Leading Venture Firm Kleiner Perkins Invests in the Amateur Video Revolution

June 12, 2006

One True Media, founded in 2005, is a web-based service offering production tools for video editing including video montage creation, compression, and posting to sites like iTunes and MySpace.com. The basic service is offered as a monthly subscription priced at $3.99 or $39 annually after a free 60 day trial. For home video makers, One True Media may be an attractive service, offering simple video editing capabilities and numerous options for delivering video online.

Video created by amateurs and distributed via sites like YouTube, MySpace.com, and Google Video has seen a boom in recent months that has driven Sandhill Road (so named for the venture firm heavy-area of Silicon Valley) investments in web video startups. Video Egg and One True Media are among the companies developing products to serve an explosion of content producers who circumvent traditional broadcast channels by serving up their content on the web. This model has proven profitable, as popular video blogs like Rocketboom have attracted advertisers.

One True Media is not the only web video company to garner the attention of the venture community in recent months. In November, Brightcove, based in Cambridge, MA, raised an impressive $16 million in their Series B round. Brightcove offers syndication services to independent producers, and was selected as AOL.com’s video self-publishing platform.

While investments in companies like One True Media and Brightcove show that video has emerged as a major internet growth sector, its success has made it a focal point of the Net Neutrality debate. Many broadband service providers including the Bell companies claim that high-bandwidth applications such as video download negatively impact their services. They favor a tiered service model that would levee fees on content creators – a move that could undermine the web video revolution by providing bandwidth to the highest bidder.

The Net Neutrality debate will surely have implications for anyone who distributes content online, from home movie bloggers to independent filmmakers. Services like One True Media make the web accessible to more people as a video distribution channel, and contribute to the growth of online video content. Proposed laws that would limit the bandwidth available for non-commercial uses could threaten the viability of the web as a video distribution channel, as well as companies like One True Media that serve amateur video makers.