Elemental Technologies, which builds encoding software used by some of the largest video providers in the world, raised $13 million in a Series C round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, which also includes existing investors General Catalyst, Voyager Capital, and Steamboat Ventures. The Portland, Ore.-based startup has now raised a total of roughly $30 million. Along with the funding, Elemental has also named Kevin O'Hara as its Chairman of the Board, replacing founder Sam Blackman, who will remain CEO.
The funding will be used primarily to promote global expansion, as the encoding vendor extends beyond its home market in the U.S. and attempts to tap into worldwide adoption of online video. Elemental opened a London office last summer to support its growing business in Western Europe, which now accounts for about 20 percent of all sales. It also opened an office in Hong Kong to tackle the Asia-Pacific market. Altogether, Elemental now has 70 employees worldwide.
More investment overseas will mean growing those markets, but also opening new offices in places where Elemental doesn't yet have a presence. That includes regions like Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
That international support will also be necessary as Elemental prepares to support multiple international distributors for their coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, which are about two-and-a-half months away. The London Games will be Elemental's largest live deployment to date, as its encoding hardware and software will be used by six major broadcasters distributing to 40 countries worldwide.
The opportunity is bigger than just supporting Olympics streams — in a phone conversation, Blackman pointed to the multibillion dollar market for traditional video delivery equipment, which will soon be replaced as distribution moves to the Internet and mobile networks. Elemental gear is already used by some of the biggest names in video, including Comcast, HBO and ESPN in the states, as well as Terra, the largest video provider in Latin America.
With that in mind, Kevin O'Hara, who has sat on the Elemental board for the last 18 months or so, will be taking over the Chairman role. O'Hara was one of the earliest employees at Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS) which sold to Worldcom in 1996, as well as a co-founder and president at Level 3 Communications. At Elemental he'll help support the startup's massive expansion overseas.
- ELEMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES
- SAM BLACKMAN
- NORWEST VENTURE PARTNERS
- GENERAL CATALYST PARTNERS
- VOYAGER CAPITAL
- STEAMBOAT VENTURES
Elemental Technologies is the leading provider of massively parallel video processing solutions for enterprise video customers. Elemental's products use off-the-shelf, programmable graphics processing units (GPUs) for compute-intensive video processing and conversion tasks. The product line is ideal for digital media workflows that require video encoding for Internet and mobile delivery, faster-than-real-time transcoding, or support for adaptive bit rate distribution. Elemental’s innovative solutions deliver unprecedented price/performance advantages to a variety of customers including broadcasters, online video platforms and content delivery...
Sam Blackman is CEO and co-founder of Elemental Technologies, Inc., a Portland-based startup company. Blackman brings extensive management experience and video processing expertise to the Elemental. As leader of Elemental, he has grown Elemental into the leading provider of massively parallel video processing solutions, building innovative products used by leading video content providers. Prior to co-founding Elemental in 2006, Sam specified and architected next-generation products as an IC design manager for Pixelworks. Prior to joining Pixelworks in 2000, Sam...
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture and growth equity investment firm that manages more than $3.7 billion in capital. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, Mumbai and Bangalore, India and Herzelia, Israel. NVP makes early to late stage venture and growth equity investments in U.S. and global companies across a wide range of sectors including: information technology, business services, financial services, infrastructure, technology enabled services and consumer. NVP has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great...
General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building the technology-based companies that will lead innovation and transform industries. Founded in 2000, General Catalyst Partners leverages its principals' extensive operational, business development and technological expertise to provide portfolio companies with a catalyst for success through business-building and partnership development assistance. General Catalyst has offices in Cambridge, MA and Palo Alto, CA. For more information, please visit: http://www.generalcatalyst.com.
The firm invests in three technology sectors that align with the most compelling investment opportunities in their primary investing regions, as well as with their team's experience and investing track record. They focus on funding first venture rounds in early and growth stage opportunities in the Pacific Northwest and California. In the Pacific Northwest they focus primarily on the Seattle and Portland markets, although they will consider other opportunities in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. In California they...
Steamboat Ventures is venture capital firm affiliate of The Walt Disney Company. They invest in early-stage technology companies in the digital media and consumer tech space. In May 2008, it was reported that Steamboat is looking to raise a $200 Million fund and also may setup a similar fund in Europe.
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