Content delivery platform Conviva raises $20M in new funding, but won’t talk about the technology
Conviva, a San Mateo, Calif. company that was formerly called Rinera Networks, has raised a substantial $20 million in new funding. But, as the headline notes, they don’t want to give the details on why they’re able to attract so much — short of making a few mildly disparaging comments about other companies in the space.
To be specific, the company doesn’t mind talking about what it wants to do; it just won’t detail why it expects to be good at it. Their target market is live video delivery to computers so that, for instance, you can watch a live boxing match on your laptop at television quality. There’s a quick demo of the technology on Conviva’s webpage. CEO Carlos Ramon says that the price is also attractive, so the platform would be a good option for pre-recorded video as well.
Video is the golden goose of content delivery, with everyone from Akamai to RawFlow wanting a piece of the market, so it’s not surprising that Conviva is also focusing its energies there. But while Ramon was careful not speak ill of any specific company, he did say that from his view, none of the existing platforms work. He referred to even newer companies like BitGravity as “legacy systems”, meaning that while some of today’s companies may be better than others at delivering video, he thinks of Conviva as being the first of a new generation.
As to whether Conviva might be a traditional content delivery network or peer to peer sharing system — or a blend of both — Ramon would only suggest that nothing similar to Conviva’s C3 platform currently exists. C3, by the way, stands for concurrent coordination and control, and the founders are known for their work in distributing computing, which does suggest a combination of various delivery methods.
The company promises to give more details in a few weeks. In the meantime, it at least disclosed its investors: UV Partners led the round, while previous backers New Enterprise Associates and Foundation Capital joined in on the $20 million funding. Conviva also took $9 million in April of last year.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.