Introducing… (drum roll please)…Clive, the Encoding.com Goat.  Look for him to appear in many places in the near future including his print debut in the latest issue of Streaming Media Magazine.  Why did we choose a Goat to represent the Company?  After many hours and several Board meetings of deliberation, and as anyone familiar with animal behavior knows, we chose a Goat for their extreme intelligence, tenacity and innate ability to discover and exploit any system weakness (think loose rung in a fence); or,  in our case, a poorly served video encoding marketplace.  OK –  we just thought Clive was cool and looked good in the ad.

2009 was a challenging year for many of us.  For Gregg and me, and the entire Encoding.com team, it was a time to hunker down and focus our very limited resources on trying to build a disruptive world-class service.  As with any startup, sacrifices were made to keep the dream alive — time with family, financial, sleep…

But a friend and mentor once said to me, “Just keep swimming.”  No, I’m not referring to Dory in Finding Nemo.  We did keep swimming, and our persistence along with your patience, feedback and support has paid off.

It is with great pleasure to announce that we closed a $1.25M Series A financing on December 31st.  We feel very fortunate to have put together such a great group of investors who believe in our vision and our ability to execute.   The round was led by Metamorphic Ventures, a fantastic and extremely supportive firm from NYC run by guys who have built their own successful companies.   Other notable investors include Pat Condon, co-founder of Rackspace; Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia and founder of TACODA and Real Media; Zelkova Ventures from NYC; and Allen Morgan, venture partner at Mayfield.

We will use these funds to continue improving our platform, and to generate awareness that our solution exists.  And yes, we will celebrate with morning bagels for all employees… for one week.

The Encoding.com team thanks you for your continued support.

Hey Everyone,

We were nominated in two categories for the Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards and could use your help. If you’re happy with the Encoding.com service, we’d very much appreciate if you would vote for us in the Transcoding SaaS and Best Online Video Startup – Technology categories. It only takes about 30 seconds.

Thanks in advance.
- Gregg and Jeff

It’s been an incredible year since our launch in September 2008. 400+ business customers, 2M+ encoded videos have far exceeded our initial first year goals. As many of you know with your own companies, there are so many factors that can positively or negatively affect one’s ability to go from product concept to proven business model. The most important thing we’ve done to increase our chances for success has been to listen to you, the folks using our platform. “Release early, release often,” has been our mantra and your support as we continue to add features and fine tune the platform has been greatly appreciated.

In the coming year, we intend to lead the cloud-based encoding market from infancy to maturity, from novel idea to essential media work flow component. We will deeply embed ourselves in the ecosystem via hooks into the leading CMS and video platforms. And, continue to look to you for suggestions and critical feedback.

As a thank you, we’re planning to celebrate with clients and partners during the Streaming Media West conference in November. Stay tuned for details.

Over the past year, we’ve received hundreds of requests from you for new features, client interface improvements, and smoother operations for the Encoding.com service. We’ve been able to address many of these over time including last week’s major release where we launched the new service plans and much improved client interface. With your help, we now have millions of encodes under our belt and an industry-leading suite of features.

We know that you are depending on us and in many cases, your customers are depending on you. To ensure that we continue to improve Encoding.com to better meet your requirements, we need your help. We also want to grow our business and learn from you why you chose Encoding.com as your provider.

Please take a moment and participate in our online survey. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Cheers,
– Gregg, Jeff and the Encoding.com team

You’ve heard about cloud-based video encoding… What is it? Why do I need it? What pain points does it solve? What opportunities does it create? I will answer these questions and present a case study to illustrate the power of this exciting new trend in video transcoding and syndication.

What is it? Encoding.com has launched the world’s first enterprise-class, high-volume video transcoding service based in the cloud. Integrate once and gain control of a powerful application for managing all of your encoding and syndication needs. You can scale infinitely and maximize revenues while avoiding the significant infrastructure costs required to support your growing demand.

Video encoding has been the necessary evil component in every video site operator’s workflow usurping significant in-house compute power and management overhead. Encoding.com can free up these valuable resources while providing a solution that is tailor-made for seamless workflow integration, is highly flexible, and ensures your content is available to as wide an audience as possible across the web and mobile devices.

Why do I need it? You need to be profitable. Utilizing a transcode solution that maximizes your audience and delivers superior quality is an imperative. At the same time, it is now possible with cloud-based encoding to stay current with the latest and greatest formats, bit rates, codecs, etc… while reducing your CAPEX and in-house management costs. Achieving profitability and self-sustainability should be tackled from both directions.

Many of you have already invested in your internal hardware/software encoding infrastructure and may wonder why change. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? Your marketing VP approves an MRD requiring all content to be available for the iPhone… yesterday. Your head of sales delivers several new distribution deals all with various and stringent specifications [think Hulu] but your CEO has frozen your CAPEX budget. Or, your PR firm lands a feature story on the Morning Show next week announcing your funniest Twitter moment video contest. If the video production system breaks down, you know where the fingers will be pointed.

What opportunities does it create? You are in the business of providing engaging video programming and delivering a seamless user experience. A robust cloud-based encoding solution can further automate your workflow and free up valuable resources to focus on feature and performance enhancements: Brightcove player customization, content targeting, social media and community-building tools, language localization, and so much more.