Brightcove CEO Says Company Profitable And Cash Flow Positive
In a conversation late yesterday with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, Jeremy went on-record to tell me that the company is now officially profitable and cash flow positive. While this is a big deal for Brigthcove, it's an even bigger deal for the industry and is validation that companies in this market can in fact create scalable, profitable businesses.
Nearly twelve months ago to the day, I interviewed Jeremy for a story where he commented that he expected Brightcove to be profitable within a year. While some wanted to argue that Brightcove burns too much money and could never grow their revenue fast enough, the sheer number of customers for Brightcove's premium service says otherwise. Brightcove now has over 700 premium customers, almost double what they had at this time last year, and while Jeremy would not give out any revenue details, he did say that the company will see 50% revenue growth in 09'. From my estimates, I expect Brightcove is probably on track to do about $80M this year.
Jeremy mentioned that the company's ability to grow revenue during a poor economy is party due to the fact that Brightcove has gotten a lot of traction in the enterprise and government verticals for their Brightcove 3 platform and have also clearly been helped out by all the customer wins they are seeing in Europe and Asia. While Jeremy and I talked about Brightcove's long-term plans and what he sees for the future of the company, Jeremy's really only interested in focusing on continuing to invest in the business and growing the bottom line. If Brightcove wanted to sell the company and make a quick buck, they could have done that a long time ago.
Brightcove is in a really good position right now as they don't need any capital, have no need to sell the business and really want to turn the company into a powerhouse. And with so many online video platforms in the space, it's only a matter of time before some distressed assets will be out on the market, leaving Brightcove in a nice position to pick up anything that may be valuable. It also helps Brightcove and all the other online video platform providers that the market now classifies companies like Brightcove in their own bucket. Video platform solutions are no longer lumped together with content delivery networks and content owners now put our RFPs specifically for video platforms. The online video market continues to mature and content owners clearly see the value of software based services that help solve many of the video ecosystem problems.
While Brightcove is clearly the leader in the video platform space today, other companies will be able to benefit from Brightcove's success and the entire industry will grow as a result of it. Anyone can argue about which company's product or service is better, who they like more and who has the best customers, but it's pretty hard to argue the importance of companies in this space being able to show profitability and be cash flow positive.