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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Pitch
VisitorsCafe brings video chat to website users
By Lynette F. Cornell
Jobzle demos at Betaspring
UMass President Jack Wilson on Entrepreneurship
VisitorsCafe
Headquarters: Boston
Phone: 617-800-3476
Email: morgan@visitorscafe.com
URL: www.visitorscafe.com
Founded: 2010
Employees: 7
In the company’s own words:
“VisitorsCafe is a feature that transforms any website or blog into a cafe by enabling visitors to talk to each other, while being relevantly and safely matched. It’s ‘Chatroulette meets eHarmony,’ meant to enrich every online community experience. VisitorsCafe can be installed on any site in seconds.”
About the technology:
VisitorsCafe is a web application that matches visitors of a web site for video chats. Website owners can choose between a sidebar button that creates a pop-up video window or embedding the video widget directly into the site’s layout. The widget uses derivatives of Adobe live streaming products and can be added to a site with customized code. Site visitors can provide their demographic information directly to the application or allow the application to connect with their Facebook account. The software then matches visitors based on their similar characteristics, including age, gender, language, interests and education. To screen out potentially offensive content, paying customers can opt to have VisitorsCafe’s team of moderators receive a live sequence of images from the video chats to ensure there is no nudity present. The images are blurred before reaching the screeners to retain the privacy of the users.
People behind the company:
Morgan Hermand-Waiche, founder and CEO, formerly served as a brand manager for student customer acquisition at the online investing startup Kapitall, and as a consultant at Magnetic, a search data marketplace startup. George Lupeanu, vice president of marketing, previously worked as the marketing manager for Romanian entertainment company MediaPro Pictures.
The pitch:
The company is seeking business partnerships, specifically with community sites, content publishing platforms and social platforms. While the company is not actively searching for a specific amount of funding, it is open to speaking with investors about fundraising opportunities.
The plan:
The service is currently free to use, but the company plans to monetize the video tool through two channels: targeted in-window advertisements on sites using the tool for free and sales of a customizable white-label version. The company also plans to allow individual bloggers to interconnect their video chat with other similar sites using the service as a means for the individual sites to collectively acquire enough users to have a video chat. According to Hermand-Waiche, this would also help bloggers generate new visitors.
The market:
VisitorsCafe identifies two segments to the online video market it is pursuing. The advertising part, said Hermand-Waiche, is between $2 billion and $4 billion, depending on the source. The B2B side, he said. is slightly smaller but, citing a lack of strong data, declined to give a more definitive estimate.
The competition:
According to Hermand-Waiche, he is not aware of a competitor offering a similar product. He said that there are many video chat websites, but most of them are destination sites and only a few have a video chat tool that can be embedded. None of the company’s competitors, he said, offer advanced services such as the demographic matching, enhanced security and monthly activity reports.
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