Video discovery startup Plizy — which last month relaunched its iPad app and website with a new look and a mission to become a “media center in the cloud” — has announced it’s raised a $4 million Series A round from Atlas Venture. The startup has previously raised $1.2 million in angel round funding. In tandem with its latest funding round, David Marcus, President of PayPal will join Plizy’s board of directors, along with Fred Destin, partner in the technology group at Atlas Venture.
Plizy said it plans to use the new funding to focus on expanding its audience. It’s not clear how many users the startup has but we’ve asked the question and will update this article with any response a Plizy spokeswoman said it does not disclose user numbers.
Plizy said the funding will also be used to aggregate more content — including from providers such as Cinemax, Snagfilm and Starz. Its service currently aggregates more than 550,000 movies, 200,000 shows and 100 million videos from the “major video services”, according to Crunchbase.
Lastly, Plizy said the funding will also be used to build out its products across multiple platforms — specifically Android and iOS. While Plizy already has an iPad app the company spokesman said the plan — “eventually” — is to add an iPhone app too.
“Video is both extremely exciting from a content standpoint and completely broken from a user perspective. We’re going to solve that with Plizy by centralizing all content in one place for easy viewing and discovery on any device,” said Atlas’ Destin in a statement.
Release follows below
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Plizy, the media center in the cloud that allows users to search, organize, watch and share any content that is available online, announced today it has raised $4 million in a Series A round from Atlas Venture.
Plizy first launched its iPad app in May 2011 to allow users to find relevant online videos based on their individual interest graph. In November 2012, Plizy launched its version 2.0 with a completely new Website and iPad app that offers a brand new experience across videos, movies and TV Shows, and continues to offer content discovery and sharing capabilities with deeper personalization.
With this new round of funding, Plizy will focus on expanding its audience, aggregating more content from providers such as Cinemax, Snagfilm and Starz, and building out its offerings across multiple platforms, specifically on Android and iOS. Plizy previously raised $1.2 million in angel round funding, joined by notable investor and co-founder of Fotolia, Oleg Tschelzhoff.
“We are thrilled to have Atlas Venture as our sole investor because of our long standing relationship with them and their success with companies like Dailymotion – the largest digital media company to come out of Europe,” said Jonathan Benassaya, founder and CEO, Plizy. “As video content is fragmented across many sites there is no easy way for consumers to get access to the content they want. Plizy offers a unique service for consumers to seamlessly search, organize, watch and share any movie, TV show or video online.”
David Marcus, President of PayPal will join Plizy’s board of directors alongside Fred Destin, partner in the technology group at Atlas Venture. Both bring deep experience in web services and consumer facing innovation.
“I have always had Jonathan on my star list of people to back and I was thrilled he decided to go after video after his success founding and launching Deezer,” said Mr. Destin. “Video is both extremely exciting from a content standpoint and completely broken from a user perspective. We’re going to solve that with Plizy by centralizing all content in one place for easy viewing and discovery on any device.”
Plizy is available on web browser (www.plizy.com) and through its iPad app, and content can also be viewed on TVs using the app through Apple Airplay. Plizy currently has partners like Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, Dailymotion, HBO Go, Hulu, Hulu+, iTunes, Netflix, Vimeo, and YouTube.
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