Gary Anderson, a veteran of software's boom two decades ago, thinks the time to shine has finally arrived for his 6-year-old startup, Netbriefings.com.
For that, he thanks YouTube.
YouTube, of course, is the site that allows people to post homemade videos on it for millions to view. Created by 20-something co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and former St. Paulite Jawed Karim, YouTube fetched $1.6 billion when it was sold to Google last month.
Maybe more than any other Web site, YouTube popularized the use of video on the Internet for the general public in the past year.
Anderson said that heightened awareness ought to help Netbriefings.com gain traction. The company uses the Web to broadcast meetings — like a CEO's all-hands, companywide message — so it can reach the desktop computers of hundreds or even thousands of employees at once.
It also has been used for other purposes such as delivering product-demonstration videos, reaching audiences who want interactive media like PowerPoint presentations or instant messaging to accompany the pictures.
"YouTube is C2C," Anderson said, meaning consumer-to-consumer. "But we're definitely B2B" — business-to-business.
Netbriefings, which has its offices in downtown St. Paul, is Anderson's second startup.
In the early 1980s, when personal-computer software companies were emerging, he established St. Paul Software, now known as SPS Commerce.
The company grew with the help of venture capital infusions, but he left it in 2000 because, he said, "it was no longer fun."
Toward the end of his time at SPS, he had an idea for a company that would help companies use online video conferencing, and he found an India-based consultancy called Sunflower Information Technology with the right online tools.
"I talked them into taking on my business plan and merge with me," he said.
They changed the name to Netbriefings.com and began seeking capital funding and customers in January 2000, when the technology market was at its zenith.
Then the market slid over a cliff that spring, and the Sept. 11 attacks followed in 2001, bringing business to a standstill.
By 2003, he had to lay off half of the staff, dropping from 23 to about 12 employees.
"It was terrible," he said. "It was near-death."
But since then, Netbriefings has stabilized, he said. It obtained $2 million in two rounds of early-stage backing from angel investors and private stockholders and has been profitable for the past three years, Anderson said.
Revenue in 2005, boosted by a consulting business, was $2.7 million, but Anderson said he closed the consulting business this year to focus exclusively on webcasting.
Revenue in fiscal 2006, which ended June 30, hit $1.6 million, and he is optimistic it will grow this year.
Companies, particularly large ones, are ready to adopt Web technologies to do more communications with employees and customers, he thinks.
Video conferencing from the 1990s failed because it depended upon expensive dedicated telephone lines and specialized equipment. It also made everyone squeeze into one room to use it, limiting its use, he said.
Meanwhile, newer Web conferencing services like WebEx, one of many competitors, are geared to serving smaller Web steams, Anderson said.
His company specializes in the large-audience market that wants broadcast-TV quality and dependability. Customers include Time Warner, St. Jude Medical and St. Paul-based Lawson Software, Anderson said.
Time Warner, for instance, has used his company's service for an internal company message to 15,000 employees from Chairman Richard Parsons, while St. Jude uses Netbriefings to demonstrate its pacemakers and other cardiac devices to doctors who log into the Web.
To serve these larger audiences, Netbriefings installs its server computers and software directly on a company's network behind the corporate firewalls. That way, thousands of individual Web streams don't get bottled up trying to get through the virtual front door to the network.
Skeptical corporations get it once they see it, said Steve Vonder Haar, research director for Interactive Media Strategies, a Web research company in Texas.
"Seeing is believing," he said. "It's not about putting TV in your office. It's about enriching your communications environment."
Netbriefings, he said, is positioned to capitalize on an increasing corporate appetite for the multimedia Web.
Anderson said he next wants to edit his client's webcasts into shorter versions that can be shown on personal digital assistants, handy for a traveling sales forces, or create podcasts.
He also envisions creating corporate sites where employees could post videos for other employees or clients — sort of like an internal company YouTube.
"If you're going to spend all kinds of money communicating with your people," he said, "you want to make sure you give them as many possible ways to listen to and see that message."
Leslie Brooks Suzukamo can be reached at 651-228-5475 or lsuzukamo@pioneerpress.com.
COMPANY SPECS
Name: Netbriefings.com
Business: Large audience webcasting for corporations.
Founder: Gary W. Anderson
Based: St. Paul
Web site: http://www.netbriefings.com/
Employees: 12 full-time, plus outside consultants.
Annual revenue: $2.7 million in 2005 with consulting business, and $1.6 million in 2006 after consulting business was closed to focus on webcasting.
Competitors: On the lower end, WebEx; for large audience clients, ON24 and Vodium.
Challenge ahead: To evolve into a multimedia portal that can offer services ranging from streaming video to podcasts and video portals.
