The size of funding rounds has grown over the last five years. When we were raising our Seed round for Bold Metrics, the average Seed round was in the $1M – $1.5M range, now it’s not uncommon to see Seed rounds hit $5M and higher.
In fact, if you go back in time, Seed rounds today are really more like the Series A round of the past. Here’s a look at the data from 2010 through 2019:
So it came as no surprise to see a new service aimed at making video easier for developers, API.video announced a $5.5M Seed round last week. The round was led by Blossom Capital, a VC firm based in London. The kinds of startups raising $5M Seed rounds in the current global economy are usually repeat founders that already have a solid track record and often a pre-existing relationship with the VC who leads the round. This rings true for API.video:
Founded in 2019 by Cédric Montet, the former founder and CEO of Libcast’s live streaming and on-demand SaaS video platform, api.video aims to do a lot of the heavy lifting required to incorporate modern video functionality into websites and mobile apps, and in turn help grow the market for what it calls “transactional video communications”.(Source – Techcrunch)
Given how critical video streaming is in our new normal, it makes sense that a company focused on helping developers easily integrate it into their products makes a lot of sense. It also happens to be the first .VIDEO domain names I’ve personally seen in the wild, and it’s a good use of the domain extension, especially given what the company does. I’m not sure APIVideo.com would get the point across in the same way, but I still think the domain probably should buy that domain and forward it to avoid confusion.
Either way, it’s going to be interesting to watch API.video grow, with a fresh $5.5M in the bank and a world more dependent on video streaming than ever before, I think it’s safe to say the sky is the limit here. Congrats to Cédric and team, here’s to the journey ahead!
