Quickplay sets sights on carriers in US with new VC funding

Every year, the world’s biggest mobile telecom players converge on CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment – the largest wireless data event in the US – and use it as a backdrop for making important announcements. This year, QuickPlay Media Inc. joined them, with two news items coming out of the conference. The Toronto-based mobile media solutions provider revealed that it had recently secured US$12 million in Series B financing from a consortium led by Cambridge MA venture capital shop General Catalyst Partners. The other partner in the consortium? Existing QuickPlay investor JL Albright Venture Partners of Toronto, another VC firm. Chief creative officer and co-founder Raja Khanna says the General Catalyst opportunity wasn’t the only investment offer the company had to consider: several Canadian venture capital firms wanted to provide funding. "Raising the money wasn’t the problem: it was really trying to find the partner who was going to help our business grow," he says. Khanna explains that despite all the financial support the company has received at home, adding a US investor to its roster gives QuickPlay a certain cache south of the border. "The truth is a lot of US companies are still looking for that local stamp of approval – it’s not quite good enough to have a Canadian VC," he says. "There’s a perception that having a US VC is more credible." That credibility boost should help open some doors during sales calls as QuickPlay intensifies its efforts to win business in the US. The firm already has deals in place with content companies such as Viacom International Inc.’s MTV Networks and The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, who currently use QuickPlay’s Personal Entertainment Server and Centre product to offer streaming video to a variety of mobile devices, but Khanna has his sights set on the sizable wireless telco market down south. "In the US market we’ve done really well on the media side, and the carrier side is definitely our next big challenge," he says, adding that QuickPlay has "made great progress in the last several months." In fact, some of that US$12 million has been earmarked to build on QuickPlay’s existing sales and marketing efforts outside of Canada. While Khanna says the company has five sales professionals working in various cities in the United States right now, there’s no formal point of presence such as a sales office for QuickPlay in that market. However, he adds, "I can pretty much guarantee that at some point this year there’ll be something in the US, a permanent facility somewhere." Other than the allocation of some of the investment to business development purposes, however, Khanna says the company isn’t in a hurry to spend its new capital. "A lot of it is just an insurance policy and flexibility. There wasn’t a huge operating need from a cash point of view," he says. The day after the General Catalyst announcement, QuickPlay announced interest in the US for its latest offering, QuickPlayer for BlackBerry, which offers streaming audio content to users of Research In Motion Ltd.’s popular handhelds. As with QuickPlay’s Personal Entertainment line, things are heating up. "There are going to be several carrier announcements for this product over the next several weeks," Khanna says. Finally, Khanna says General Catalyst’s move to take a stake in the company is recognition of all that QuickPlay’s accomplished in the less than three years since its inception: "We’ve built the company, we’ve proven the model, we’ve built a product, now it’s really about scalability and selling that product around the world."

Quickplay sets sights on carriers in US with new VC funding

Broadcast | September 20, 2006

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