Wistia Goes Up Against Big Video for Business

Wistia, a startup focused on providing online video services for businesses, came out of its “under the radar” mode this week. The sector it’s in has certainly gotten more crowded since the company was founded two and half years ago.

The Wistia business offering is pretty straightforward: It provides secure video hosting and sharing services that allow other companies to communicate and work together via web video. The company sees its biggest opportunities in training, marketing and collaboration (e.g., an ad agency sharing iterations of a commercial with a client).

Based in Lexington, Mass., Wistia was founded in the summer of 2006 and has taken one, undisclosed round of angel funding and currently has five employees. The company is not profitable, is not currently looking for additional funding, and has 25 customers including Cushman & Wakefield, Nestle Nutrition and Sonus Networks. According to Chris Savage, Wistia CEO and co-founder the cost for the service varies, but can go as low as hundreds of dollars per month.

Wistia is up against some big competition in the “YouTube for business” space. IVT has built up an impressive roster of clients including Cisco, IBM and Ernst & Young, and offers webcasting (a service Wistia does not). Other players include Veodia, Cisco, and a little company called Google, which launched video sharing for businesses in September.