- Vimeo raised $150 million in new equity funding
- Funding came from Thrive Capital and GIC
- The company aims at simplifying how businesses create and share videos.
Vimeo is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform. The company is headquartered in New York City. It operates on an ad-free basis. Instead, it collects revenue by providing a subscription plan for video content producers. Vimeo offers software as a service.
It includes video creation, editing, broadcasting tools, and enterprise software solutions. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high definition video across a range of devices. The site was built by Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein in 2004 as a spin-off of CollegeHumor.
IAC acquired CollegeHumor and Vimeo in 2006, after Google had acquired YouTube. Lodwick and Klein left by 2009. IAC implemented a more corporate-focused structure to build out Vimeo’s services. The current CEO Anjali Sud has been in place since July 2017.
The New Funding raised by the company
The company has raised $150M in new equity funding. The announcement was made in conjunction with the third-quarter earnings of its parent company IAC. CEO Joey Levin said the company has “begun contemplating spinning Vimeo off to our shareholders”.
The following was addressed in a letter to shareholders. “Given Vimeo’s success, and investor adulation for the Software-as-a-Service category. We expect Vimeo’s access to capital inside of IAC will be more expensive compared to outside of IAC.
The capital will be helpful to enable Vimeo to achieve its highest ambitions”. In the summer, Match Group completed its separation from IAC. This group owns a variety of dating services, including Tinder. The ownership was distributed to IAC shareholders.
The company has shifted its focus over the past couple of years. It sells video tools to enterprises and businesses instead of trying to compete with YouTube. For instance, it launched a free video messaging product called Vimeo Record recently.
As per the company, it has 1.5M paying subscribers. In addition to this, it has more than 3,500 enterprise clients. It includes Amazon, Starbucks, Deloitte, Zendesk, Rite Aid, and Siemens. The funding was led by Thrive Capital and GIC.
In Q3 Vimeo grew revenue by 44% year-over-year, to $75.1 million. The company had its first quarter of positive EBITDA – $3.4 million. “Our goal is to radically simplify how businesses create and share video. We focus on tools that are far more intuitive and cost-effective”, said CEO Anjal Sud.
