The 20 smartest companies to start now
CNN Money, September 01, 2006
Excerpted from The 20 smartest companies to start now
A Matchmaker for Mashups
The Investor: Todd Dagres, general partner, Spark Capital
What he’s backed: Akamai, Qtera, Veoh Networks
What he wants now: A Web-based service that allows users to combine their own videos with a library of licensable clips and music to create video mashups online. Want to create a cameo for yourself in Glengarry Glen Ross? Have your boss stand in for Lumbergh in Office Space? That’s at the core of Dagres’s idea.
He sees two main tasks for a startup. First is building a video-editing program that’s as easy to use with a browser as iMovie is with a Mac. Second is inking enough licensing deals to create a video library big enough to get the concept off the ground. “Digital content is starting to be treated like intellectual property exchanges,“ Dagres says. “Studios have all this content that they would love to monetize- this helps them do that.“
What he’ll invest: $4 million for a working site and editing software
——-
