VideoElephant, which specialises in online video, has strengthened its balance sheet with a funding round and conversion of loan notes into equity.
The Dublin company was founded in 2012 by Stephen O’Shaughnessy and operates offices in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Sydney.
VideoElephant maintains an online library of two million searchable, rights-cleared pieces of video content. It aggregates the video content from hundreds of content providers like Reuters and Bloomberg, licensing it to online web publishers, among them USA Today, Comcast and The San Francisco Chronicle.
More than 2,000 new videos, covering world news, entertainment and lifestyle, become available on the platform every day. The US is the main market for O’Shaughnessy’s firm, which booked a loss of €411,000 in 2018, bringing accumulated losses to €3.9m. Twelve staff were on the payroll in 2018.
O’Shaughnessy came up with the idea for VideoElephant after creating a series of travel videos of cities for a portfolio of websites he owned. Seeing that there was no centralised marketplace where video producers could syndicate their content, he set about building a platform where publishers could access videos from multiple sources centrally.
In Association with
VideoElephant’s backers include AIB Seed Capital, Tony Smurfit and Tom Kennedy. Enterprise Ireland has also invested around €650,000.
“Video is quickly being accepted as the most engaging format for consumers to digest content, and advertisers are increasingly betting that video is the most effective way to spread their message,” said O’Shaughnessy.
Video Elephant Ltd had net liabilities of €3.7m last December, including conterible loan notes in the amount of €3.2m.
The accounts filing for 2018 discloses that in May 2019 the company issued new preference shares as par of a €5.3m funding round which included the purchase of 508,000 Ordinary shares by new and existing investors.
The filing states: "As part of this investment, holders of the Convertible Loan Notes and the CRCP shares agreed to the conversion of their securities into Seed Preference Shares. As a consequence of the combined transactions, the long term liabilities of the company reduced by €4.4m and the equity share capital and premium (and net assets) increased by €8.6m."
John O’Sullivan, who led the investment for Act, said that his firm first invested in VideoElephant with the AIB Fund. “They convinced the owners of some the best video content available to work with them and test whether this could work at scale for publishers -- and they proved they were right, to their partners and the market,” O’Sullivan added.
PepTalk Funding
Separately, tech startup PepTalk announced that it has raised another €300,000.
The workplace wellbeing technology company was founded in 2016 by ex-Twitter executive Michelle Fogarty, former lawyer and CEO James Brogan (pictured below), and Dublin footballer Bernard Brogan.
PepTalk’s app and software platform allows organisations to deliver well-being programmes to improve employee engagement, retention, productivity and attraction. The platform is currently being used by clients that include Northern Trust, A&L Goodbody and Mercury Engineering.
PepTalk previously raised €335,000 from private investors in 2016, followed by another €165,000 in 2017. Enterprise Ireland invested €130,000 in 2018.
Tech entrepreneur and current chairperson of Accuris Network, Larry Quinn, joined the board of directors in 2018 and is company chairman.
PepTalk said that it expects to treble its revenue growth to over €1m by the end of 2018, and will be targeting further funding rounds in the early part of 2020. Accumulated losses in 2017 stood at €222,000, according to PepTalk’s most recent filings.
PepTalk’s CEO James Brogan commented “The last year has been very significant for PepTalk with our appointment into the HPSU of Enterprise Ireland We are tremendously excited about the next chapter, and both the funding and board appointment will be crucial in us executing on our growth objectives.”
