Virtual events and meeting company Brandlive hasn’t slowed down since its massive 2020, and CEO Sam Kolbert-Hyle has plans to take the company to 400 employees in the next 24 months.
He is already on his way. Brandlive is at about 200 people now, up from 110 at the close of 2020.
The company quietly raised $17.5 million in April, according to regulatory filings with the Security and Exchange Commission. It’s added capital to the balance sheet to accelerate growth and add staff. The company has 14 open roles on its website.
This month the company launched its third product, called AllHands. It’s a platform to improve internal meetings by helping companies create engaging content that can be watched and re-watched by employees that are increasingly dispersed and working in hybrid office situations.
“We want to marry the boring corporate intranet with the power of video,” Kolbert-Hyle said.
Like the company’s two other products — for events and training — AllHands is powered by Brandlive’s Greenroom production software. The production suite allows companies to create content by mixing live and prerecorded video. The platform incorporates chat, a question platform to keep conversations going between meetings and integration of company dashboards for key performance indicators or other information.
It’s also no accident that the content and engagement, with chat and public praise, looks a lot like video content on social media.
Greenroom features patent-pending technology to separate audio and video which allows for an onstage and backstage feel — those backstage can talk while someone is on stage. Additionally, with the video separated, it can be streamed over Amazon servers and offer higher quality video experience for those watching, he said.
“We want to be the best virtual experience,” Kolbert-Hyle said. “Products are focused on the attendee experience. It’s the way they watch content.”
And that means it looks good on mobile, which the company found is how most people watch this kind of content. The company looked at 2020 data and found that 60% of traffic is on a phone or tablet, which was much higher than expected by both Brandlive and its customers, who had assumed people were watching on desktops.
Reentry to offices will likely see that go higher, Kolbert-Hyle said as people juggle hybrid work schedules and start commuting again.
Some customers are using Brandlive’s existing products to power companywide meetings, it’s a niche the company has had for years. However, the company is transitioning those existing meetings onto the new AllHands product.
AllHands has been used by customers with 5,000 to 15,000 people. Kolbert-Hyle sees the target customer for the product at 50 or more employees — around the size when other video meeting products break down.
Brandlive’s business took off last year after it started working with the Biden presidential campaign. By the end of the year, the company had powered more than 200 Biden events ranging from small house parties to big-ticket fundraisers.
