Ooyala Raises $10M, Disses Competitors
Ooyala, which we just named to our NewTeeVee’s Next Big Thing list tonight, has raised $10 million in Series C funding in a round lead by Rembrandt Venture Partners and including previous investor Sierra Ventures. The Mountain View Calif.-based video platform startup has now raised a total of $20 million.
Ooyala, which recently hired CEO Jay Fulcher, said it has more than 500 customers delivering hundreds of millions of streams per month, and it plans to expand into Europe next, as well as onto the iPhone and Android and Microsoft Silverlight.
Alongside its funding, the company released a fact-sheet to the press with some fighting words about its competition. See below — ouch!
Q. Who are your biggest competitors?
A. The incumbent solutions we compete against most often are the homegrown implementations of video. There are over 10,000 of these in the top 100,000 Quantcast sites. Outside of that, we believe that Brightcove is next closest competitor.
Q. What do you think of the recent acquisition of the Feedroom by KIT Digital? What do you think the OVP landscape will look like by the end of 2010?
A. Like so many companies in the OVP space that were started in the late 90s or earlier part of this decade, the Feedroom stopped building technology and focused on building custom video solutions, which is not a business that can easily scale. As a result, their revenues were stunted and ultimately absorbed by KIT Digital. For 2010, I think many of the small providers like Delve Networks, Episodic.com, Twistage will fall by the way-side. Companies that already have some level of success but not very much technology, like Fliqz and Multicast, will be consolidated into a company that primarily provides professional services. Depending on what Brightcove’s investors plan to do, they may also be taken out in the next 6-12 months.
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[...] funny how fundraising is such a widely written about activity when it really has little to do with product or business [...]
Raising $10 Investment For Viddler —…
— 12:32 PM on October 14, 2009
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Uh, and what about ThePlatform, owned by that little company called Comcast? http://tvnewsstream.com/uh-ooyala-theres-a-little-company-called-thep
How classy… Just goes to show the immaturity of management… How ironic would it be if Ooyala shutdown and Brightcove survived?
Nice billboard material for Twistage, Fliqz, Multicast, Episodic, Delve, and BC.
I wonder what value Ooyala found in poking the competition?
Very classy. How much you want to bet that they’ve lost a bunch of business lately to the 3 they diss (Delve Networks, Episodic.com, Twistage)? I think they are right about Fliqz et al though. No unique technology. Just a low price point. They’ll be squeezed between the free (YouTube et al) and the low-end offerings from some of the aforementioned dissed companies. The fact is the market is big and will support various angles/niches.
Liz: I bet Delve, Episodic and Twistage can validate my hypothesis of Ooyala winning competitive bids.
Not classy at all. I am not sure where this immature atitude comes from. Its one thing to show confidence about execution which would have been great but to completely “diss” the competition was irrelevant. Maybe this is how they might treat customers the bigger they grow and more resources they attain. Something to keep an eye on…
Agreed, Mike. The market is definitely big enough – especially now – to support several different niches and angles. Not to mention up and comers that Ooyala didn’t call out who are making a splash in their own right (Digitalsmiths, Unicorn Media, etc.). And even further, they’re ignoring how many organizations are using their own resources to build in-house solutions because they have to; there just aren’t many third party providers who have a professional grade backend platform. Simply putting a video player on a website isn’t a great business – providers who offer a flexible and scalable solution that lets companies upload and manage their assets, syndicate them to any device or site, monetize them and then analyze their audiences are going to have the most success. There’s still just too much innovation happening to be making predictions about who’s going to be the last one standing.
Not a bad summary of the US VMS providers, but Ooyala’s technology is very clunky and basic from my experience, so they should be careful of throwing stones in a glass house. Also, since they recently claimed to be profitable, why are they diluting themselves so badly ?
How is Ooyala not a homegrown implementation of video.
I can’t see there’s anything unique about Ooyala either? We’re all on the same ground technologies wise. It’s a matter of how well you tell your stories and make your customers believe you have some unique technologies.
Jay – You should be ashamed of yourself. It just goes to show you how little you actually know about this industry. I’ve already heard of at least three large deals that you LOST because your team was found to be both cocky and immature. Sure, you have interesting technology, but so do twenty other online video platforms… and most everyone else provides oustanding service along with it! I thought perhaps that “the boys” brought you in to raise the maturity level, but it appears that you are just another child in a long line of in-house foosball champions.
Why do they make it so hard to find pricing information?
Don’t they want to be compared with others?
What would it cost to provide a 3 minute, ten meg video to an audience of 1000?
Free Trial upgrade shows:”Current fees for this Backlot account are $0.25 per hour for video delivered and $50 per gigabyte (GB) per month exceeding 5GB of managed content for platform access. Your credit card will be billed based on usage at the end of each month.”
10 megs averages 3 minutes = 20 (full) views for 1 hour of delivered video for $25c. 1000 viewers divided by 20 = 50 hours @ $0.25 = $12.50
1000 views x 10 meg = 10 gig. 5 Gig free.. 5 Gig @ $50
Total = $62.50
No wonder ooyala pricing is a secret!