A big injection of cash will help Victoria-based MediaCore nearly double its staff this year and expand its reach around the world, according to the technology company’s chief executive.
Stuart Bowness said a $4.5 million investment from Vanedge Venture Partners will allow the cloud-based educational video platform company — think Youtube tailored for universities — to grow its staff to as many as 35 from 20 and establish more customers around the world.
“This round of investment is all about growth,” Bowness said in an interview on Tuesday.
“We have gotten to a point now where we have a solid customer base and we have a good degree of revenue predictability. It’s a terrific thing for our team to be able to expand to the next stage of growth.”
The money will be used primarily to back new engineering hires for product development and sales and marketing teams to expand its reach.
While Bowness would not disclose the company’s annual sales, MediaCore provides video-platform services to more than 100 universities and post-secondary institutions, including members of the Ivy League and state universities as well as the University of Victoria, Camosun College and several Canadian community colleges.
MediaCore’s secure, customized online video platform provides universities with software to make it simple for professors and students to record content.
It also offers tools to manage and catalogue the content to enable easy access for students.
Bowness believes the new venture funds reflect well on Victoria.
“I think this is a good thing for the city. It shows it’s possible to build a real venture-backed business in this community,” said Bowness, who stressed he is intent on establishing MediaCore as a major player and employer in Victoria.
While MediaCore had an office in the United Kingdom, it is in the process of moving staff back to the Island.
“It takes a village to raise a child, well I feel like Victoria as a village is doing a great job at raising young companies and those blossoming into becoming larger companies,” Bowness said.
A condition of the funding is the addition of Vanedge partner Moe Kermani to MediaCore’s board. Bowness said that is a boon to the firm.
“The reason I wanted to get Vanedge as an investor is I thought Moe in particular would add a lot of value both strategically and tactically,” Bowness said.
He noted Kermani, who has a background in cloud storage and development, has already helped in the process of hiring sales and marketing executives.
“The great thing about him is he was an operator, and it’s rare to find [venture capitalists] who have been operators in their past lives.”
Kermani said Vanedge was compelled to invest because of MediaCore’s performance.
“We got a lot of passionate feedback from MediaCore’s customers, and it was clear that they were winning big on user experience, support and enterprise integrations, which we see as key in their market,” Kermani said.
“At Vanedge, we were searching for a disruptive education platform to serve today’s on-demand generation of students, who consume a tonne of video.”
