{"id":41241,"date":"2023-10-20T15:12:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/melbourne-startup-backed-by-lleyton-hewitt-and-kim-williams-announces-a-3-million-series-a-round-after-an-emotional-rollercoaster-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:12:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:12:37","slug":"melbourne-startup-backed-by-lleyton-hewitt-and-kim-williams-announces-a-3-million-series-a-round-after-an-emotional-rollercoaster-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/melbourne-startup-backed-by-lleyton-hewitt-and-kim-williams-announces-a-3-million-series-a-round-after-an-emotional-rollercoaster-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne startup backed by Lleyton Hewitt and Kim Williams announces a $3 million Series A round after an “emotional rollercoaster” – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Melbourne video startup backed by former top Aussie tennis player Lleyton Hewitt and ex-News Corp Australia CEO Kim Williams has opened a $3 million Series A round as it looks to expand its presence around the world.<\/p>\n

VidCorp offers an all-in-one communication platform for companies to speak to their customers, staff and stakeholders through video.<\/p>\n

The startup was founded in 2011 and is now used by Asahi and Schweppes for internal communication and engagement with staff, along with EY Australia and Target.<\/p>\n

The platform allows businesses to send video content directly from a phone to selected people or groups via a text or email which directs to a branded landing page, with the content ranging from anything to an informal motivation video to important company updates.<\/p>\n

Big-name backers<\/h3>\n

VidCorp secured an undisclosed seed round from the Hewitt family office and Williams, who has also joined the company as chairman, and founder Ryan Berman says he first met with the media mogul after listening to a charity talk he presented.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking to him about our system and what we do and we got into a whole discussion about how he had tried to do something similar back at News Corp but they didn\u2019t have the technology then,\u201d Berman tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is very much drawn to analytics. His biggest grudge with CEOs nowadays is that they make decisions with gut feelings and not data. Actually having the data surrounding this is critical and gives CEOs the ability to make informed decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what drew him to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams says he invested in VidCorp because of its potential to be a world-leading video platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like VidCorp as an investment proposition because it provides an accessible video platform which is discrete, easy to use and driven on fair value with full accountability on results from any piece of communication \u2013 what\u2019s not to like?\u201d Williams says in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my view VidCorp has a great growth story ahead of it in Australia and internationally. It is a product and platform that, once used, sells itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

VidCorp is now seeking to raise a Series A round of at least $3 million, which Berman says will be used to drive further international growth and to expand the Melbourne-based team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very, very confident that we\u2019ll close it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about running now and it\u2019s going to be hard for people to catch us.\u201d<\/p>\n

An “emotional rollercoaster”<\/h3>\n

After previously working as a personal trainer, Berman made the dive into the tech world with a startup that allowed users to pay a monthly fee to receive texts from professional athletes.<\/p>\n

But after Twitter launched and saw celebrities tweeting this content for free, Text A Star pivoted to focus on video content from celebrities, a platform which formed the basis for VidCorp.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough our research we saw two unique opportunities: peer-to-peer private video sharing and an online video platform designed for businesses,\u201d Berman says.<\/p>\n

With an already existing relationship with the Hewitt family from Text A Star, Berman secured seed funding for both ideas, but after SnapChat came along, decided to focus his attention on VidCorp which was growing quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cVidCorp started to get really significant traction and it hadn\u2019t even been built yet,\u201d Berman says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first client was Toll, who wanted to use it to speak to their drivers on the road, and they helped us develop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berman says that while video has become the dominant form of communication, businesses have previously lacked analytics or a specific platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw there was a huge opportunity in the online video space where businesses were relying on social media video platforms like YouTube,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just measure views and where people drop off in isolation. At VidCorp we say that video is only part of the communications process \u2013 we look at how they get to it, how they engage and most importantly what they do after the video.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transforming the way companies communicate<\/h3>\n

The VidCorp platform allows users to closely analyse how the video is interacted with, and to include two-way engagement like a survey or a document to be downloaded.<\/p>\n

\u201cVideo is the most powerful form of communication but the problem is that when someone watches it on YouTube there\u2019s no call to action and there\u2019s no business outcome,\u201d Berman says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith VidCorp\u2019s platform, once someone has watched a video you can capture their attention and get them to act there and then.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd to create that whole experience takes a user with no technical skills about five minutes. A CEO can communicate with 30,000 staff around the world in five minutes, and it\u2019s all personalised and tracks who is engaging with you.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re transforming the way companies communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berman says the startup has enjoyed double-digit quarterly growth and year-on-year revenue growth in the triple digits, without yet making an active effort to expand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re growing at a very fast rate but that actually hasn\u2019t been the focus,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus has been making sure we have a phenomenal product and getting unbelievable and trustworthy brands on board and using the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe brands we have attracted show that we\u2019re solving a huge problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

A key aspect of this growth requires the startup educating its potential clients on the importance of video communication combined with analytics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re finding that the market is just so uneducated about the video world,\u201d Berman says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally people are just uploading content to YouTube and social media but they aren\u2019t getting an ROI on it, they\u2019re just judging it on views.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally views are seen as a form of success \u2013 we\u2019re trying to change that and say there\u2019s much more to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken several significant pivots for Berman and VidCorp to get to this point, and the entrepreneur says honesty with his team has kept them on board with his vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an emotional rollercoaster,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about explaining to the team why we\u2019re going down this path and being open and honest with everyone involved about why we\u2019re pivoting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a journey and you never know where you\u2019re going to land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter, LinkedIn.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Melbourne video startup backed by former top Aussie tennis player Lleyton Hewitt and ex-News Corp Australia CEO Kim Williams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}