Well, apparently Animoto is going for it. This jewel of a startup, which lets people easily create professional-looking videos from audio and video clips and pictures, has raised a third round of funding – $25 million in a round led by Spectrum Equity Investors.
Ben Spero, a managing director at Spectrum, joined the Animoto board of directors.
Previous investors Madrona Venture Group and Amazon also participated in this round.
That brings the total raised by Animoto to $30 million.
If they were going to go for the easy sale, any time in the last year or two would have been a good time. This round signals that Animoto is going to go it alone and see if they can turn it into a very large company. My guess is that part of the round was taken off the table by founders/execs, which is often a risk mitigation move and can align the risk tolerance of investors and founders.
Animoto won’t comment on whether any or all of the round is secondary.
The company has been profitable since 2008. 700,000+ videos are created per month, over 15 million have been created since the company launched five years ago. There are 3 million registered users (they had 1.75 million this time last year), and 100,000 of those users, including me, pay for the service.
(Tat tip on the use of the classic “in it to win it” in the title of this post to Skype’s PR team)
Animoto generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. They say the Cinematic A.I. analyzes users’ photos and music like an actual director and editor. For instance, to analyze music the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals are all taken into consideration. Once completed, videos can be emailed, downloaded and embedded into other sites. The company says no two videos are ever the...
Founded in 1994, Spectrum Equity Investors have raised six investment funds representing $4.7 billion of private equity capital. They seek opportunities in businesses with common economic characteristics: recurring revenue, significant operating leverage, healthy operating margins, strong free cash flow, and franchise customer loyalty. Their investment activity is focused on business services, entertainment, communications, information services, media, and related growth sectors. The companies in which they invest are leaders in their industries, have well-established business models, are run by experienced management...
Ben is a Managing Director in the Menlo Park, CA office of Spectrum Equity Investors. Prior to joining Spectrum Equity Investors, Mr. Spero was a consultant at Bain & Company and co-founder of TouchPak, Inc. Ben serves on the Leadership Board of Destination: Home and is a member of Full Circle Fund. He previously served on the Santa Clara County Blue Ribbon Commission on Housing & Homelessness.
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