New York-based online television network blip.tv has closed its second round of institutional capital, led by Bain Capital Ventures. The company had previously closed a round of funding (June 2007) with Ambient Sound Investments, the venture capital vehicle of the foursome that made up Skype’s founding engineering team. On both occasions, we tried to obtain more information on the amount of investment, but the company is not disclosing how big the its war chest currently is.
Update: a regulatory filing has revealed the amount was $5.2 million.
It is also not clear whether Blip.tv is making any money, although that hasn’t stopped CEO Mike Hudack from joining Team Cyprus. Web video is still a phenomenon in search of a business model. Blip.tv is still carving out a name for itself in a crowded market. Grabbing onto the safety line of this cash infusion will give it some more time to establish itself.
Blip.tv was founded in May of 2005 and claims to have grown to serving more than 51 million video views in September 2008, which would represent a 250% increase compared to September 2007 (Compete shows traffic numbers back up that statement). The company now distributes more than 37,000 actively updated Web shows, which release an average of three new episodes per month.
Blip.tv’s distribution network already includes platforms like iTunes, AOL Video and Facebook, but the money from Bain Capital will be used primarily to expand its syndication relationships.
Here is a Beet.tv interview with Blip.tv’s director of ad sales Sam Stahl from August, explaining the business:
Blip.tv is smart for not disclosing the amount of money it has raised. Many of its competitors were more interested in disclosing that kind of data than excelling on the front lines… not surprised to see more and more financial backers want to back Blip.tv.
Disclosure: we’ve integrated Blip.tv’s player into our CMS at WatchMojo.com. Not a week goes by when some company doesn’t want to offer their own platform with all of the bells and whistles, but we stick with Blip.tv.
Very smart on their part, taking capital when they can. Its all about balance sheet management.
Sounds like a debt round to me. Bain is sharp enough to realize open source platforms for video publishing/distribution are emerging in the down economy.
yeah I think blip.tv sounds like it might be very useful to content creators.
At least their employees are safe…for a while
…but their better find a biz model ASAP…
Jason, I don’t think that any of the Open Source solutions are there yet for things like this. The closest I’ve seen are Nate Aune/Jazkarta’s efforts with their Plone.tv platform/turnkey video hosting.
I met with one of their co-founders and a developer this weekend and it sounds like the company has their stuff together quite well and are doing a good job. Not hiring more people than needed, and keeping an eye on the ball well. It sounded like some of the new features they are working on are very smart and make sense in the market right now.
Kudos to Blip, I love their service. It rocks.
This is great news. I’m a content creator and I love what Blip provides – great video quality and distribution options. The fact that they pay doesn’t hurt either.
Good stuff. I like the product from Blip..
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