{"id":43743,"date":"2023-10-20T15:30:49","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/melbourne-startup-linius-secures-500000-investment-from-village-roadshow-boss-robert-kirby-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:30:49","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:30:49","slug":"melbourne-startup-linius-secures-500000-investment-from-village-roadshow-boss-robert-kirby-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/melbourne-startup-linius-secures-500000-investment-from-village-roadshow-boss-robert-kirby-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne startup Linius secures $500,000 investment from Village Roadshow boss Robert Kirby – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Melbourne video virtualisation startup Linius has scored a $500,000 investment from Village Roadshow boss Robert Kirby in a strategic move to drive the company towards commercialisation.<\/p>\n

The investment comes through the Kirby Family Trust, which has acquired 10 million shares in Linius Technologies for 5 cents each.<\/p>\n

Linius, which went public in May through a backdoor listing after raising $3.5 million, offers a patented video virtualisation engine which treats video content as data rather than video, creating a wide range of personalisation options.<\/p>\n

Its first application aims to bring personalised direct advertising from the internet to television.<\/p>\n

Strategy over money<\/h3>\n

Linius CEO Chris Richardson says the Kirby Family Trust approached the company when it wasn\u2019t even looking for funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said they could help us with intros but what they really wanted was to invest in us,\u201d Richardson tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were completely happy with our cash situation, we had just done a raise, and we weren\u2019t looking to raise money at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the strategic value of having such a prominent investor was too enticing, Richardson says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film and cinema side of things is very closed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy enough to call up a tech company and get onto an executive, but if you\u2019re calling up Warner they\u2019re not going to talk to some crazy startup from Australia. But they will take a call from the Kirby\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a great deal of value for us. It\u2019s huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Kirby says Linius has the potential to disrupt several different industries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see great potential for the Linius technology to impact many areas of the film industry, from reducing production costs, potentially reducing piracy to opening up a myriad of new monetisation opportunities for content products and broadcasters alike,\u201d Kirby says in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited to be involved with this transformative technology and look forward to assisting Chris and his team drive the business to even greater heights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagination is the limit<\/h3>\n

Linius\u2019 technology works by extracting a small index file from a video, allowing for this to be modified while the rest of the video is untouched.<\/p>\n

Its first application is for personalised advertising on cable TV, with Linius partnering with Digisoft to demonstrate the disruptive capabilities of this technology at the 2016 International Broadcasting Convention.<\/p>\n

Richardson says this technology will allow cable TV providers to deliver personalised direct advertising commonly seen on the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you sit down to watch Foxtel you and your neighbour will see exactly the same ads,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Linius we\u2019re able to provide the same kind of direct, personal advertising on cable TV that you see today on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

When these form of advertising launched online, its value went up by 2.7 times, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an opportunity for a huge bump in advertising revenue, or being much better able to compete with the Netflix\u2019s of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the technology isn\u2019t limited to this application, with Richardson also saying it can be used to near-instantaneously compile tailored highlights packages for sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday if you need a highlights reel someone has to sit down at an editing booth and find all the clips you want then copy and paste them into a new video,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith our technology that processing part goes away completely. You can have a user sit on a website, search for all the footy goals and stream it exactly how they want.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnywhere you can imagine copy and pasting videos together that you can\u2019t do today, with us it\u2019s instantaneous. Your imagination is the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Melbourne video virtualisation startup Linius has scored a $500,000 investment from Village Roadshow boss Robert Kirby in a strategic move<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743"}],"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=43743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}