Bambi Francisco

Gotuit's video on demand

 

 

Mark Pascarella, Gotuit's president, talks about the company's strategy to compete with other emerging video networks. One thing Gotuit has going for it is a sophisticated user interface. It's the difference between going to a rock concert (YouTube) and the symphony.

Interviews with video startups

During the first six months of this year, the amount of venture dollars invested in Internet video startups rose 45% to $156 million, according to Dow Jones VentureOne. Nineteen companies received that funding. If the investing continues apace, the dollars pouring into this sector will surpass the $267 million million invested in 40 startups in 2005. All told, since 2002, 139 video or video-related startups received a total of $954 million in venture financing.

Some of those companies include MeeVee, Revver, YouTube, Video Egg, Brightcove, CinemaNow, FeedRoom, and Veoh. 

Watch my interview with MeeVee President Michael Raneri

Watch my interview with Instant Media CEO Andy Leak

Watch my interview with Veoh CEO Dimitry Shapiro

Watch my interview with MobiTV CEO Philip Alveda

Also watch my interviews with two social search startups, Eurekster and PreFound

Watch my interview with PreFound CEO Steve Mansfield

Watch my interview with Eurekster CEO Steve Marder

Video publishing over easy

VideoEgg co-founder Kevin Sladek talks about how he spent 18 months building a publishing tool that transcodes video on a user's machine rather than on VideoEgg's servers. In this way, the upload time is faster. He said video uploads take about 2 minutes over a DSL line. Well, the video of his interview took me about 20 minutes on a DSL line. Nonetheless, the service does work. And, VideoEgg is one of the few companies providing private-label video-uploading services. For instance, VideoEgg is powering AOL's Uncut user-generated video service. Both companies will share ad revenue.

More startup interviews

Bebo is set to overtake MySpace in the UK for visits before this fall, according to Hitwise. Bebo climbed to take the No. 2 spot, in the Hitwise Net Communities and Chat category last week, second only to MySpace. MySpace still leads social networking sites. Bebo is No. 2, but Bebo is fast closing the gap. 

Watch my interview with Bebo founder and CEO Michael Birch

Want to know how Plaxo started? Watch this two-part story I did during Plaxo's early years. It aired on MarketWatch's business magazine show on CBS, when the founders and venture investors were seeking a CEO. The story includes the Plaxo founders, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring, and VC backers, such as Mike Moritz and Ram Shriram.

Watch Plaxo, part I and Watch Plaxo, part II

Blog churn

Technorati's David Sifry talks about the many one-hit wonders in the blogosphere. Yikes.

AddictingClips

So you want to share your videos? You can earn $250 if you submit your video to Atom Entertainment, which operates AddictingClips and AtomFilms. If you're serious about a making movies, you might want to consider this service, given Mika Salmi's track record. AtomFilms helped launch JibJab into stardom. I asked Salmi, who started Atom Entertainment about 8 years ago, how he was going to compete for user video when YouTube seems to be the place to be seen. File-size limit at AddictingClips is 100 megabytes.

Atypical financing

Kaboodle CEO and founder Manish Chandra took $3.5 million in funding from 10 strategic angel investors. It's a large sum for an angel round, hence the large number of angels. In our interview, I asked Chandra why he chose this route over the VC route, and whether he received a valuation in this round.  He did. Post-money valuation = $9.5 million. I also asked him why a Web 2.0 startup needed so much cash to operate a business. After all, don't Web 2.0 companies outsource all the content creation? Chandra has some interesting ideas he needs to build out. For instance, he's working on integrating product feeds from comparison-shopping engines and comparison-shopping travel sites. No partnerships to announce just yet. The goal? To get consumers to create pages of shopping or travel lists and to match these consumers up with the vendors.

Watch interview with Chandra

AddictingClips

So you want to share your videos? You might win $250 if you submit your video to Atom Entertainment, which operates AddictingClips and AtomFilms. If you're serious about making movies, you might want to consider this service, given Mika Salmi's track record. AtomFilms helped launch JibJab into stardom. I asked Salmi, who started Atom Entertainment about 8 years ago, how he was going to compete for user video when YouTube seems to be the place to be seen. File-size limit at AddictingClips is 100 megabytes.
 

Jajah founder

Jahah, which received several million from Sequoia back in October, is getting traction these days. Co-founder Roman Scharf says his voIP service is as easy as searching on Google.
 

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

Can't read what Mark's shirt says? It says: "My mom thinks I'm cool." This is an interview at the MarketWatch offices in the fall of 2005. Facebook has come a long way from its $100 million valuation back then. Viacom offered $750 million for the startup earlier this year, according to someone close to the situation.