Startup of the Day - Quick.tv

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The company of the day is Quick.tv, based in the UK. www.quick.tv is a web-based ‘Video-as-a-Service’ platform. You will find below an interview with Nick Bell, Co-founder of Quick.tv. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.quick.tv.

Interview with Nick Bell, Co-founder of Quick.tv

Who are you?

Co-founder of Quick.tv and serial entrepreneur.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘company of the day’ per Microsoft?

Flattered.

What did you do before creating your company?

I have successfully founded and exited three startups prior to launching Quick.tv. I sold the first at the age of 16 whilst still at school!

How did you get the idea? What s the genesis?

I came up with the idea whilst watching the movie Fight Club. In one scene Edward Norton’s apartment is shown as the Ikea catalogue. Product descriptions appear in the video – I suddenly thought, how great would it be in online videos allowed you to do something similar, then idea then snowballed.

What do you sell? What is your company’s mission?

www.quick.tv is a web-based ‘Video-as-a-Service’ platform, allowing the injection of dynamic and interactive features into online video clips. Aimed at business users, productions created through Quick.tv transform the viewer experience by prompting them to click on items within the video.

A full range of intuitive drag’n’drop tools include hotspots for e-commerce, real-time voting and graphs, RSS feeds for live data, forms for viewers to apply for offers, hyperlinked text and image overlays, chapters for ease of navigation and more.

The end-to-end service delivers file transcoding and storage, player and play-out options and detailed analytics both on the video itself and the viewers’ use of the interactive features. It even has an editing tool to re-cut video clips online.

Templates and style sheets make the deployment of large numbers of interactive videos easy, leaving users free to monitor the increased monetisation and viewer engagement benefits the service has to offer.

What is your market?

Any business which is using online video that wants to enrich the viewer experience, and add monetization opportunities to their assets, in particular, publishers, e-tailers and agencies.

Any clients? References? Partners?

We are about to unveil a host of big name users from national newspapers to high street retailers… watch this space. We currently partner with several advertising networks such as Inskin and Doubleclick and work closely with content distribution network CDNetworks.

Funding history? VCs? BA?

Having initially funded the business with my business partner Tod Yeadon we have now raised circa £1.2m from a mixture of angels and VC fund North Star Equity Investors.

Growth? Internationalization?

Just launching we are very excited about the growth prospects of Quick.tv we are looking to open an office in New York early next year.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

8/4

Are you hiring? If yes, what? Where?

Yes we are hiring developers and sales superstars in London and Newcastle (UK).

Which platform are you building on? Why?

Quick.tv is built on a ASP .net platform with SQL DB. The application is FLEX. We are also working on a “top secret” Silverlight 3.0 project!

Do you have any Software IP? Is there something that you’re the only one to do on the market?

Our software was built from the ground up. We have the most advanced interactive editing tools – our intuitive drag and drop environment makes it possible for people to achieve stunning and engaging responses very easily. A lot of work went into making the user experience painless but powerful.

Who’s your role model?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin – so clichéd I know but I love what Google has achieved in such as short space of time.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet areas?

SAAS businesses which help business make more money.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

Yes c£3m.

What about the BizSpark Program? What do you think? Are you going to join? Why?

The BizSpark Program has opened up several opportunities for us and provided a very solid support network. I often meet with Bindi to discuss new ideas and use her as a sounding board. Our developers love the free software too.

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

Don’t give up and network, network, network!

Published: 7/7/2009 8:55 AM

Company: Quick.tv