Investing in Anywhere, Anytime Video

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Investing in Anywhere, Anytime Video

NVP News

May 8, 2012 at 16:43

The proliferation of Internet-connected devices and fresh, Internet-delivered premium video services are forcing service providers to meet the growing demand of “anywhere, anytime” subscribers. The craving for this quality viewing experience and the ability to consume content on-demand, via multiple devices, has further energized innovation in the video delivery market.

Over the past few years, I’ve been following a 60 person company in Portland, called Elemental Technologies. Elemental’s mission is to perfect the media experience. The company works behind the scenes to help service providers, content programmers, broadcasters, live event producers and enterprises worldwide to instantaneously serve quality video anywhere, anytime. The Elemental team pioneered the use of graphics processors to power adaptive video streaming over IP networks, and is now working with top media and entertainment companies worldwide, including Comcast, Disney and HBO, offering solutions for superior multiscreen content delivery. Elemental’s innovative technology uses parallel architectures and codecs built from the ground up to achieve superior results and we’re excited by the rapid adoption of the company’s solutions.

Today, we are pleased to announce our investment in Elemental. This $13 million round will help the company fund its aggressive global growth plans, and enable Elemental to aggressively extend its leadership position in the multiscreen content delivery market. This rapidly growing sector (which includes online and mobile video processing and distribution) is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2014.

NVP has partnered with a number of video related startups over the years and we’ve seen the industry evolve significantly. We experienced some early success through our investment in Accord Networks, a voice and video company which went public in 2000 and was later sold to Polycom for $339 million. We also were early investors in Polycom, which resulted in a successful IPO in 1996, and laid the groundwork for future NVP bets in the video communications space.

LifeSize Communications is another company we helped incubate that was acquired in 2009 by Logitech for $405 million; as well as Omneon, which was acquired in 2010 by Harmonic for $306 million. Today, we are excited to be active investors in some cutting-edge video-related companies such as Blue Jeans Network, the leader in interoperable video conferencing services; Zenverge, a fabless semiconductor company devoted to accelerating consumer access to next generation digital content and services by delivering advanced, cost-effective IC solutions for content storage, playback, interoperability, mobility and networking in the next generation of consumer digital media products; and SundaySky, the creator of SmartVideo–a newer, better, smarter way of using video to communicate with prospects and customers. Adding Elemental to this group is exciting for us. We believe NVP’s partnership with Elemental is a perfect match—and the decision for us to invest was an easy one. We’re hopeful that our video experience, business relationships and current portfolio of companies in this sector will be of value to Elemental at this stage of the company’s growth.

We are thrilled to work with Elemental CEO and Co-founder, Sam Blackman, as well as SVP Worldwide Sales and Service, Dan Marshall, who previously served as head of sales at NVP portfolio company Omneon Video Networks. Elemental also announced today that industry veteran Kevin O’Hara is joining the company as chairman, and we’re excited to collaborate with him.

I look forward to partnering with this talented team and helping Elemental achieve continued growth.

More information on the funding announcement can be found here, as well as some recent links to news below.