc, a provider of internet-based call center services, wanted to gauge the success of its video marketing campaign, it turned to Canadian video analytics startup Vidyard.Vidyard – which says it could list its shares within the next two years – analyzed how many people InContact’s videos reached and how long they were watched, enabling its customer to better target its audience.

“(InContact) increased user engagement and click through rate by 57 percent but they also drove … millions of dollars in pipeline,” Vidyard’s Chief Executive Michael Litt told Reuters.

Kitchener, Ontario-based Vidyard, dubbed “YouTube for Business” by some in the industry, also enables users to embed video in their websites, view real-time attention span data and share videos on social networks.

The company, whose customers include Salesforce.com, Rockwell Automation Inc and Fidelity National Information Services Inc, expects to double its customer base to about 2,000 over the next year.

Litt said an IPO was not likely in 2014.

“It’s something that is kind of within a 24-month perspective,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

Litt, 27, founded Vidyard in 2010 with his college buddy Devon Galloway, who is the company’s chief operating officer.

The duo received initial funding from American startup incubator Y Combinator and raised additional funds from angel investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, former BlackBerry Chief Operating Officer Dennis Kavelman and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

Vidyard, which in March secured $6 million in its series A financing led by venture capital firm OMERS Ventures, expects to go in for another round of private financing well ahead of its market debut.

“We are quite pleased in principle with the investment … we are very pleased with the progression that Vidyard has made in the marketplace,” said Kevin Kimsa, managing director at OMERS Ventures.

“We are really in it for the long run.”

Vidyard, some of whose products compete with offerings from online video publisher Brightcove Inc, said it expects to at least double its headcount over the next year. It currently employs about 50 people.

Filed under TMT Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment