Instructional video site 5min, based in NYC and Israel, has raised an additional $7.5 million in a round led by Globespan Capital Partners and joined by previous investor Spark Capital, reports Israeli business news site Globes. This brings the total of capital invested in the startup, founded in 2006, to a healthy $12.8 million.
Its most recent financing round was $5 million from Spark back in November 2007, following a painful $300,000 angel round (at least it was painful for the startup’s founders) which we talked about a bit in the post covering the announcement of their first VC round.
5min is in essence a syndication platform for instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos, both professionally produced and user-generated. The service’s video library boasts tens of thousands of videos across a variety of categories (e.g. Pets), submitted by media companies and independent producers from around the world. The site has clearly struck a chord with legions of people looking for free hands-on instructions captured on video, since 5min reportedly attracts a significant audience of between 160 and 200 million unique visitors on a monthly basis.
A big part of its vast reach comes from hundreds of publishers and advertisers who use the company’s VideoSeed product, which uses semantic technology to automatically match videos to their respective audiences. What I personally like about 5min is the rich, custom video player, dubbed SmartPlayer, and the generally high quality of the how-to videos. An example video is embedded below.
(Thanks to Ouriel Ohayon for the tip)
Is there a such thing as a funded startup in the United States that isn’t located in
- California
- Seattle
- Boston
- New York
?
Entrepreneurs tend to go where the venture capitalists are, and then the venture capitalists follow the entrepreneurs so they can invest in good ideas.
I’m sure you can figure out the next steps in this process.
Hey Dan, erm, ever heard of Zappos? They’ll invest if the team and the opportunity are solid.
okthxbye
Does this also lead to only reporting about those companies?
Again you guys need to focus on the positive aspect of this post. In my opinion that’s quite an accomplishment for a small company to be able to raise that kind of money in the middle of Recession.
So to the majority of TechCrunch Readers – Please stop being so Negative and Critical all the time. Take a chill pill and be POSITIVE!! for a change. Peace!!
There were no negative words or sarcastic indicators in the question I asked. You need a better sentiment detection algorithm.
In Buffalo… or Bangalore. Funding is like buying a lottery ticket you know…
How will this 5min can compete with youtube?
Atlanta
I don’t understand what makes this any better than VideoJug?
Someone plz enlighten me.
5min is a syndication platform. You can see 5min Videos all across the web (for example: http://www.answ...opic/apple-cake).
It’s not, it’s all the same crap. Out of all the “hot air” investments in Web 2.0 companies I’ve seen so far, this one boggles my mind the most.
There is no chance they have “between 160 and 200 million unique visitors” when Compete says 1.7 million. A little overblown PR wouldn’t you say? And here I thought this recession would smarten up investors. Guess not.
Hey Mr. VC,
A great investment! Sure, the guys at Best Buy don’t have the skills, but this site is sure to be bought by them to help with their sales.
I see a big exit here — $100MM quick from a major manufacturer or wait, CISCO to pair with their new FLIP camera acquisition.
No? This is a cash flow business? Yes! People paying $50 per hour course on video production — we’re gonna make a billion bucks on this thing!
Or Google / Youtube — this is the way we’ll get to 10 billion videos on Youtube, all HD quality, we’ll buy this Video education site for like $200MM and outbid Sony and Best Buy.
Brilliant!!!!
Dr Lauren = Dr Hot.
5 min = hot = dr lauren = hot
That’s quite an equation.
Smart idea. Short how-to videos that match your content.
I’m very confused by the 160-200 million unique visitors statement. Compete says 1.7 mil. That seems a little steep is it referring to something else?
Wow!!!
Happy for the 5min team
But really sad for the VC’s
And best of all, they use Whaleback Systems as their voice provider. No wonder they sound so good!
160-200 million unique visitors?
Care to explain where you got that statistic from TechCrunch?
Not 160-200 mil to the site but 160-200 mil that watch the video across the syndicated network.
then why does TC list is as “unique visitors”? Surely that must be “unique views”?
Quite right. ‘Views’ rather than ‘Visitors’ is less confusing.
these how-to video sites and how-to content sites are getting lots of hits and google love.I want to start such a site soon.
sounds like sclippco
Congradulations to Ran and the whole 5min team. They have a strong team, a lot of passion and a great vision.