Deal Radar 2008: Fliqz

This story was written by Sramana Mitra.

Online video has led to the internet becoming a richer medium, and has created many beneficiaries in the infrastructure sector. Here's a company that wants to add to that momentum.

Fliqz provides companies with video solutions for their websites or social networks. These tools help increase a site'straffic, create an interactive experience for its viewers, and increase the conversion rate, compelling viewers to make a purchase.Fliqz is a provider of plug-and-play video solutions, with over 20,000 publishers on its platform.

The Fliqz platform is an end-to-end solution for video and other forms of multimedia content.It includes tools, services, and applications for the management, storage, tracking, and analysis of multimedia assets.The solutions offered are cost-effective, easy to install, and customizable depending on the brand.Fliqz's products were introduced in the summer of 2006 and were available commercially by the end of 2007.

Fliqz was founded in 2005 by CEO and president Benjamin Wayne, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded Collabrys, which was acquired by E-centives in 2004.He also founded Smartshop.com, which was acquired in 2000 by CNET, and has been around the e-commerce block for a long time.The company raised their angel round of $700,000 in December 2005 from the Caufield Angel Fund, Don Hutchison, and others.Their $5.5 million Series A was raised in December 2006 from Mohr Davidow Ventures.

Fliqz operates on a premium SaaS subscription model where customers usually sign up for 12 months and are billed monthly.Packages start from $99 a month and go to several thousand dollars a month.The company has seen100% growthqoq for the last six quarters, and they expect to service 100,000 premium subscribers by 2011.A typical contract has a value of $2,750, although it can range from $1,200 to $100,000.The company did not providefurther financial information, and I don't have a sense of their revenue range.

Fliqz caters mostly to small- and medium-sized companiesthat have a consumer-facing web presence.VentureBeatdiscussses how Brightcove focuses only on large enterprises while ignoring this mid-sized market completely. Over the next two to three years it is expected that competition will force companies in the marketplace to adopt video as a core component of their sites.Fliqz estimates that approximately 25% of the online sites using video use Fliqz for their platform needs.Their customers include Autobytel, T-Mobile, Friendster, ZDF, and Major League Soccer. It competes directly with Brightcove, whose prices are higher, and with Kaltura and YouTube.

It's true that in the future many sites will offer video as part of the user experience.It remains to be seen whether Fliqz will become the platform of choice supporting this trend.

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