Conviva Leadership
Press Release
San Mateo, CA – Conviva. Today announced the close of $9M in Series A funding from existing investors NEA and Foundation Capital. Conviva will use the funding to further develop its unique technology for distributing video over the Internet.
Dr. Hui Zhang, President, and Dr. Ion Stoica, CTO, founded Conviva to address unsolved problems in delivering high quality video over the Internet. “The increase in video consumption is driving Internet traffic to unprecedented levels, which can cause serious problems for both content owners and network service providers,” says Dr. Zhang, “The challenges around scaling, assuring attractive economics, and intelligently managing massive video traffic requires new technical approaches, such as Conviva’s.”
Dr. Zhang from Carnegie Mellon University and Dr. Stoica from U.C. Berkeley are considered amongst the world’s top researchers in distributed network technologies. As a result of collaborative research efforts conducted over the past several years, they have pioneered a set of leading-edge distribution technologies that will enable content owners to deliver live, on- demand, and user-generated video to consumer audiences with superior quality and security at very low cost. Conviva’s unique Coordinated Video Distribution System (CVDS) allows content owners to offer a consumer experience that is on-par with or better than that offered by server- based Content Delivery Network (CDN) solutions. Furthermore, Conviva’s technology provides excellent network efficiency and breakthrough traffic management capabilities for both content owners and network service providers.
“Video is rapidly growing to consume well over 50% of available Internet resources. However, today’s Internet is optimized for highly bursty traffic, such as web traffic. This mismatch of technologies requires new approaches to networking. We have developed unique protocols and
algorithms that will be fundamental to this emerging large-scale data distribution problem,” says Dr. Stoica.
According to Conviva Board Member Adam Grosser, General Partner at Foundation Capital, “The Internet video marketplace is an important investment area for us. Conviva stood out because they have technical credibility as well as a keen understanding of the problems that are faced today by content owners. Consumers are just scratching the surface of what the Internet has to offer in terms of video. As content supply and consumer demand grows, new technical approaches such as Conviva’s will be absolutely necessary.”
Conviva’s Board also includes NEA General Partner Dr. Forest Baskett and Principal Peter Sonsini. “When we invest in companies, we look for excellent teams with truly differentiated technology that solve real problems in exploding new markets. Conviva has all of these attributes,” says Sonsini.
Conviva is currently conducting trials with selected customers and plans to make its technology available to the marketplace later this year.
About Conviva
Conviva is a technology leader in Internet video distribution, providing the quality user- experience achieved from server-based streaming with tremendous cost and scalability benefits. Founded by professors from Carnegie Mellon and U.C. Berkeley and backed by NEA and Foundation Capital, Conviva aims to provide a broad set of video distribution service offerings to content owners and aggregators who deliver live events, linear programming, on-demand, and user-generated video to global consumer audiences. For more information, visit https://www.conviva.com.
About NEA
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is a leading venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs create and build major new enterprises that use technology to improve the way we live, work and play. Since its founding in 1978, the firm has followed the same basic principles: support their entrepreneurs, provide an excellent return to their limited partners and practice their profession with high standards and respect. Practicing classic venture capital for 28 years, NEA focuses on investments at all stages of a company’s development, from seed-stage through IPO. With approximately $8.5 billion in committed capital, NEA’s experienced management team has invested in over 550 companies, of which more than 150 have gone public and more than 220 have been acquired. NEA has offices in Reston, Virginia, Menlo Park, California and Baltimore, Maryland.
About Foundation Capital
Founded in 1995, Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm committed to supporting entrepreneurs and their companies, targeting innovative opportunities in telecommunications and networking; Internet infrastructure; and enterprise software and on demand services. Foundation Capital funds total more than $1.7 billion
