IP Democracy: VideoEgg Lands $12 Million in Funding

Little-discussed online video sharing start-up VideoEgg has landed $12 million in venture funding, according to this scoop by Business Week’s Steve Rosenbush. Maveron, a $600-million VC founded by Starbucks Chairman Howard Schulz along with August Capital and unnamed private investors have plunked the funds into the barely one-year old venture.

VideoEgg’s big selling point is that it can read up to 100 video formats and will even accept video from a camcorder. According to the BW piece, VideoEgg is used to download 15 million videos per day and given the assist of recent deals with Bebo, Dogster, AOL, CurrentTV and others, plans to generate 50 million downloads per day by year-end.

But the volume of free downloads can’t be the big draw for the investors. The company must have a golden plan to sell advertising, and the BW piece hints at this.

The company’s next step is to bring video-based marketers and advertisers into the fold. “We think that if we can develop a platform that’s useful for users, and if we can integrate it with advertising that doesn’t detract from the user experience, that we can build something that’s valuable,” [Co-founder Matt] Sanchez says.

With this latest affirmation of the power of web-based video, and video-sharing in particular, it’s clear that some kind of race is on to capture the early momentum in this hot sector.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on September 28, 2006 8:41 AM to IP Democracy