The player: Benjamin Wayne, CEO and founder of Fliqz, a private-label online video solution.
The play: Fliqz provides the tools for companies to quickly integrate video into their Web sites. Fliqz offers a video player, software to ingest the video, transcoding and encoding, ad serving and management and sharing features. The player isn’t branded, which allows customers to provide a white-label experience for users.
The pitch: Fliqz is marketing the simplicity of its offering, Mr. Wayne said. “We have tools that can be deployed in 30 minutes or less, as opposed to 30 to 45 days,” he said. “It’s very cost-effective and it’s completely white-label, so it can match your look and feel.”
In the mix: Fliqz customers include Autobytel, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, T-Mobile, the Mill Valley Film Festival and VH1. Major League Baseball used the service for a Baby Ruth-sponsored contest to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Fliqz competes with online TV platforms such as Brightcove as well as other private-label solutions, such as Twistage. Fliqz has about 18,000 customers.
The backstory: Mr. Wayne founded the company in 2005 in Emeryville, Calif.
The money guys: Fliqz raised about $6.5 million in venture funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures. Customers pay for services, with monthly fees ranging from about $100 to a few thousand dollars. Mr. Wayne expects to achieve profitability in a year.
The pros: Small and large businesses alike are recognizing that video is a must-have for a Web site. “In the next two years every site will figure out video needs to be a part of their offering, and most aren’t going to do it themselves,” Mr. Wayne said.
The cons: Competition is stiff in the online technology business, with competitors including Brightcove, Magnify, Twistage, Permission TV, thePlatform and Maven. Also, monetization models for online video have not fully crystallized yet.
Background: Mr. Wayne was born and raised in Santa Barbara, Calif. He earned an architecture degree from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard. He previously served as president and CEO of Collabrys, a provider of outsourced services, and Smartshop.com, an online comparison shopping portal. He lives in Oakland, Calif.
Who knew? Mr. Wayne spent four years living in Southeast Asia and speaks Korean. He went to South Korea on a Fulbright grant and also owned a business there.