Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic raises 6 million

Written on February 13, 2008 – 11:08 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Loic Le Meur at the Seesmic Offices

Seesmic, the video conversation start-up by Loic Le Meur has just raised a cool 6 million dollars from an impressive list of investors. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about Seesmic but I am afraid to write about them because obviously I must be stupid. I mean, if Michael Arrington, Steve Case and Ron Conway all DO seem to get it, there can’t be any other explanation.

Can you imagine we will be chatting to each other in pre-recorded video messages? Do YOU use iChat video on a regular basis? Can you imagine using it in a Walkie Talkie kinda way where you talk first, then upload your message, then wait for someone to record their message which you then have to watch after which you can record a new message? Or maybe this whole video chatting this is just a cover for another business that we haven’t heard from yet?

No, it must be me. Or maybe these people just REALLY liked Loic and that is the reason why they invested 6 million. Either way, here is the press release:

Seesmic Raises $6 Million to Power the World’s Video Conversations

A-List investors are led by Niklas Zennström’s Atomico and include Steve Case, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Reid Hoffman

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - February 14, 2008 - Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), the highly anticipated new start-up from Loic Le Meur, today announced that it has raised $6 million from internationally renowned investors. The investment is lead by Atomico - an investment group founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The complete list of investors is:

* Michael Arrington - Founder, TechCrunch
* Steve Case - Co-Founder and former CEO and Chairman, AOL
* Jeff Clavier - Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
* Ron Conway - Early investor, Google
* Steve Garfield - Pioneering video blogger
* Dan Gillmor - Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship
* Reid Hoffman - Founder, LinkedIn
* Michael Parekh - Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
* Mark Pincus - Co-Founder and former Chairman and CEO, SupportSoft
* Ariel Poler - Founder and former CEO, IPRO and Topica
* Jeff Pulver - Chairman and Founder, Pulver.com
* Martin Varsavsky - Founder, FON

Until now, online communication has lacked personality, being limited to text (IM, SMS, email). Seesmic changes that, bringing conversation alive through video, allowing users to be seen and heard and to broadcast themselves. Still in closed alpha, Loic is building Seesmic in the open, with the help and guidance of the Seesmic community. Through his daily video blog loic.tv and the “feature request” function on the Seesmic site, Loic and his team gather suggestions and solicit feedback from the community about the platform and its functionality.

“I’m thrilled to have such an unprecedented group of high-profile business leaders, entrepreneurs, and angel investors validate the potential for Seesmic,” said Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic. “This significant investment will enable us to launch a site built by and for our community, incorporating the products and features they’ve told us they want through their Seesmic conversations.”

“Seesmic has grasped the opportunity to evolve the way people express themselves and converse online. Theirs is an exciting vision and I look forward to supporting the team,” said Niklas Zennström, Co-Founder of Skype.

“At last, the Internet is really social: you can see and hear people express their ideas and thoughts, you can join in, and you can make new friends. With Seesmic, everyone can participate in live conversations rich with personality, bought to life through video,” commented Ron Conway.

About Seesmic

Seesmic brings online conversation to life through video. Straight from their webcams, Seesmic enables users to easily post videos of their thoughts and ideas and participate in video conversations with the world.

Founded by Loic Le Meur - France’s best-known blogger, entrepreneur, founder of the largest European web event LeWeb3, and Internet Advisor to French President Sarkozy - Seesmic is changing the way people converse on the Web.

What Seesmic’s community says about Seesmic:

“The difference between YouTube and Seesmic is that YouTube puts video at the center, whereas Seesmic puts people at the center,” Stephanie Booth, Lausanne, Switzerland’s best known blogger.

Source: Valleywag

Here is a Demo of Seesmic from Loic himself at Demo:

And, in case you missed it, the infamous review of Seesmic by Loren Feldman.

Seesmic Review
by 1938media

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Arrington, funding, Jeff Clavier, Loic Le Meur, seesmic, Steve Case

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11 comments/trackbacks to “Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic raises 6 million”

Jun 20, 2008: Seesmic about to announce big news
[...] I believe it is to soon for seesmic to be acquired. A huge partnership could be, but big companies don’t like it that you leak this kind of information before the big press push is going out, so my guess is that they do a series B and raise another couple of millions after their first round in February. [...]

By Gino Goossens on Feb 13, 2008

I don’t get it neither. We try to get people understand a whole new technology and a mash up like Seesmic gets 6 mlj. ?
To me Seesmic is just an other masturbating web 2.0 application to spread more amateur content on the Internet by exactly do what Stephanie Booth says “put the people in the center” and let them spread a whole lot of rubbish…

Reply
By Gino Goossens on Feb 13, 2008

Before someone understands me wrong, read my blogpost about:
Web 2.0, Masturbation and the amature culture on DC:
http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/socialmedia/12115

Use Google translation to read it in English.

Reply
By Thibaut Thomas on Feb 14, 2008

I thinks its more similar to online forums than IM : think about it as conversation threads with video messages instead of text.

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By Patrick on Feb 14, 2008

I don’t think I’ll use it in the way Twitter works. I remember I was testing twitter and radar.net at the same time, radar seemed more advanced (you could add pictures to your ‘tweet’), but it didn’t make it. Twitter won and probably because it did just one thing and they do that very well. Now services around twitter are adding the picture upload via the API (mobypicture).
I guess seesmic is in that sense more of an add on to twitter than it is a standalone company or a new Twitter. This is how I see it B-to-C wise.
But from an B-to-B point of view I can see it working. Big brand who want to get in contact with their customers and want to test new product in a new way, might find Seesmic the solution. It does work easy, and it does provide value (from a ‘customunitty’ relationship perspective). Big brands do not have to build their own software (and oh.. please do not try to do so) and can use seesmic as a tool to get video responses from their customers/users.

B-to-B yes
B-to-C don’t think so

Reply
By Gino Goossens on Feb 14, 2008

@Patrick I agree. B2B could work, you need to create expert channels and filter the amateur content. You don’t want people to use the channel to complain in an unfair way about your brand. I don’t now if companies necessary need a service like Seesmic for that ? It is not Rocket Science … For a company it will be more effective to have their own branding page with MySpace, Netlog or Hyves and put the video’s on the branding portal. It would be a good idea for social portals to create their own video recording portal for professionals and companies.

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By Mark on Feb 14, 2008

But do businesses really want to have people complaining about their products on video? It is a powerful medium, and one video of a dysfunctional product could cost a lot in sales. Generally few people are “excited” enough to send “I live this product” videos unless they work for the company of course…

Reply
By Steven Carroll on Feb 14, 2008

This one is going to the deappool in 12 months. Mike is an investor, and judging by some of his recent other investments I think its clear he hasn’t the midas touch. You cannot beat youtube and goodle and even they cannot make money from it.

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By Steven Carroll on Feb 14, 2008

@Mark your right the only uploading will be competitors with naughty tails and smear campaigns, this is one of the greatest fears companies have about the internet.

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By Joost on Feb 14, 2008

I love reading about seesmic.. From the moment it was founded I was dazzled by the complete ackwardess of the concept and the lack of clear business model.

The question that repeatedly came to mind was: I’m I crazy OR has the world gone absolutely mad??? Loren’s review was so amusing; he totally nailed everything ackward about the concept! It gave me some reassurance that maybe I’m not crazy after all ;)

Although 6M is a big investment and big names are involved, I’m increasingly leaning to the “world gone mad scenario”.
Can’t wait how it turns out for Loic and Seesmic!!!

Reply
By David VM on Feb 14, 2008

TOo, I don’t get it neither…however, be sure that people like Loren (let’s say “the douche bag”) make that kind of website famous. It’s too easy to be rude; and even if I doubt about Seesmic I would rather congrats Loic for his entrepreneurship than the douche bag.

Reply

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