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Media - Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Revver - Profile

Who Cares: Revver is this week's It-girl. Video Flickr + Sexy Skype investors + BoingBoing Coverage = Huge Traffic Spike

HQ: Los Angeles, CA

Founded: 2004

Management: The company has a very odd management team. It was co-founded by Ian Clarke, a programmer who co-founded Free-Net; Steven Starr who is CEO and was a former Hollywood agent and co-creator of MTV's The State; and Oliver Luckett, who recently spearheaded the Norman Lear's voter registration campaign

Investors: In October 2005, the company raised an undisclosed round of funding that they touted as coming from the dream-team Skype-backers Bessemer Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Draper Richards.

Business Model: Revver is a user-generated content site where video makers can post their work, and get paid for it. The company expects to host and represent the next Jib Jab type cartoon or next Paris Hillton type of video phenomenon. The company splits ad revenue 50/50 with the amateur filmmakers, paying them based upon how often users viewed the filmmakers' work and clicked into advertisers' sites. Notably the site offers an adult material area. The company says advertisers will be able to narrowly focus on their markets by affixing ads based on each video's content thanks to user generated tagging.

Competitors: Apple iTunes Video, BrightCove Networks, Yahoo, Google, Lulop, Vimeo, YouTube.

Dirt: Wow. No sooner does this company launch its site than it catapults to the big leagues of site traffic. User generated video and photo content is an amazing phenomenon. And Revver's implementation is good. Having said that, Revver is setting itself up as a Skype-type of company or at least a Flickr and we don't see that. Yahoo is so energized by the success of Flickr that has moved ahead of with Video Flickr. It's great that Revver splits revenues with publishers but 50-50 is just not sustainable.