Ponte Vedra Beach-based tech startup Cloud Media Center — a sports video distribution company — officially launched its network last week.
The company's software,
"Typically, you'll see startups with a valuation of $500,000 or valuation of $700,000," CEO Robert Portrie said. "Ours is substantially higher than that because we've spent 20 years doing this stuff, and we've build a lot of credibility."
Portrie said the company had a pre-money valuation, before any investments were made, of $10 million. In the first round, which was funded 75% through local investors, the company received $1.3 million.
The company works with content producers, advertisers and publishers, using algorithms to match up videos and ads and then to match the content with publishers. The company says its tools open up the algorithmic advertising marketplace to smaller publishers.
Its first product is focused on sports video that it creates and obtains from other sources, some of which feature major athletes. At the heart of the company's business is a series of dashboards that lets all three types of users understand how their products are doing in terms of viewership.
"Advertisers want to be able to manage campaigns real time, so we have to build out a media player and a platform that gives real-time analytics," Portrie said.
Portrie spent a year incubating CMC in the Fenwick Group, a consulting and software development company of which he's a founding partner.
CMC has two offices, one in Ponte Vedra and a technology center off of Baymeadows Road, and chose Jacksonville for a reason. It has 20 employees now.
"We've become a destination spot for people in the business world," Portrie said. "It's been like that for a long time now and companies look at us as well, and we have a young population ... Jacksonville has really become a melting pot of capability."
The venture capital and investment landscape on the First Coast has changed in the last few years, he said, and he anticipates more growth in the software startup industry.
