Brightcove, an online video platform and destination start-up has raised a whopping $59.5 million in new funding from strategic and large institutional investors. The new investors include Maverick Capital, Brookside Capital, AllianceBernstein, The New York Times Company and Transcosmos. Existing investors such as Allen & Company, AOL, and Accel Partners participated in this round of financing.
The funding closed yesterday, company CEO Jeremy Allaire wrote to us in an email this morning. We had reported in November that the company was looking to raise over $55 million. The company had previously raised over $21 million in two rounds of financing. On his blog this morning, Allaire notes:
2007 is clearly going to be a major year for online video, and also a year of consolidation as many of the hundreds of online video startups seek a place in the new ecosystem. We also expect 2007 to be a year where established media companies make more bets.
BrightCove is in a crowded and competitive online video market. If on one hand it is taking on the mighty Google-YouTube combo, then on the other hand it is fighting with tiny tots who keep popping up every so often. The emergence of P2P TV-Video start-ups like Joost is another worry for BrightCove, since they are going after the big media companies as well. With another $59.5 million or so in the coffers, Allaire has ensured that at least he can fight for a long time.
Is there any estimate / knowledge as to the valuation of Brightcove?
Raising so much money means a very high valuation for privately held company.
Wow, $60M, that’s a lot! I wonder what the post-money is? I bets it’s in the range of $250M, so that means that Brightcove has to exit for at least a couple billion in order for it to be an interesting investment for the VCs. Amazing.
Yes indeed the BUBBLE is back with even BIGGER Delusions of grandeur.
$60M… Crap that is a ton of cash to raise. Wonder where this startup will be in five years… Crazy! Thanks for the post.
Bambi Francisco says she’s been told the valuation is $220 million: http://bambi.blogs.com/bambifrancisco/2007/01/brightcovesqua.html
Correct link is:
http://bambi.blogs.com/bambifrancisco/2007/01/brightcovesqua.html
Ooops, the underscore was swallowed. Its before the qua.html.
Why?
We had posted back in November 2006 that the company was looking for a $225 million valuation. I am not sure if that is true today or not, but it is certainly over 200 million.
and yes i do agree – $60 million is a whole lotta cash. if this is not enough to take them to the promised land, than nothing will.
On another note, I think they should be focusing on the large media companies instead of chasing the YouTube type market opportunity. There is a lot more money in being an enabler, and makes them a lucrative take out target for one of the big boys like Arris or even Cisco.
As a vlogger, I wanted to chime in on the Brightcover platform. It’s by no means the easiest thing to learn or to setup. But, the platform is so robust, and offers so much customization, that it was a no brainer to utilize their service.
I do have very many complaints about the service, as it requires way too many steps to upload and publish a video. If they have any hopes of capturing a wider market, they’ll have to streamline this process.
They also seem to have required the content owners to convert their videos to a flash file prior to uploading. I guess this significantly reduces their server side activity and bandwidth usage, but this is a tedious task to require of the publisher – especially when all other video sharing websites provide this service instantaneously.
After the tedious learning curve and setup, things become easier to implement as you continue to add content to your account. But, I still find many steps combersome. I guess I can expect my patience during video uploads to thin over time as well.
But, after all these negative aspects, the player platform is uncomparable in the industry. Let’s hope this $60mm goes to improving the publisher’s experience and ease of usability.
“Brightcove1, an online video platform and destination”
Please, that “Brihtcovel” link should point to the company web address, not to the “Brightcovel” tag.
Om, you couldn’t have been more on target when you said they “should be focusing on the large media companies instead of chasing the YouTube type market opportunity. There is a lot more money in being an enabler, and makes them a lucrative take out target for one of the big boys like Arris or even Cisco.”
I share your opinion 110%. Brightcove does what it does very well with better technology than YouTube. They should absolutely hold their flag up and build quality content partners. I think the fact that they raised $60M serves as direction and distance they are willing to go. Certainly a major head start financing-wise compared to the Venice Project (sorry, Joost now, is it?), Veoh, and other players.
As a side note, I should hire whoever is responsible for orchestrating the deal. If you are that person and you are reading this – I will double whatever you are getting now!!! smile
Don’t think they should just pursue big media, but do think they need to hone in on more specific role in the online video ecosystem…too much money could give them the flexibility to continue to wear too many hats, which could allow the Joosts of the world to win critical specific segments. Blogged more over at NextBlitz as well.
$81 million pumped into company that places broken flashboxes on sites, and maybe slicked on some nice admin interface behind the scenes. this is the knid of thing that techcrunch makes fun of – but i can only be simultaneously jealous/disgusted/angry
I’d be interested in hearing any comments about how brightcove and maven networks compare in terms of technologies and business position (i.e., business model, likelihood of success, partnerships).
thanks,
jp
As everyone knows by now, video is very exciting. I think in the next few years people will discover that video is appropriate for certain areas of the consumer market, right now it seems like everyone wants to use video for everything. I think the small business arena will benefit the most from video which is pretty much the thesis behind Jippidy.com